To Light a Thousand Lamps - The Theosophical Society

Remembering and Forgetting Past Lives / 51
near Petelia, in the environs of Strongoli, tells of two wellsprings
near the entrance to the Underworld: the fount of
Lethe or Oblivion (unnamed) on the left, that of Mnemosyne
or Memory to the right:
Thou shalt find to the left of the House of Hades a
Well-spring,
And by the side thereof standing a white cypress.
To this Well-spring approach not near.
But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory,
Cold water flowing forth, and there are Guardians
before it.
Say: ‘‘I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven;
But my race is of Heaven (alone). This ye know
yourselves.
And lo, 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 from the
holy Well-spring,
And thereafter among the other Heroes thou shalt have
lordship. ...*
In this hymn the Orphic candidate is warned against
imbibing the waters of Lethe. In another account by
Pausanias, 2nd-century AD Greek traveler and geographer,
the candidate drinks from the well of Lethe in order to
‘‘forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto.’’† Thereafter
he partakes of the waters of Mnemosyne, that he may
*See Jane Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of the Greek Religion,
‘‘Critical Appendix on the Orphic Tablets’’ by Prof. Gilbert Murray,
pp. 659‒60.
†Pausanias: Description of Greece, trans. W. H. S. Jones, 4:351.