DeConick A.D

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HELL WALKS AND STAR TREKS
the cosmic strata. Invading the otherworld in this manner gave them access
to powerful animal spirits and ancestors in the otherworld, beings
who could help them heal people and control the chaotic world around
them (Rappenglück 2004).
The Lascaux caves and their connection to prehistoric shamanic practices
is uncanny, especially when we realize the longevity of this sort of
religious activity. Thousands of centuries later , stories of early Greek shamans—like
Pythagoras, who was deputized by the Mongolian shaman
Abaris—place them in caves too, while also emphasizing their astute astronomical
abilities.
Ancient biographies of Pythagoras tell of a man obsessed with initiation
in order to learn the mysteries of every god he possibly could, gods not
only from his Greek homeland but also from Egypt, Syria, and Rome. He
and a fellow Greek shaman, Epimenides, are reported to have descended
into the sacred Idaean cave on Crete in which Zeus had once been hidden
from his cannibal father, Kronos. They received instruction in the mysteries
of the gods who were worshipped there (Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras
3). One of his biographers compares Pythagoras’s experience in this
sacred cave to his later Egyptian initiations. These took place in the holiest
of crypts of the Egyptian temples as Pythagoras journeyed from one major
temple complex to the next, meeting the various families of Egyptian gods
in Heliopolis, Memphis, and Diospolis (Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras 3;
cf. Iamblichus, Pythagoras 4; Porphyry, Pythagoras 7).
Everywhere he lived after his international travels, when he could
count himself initiated into the mysteries of every known god, Pythagoras
resided in caves (see Ustinova 2009). On his native island, Samos, he
set up his home in a cave just outside the city. He instructed his disciples
in this cave, and we are told that it was while studying in this cave that he
figured out the science of the stars and planets and demonstrated them
mathematically (Iamblichus, Pythagoras 5). When Pythagoras moved to
Italy, his living quarters were in an underground cavern, where he stayed
in isolation for long periods of time. On one occasion when he came out
of the cave, people who saw him said that he looked like a skeleton. He
told them that he had just completed a journey to the underworld and
had visited with the shades in Hades (Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras 21).
Why was Pythagoras trotting around in caves and mapping the paths of
the stars geometrically? It was all for the care of the soul, which Pythagoras