'I am a Child of Earth and Starry Heaven... the Orphic Rites

Mircea Eliade, one of the great contemporary scholars of mystery religions, wrote about the Orphic Mysteries as well as others.  In his work, 'From Primitives to Zen', you can find some of the rites found on plates from the time before Christ:

[Plate from Petelia, South Italy, fourth-third century B.C.]

Thou shalt find to the left of the House of Hades a spring,
And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
To this spring approach not near.
But thou shalt find another, from the Lake of Memory
Cold water flowing forth, and there are guardians before it.
Say, 'I am a child of Earth and starry Heaven;
But my race is of Heaven (alone). This ye know yourselves.
But I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly
The cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.'
And of themselves they will give thee to drink of the holy spring-
And thereafter among the other heroes thou shalt have lordship.

[Plate from Eleuthernai in Crete, second century B.C.]

I am parched with thirst and I perish-Nay, drink of me (or, But give me to drink of)
The ever-flowing spring on the right, where the cypress is.
Who art thou?.....
Whence art thou?-I am the son of Earth and starry Heaven.



[Plate from Thurii, South Italy, fourth-third century B.C.]

But so soon as the spirit hath left the light of the sun,
Go to the right as far as one should go, being right wary in all things.
Hail, thou who hast suffered the suffering. This thou hadst never suffered before.
Thou art become god from man.
A kid thou art fallen into milk.
Hail, hail to thee journeying the right hand road
By holy meadows and groves of Persephone.

[Three more tablets from Thurii, of roughly the same date as the previous One. ]

I come from the pure, pure Queen of those below,
And Eukles and Eubuleus, and other Gods and Daemons.
For I also avow that I am of your blessed race.
And I have paid the- penalty for deeds unrighteous,
Whether it be that Fate laid me low or the gods immortal
Or . . . with star-flung thunderbolt.
I have flown out of the sorrowful, weary circle.
I have passed with swift feet to the diadem desired.
I have sunk beneath the bosom of the Mistress, the Queen of the
underworld.
And now I come a suppliant to holy Persephoneia,
That of her grace she send men to the seats of the Hallowed.
Happy and blessed one, thou shalt be god instead of mortal.
A kid I have fallen into milk.'

The declaration of 'I am a Child of Earth and Starry Heaven' comes to me often when I first awaken or when I step in or out of the bath.  It is very compelling for some reason.  Although some of the followers of the Orphic religion believed that the mud of the Titans (our earthly aspect) was tainted and that one should aspire to lose that in the ascension to the higher self, I find myself increasingly uhappy with that philosophy.  Perhaps Orpheus was torn to pieces by the wild beasts because they sensed his rejection of his earthly self.  We are both animal and spirit.  It is the animal in us, oddly enough, that allows us to experience the varied and marvelous experience we call 'Life'.  The spirit would be inclined to view it all as irrelevant.  If computers 'think' in a binary mode, do they translate everything into numbers in order to comprehend it?  Is that how they 'see'?  I know they are not sentient beings but even so, it strikes me as particularly sad if they must reduce everything to a binary mode in order to process it.  What we see is so much more glorious even if it is 'dross' according to the Orphic mysteries.

I neither am a mathematician, nor am I a computer programmer or even particularly adept with code.  Philip K. Dick, whom I admire tremendously, dealt with the issue of the 'thoughts' and 'souls' of machines, particularly computers.  His work, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' known to more people as the inspiration for the film 'Blade Runner', dealt with this topic.    The Pythagoreans and Orphic followers believed in the purity of numbers.  Numbers were divine.  If not God himself/herself, certainly they were the ladder to heaven.  The 'music of the spheres' was created from numbers.  In a sense, it is difficult to believe that they had no knowledge of 21st century technology, for much that the ancients wrote and thought is in tune with contemporary technology.

I understand how numbers can be the foundation of all things.  I understand that they are the skeleton of the items perhaps that we perceive, but it is in  the flesh and accoutrements, that beauty resides.  Does a computer, when churning out the binary formulae, perceive the beauty or is it all numbers, numbers, numbers?  That is the thought that occupies me today.

I became acquainted with code through gaming.  A game devised in the early 1990s named 'Claw' allowed players to create custom levels of their own.  It was the custom level editor that taught me that ships and sails and trees and even characters in a game are all defined by numerical code.  Change the codes and you change the essence of the thing.  Furthermore, cheat devices in games give players access to codes for unique or rare items.  If one can input the code into the game, one can acquire the rare item magically without any effort.  I basically eshew those cheat devices.  What is the point of a game if one does not PLAY it?

I am not in love with numbers but I do comprehend that numbers, as measurements, define objects.  If one makes an object too small, it can cause an entire structure to fall.  In terms of beauty, a feature that is too large or too small, out of proportion to the rest of the body, can create disharmony.  Some would disagree and declare that it is pecisely those little 'flaws' that generate true beauty.  That, however, is a matter of perception.  Where strength and practicality are concerned, precise measurements can be vital.

In the old Babylonian religion, the gods created humans from 'mud' or 'clay' to be servants as well as worshippers.  They yearned for a race of creatures who would admire and praise them.  They really probably did not NEED servants to perform tasks.  What they needed was love and adulation.  Curious, isn't it? 

How many of us can create iwthout any hope of an audience?  Most artists do not create entirely for themselves, even if the need to express themselves drives them.  They desire an audience.  They desire what the internet language terms 'feedback'.  An interesting word, that.  Feedback means to feed back to the giver or source.  In our culture, there are businesses that have become rich on nothing more than the collection of 'feedback' from consumers or 'users', whether of computer programmes or actual objects.  'Feedback' can make or destroy a firm.  Never mind whether or not it is accurate.  A certain quantity of positive or negative feedback can fuel search engines or sway corporate decision makers.