Shamanism and the Drug Propaganda: Orpheus

"The shedding of plant and animal form marks of course the complete close of anything like totemistic thinking and feeling. It is in many ways pure loss....There are few things uglier than a lack of reverence for animals. The well-born, well-bred little Athenian girls who danced as Bears to Artemis of Brauronia, the Bear-Goddess, could not but think reverently of the great might of the Bear. Among the Apaches to-day, Bourke states, 'only ill-bred Americans, or Europeans who have never had any "raising," would think of speaking of the Bear or indeed of the snake, the lightning or the mule, without employing the reverential prefix "Ostin,"meaning "old man,"and equivalent to the Roman title "Senator."

Olympian Greece turned Apollo Lykegenes, 'born of the she wolf,' into Apollo Lykoktonos, 'the one who slew the wolf.' "All the canonical denizens of the underworld are heroic or divine figures of the older stratum of the population....Tityos and Salmoneus are beings of this order. Once locally the rivals of Zeus, they paled before him, and as vanquished rivals become typical aggressors, punished for ever as a warning to the faithful."

"Pandora ['All-Giver'] is in ritual and matriarchal theology the earth as Kore, but in the patriarchal mythology of Hesiod her great figure is strangely changed and minished. She is no longer Earth-born, but the creature, the handiwork of Olympian Zeus....there gleams the ugly malice of theological animus. Zeus the Father will have no great Earth-goddess Mother and Maid in one, in his man-fashioned Olympos, but her figure is from the beginning, so he remakes it; woman, who was the inspirer, becomes the temptress; she who made all things, gods and mortals alike, is become their plaything, their slave, dowered only with physical beauty, and with a slave's tricks and blandishments. To Zeus, the archpatriarchal bourgeois, the birth of the first woman is but a huge Olympian jest: 'He spake and the Sire of men and of gods immortal laughed.'"

Hesiod: "But the noble son of Iapetos outwitted him and stole the far-seen gleam of unwearying fire in a hollow fennel stalk. And Zeus who thunders on high was stung in spirit, and his dear heart was angered when he saw amongst men the far-seen ray of fire. Forthwith he made an evil thing for men as the price of fire; for the very famous limping god formed of earth the likeness of a shy maiden as the son of Cronos willed. And the goddess bright-eyed Athene girded and clothed her with silvery raiment, and down from her head she spread with her hands a broidered veil, a wonder to see; and she, Pallas Athene, put about her head lovely garlands, flowers of new-grown herbs. Also she put on her head a crown of gold which the very famous Limping God made himself and worked with his own hands as a favour to Zeus his father. On it was much curious work, wonderful to see; for of the many creatures which the land and sea rear up, he put most upon it, wonderful things, like living beings with voices: and great beauty shone out from it. But when he had made the beautiful evil to be the price for the blessing, he brought her out, delighting in the finery which the bright-eyed daughter of a mighty father had given her, to the place where the other gods and men were. And wonder took hold of the deathless gods and mortal men when they saw that which was sheer guile, not to be withstood by men."

The mythological devolution from inspirer to temptress, from shamanic ecstacy to sexual excitement, is an infantilizing step down the psychological ladder, equivalent to replacing spontaneous ecstatic singing with masturbation. It's a circus trick for the laoi, 'the laity,' as the bowl below, by Makron, c.490 BC, seems to suggest.

The pharmakon, Dionysos, was the herb eaten, sacrificed, to satisfy the soul. The pharmakos, Pentheus, the herb's mythic double, atavistically, psychologically, identified with the herb, became the scapegoat sacrificed to satisfy the community, once the pharmakon was prohibited, once the community was convinced that healing and rebirth were second hand, not entheogenic, not sacramental, but sacrificial, political. The psychological transition was simultaneously political, religious and medical - none of the elements can be separated from one another.

The eidolon became the focus of the lost group emotion and identity, the pharmakon athanasias, the 'medicine of immortality' to use Ignatius'phrase. The pharmakos, the official scapegoat identified with the pharmakon - the Slave, the Judas, the Witch, the Nigger (a perfect pharmakos, embodying, historically, a close connection to tribal culture), the Hippie - became the living example of what happens to practitioners of the now prohibited shamanism. The emotive meaning, the archetypal apprehension of the originary shamanistic imagery is intentionally used against itself by the fascist high priesthood, the industrial state. Much of the unconscious hostility of racism and misogyny can be understood in terms of neurotic hostility to shamanism, that is, to nonconformity to the official cult, emotionally misunderstood, as intended, as a betrayal of the sacred.

"When we realize that the liknon is, as it were, a cornucopia that for human fruit becomes a cradle, we naturally expect that, in its mystical sense, it will be a symbol of new birth, that Liknites will be connected with a doctrine of palingenesia, a sort of spiritual resurrection. The Orphics had their doctrine of palingenesia, but the symbolism of the liknon was to them mainly of purification, to which they added that of rebirth.... It is remarkable that the liknon in this representation, unlike those previously discussed, contains no fruits. This can scarcely, I think, be accidental. When the artist wishes to show fruits in a sacred vessel, he is quite able to do so, as is seen in the dish of poppy heads held by the priest [above]..., where perspective is violated to make the content clear. The absence of the fruits is best, I think, explained on the supposition that the liknon is by this time mysticized. It is regarded as the winnowing fan, the 'mystic fan of Iacchos,' rather than as the basket of earth's fruits. It is held empty over the candidate's head merely as a symbol of purification."

"The shift of Maenad to Muse is like the change of Bacchic rites to Orphic; it is the informing of savage rites with the spirit of music, order and peace....Orpheus, it has been established in the mouth of many witnesses, modified, ordered, 'rearranged' Bacchic rites....Did this man...in whose saintly and ascetic figure the early Church saw the prototype of her Christ, effect nothing more vital than modification?.... In the course of the excavations on the west slope of the Acropolis....was discovered an inscription giving in great detail the rules of a thiasos of Iobacchoi in the time of Hadrian [117-138 CE]....and thoroughly Orphic rather than Dionysiac are the regulations as to the peace and order to be observed. 'Within the place of sacrifice no one is to make a noise, or clap his hands, or sing, but each man is to say his part and do it in all quietness and order as the priest and the Archibacchos direct.' ...if any member is riotous an official appointed by the priest shall set against him who is disorderly or violent the thyrsos of the god. The member against whom the thyrsos is set up, must...leave the banquet hall....The thyrsos of the god had become in truly Orphic fashion the sign not of revel and license, but of a worship fair and orderly."

A worship, that is, acceptable to Hadrian. As power shifted from Greece to Rome, the Greek mysterion was replaced by its Roman synonym, sacramentum, and the meaning changed from participatory mystery to legal oath, "solemn engagement, caution-money deposited in a suit, military oath."(Oxford) Thus was the thyrsos turned into a billyclub, the fennel stalk into a crooked shepherd's crook , and the sacraments into confused symbols not for consumption.