Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth - Bryn Mawr College

EDMONDS: Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth 61
against it the Protestant reformers with their “justification by faith” and
bibliolatrous attitude to the canonical writings. 75
The Orphic reform, according to these scholars, spiritualized the meaningless
rituals of traditional religion and gave them a significance for the individual in
his relations with the divine, just as the Protestant Reformation did away with
the ritualism of the Catholic Church and focused on the relation of the individual
with God. Of the rituals of Homeric religion, Watmough claims, “The important
fact is that they were devoid of moral and spiritual significance. With ‘Orphism’
much of the ritualistic and ceremonial element is retained, but behind there is
much more real and much more personal yearning to escape from an abstract
power called Evil.... The parallel in modern Protestantism is clear to the most
superficial observer.” 76 Orphism even surpasses the other mystery religions with
this emphasis on the personal and spiritual rather than ritual and ceremonial
elements. Morford and Lenardon compare Orphism with the most famous of the
mystery cults, the Eleusinian Mysteries: “The mysteries of Demeter, with their
emphasis on participation in certain dramatic rites, lacked the spiritual depth of
Orphism with its insistence on the good life as well as mere initiation and ritual.” 77
The point of all these comparisons is that Orphism is higher up on the scale
of religions than the other forms of Greek religion (be it Dionysism, Homeric
cult or the other mystery cults), just as, for the same reasons, Protestantism (or a
reformed version of modern Catholicism) is higher than medieval Catholicism.
Protestantism was thus mapped onto another of the dominant paradigms of the
day, the idea of the evolution of mankind in terms of a growing rationality and
individuation. As Orphism represents an advance on the other forms of Greek
religion, so Christianity represents an advance on the earlier Greek religions,
and so too Protestantism represents an advance over medieval Catholicism in
terms of rational theology for the individual. Macchioro explicitly posits an
evolutionary scale of religions, progressing from the childishly irrational to the
maturely reasonable and spiritual: “Human spiritual evolution progresses from
a maximum to a minimum of imagination. It seems that the path of history
leads mankind from fantasy to reason, from a mythical to a logical condition.
Perhaps progress consists in getting rid of that overwhelming power of fantasy,
which seems to dominate children and primitive people.” 78 Orphism is thus for
Macchioro the step on the road from pagan myth to Christian religion. 79
This construction of Orphism served in the debates about the nature of early
Christianity as a foil to the mystery cults and other forms of Greek religion. Just as
75. Watmough 1934:56–57.
76. Watmough 1934:50.
77. Morford and Lenardon 1999:280–81.
78. Macchioro 1930:73.
79. Literally. Macchioro argues, in a number of his books, that St. Paul was directly influenced
by Orphism in his theology.