The Orphics

Well, I suppose rather than beat around the bush as I usually do, I shall just jump into the occasional 'other side' of Hollywood.

In the last article here, TheTaoOfJonze directed our attention to our good friend Stanley Kubrick once again, and specifically to that slightly ambiguous final set of scenes in 2001 A Space Odyssey.

Old Dave - very old Dave - is to be seen in a renaissance-style large drawing room with a bed in it, and of course, the iconic 'obelisk' which is seen throughout the entire movie. It seems Dave feels quite well, if clearly old, yet nonetheless satisfied; it would appear.

From the most ancient recorded times, there was this 'cult' - a very private, strictly exclusive cult, almost always restricted to only a handful of members of the upper aristocratic classes - which has been variously called the Cult of Orphues, or 'the Orphics,' also the followers of the Mysteries of Dionysus, and the Eleusinian Mysteries.  

Nobody has ever recorded or written down anywhere what it was they taught inside those religious 'cults.'

I have mentioned them before, here, specifically a few things in regard to the 'Parthenoia,' of whom Mary the mother of Jesus, was a member, since of course, as you all know, that was in fact the label given to her in the original texts. The Parthenon in Athens, is to do with this 'cult.'

These female 'Partheni' were taught how to procure death, and also how to survive death. They were a philosophical 'anti-thesis' to the systematic materialistic anatomical practices of the Pharaonic court physicians and their mummification ideas.

I mean, without going into it here, there is no modern era understanding about what the pyramids were at all and there is literally no connection between mummification and the original cultures of 'the pyramids;' and nor any understanding of the other monumental structures that are in the vicinity at least two of which have not been formally 'discovered' yet.

One of these is the small but profoundly beautiful 'snakes headed' figure nearby the Sphinx.

Anyway, the point is that in the Eleusinian Mysteries (in all of these 'schools' or 'cults' if you wish), they taught that a calm form of breathing ('eupnoea' - we still use this term in modern medicine) was related to the supernatural, the Divine, pattern that could help to instill 'life' - as in 'eternal life.'

Roja Dove's Elysiuam - 'heroic, virtuous...'
Goes the ad copy.

But we are not simply talking about something like modern Yoga ideas here, these ancient cults had a concept about 'breath' or 'air' and then something that was a living kind of air, and which was quite different to the ordinary air we breathe and the ordinary way we breathe (ordinary air).

'Psyche' was the living intelligent 'soul' endowed into the material physical being, when 'pnoe' was breathed into that 'body.' Pneuma, was just the ordinary 'life' and 'air' around and in everything that existed in the material world, and did not have actual sentient intelligence.

Although almost all Abrahamic religions in their modern day forms say that 'God' is 'spirit' only - this is not what the early Orphics and then the Dionysus-pattern religion of Christianity believed. 

But I am not going to deal with that aspect here (God beyond just the spiritual), only with the specific conception they did have about in what way, God was Spirit when He was 'being' Spirit.

And when we look at these ideas, which are completely communicated in the Torah and Septuagint, we suddenly find something different to what modern people tend to 'believe' (that is, think they believe, because they think they know...)

Suddenly, we are confronted with exact and precise details about the material blending, entering in with, maybe becoming one with, the completely non-material, non-physical, and the Divine atmosphere Itself.

"The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God's people, went up before God from the angel's hand (my italics)."

It actually says in greater details '...was received and accepted by God' but modern translations leave this out, in the sense that they think it is redundant and implied by their translations.

This is from Revelation 8:4 but it is also simply a re-quoting of half a dozen earlier references from the original Torah.

And so, according to the literature, incense (of a specific composition) IS to be found, literally as in literally materially found - IN THE NON-EARTHLY SPIRITUAL PLACE(S).

Which is therefore either wrong and an incorrect idea, or else, it means that 'spiritual' does not actually mean non-material; even non-material from our plane or dimension of existence.

And my ultimate point here - what I am leading to - is that something about incense (or at least, this kind of incense - Opoponax, and Frankincense and other ingredients specified in the texts) is 'harmonically associated' with a beneficent aspect of the Supreme Divine. ...As the Taoists call it - 'the Supreme Ultimate.' ...If we go by these sacred texts; if those texts are conveying correct, true matters. Though I would argue they are in line with highly complex facts to do with neural topography and their complex functions: neural network firings at the highest level are like a constellation of stars all pulsing together in time code.

Additionally, there used to be similar religious or theistic philosophy ideas among the Orphics, about what we now know to be the non-spectral color 'mauve' or also 'Tyrian purple,' which the god Hermes was supposed to have invented or at least bestowed, to the divinely-approved rulers of human society.

It's getting late, I haven;t managed to really forcefully 'hit my target' at which I first aimed here when I began to pen this article, but hey, that's what you get when you're just hearing from a human!!