DeConick A.D

46
THE MATRIX OF ANCIENT SPIRITUALITY
initiation they had become kin to the god. The god would know them
intimately as extreme devotees, as absolute observers of the god’s will,
and grant them privileges in this life. And when they died and their transformation
into the Other body was made permanent, the initiates would
already know the way to journey to the house of the god, where they
believed that they would be treated advantageously in the afterlife.
The mystery rites we know a great deal about are the Orphic rites, because
we have found grave goods that tell us what the popular literature
of the ancients has kept secret and fragmented. The Orphic gold tablets,
like versions of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, were placed in graves to
provide the deceased with instructions for navigating the netherworld.
The tablets clearly point to an initiatory cult with a common mythology,
ceremonies, and eschatology (Graf 2007; Bernabé and Cristóbal 2008).
The tablets contain references to Dionysus or Bacchus, who has assisted
them previously in rites of initiation, and to the queen of the underworld,
Persephone, whom they hope will greet them with favoritism in the underworld
and grant them a happy afterlife in her groves and fields.
The teachings reflected on the tablets had been taught to the deceased
during initiatory ceremonies while the person was still alive. It is for this
reason that the person is called in the tablets both “mystic” and “Bacchos,”
references to the person’s status as an initiate and devotee within
the cult of Dionysus.
The tablets caution the deceased to avoid drinking from the water
of forgetfulness, a spring on the right of the entrance to Hades, near a
white cypress tree. Instead, they should go to the Lake of Memory and,
when tested by the guardians about why they are there, they should repeat
the passwords they learned during initiation (Bernabé and Cristóbal
2008, 9–12):
I am the son of Earth and starry Heaven.
But my race is heavenly.
Give me fresh water to drink
from the Lake of Memory.
Here we have the key to the rites, which centered on the initiates’
transformation from mortal to immortal. Here is their declaration of immorality
and the recognition of their true race as that of the gods. Although
they admit they are human, born from the earth (their bodies)