The shadowy chorus of walking dead parted,
goaded back by the iron blade
unshakeningly held in Odysseus’ firm hand
– all but one.
Smoke rose off him,
and his flesh bubbled and dripped
as the Prophet stepped forward
and greeted by name clever Odysseus,
who wanders in circles
and suffers greatly.
His voice was beautiful,
despite being volcano seared,
with all the lyricism of one from Doric Akragas.
And do thou give ear, you who come from the wise!
For many are the woes that burst in on men and blunt the edge of their careful thoughts! They behold but a brief span of a life that is no life, and, doomed to swift death, are borne up and fly off like smoke. Each is convinced of that alone which he had chanced upon as he is hurried every way, and idly boasts he has found the whole. So hardly can these things be seen by the eyes or heard by the ears of men, so hardly grasped by their mind! Howbeit, thou, since thou hast found thy way hither, shalt learn no more than mortal mind hath power, to keep within thy dumb heart.
But I will tell you.
First you will find a spring on the left of the halls of Haides, and beside it a white cypress growing. Do not even go near this spring. And you will find another, from the Lake of Memory, flowing forth with cold water. In front of it are guards. You must say, ‘I am a child of Ge and starry Ouranos; my name is Starry. This you yourselves also know, for I am of your race. I am dry with thirst and perishing. Come, give me at once cold water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.’ And they themselves will give you to drink from the divine spring, and then thereafter you will reign with the other heroes.
There is a double becoming of perishable things and a double passing away. The coming together of all things brings one generation into being and destroys it; the other grows up and is scattered as things become divided. And these things never cease continually changing places, at one time all uniting in one through Love, at another each borne in different directions by the repulsion of Strife.
Come now, look at the things that bear witness to my discourse. Behold the Sun, everywhere bright and warm, and all the Immortal things that are bathed in heat and bright radiance. Behold the rain, everywhere dark and cold; and from the earth issue forth things close-pressed and solid. When they are in Strife all these are different in form and separated; but they come together in Love, and are desired by one another.
For out of these have sprung all things that were and are and shall be — trees and men and women, beasts and birds and the fishes that dwell in the waters, yea, and the Gods that live long lives and are exalted in honor. Just as when painters are elaborating temple-offerings, men whom wisdom hath well taught their art — they, when they have taken pigments of many colors with their hands, mix them in due proportion, more of some and less of others, and from them produce shapes like unto all things, so let not the error prevail over thy mind, that there is any other source of all the perishable creatures that appear in countless numbers. Know this for sure, for thou hast heard the tale from the Goddess Mnemosyne.
Stepping from summit to summit, not to travel only one path of words to the end….
What is right may well be said even twice.
For they prevail in turn as the circle comes round, and pass into one another, and grow great in their appointed turn.
There is one Dionysos;
the password of the initiates is man-boy-thyrsos.
There is no discord and no unseemly strife in his limbs.
But he was equal on every side and quite without end, spherical and round, rejoicing in his circular solitude.
Two branches do not spring from his back, he has no feet, no swift knees, no fruitful parts; but he was spherical and equal on every side.
But when Strife was grown great in the limbs of the God and sprang forth to claim his prerogatives, in the fulness of the alternate time set for them by the mighty oath,….for all the limbs of the God in turn quaked.
The joint binds two things.
Even as when fig juice rivets and binds white milk….
Cementing meal with water….
Solitary limbs wandered seeking for union.
But, as divinity was mingled still further with divinity, these things joined together as each might chance, and many other things besides them continually arose.
Shambling creatures with countless hands.
Many creatures with faces and breasts looking in different directions were born; some, offspring of oxen with faces of men, while others, again, arose as offspring of men with the heads of oxen, and creatures in whom the nature of women and men was mingled, furnished with sterile parts.
Come now, hear how the Fire as it was separated caused the night-born shoots of men and tearful women to arise; for my tale is not off the point nor uninformed. Whole-natured forms first arose from the earth, having a portion both of water and fire. These did the fire, desirous of reaching its like, send up, showing as yet neither the charming form of the limbs, nor yet the voice and parts that are proper to men.
… but the substance of the child’s limbs is divided between them, part of it in men’s and part in women’s body.
And upon him came Desire reminding him through sight.
And it was poured out in the purified parts; and when it met with cold, women arose from it.
The divided meadows of Aphrodite.
For in its warmer part the womb brings forth males, and that is why men are dark and more manly and shaggy.
On the tenth day of the eighth month it turns to a white putrefaction.
Double bearings
Sheepskin.
Now you have died and now you have been born, thrice blessed one, on this very day. Say to Persephone that Bakchios himself freed you. A bull you rushed to milk. Quickly, you rushed to milk. A ram you fell into milk. You have wine as your fortunate honor. And rites await you beneath the earth, just as the other blessed ones.
It is moisture that makes evergreen trees flourish with abundance of fruit the whole year round.
Wherefore pomegranates are late-born and apples succulent.
Wine is the water from the bark, putrefied in the wood.
Hair and leaves, and thick feathers of birds, and the scales that grow on mighty limbs, are the same thing.
But the hair of hedgehogs is sharp-pointed and bristles on their backs.
For this reason grow your hair long,
and cover your face is sacrificial ash
when you pray. Always pour out plentiful libations
for the thirsty ones.
Wine especially.
And let the Bakchos first throw round him a crimson robe,
like flowing rays resembling fire.
Moreover from above the broad all-variegated skin of a wild fawn
thickly spotted should hang down from the right shoulder,
a representation of the wondrously-wrought stars and of the vault of heaven.
And then over the fawn-skin a golden belt should be thrown,
all-gleaming to wear around the breast a mighty sign
that immediately from the end of the earth the Beaming-one springing up
darts his golden rays on the flowing of ocean.
Thus ended the Prophet’s discourse.
Empedokles woke in the warmth of his bed,
having come from a dream
in which he met one of the heroes of elder days.
He kept hearing a line from the dream
repeat in his head over and over:
“Your eyes are open and you see them.”
