The Gospel of Hellas - Research Institute for Waldorf Education

the world of homer
The descent to Hades, in the seventh step of Odysseus’ travels, consists of
two stages. In the first he encounters the Mothers. The journey to the Mothers
represents the way to the realm of archetypal ideas which reveal the mysteries
of birth and the prenatal life. Goethe drew from sources of Greek mysterytraditions
when he described Faust’s journey to the Mothers in the second part
of his tragedy.
Odysseus first meets the shade of Elpenor, one of his companions who died
on Circe’s island. Then he meets his own mother. Now he is ready to encounter
Tiresias, the seer who reveals to him the meaning of his destiny, the reason for
his wanderings and the goal of his initiation. In remarking that Tiresias foretells
the future, it should be borne in mind that in the Greek language, the words
future and goal (telos) were mystery-words. Goal is the term for perfection and
initiation, and the initiates were named telestes after telos, goal.
After Odysseus has learned from the seer the origin and the condition of
his existence in the spiritual world, he again meets his mother, who tells him
the meaning of death. Then he meets the “Mothers.” Fourteen names are given,
four of which are in pairs so that the number again in evidence is twelve in
these encounters. Odysseus meets the mothers of Heracles and Oedipus, of
Castor and Polyneikes, of Laius and Neleus, and so forth.
After the description of the meeting with the Mothers, Odysseus at
midnight—as already related—interrupts his long tale to the king of the
Phaeacians. Here recurs a high point that marks the epic as a profound work
of art: A borderline separates the world of the past and of the Mothers from
the world of the future and initiation. After midnight, and at the request of
king Alkinous, Odysseus relates his encounter with the Fathers. His tale is
a retrospective one. It leads from the most recent to the more distant past,
beginning with his encounters with Agamemnon, Achilles and Ajax, the
recently fallen heroes of the Trojan War. Achilles pronounces the significant
words which run like a fundamental motif through the whole epic: “It is better
to be a slave of a stranger and to serve a poor man on a miserable farm than to
be a ruler over all the dead!”
After his meeting with Achilles, Odysseus relates his encounters with the
other heroes, the Fathers of the legendary past: Minos, Orion, Tytius, Tantalus,