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Salutius

2. On the Gods and the World

Edited by Paolo Bagnato

IV. The species of myth

1. There are different kinds of myths: theological, physical, psychic, material and mixed.
Theological myths are those that do not concern the bodily form, but contemplate the essences of the Gods, such as the myth of Kronos who swallows his children1: since the God is intellect and every intellect turns towards itself, the myth refers to the essence of the God2.

2. The myths that describe the activities of the Gods in the World, may be considered as physical: for example, some people before now have regarded Kronos (Κρόνος) as the time Chronos (Χρόνος), and, since they call the divisions of time “sons of the Whole”, they say that the children are devoured by their father.

3. The psychic type of the myth concerns the activities of the soul itself, because the thoughts of our souls, though they move towards other objects, nevertheless they certainly persist inside those who generated them3.

4. Material is the lowest type of myth, mostly used by the Egyptians, because of their ignorance4, they considered the material bodies to be gods and called the earth Isis, the humidity Osiris, the heat Typhon, or the water Kronos, the fruits Adonis, the wine Dionysus5. It is wise to say that these things are sacred to the Gods, as well as plants, stones and animals6, but it is foolish to call them Gods; except in a metaphorical sense, like for instance when we call Elios, the Sun, both the sphere of the sun and the ray that comes from that sphere7.

5. The mixed type of myths is found in many and different ways, for example when it is told that in the banquet of the Gods, Eris, the Discord, threw the golden apple, and the Goddesses, fighting for it, were sent by Zeus to Paris to be judged. Paris said that Aphrodite8 was beautiful and gave her the apple. 6. Here the banquet certainly represents the hypercosmic9 powers of the Gods, this is why they are all together; the golden apple represents the World, which being generated by opposites, is rightly said to be thrown by Eris, Discord. Since different Gods bestow different gifts upon the World, they seem to contend for the apple; the soul – that is what Paris is – that lives according to the senses, since it sees only beauty in the world and not the other powers, establishes that the apple belongs to Aphrodite.

7. Theological myths suit philosophers, physical and psychic myths suit poets, mixed myths suit initiation since every initiation aims at uniting us with the World and the Gods.

8. If it is necessary to take another myth, it is said that the Mother of the Gods10, having seen Attis lying by the river Gallus, fell in love with him and put the cap adorned with stars on his head, and kept him with her for the remaining time; but he fell in love with a Nymph11, and wishing to live with her, he abandoned the Mother of Gods. Because of this, the Mother of the Gods made Attis go mad, cut off his genital organs and left them with the Nymph, and had him back to live with her.

9. Therefore, the Mother of the Gods is the Goddess who generates life, and for this reason she is called Mother; Attis is the creator of all that is is born and becomes corrupted, and for this reason he is said to have been found near the river Gallus; for the river Gallus refers to the circle of the galaxy, or Milky Way, from which comes the body subject to passions12. Since the primary Gods perfect the secondary, the Mother falls in love with Attis and gives him the celestial powers symbolized by the cap.

10. However Attis falls in love with the Nymph: the Nymphs preside over the generation, in fact everything that is generated flows13; but since it was necessary to stop the generation, so that from the worse could not be generated the worst, the demiurge that produces these things, i.e. Attis, throws away the generative powers into the realm of becoming and he is reunited again with the Gods. These events never happened, but they always are: the intellect seizes them all together, while the speech expresses one particular thing at a time14.

11. Since the myth is similar to the World, it is to imitate the World – how could we dispose or put ourselves in order15 in a better way? – we celebrate a feast in this way16: at first, since, just like Attis, we fell from heaven17 and stay together with the Nymph, we are humiliated and we have to abstain from grain and any other heavy and impure food, which are both hostile to the soul; then comes the cutting of the tree and the fast because we also eliminate any further process of generation after these things, the feeding on milk symbolizes the ascent18; finally there are rejoicing and garlands as if we ascended and returned to the Gods.

12. The proper time in which these sacred rites are performed proves all this: these ceremonies take place during spring and the equinox, when things that are born cease to be produced and the day becomes longer than the night, which is associated with the ascent of the souls. In fact, it is during the opposite equinox that the abduction of Kore19 is narrated, meaning the descent of souls to Earth20. May the Gods and the souls of those who wrote the myths be propitious to us who talked about them.

