Krishna and Orpheus the great initiates of the east and west
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| Krishna and Orpheus |
Neither Greece nor the nations of the north have ever pictured in their poems such noble and lofty-souled wives as the passionate Sita or the tender, loving Damayanti. What the Hindu epopee do not tell us is the profound mystery of the mixture of the races, and the slow inculcation of the religious ideas which brought to pass profound changes in the social organisation of Vedic India.
The Aryans, pure-blooded conquerors, found themselves in the presence of considerably mixed and inferior races, in which the yellow and red types were blended into a multiplicity of shades on a dark background. Hindu civilisation thus appears to us as a formidable mountain, bearing a melanian race at its foot, mixed nations on its sides, and the pure Aryans on its summit. Separation of the castes not being rigorously insisted on in the early ages, great mixtures took place among these peoples.
The purity of the conquering race diminished more and more as time went by, though even nowadays the predominance of the Aryan type in the higher classes, and of the melanian in the lower, may be noticed.
From the turbid depths of Hindu society, there was always springing forth a burning vapour of passion, a mixture of languor and ferocity, like the pestilential miasma of the jungles mingled with the odour exhaled by savage beasts.
The superabundant black blood has given India a colour special to itself. It has refined the race and rendered it effeminate at the same time. The strange thing is, that in spite of this mixed blood the ruling ideas of the white race have been able to keep themselves at the top of this civilisation through so many revolutions. Here, then, we have the ethical basis of India clearly outlined: on the one hand, the genius of the white race with its moral signification and its sublime metaphysical aspirations; on the other, that of the black race, with all its passionate element and dissolvent energy.
How is this double genius translated in the ancient religious history of India? The most ancient traditions speak of both a solar and a lunar dynasty. The kings of the former claimed to be descended from the sun, the latter called themselves sons of the moon. This symbolical language, however, threw a veil over two opposing religious conceptions and signified that these two categories of sovereigns were attached to two different cults.
The solar cult gave the male sex to the God of the universe. Around him was grouped the purest element in the Vedic tradition: the science of the sacred fire and of prayer, the respect due to women, the worship of ancestors, and the elective and patriarchal royalty.
The lunar cult attributed to the deity the feminine sex, under which sign the religions of the Aryan cycle have ever given adoration to Nature, often to Nature blind and unconscious in her violent and terrible manifestations. This cult inclined towards idolatry and black magic favoured polygamy and tyranny which depended on popular passion. The struggle between the sons of the moon and those of the sun, between the Kauravas and the Pandavas, really form the subject of the great Hindu epopee, the Mahabharata, a kind of perspective resume of the history of Aryan India before the definite constitution of Brahmanism.
This struggle is full of desperate combats, strange and interminable adventures. In the middle of the epopee we find that the Kauravas, the lunar kings, are conquerors. The Pandavas, noble children of the sun and guardians of the unpolluted rites, are dethroned and banished. They wander about in exile, hiding in forests, taking refuge with anchorites, weaving clothes made of the barks of trees, and each carrying a hermit's staff in his hand. Are the baser instincts to triumph?
Are the powers of darkness, represented in the Hindu epopee by the black Rakshasas, to gain the victory over the light-giving Devas? Is tyranny on the point of crushing the elite of the land beneath its war-chariot?
Will the cyclone of evil passions dash to pieces the Vedic altar and extinguish the sacred ancestral fire? No. India is only at the outset of her religious evolution. She will manifest her metaphysical and organising genius in the institution of Brahmanism. The priests who officiated for the kings and chiefs under the name of purohits (the ones appointed to perform the sacrifice of fire) had already become their advisers and their ministers.
They possessed great wealth, considerable in- fluence, still they could not have given their caste that sovereign authority, that unassailable position, loftier than the royal power itself, but for the help afforded by another class of men personifying the spirit of India in its deepest and most original elements. These men were the anchorites.
Contents:
I. HEROIC INDIA
THE SONS OF THE SUN AND OF THE MOON. 3
II. THE KING OF MATHURA 12
III. THE VIRGIN DEVAKI 20
IV. KRISHNA'S YOUTH. 28
V. INITIATION 41
VI. THE DOCTRINE OF THE INITIATES 55
VII. TRIUMPH AND DEATH 63
VIII. RADIANCE OF THE SOLAR WORD ...
THE SONS OF THE SUN AND OF THE MOON. 3
II. THE KING OF MATHURA 12
III. THE VIRGIN DEVAKI 20
IV. KRISHNA'S YOUTH. 28
V. INITIATION 41
VI. THE DOCTRINE OF THE INITIATES 55
VII. TRIUMPH AND DEATH 63
VIII. RADIANCE OF THE SOLAR WORD ...
PREHISTORIC GREECE
THE BACCHANTES APPEARANCE OF ORPHEUS 91
II. THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER . . . . . 107
III. DIONYSIAC FETE IN THE VALLEY OF TEMPE . 117
IV. EVOCATION . . . . . . - .128
THE BACCHANTES APPEARANCE OF ORPHEUS 91
II. THE TEMPLE OF JUPITER . . . . . 107
III. DIONYSIAC FETE IN THE VALLEY OF TEMPE . 117
IV. EVOCATION . . . . . . - .128
V. THE DEATH OF ORPHEUS . . . . -
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