Jeff Russell

☤

Happy Hermes-Day! Can we talk about Teiresias for a second? That whole thing with the snakes [item 3] has been bothering me.

So if you're recall, one day blind Teiresias was walking on Mount Kullene (the birthplace of Hermes), stumbled across two snakes entwined in sex, and he accidentally crushes one or both of them with his staff. Hera was infuriated at this and changed Teiresias into a woman. Teiresias becomes a priestess of Hera. At some point, Apollo advises Teiresias that if he ever happens upon the same situation to crush one or the other of the snakes with his staff; in the eighth year of being a woman, Teiresias does and is restored to his original form.

This is clearly a story about reincarnation in order to learn a particular lesson: Teiresias is each of us, Teiresias's sex-change is reincarnating into different bodies, Hera is "mother Earth" and becoming her priestess is to devote oneself to learning her lessons; Apollo is the mysteries and his advice is the mystery teachings; eight years is a "great year" representing one's greater life (Apollodoros, Library III iv §2).

All that is very straightforward, I think; the only question is, what is the lesson to be learned? It has something to do with polarity, certainly, which already puts me at a disadvantage since I'm of a monistic bent and have a difficult time making sense of dualities; but it is further complicated by the fact that almost every version of the story we possess tells it differently. I tend to trust Apollodoros more than the others, but his version is itself ambiguous, so we're on our own.

Thinking about this, though, reminded me of the Ra Material; if you're not familiar with it, it's one of the major channeled texts of the New Age movement. (Since it's a channeled text, we're already in super-grain-of-salt-territory, but bear with me.) "Ra" states that there are seven degrees of consciousness, and that each degree of consciousness has a lesson to learn in order for beings of that consciousness to move to the next degree of consciousness. First degree beings (like minerals) are static and inanimate, and their lesson is to learn to move and grow. Second degree beings (like plants and animals) are animate but unselfconscious, and their lesson is to learn individuality. We humans are third degree beings, and our lesson is to learn to relate the individual to the all. "Ra" says that there are two polarities of relating to the all: the positive pole of giving to others or compassion, and the negative pole of taking from others or selfishness; since all is one, both the love of others and the love of self are ways of loving the all, and so either way can carry one upwards, but the crucial point is to develop enough reflective capacity and will to be capable of actively choosing a path.

Of course, all models are wrong, but some are useful: true or not, "Ra's" model certainly has the merit of making sense of the snakes. The female snake is the negative pole (and let me stress that I'm not denouncing women, I am referring strictly to the inward-attracting direction of any negative pole); the male snake is the positive pole (as outward-emitting); Teiresias is doomed to reincarnation by being incapable of choosing a path (his first killing is accidental); over a great year he studies the lessons of earth, guided by the mysteries; finally, he is freed from reincarnation by choosing a path (his second killing is willed). Perhaps it even makes sense of why so many variants of the story are recorded: a "pure" version of the story, like the "Ra" material, stresses the free will of the individual to choose as they please; however, "moralistic" versions of the story might urge the individual to prefer one or the other polarity. (And I can certainly sympathize with this: I would, myself, much rather hasten to the light in love than sound the darkness in isolation.)

Penises (as emblematic of male sexuality) are really all over the mysteries, from the phalluses in the temples of Osiris to the thursoi of Dionusos. (Hell, if you haven't read De Dea Syria, there's a veritable boatload of penises in there for you.) I've always thought that's pretty weird to say the least, but if it's an injunction towards the positive pole, that would at least make some sense of it.

It is interesting to me that Hermes picked up the image of the story as his symbol, carrying always the kerukeion with it's two snakes coiling around Teiresias's cornel-wood staff, topped by the wings which the development of will grants. It is interesting that this became Hermes's symbol even though Athena also figures prominently in the Teiresias myth; we see just the opposite in the Perseus myth, where Perseus is guided by both gods, but only Athena took her symbol—the head of Medousa affixed to a shield—from there.

ποιμένες ἄγραυλοι, κάκ᾽ ἐλέγχεα, γαστέρες οἶον,
ἴδμεν ψεύδεα πολλὰ λέγειν ἐτύμοισιν ὁμοῖα,
ἴδμεν δ᾽, εὖτ᾽ ἐθέλωμεν, ἀληθέα γηρύσασθαι.

"Boorish shepherds—you disgraceful wretches, nothing but stomachs!—
we know how to say many convincing lies,
but we know also, when we please, how to sing true."

(The Muses of Mount Helikon speaking. Hesiod, Theogony 26–8.)

I have been thinking a lot lately about the spiritual process.

I have studied, and continue to study, a lot—but truth is simplicity itself: ἕν τὸ πᾶν "all is one." The closer one can actualize that notion, the closer to divinity one is. No amount of study can add to that.

And yet the study is not for nothing; one often needs much scaffolding to build a tower, even if it all gets pulled away and torn down thereafter. This was called to mind forcefully today as I began my attempt to reread Hesiod haltingly in Greek and read the above lines. (He's much harder than Homer, since while Homer has an elegance about his speech, Hesiod is coarse and takes, shall we say, tremendous liberties with his grammar to make the verse work. Simonides said that Hesiod was taught by the Muses, while Homer was taught by the Graces, and this seems about right to me.)

Who are Hesiod's Muses? Well, recall our fourfold schemata of consciousness, and note that light is truth. In Air, light is transmitted clearly, so all there is true. In Earth, light is not transmitted and only received, so all there is false. (Indeed, this is why there is no "user manual" for life here in the world of Earth, and why we need to grope about in darkness.) Water is translucent, just as Air is, but unlike Air, the light there can be reflected and refracted: when the Water is calm, the light passes true, but if the Water bends on itself cleverly, it can distort the light in whatever ways it pleases—even seeming true when it is quite false. So the Muses are clearly daimons, beings of Water, shepherding the shepherd—inner-plane initiatrixes, we may say, rather than the guiding angels I am so fond of. (Thus while one may learn from them—and from Hesiod!—great care must be taken, as they can't be trusted to be Good, just as they warn us.)

This identification is very useful, I think, and was effortless to make, but it must be noted that I've studied Empedokles with at least some care for something like six years, ever since I first took up geomancy. It took so much effort and contemplation to finally penetrate the proper simplicity of the model, so that now I can easily use it as a map and identify something from it. Now that I comprehend the model in it's simplicity, a lot of what I studied is now redundant... but it cannot be said to be "wasted," since without the complicated I couldn't have gotten to the simple.

So it is with spirituality. It is perhaps best to just clear the mind and sit in zazen; but without a koan or sutra or some other material for the soul to work on, the leap may never come, just as you may have all the reagent in the world, but without catalyst, the reaction can't occur.

The end may be utter simplicity, but there are long miles of breadcrumbs we must follow that we may appreciate it.

"Seijo, the Chinese girl," observed Goso, "had two souls, one always sick at home and the other in the city, a married woman with two children. Which was the true soul?" [...]

The clouds and moon are the same.
The mountains and valleys are different.
Each is blessed in its own way.
One is. Two are.

(Wumen Huikai, The Gateless Gate XXXV. The case is adapted by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki, while the verse is adapted by myself.)