  1. Salutius refers to the myth, told by Hesiod (Theogony, in Greek Θεογονία, 453 ff.), in which the God Kronos swallowed his own children because he was afraid of being dethroned, fact that eventually happened by the hand of Zeus. The reign of Kronos is described by Hesiod (Works and Days, in Greek Ἔργα καὶ Ἡμέραι, 106-126) as a golden age (corresponding to the satya yuga of Hinduism).[↩]
  2. The correspondence of Cronus with the intellect is also attested by Plotinus: “Kronos (Κόρου καὶ νοῦ), God who is satiety(κόρος) and intelligence (νοῦς)” (Enneads V.1.4), and is confirmed with the Latin name of the God, Satur-nus: satur in fact means sated and nus intellect. The philosopher explains that Kronos contains everything that is immortal and for this reason he is unchanging and does not need anything, being full of all things “at rest” and all together at once, not in temporal succession. Later Plotinus refers to the same myth used by Salutius and says that Kronos “is full of the beings that he produced and, as if he swallowed them, he keeps them within himself to not let them fall into matter” (Enneads V.1.7).[↩]
  3. Just as Kronos begets his sons and then he swallows them, bringing back into himself what he produced, so the soul, though it projects outside of itself its own thoughts, always keep them in itself.[↩]
  4. This part is surprising considering the general attitude of strong admiration by the platonic philosophers and Julian in particular towards the Egyptian tradition. For example, Plutarch states that Pythagoras, Plato, Thales, and other Greek wises went to Egypt to be initiated and to learn from the priests. A possible explanation of this negative judgment may lie in the hypothesis of a degeneration of Egyptian religion or a will of the author to distinguish the Greek tradition, which he is defending here, from the Egyptian tradition particularly attacked by Christians. It should be noted, however, that the attitude of the Greeks towards the Egyptians was often ambivalent.[↩]
  5. Plutarch in his On Isis and Osiris (Greek Περὶ Ἴσιδος καὶ Ὀσίριδος, Latin De Iside et Osiride) identifies the Egyptian God Osiris with the Greek God Dionysus.[↩]
  6. The Gods, according to theurgy, imprint in the world symbols (σύμβολα) or signs (συνθήματα) that participate in the divine essence thanks to a theurgic connection or sympathy (συμπάϑεια): the causes are found in the effects and the effects are found in the causes (see Proclus, Elements of Theology 18), everything is in everything. For example, Proclus, in his treatise on priestly art (Greek Περὶ τῆς καθ’ Ἕλληνας ἱερατικῆς τέχνης, English On hieratic art according to the Greeks), tells us that the sunflower and the rooster crowing at dawn are solar or heliacal entities. In fact, according to the philosopher, they address to the Sun real prayers: by listening to the sounds that the sunflower generates in friction with the air while it moves, the hymn that the plant offers to the Sun can be heard. The lotus opens and closes its petals just as men do with their lips during prayers. Everything turns to its cause and, in its own way, raises hymns and prayers. Some of these signs or impressions, i.e. plants, stones, etc., were also used in rituals to allow the theurgist to “ascend” to the divinity connected to these.[↩]
  7. For example, when we say “I have the sun in my eyes,” it means that our eyes have been hit by a ray.[↩]
  8. Greek goddess associated with beauty and prosperity, similar to Lakṣmī.[↩]
  9. I.e. beyond the world.[↩]
  10. Cybele whose vehicles (vāhana) are the lions, just as Durgā. In Rome she was known as Magna Mater, i.e. Great Mother (Mahā Mātā). Julian’s speech entitled “To the Mother of the Gods” (Greek Εἰς τὴν Μητέρα τῶν Θεών) is clearly similar to what Salutius presented here.[↩]
  11. Nymphs are similar to the apsarās.[↩]
  12. The term Milky Way comes from Greek mythology because it was formed by milk drops from the breast of Goddess Hera while she was nursing Hercules. According to the doctrine of the Mysteries (Aristides Quintilianus, On Music; Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio I,10; Porphyry, The Cave of the Nymphs 28; Corpus Hermeticum I, 14-15 where the teaching is expressed through the myth of Narcissus) the soul, which first resided in the heavenly regions without any contact with the body, is attracted by a desire for earthly life and comes into the circle of generation and becoming (saṃsāra; “the circle that gives breathlessness and pain” from which it is necessary to fly away, as it is