Ivan Yefremov - Thais of Athens

All things had become unknown, new and tempting, waiting everywhere. Her life path now appeared straight as the flight of an arrow to Thais. It cut through the valleys of life, broad and clear at the beginning, narrow and indistinct in the distance, until it finally vanished beyond the horizon. But it was astonishingly uniform all along the way, like an open gallery with identical pillars, stretching into the distance till the end of Thais’ life.

Deira, the knowledgeable one, as Persephone was secretly called, had stepped into her soul, where only Aphrodite and her mischievous son had ruled until then. This feeling, unusual for a young, healthy woman, never left the Athenian during her stay at the Neit temple, and strangely enhanced her comprehension of the Delos philosopher’s teachings. The old man uncovered to her the teaching of the Orphics, called such because they considered it possible to leave the underground kingdom of Hades, akin to Orpheus who rescued his Eurydice.

The teaching sprang from the depth of past centuries of the combined wisdom of Crete and India, uniting the belief in reincarnation with the rejection of the hopelessness of the circles of life and fate. The great principle: “all things flow, change and pass”, reflected in the name of the great Cretan goddess Kibela-Rhea, ran into a question: would there be a return to the past?”

“Yes, there always will be,” the scholars of Syria and Pythagoras stated, the latter being the most famous student of the Orphics. They were the Pelasgoan from the island of Samos, who had led the Orphics away from ancient wisdom, succumbing to the game of numbers and symbols under the influence of the scholars of Ur-Salim.

“No, there will not be,” the philosophers of the old-Orphic type disagreed. “It is not the Wheel that constantly makes one circle after another, but a Spiral. That is the true flow of changing things, and that is our salvation from the Wheel.

“Gods did not create the Universe,”taught the Orphics. “It came to be from the natural physical powers of the world. Cosmos is order, first and foremost. The egg of the Universe formed from Chaos, Chronos (time) and Ether (space). The egg started growing until one half of it formed the sky and the other one formed the earth. Between them Bios — life — was born.”

Satisfying the needs of thinkers in their own era, the Orphics could not have suspected, of course, that twenty-six centuries later the greatest minds of the hugely increased humankind would accept a similar concept of the origins of Cosmos, with the exception of excluding Earth from the dominance over the Universe.

In Gaza, the Cretan colony on the shores of Syria which had been founded twelve centuries before Thais’ birth, a myth of Samson was born. He was a blind warrior, chained to a mill and doomed to eternally revolve its wheel. He escaped due to his tremendous strength, having broken the columns and crashed the temple roof on everyone. The meaning of the hero’s deed was in the fact that the entire world would have to be destroyed. All people would have to be killed in order to escape the eternal circle.

The Orphics solved that problem in their own way. Their instructions could still be found on the gold medallions they put on their dead. As each thirst-tormented departed soul stumbled its way through the underground kingdom through the fields of white lilies, or asphodels, it had to remember not to drink from the river Leta. Its water, dark from the tall cypresses shading its shores, made everyone forget his previous life. Thus the soul became helpless material for a new cycle of birth, destruction and death without an end. However, if a soul were to drink from Persephone’s sacred spring hidden in a grove, then the soul could preserve its memory and knowledge, escape the endless Wheel, and become the ruler over the dead.

Along with the teachings of reincarnation from Asia, the Orphics preserved the ancient local rituals.

“From you,” the Delos philosopher said. “The Orphics teaching requires us to remember that a man’s spiritual future is in his hands, and not entirely dependent on gods and fate, as everyone from Egypt to Carthage believes. One cannot compromise along this path. They cannot deviate, otherwise, akin a sip of water from the Leta, you will drink the poison of evil, envy and greed, and be tossed into the distant abyss of Erebus.

“We, the Orphics of Ionia, teach that all people are the same on the path of the good and are equal in their search for knowledge. The difference between people at birth is enormous. There is only one way to overcome it, to unite everyone as well as to conquer the differences between them, and that is the way of knowledge. But one must understand what sort of a path unites different nations. Woe be upon us if it does not lead to the good or, even worse, if one people considers itself above all others, chosen by gods and destined to rule. Such people will make others suffer and feel the general hatred, wasting their energies on reaching insignificant goals rather than the breadth of life. We Helenians have only recently stepped onto this savage and evil path, while the Egyptians and the people of Syria arrived at it sooner. Now an even worse supremacy of Rome is growing in the west. It will achieve terrible power. And this power will be worse than all others because the Romans are not of the Helenian mindset. They are ignorant and reach for the military invasions and wealthy living accompanied by bloody spectacles.

“But let us return to you,” the old philosopher said, interrupting himself. “One cannot be an Orphic of our kind if he remembers the goal but forgets the price at which people came to possess things. I am not talking about simple things made by the hands of craftsmen, but of large structures: temples, cities, harbors, ships, just about everything that requires the effort of many people. You must not be captivated even by the most beautiful temple if it has been erected upon torment and bones of thousands of slaves. No grandeur is worthy if people were killed, starved or enslaved for the sake of achieving it. And not only people, but animals as well, for their suffering also weighs down the scale. That is why many Orphics do not eat meat.”

“Father, why do gods demand bloody sacrifices?” Thais asked, then pulled away, seeing a flash of anger in her teacher’s eyes.

He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was hoarse, his words halting, completely unlike his usual calm manner. “Only murderers offer savage sacrifices to savage gods.”

Thais became embarrassed. This wasn’t the first time during their talks when she had felt as if she were getting into forbidden territory, sacrilegiously pushing away the curtain separating people from gods.

Sensing this, the Delos philosopher dismissed the subject. “Let us not speak of something you are not ready for yet.” And he let Thais go for the day.

In the subsequent days he taught her proper breathing and development of particular flexibility of the body, allowing her to assume poses for concentration and quick rest. Trained since childhood, beautifully developed and moderate in food and drink, Thais turned out to be such a capable student that the old man slapped his knee with delight, encouraging the Athenian.

“I can teach you only the basics. You may continue on your own if you wish and if you can, although this path takes more than one year,” he said over and over again, making sure Thais remembered it well.

On the sixth day, the symbolic number of life among the Pythagoreans, the old man told Thais in greater detail about the foremother of all religions, the Great Goddess. He taught her the preachers had lied trying to prove that the male deity began it all. Thousands of years ago, all people worshiped the Great Goddess, and women were heads of households and families. The path had split when men became dominant. Ancient religions were wiped off the face of Gaea, or were preached against, and women were called the source of all things evil and impure.