PYTHAGORAS
“Know thyself, and thou wilt know the Universe and the
Gods.”--_Inscription on the Temple of Delphi._
Evolution is the law of Life,
Number is the law of the Universe,
Unity is the law of God.
PYTHAGORAS
AND
THE DELPHIC MYSTERIES
BY
EDOUARD SCHURÉ
TRANSLATED BY
F. ROTHWELL, B.A.
NEW YORK
THE THEOSOPHICAL PUBLISHING CO.
244, LENOX AVENUE
1909
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. GREECE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY 3
II. YEARS OF TRAVEL 12
III. THE TEMPLE OF DELPHI 32
_The Science of Apollo--Theory of Divination--The
Pythoness Theoclea._
IV. THE ORDER AND THE DOCTRINE 63
_The Test--First Degree: Preparation--Second
Degree: Purification--Third Degree: Perfection--
Fourth Degree: Epiphany._
V. MARRIAGE OF PYTHAGORAS--REVOLUTION AT CROTON--THE
MASTER’S END--THE SCHOOL AND ITS DESTINY 162
PYTHAGORAS
CHAPTER I
GREECE IN THE SIXTH CENTURY
The soul of Orpheus had passed like a divine meteor across the troubled
heavens of a new-born Greece. When the meteor had disappeared, the land
was again wrapt in darkness. After a series of revolutions, the tyrants
of Thrace committed his books to the flames, overthrew his temples and
drove away his disciples. The Greek kings and numerous cities followed
this example, more jealous of their unbridled licence than of that
justice which is the source of pure doctrine. They were determined to
efface his very memory, to leave no sign of his existence, and they
succeeded so well, that, a few centuries after his death, a portion of
Greece even doubted whether he had ever lived. It was in vain that the
initiates kept alive his tradition for over a thousand years; in vain
that Pythagoras and Plato spoke of him as divine; the sophists and
the rhetoricians saw in him no more than a legend regarding the origin
of music. Even at the present time, savants stoutly deny the existence
of Orpheus, basing their assertion on the fact that neither Homer
nor Hesiod mentioned his name. The silence of these poets, however,
is fully explained by the interdict under which the local government
had placed the great initiator. The disciples of Orpheus lost no
opportunity of rallying all the powers under the supreme authority of
the temple of Delphi, and never tired of repeating that the differences
arising between the divers states of Greece must be laid before the
council of the Amphictyons. This was displeasing to demagogues and
tyrants alike. Homer, who probably received his initiation in the
sanctuary of Tyre, and whose mythology is the poetical translation of
the theology of Sankoniaton, Homer the Ionian might very well have
known nothing of the Dorian Orpheus whose tradition was kept all the
more secret as it was the more exposed to persecution. As regards
Hesiod, who was born near Parnassus, he must have known the name and
doctrine of Orpheus through the temple at Delphi; but silence was
imposed on him by his initiators, and that for good reasons.
And yet Orpheus was living in his work, in his disciples, and even in
those who denied his very existence. What is this work, where can the
soul of his life be sought? In the ferocious, military oligarchy of
Sparta, where science was despised, ignorance erected into a system,
and brutality exacted as being the complement of courage? In those
implacable wars of Messenia in which the Spartans were seen persecuting
a neighbouring people to the point of extermination, and these Romans
of Greece preparing for the Tarpeian rock and the bleeding laurels of
the Capitol by hurling the heroic Aristomenes, the defender of his
country, into an abyss? Or should it rather be sought in the turbulent
democracy of Athens, ever ready to convert itself into a tyranny? Or
in the praetorian guard of Pisistratus, or the dagger of Harmodius and
Aristogiton, concealed under a myrtle branch? Or in the many towns and
cities of Hellas, of greater Greece and Asia Minor, of which Athens and
Sparta offer us two opposing types? Is it in all these envious, these
jealous democracies and tyrannies ever ready to tear one another into
pieces?--No; the soul of Greece is not there. It is in her temples,
her mysteries and their initiates. It is in the sanctuary of Jupiter
at Olympia, of Juno at Argos, of Ceres at Eleusis; it reigns over
Athens with Minerva, it sheds its beams over Delphi with Apollo, who
penetrates every temple with his light. Here is the centre of Hellenic
life, the heart and brain of Greece. Here come for instruction poets
who translate sublime truth into living images for the masses, sages
who propagate these truths in subtle dialectics. The spirit of Orpheus
is felt wherever beats the heart of immortal Greece. We find it in
poetry and gymnastic contests, in the Delphic and Olympian games,
a glorious project instituted by the successors of the Master with
the object of drawing nearer together and uniting the twelve Greek
tribes. We are brought into direct contact with it in the court of
the Amphictyons, in that assembly of the great initiates, a supreme,
arbitrary tribunal, which met at Delphi, a mighty centre of justice and
concord, in which alone Greece recovered her unity in times of heroism
and abnegation.[1]
And yet Greece in the time of Orpheus; her intellect, an unsullied,
temple-guarded doctrine; her soul, a plastic religion; and her body,
a lofty court of justice with Delphi as its centre, had begun to
decline early in the seventh century. The orders sent out from Delphi
were no longer respected, the sacred territories were violated. The
race of men of mighty inspiration had disappeared, the intellectual and
moral tone of the temples deteriorated; the priests sold themselves to
politicians. From that time the Mysteries themselves became corrupted.
