DeConick A.D

47
THE MATRIX OF ANCIENT SPIRITUALITY
and from the heavens (their souls), they believe that they have been transferred
from this mixed human race to the pure or heavenly race of the
gods. The allusion points to the nature of the human being as it is related
in the myth of the Titans who cannibalized Dionysus. All humans are a
combination of the earth and the sky, but only the initiates have purged
themselves of the Titanic nature and cultivated the Dionysian (Bernabé
and Cristóbal 2008, 41–42). They have recovered their divine nature and
belong to the race of the gods. The tablets glory in the promise: “Happy
and fortunate! You will be a god, from the mortal that you were” (173).
Next, the tablets tell us that the guardians of the Lake of Memory
consult Persephone about the arrival of the deceased. Should the deceased
be allowed to drink? She grants permission to drink from the lake. After
drinking from the lake, the deceased recall the path to Persephone
that they learned during the initiation ceremonies. The deceased progress
along the Sacred Way, approaching Persephone as supplicants. The deceased
hope that Persephone will send them to live with the other bacchic
mystics who have already died and passed along the Sacred Way. So they
declare their purity: “I come, pure from among the pure, pure!”
Persephone yields, and the deceased are permanently transformed into
heroes and gods. This transfiguration is described as regeneration or rebirth.
The tablets talk about the deceased plunging beneath Persephone’s
lap, becoming a baby animal that has fallen into milk (figure 1.5). This is
likely a reference to the rebirth of the deceased as a suckling infant from
the womb of Persephone (Bernabé and Cristóbal 2008, 76–83). Then it is
off to the sacred groves and meadows of Persephone, where they will drink
wine and dwell happily with the other heroes and pure ones already there.
Although the Orphics clearly focused their rites on the concept of the
divine human, this concept stayed locked within the old metaphysics of
servant and ecstatic spirituality, doing nothing to reframe or reform traditional
Greek religion. The deceased gains an immortality of inebriation
and revelry, but they do so as Persephone’s favorites, locked within the
underworld with her other darlings.
The Red Pill
The three types of ancient spirituality are united when it comes to the human
being. The human is a servant to a master god of exceeding form and
power; a vassal legally bound to a mighty liege; a client of an influential