Roberto Calasso - Ardor

Implicit is the thought that Death is a cycle. What destroys is the simple passing of day and night. The new day means the destruction of the night. The new night means the destruction of the day. Together, they signify the destruction of the works carried out during the day and during the night. How can we escape from the cycle? By rising above it, looking upon it from on high, standing upright on the back of the sky: “In the same way as, when standing on a chariot, one looks down from above at the wheels that revolve, so he looks down from above at day and night.”

But who can lift us up? The agnihotra. Then the Sun, which is Death, can allow us to be lifted onto his back, so we may see what lies beyond the Sun and are no longer touched by Death. How is it done? To escape Death, the feet have to be mounted firmly on Death. Then the journey begins. The Sun rises and carries us with it. Just by standing on Death — and only if Death helps us by carrying us on its back, as if it were a huge animal, without shaking us off — we will see the world that opens up beyond Death.

* * *

The Sun’s first name was Mārtāṇḍa, Dead Egg. It so happened that Aditi, the Limitless, had given birth to seven children, who then became the main gods, the Ādityas. But appearing from her womb immediately after was a formless being, “as broad as it was high”: it was Mārtāṇḍa, the Dead Egg. The gods decided not to throw it away because, they said: “that which is born after us must not be lost.” And they began to give it form. When we think of the Sun as the origin of life, the image is mixed with the memory of a formless being, “a mere lump of bodily matter.” Death and formlessness, which haunt life at every moment, are there from its very origin. Indeed, they are the foundation on which Vivasvat, the Radiant One, the Sun, rests, dazzling us with his light, who conceals first of all himself.

If the Sun is Death, what is night? Once the evening libation has been performed, the vast expanse of darkness opens up. But, once again, points of reference are reversed. The darkness appears “rich in lights,” for the ceremony has lit it with the embers of Agni: “‘O you, rich in lights, may I safely reach your end!’ [the sacrificer] murmurs three times. She that is rich in lights ( citrāvasu ) is without doubt the night, since, in a certain way, she rests ( vas- ) after having gathered the lights ( citra ): so one doesn’t see clearly ( citram ) from a distance.

“Now, it was by means of these words that the ṛṣis safely reached the end of the night; and because of them the Rakṣas did not find them: because of them he too [the sacrificer] now safely reaches the end of the night; and because of them the Rakṣas do not find him. He murmurs this while standing.”

Long before the song of the Swiss Guards (“Notre vie est un voyage / Dans l’hiver et dans la Nuit, / Nous cherchons notre passage / Dans le Ciel où rien ne luit”), which Céline used as an epigraph to his Voyage , the ṛṣis had been murmuring very similar words — and every sacrificer since them. Ever at risk of ambush, moving forward in the darkness: this is the tension underlying every ritual scene: “Dangerous indeed are the paths between sky and earth.” What we see is of little importance compared with the invisible maze, where the Enemy lies in wait, where the celestial waters open. The ṛṣis entered it, troubled and uncertain, like Céline’s Bardamu, clinging to ritual words that showed them the route.

* * *

Socrates spent his last day — from the moment the prison gates were opened until dusk — talking with his disciples about how easy it is for a philosopher to die. Unlike the gods, who find it easy to live. He also talked about an “obstacle.” He said: “The festival of the god has delayed my death.” Athens, in obedience to a vow to Apollo, forbade anyone to be executed by the state during the period of the annual pilgrimage to his sanctuary at Delos. And Socrates’ death sentence had been pronounced a day before the ship’s departure for Delos. So he had spent his time during this period — a month, according to Xenophon — composing a hymn to Apollo and adapting some of Aesop’s fables. Everyone wondered why. And Socrates replied that he had been urged in a dream to “compose music.” A dream that had recurred through his life, which he had always interpreted as an encouragement to practice philosophy, since “philosophy is the greatest kind of music.” But now, in that time of suspension before his death, Socrates had come to a different conclusion: perhaps the true meaning of the dream was its literal meaning. It would be “safer” to obey the dream without adding any interpretation to it. And so he had composed a hymn to the god whose festival was being celebrated (and, later the same day, he would also reveal that Apollo was his god). And so also—“since a poet, if he is really to be a poet, has to compose myths and not reasonings ( mýthous all’ou lógous )”—he had devoted himself to those myths that were “ready to hand,” the Aesop fables. Spoken on that day and with such tranquillity, they were words that would amaze his disciples — as well as the curious and spiteful Sophists. Socrates, as everyone knew, had spent his whole life elaborating discourses, reasonings, arguments: lógoi. Why should he now, at this moment, devote himself to mýthoi , which he had always treated with a certain disdain? Socrates had no wish to reply; instead he spent the whole day composing lógoi , no more or less striking than so many others that his disciples had heard in past years, in response to a question from Cebes, his most cautious disciple: “Why do you say, Socrates, that a man ought not to do violence to himself and, on the other hand, the philosopher does not want anything more than to follow someone who dies?” The question was well put. If the philosopher is so willing to die, why should he condemn suicide? Socrates’ reply was a series of lógoi , but this time interspersed and subtly interwoven with terms and formulas of quite another kind: that of the Mysteries. And he immediately cited a lógos , but in the sense of a “formula” that is pronounced en aporrḗtois , “in the unnameables” (a traditional way of referring to the Mysteries). Socrates gave it as an example of “mythologizing about the journey yonder,” which he proposed as the best way “of passing the time between now and sunset.” It is as though his thinking, in this last dialogue, swerves in a way that exposes it to a bright light of indiscernible origin. But all now appears transformed.

This is the formula of the Mysteries: “We men are in a sort of garrison post ( phrourá ) and must not free ourselves or run away.” Highly enigmatic, Socrates immediately recognizes. But he adds: “It is a sound way of expressing the fact that the gods are our guardians and that we men are part of the property of the gods.” A brutal as well as pious definition: someone committing suicide would consequently be taking from the gods part of their property. Man is therefore in debt to the gods for his existence. This is the point that comes closest, in the West, to the Vedic doctrine of the four “debts,” ṛṇa , that make up man. And here the differences between Plato and the Vedic ritualists become all the more apparent. What for them was a clear and binding doctrine is presented by Socrates as a doctrine that is secret and extreme, suitable for the “composing of myths” with which he wants to occupy his last hours.

Even though, a little later, Socrates would go back to reasoning with his disciples, as he had done so many times before, the halo of mystery over that initial formula would envelop his “hunting for that which is,” as he described then his philosophy. And it would bring him as close as possible to a katharmós , a specific term used to describe the purifying transformation that took place in the Mysteries. To the point when Socrates goes as far as stating that “thought ( phrónēsis ) can itself be a katharmós. ” Never as in that phrase did Socrates’ doctrine coincide so closely with the unrevealed, unrevealable doctrine of the Mysteries. Perhaps it was this — much more than arguments over the immortality of the soul, which are always open to doubt — that Socrates wanted to leave as his legacy to his disciples.