The general aspect of Greece had changed. The old sacerdotal and
agricultural royalty was succeeded either by tyranny pure and simple,
by military aristocracy, or by anarchical democracy. The temples had
become powerless to check the threatening ruin. A new helper was
needed. It was therefore necessary to popularize esoteric teaching. To
enable the thought of Orpheus to live and expand in all its beauty,
the knowledge of the temples must pass over to the lay classes.
Accordingly, under different disguises, it penetrated the brains of
civil legislators, the schools of the poets, and the porticoes of the
philosophers. The latter felt in their teachings the very necessity
Orpheus had recognized in religion, that of two doctrines: the one
public and the other secret, manifesting the same truth in different
degree and form, and suited to the development of the pupil. This
evolution gave Greece her three great centuries of artistic creation
and intellectual splendour. It permitted the Orphic thought, at once
the initial impulse and the ideal synthesis of Greece, to concentrate
its entire light and radiate it over the whole world, before her
political edifice, undermined by internal dissensions, tottered beneath
the power of Macedonia and finally crumbled away under the iron hand of
Rome.
Many contributed to the evolution we are speaking of. It brought out
natural philosophers like Thales, legislators like Solon, poets like
Pindar, and heroes like Epaminondas. It had also a recognized head,
an initiate of the very first rank, a sovereign, organizing, creating
intelligence. Pythagoras is the master of lay as Orpheus is the master
of sacerdotal Greece. He translates and continues the religious thought
of his predecessor, applying it to the new times. His translation,
however, is a creation, for he co-ordinates the Orphic inspirations
into a complete system, gives scientific proof of them in his teachings
and moral proof in his institute of education, and in the Pythagorean
order which survived him.
Although appearing in the full light of historical times, Pythagoras
has come down to us as almost a legendary character. The main reason
for this is the terrible persecution of which he was the victim in
Sicily, and which cost so many of his followers their lives. Some
were crushed to death beneath the ruins of their burning schools,
others died of hunger in temples. The Master’s memory and teaching
were only perpetuated by such survivors as were able to escape into
Greece. Plato, at great trouble and cost, obtained through Archytas a
manuscript of the Master, who, it must be mentioned, never transferred
to writing his esoteric teachings except under symbols and secret
characters. His real work, like that of all reformers, was effected
by oral instruction. The essence of the system, however, comes down
to us in the _Golden Verses_ of Lysis, the commentary of Hierocles,
fragments of Philolaus and in the Timaeus of Plato, which contains the
cosmogony of Pythagoras. To sum up, the writers of antiquity are full
of the spirit of the Croton philosopher. They never tire of relating
anecdotes depicting his wisdom and beauty, his marvellous power over
men. The Neoplatonists of Alexandria, the Gnostics, and even the early
Fathers of the Church quote him as an authority. These are precious
witnesses through whom may be felt continually vibrating that mighty
wave of enthusiasm the great personality of Pythagoras succeeded in
communicating to Greece, the final eddies of which were still to be
felt eight hundred years after his death.
His teaching, regarded from above, and unlocked with the keys of
comparative esoterism, affords a magnificent whole, the different
parts of which are bound together by one fundamental conception. In
it we find a rational reproduction of the esoteric teaching of India
and Egypt, which he illumined with Hellenic simplicity and clearness,
giving it a stronger sentiment and a clearer idea of human liberty.
At the same time and at different parts of the globe, mighty reformers
were popularizing similar doctrines. Lao-Tse in China was emerging from
the esoterism of Fo-Hi; the last Buddha Sakya-Mouni was preaching on
the banks of the Ganges; in Italy, the Etrurian priesthood sent to Rome
an initiate possessed of the Sibylline books. This was King Numa, who,
by wise institutions, attempted to check the threatening ambition of
the Roman Senate. It was not by chance that these reformers appeared
simultaneously among such different peoples. Their diverse missions
had one common end in view. They prove that, at certain periods, one
identical spiritual current passes mysteriously through the whole of
humanity. Whence comes it? It has its source in that divine world, far
away from human vision, but of which prophets and seers are the envoys
and witnesses.
Pythagoras crossed the whole of the ancient world before giving his
message to Greece. He saw Africa and Asia, Memphis and Babylon, along
with their methods of initiation and political life. His own troubled
life resembles a ship driving through a storm, pursuing its course,
with sails unfurled, a symbol of strength and calmness in the midst
of the furious elements. His teachings convey the impression of a
cool fragrant night after the bitter fire and passion of an angry,
blood-stained day. They call to mind the beauty of the firmament
unrolling, by degrees, its sparkling archipelagoes and ethereal
harmonies over the head of the seer.
And now we will attempt to set forth both his life and his teaching
apart from the obscurities of legend and the prejudices of the schools
alike.