said in the orphic tablets) and descends to the Earth passing through the celestial spheres and covers itself with many “tunics” (χιτών, similar to the kośas of Hinduism; see Porphyry, On the abstinence from animals I,31,3; Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs 14; Proclus, Elements of theology 209; Plato, Gorgias 523c), down to the last one made of flesh. Since milk is what souls “feed on” while passing through the spheres to fall into generation, this is also the food that is given to new-borns (Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio I, 12,1). The soul, stripped of its tunics, can ascend the spheres of the galaxy and return to the heavenly abode. Thus milk, as will be more evident later, in the Mysteries, probably had a double value: one linked to the generation and another one linked to the ascent to the Heavens. In fact, it is by drinking the milk of Hera that the demigod Hercules can obtain immortality. “From man, I became a God: a lamb, I fell into milk” Orph. Fragm., 32 f Kern.[↩]
  13. I.e. changes. Nymphs are linked to water, therefore, just as the water of a river flows continuously and is never the same as it was in the previous moment, so everything that is generated undergoes change. This is a reference to the πάντα ῥεῖ (panta rei, i.e. everything flows) attributed to Heraclitus and his fragment 91 DK.[↩]
  14. The truths expressed by the myths did not happen in a particular historical moment since they are eternally true. However, because of the limitations of the human language it is necessary to describe them as if they happened in succession: we must talk first about one thing and then about another.[↩]
  15. The Greek word κόσμος means “world” or “universe” but also “order”.[↩]
  16. These are procedures connected to the ritual celebration of the Mysteries related to the Mother of the Gods.[↩]
  17. “The human souls, seeing their own images reflected as in the mirror of Dionysus, fell here from above, without separating themselves from their Principle and the Intellect“, Plotinus, Enneads IV, 3, 12. According to Orphic mythology, the God Dionysus, as a child, was dismembered by the Titans (forces fighting against the Gods, asuras) while he was looking in a mirror. This means falling from unity to diversity.[↩]
  18. As explained in note 12, milk is also linked to the soul rising from the earthly abode to the heaven. The word can also be translated as “rebirth” or “regeneration” but clearly in this case it means a “Celestial birth” and not metempsychosis.[↩]
  19. This is another name, preferred by Platonists, for Persephone Goddess and queen of the underworld, whose vicissitudes were the main theme of the Mysteries of Eleusis. See also From Cosmos to Chaos – 11. The Greek Civilization: the bright side (III)[↩]
  20. The spring equinox occurs between the winter solstice and the summer solstice, that is to say, the six months when the Sun moves towards north, and the days lengthen. This period is known in Sanskrit as uttarāyaṇa which, according to Bhagavad Gītā VIII.24, is when one leaves the body following the devayāna (the way of the Gods) to reach Brahman (saguṇa) and not to return to Earth. The autumn equinox occurs between summer solstice and winter solstice. This period is called dakṣiṇāyana in Sanskrit, when the Sun moves towards south. In these six months, according to Bhagavad Gītā VIII.25, one abandons the body to reach the light of the Moon, following the pitṛyāṇa (the way of the Fathers), and then returns again to Earth. The same doctrine is found in De Antro Nympharum (English On the Cave of the Nymphs) by Porphyry. It is important not to get confused, because the terms referring to the “northern” (βόρειος) and “southern” (νότιος) ways seem inverted compared to the hindū tradition since in the Greek text the first corresponds to the way of descent of the souls and the second corresponds to the way of ascent of the souls. Actually, in Porphyry these terms refer, just as the winds, to the origin of the way and not to the direction, which it is obviously the opposite. Plutarch in De facie in orbe Lunæ (English On the face in the Moon, in particular the paragraph 29) explains that the souls of those who return stay on the side of the Moon facing the Earth, where Kore reigns, while those who don’t return stay for a period on the side of the Moon facing the Heavens, called Elysian Fields, and then continue on their way. See also Gian Giuseppe Filippi, Il post mortem dei sādhaka secondo la dottrina di Śaṃkarācārya, Milano, Ekatos, 2019;[↩]