Mead G.R.S. - Plutarch's Yogi

The following incident is taken from the Moralia of Plutarch and is to be found in the dialogue “Concerning the Cessation of Oracles”. The speaker is Cleombrotus who, Plutarch tells us, was a Lacedæmonian gentleman and a great traveller. He had spent much time in various parts of Egypt and in particular had visited the country of the Troglodytes, who are said to have been an Æthiopian tribe of cave-dwellers. He had also been on a voyage beyond the Red Sea. This Cleombrotus was not a merchant, but a private gentleman who was collecting information for the basis of a philosophical religion.

“But since a bowl of mixed myth and argument has been set before us – and there seems no reason why with such a sympathetic audience such views should not be put to the test like foreign coins – I do not hesitate to oblige you with the description of a foreigner whom I discovered, though not without great difficulty and after much wandering and expenditure of money for the information. He was seen by the people round the Red Sea only once a year and for the rest of the time associated, according to his own statement, with the nomad nymphs and daimons.^[1] This man gave me a courteous reception and we entered into conversation.

“In appearance he was the handsomest fellow I have ever seen and kept free from disease by taking once a month the fruit of a plant of a medicinal nature and bitter to the taste. He was skilful in the use of many languages, but with me he mostly spoke Doric and almost in verse, and as he spoke perfume filled the place from the sweetness of his breath. The rest of his knowledge and information always remained with him, but the prophetic inspiration only came upon him once in every year, when he went down to the sea and prophesied. And nobles and royal scribes used to flock to hear him and then went away. Well, this man attributed prophesying to the daimons. He talked a great deal about Delphi, and he seemed to be acquainted with all that they say about the Dionysus there and the performance of the sacred rites, but he said that such things signified certain great matters that befell the daimons. He was also acquainted with the myth of the Python. And he denied that the slayer of the Python goes into exile for nine years or yet to Tempe, but said that he is banished to another world, and afterwards in the revolutions of nine

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Great Years becoming pure and a ‘Phœbus’ in reality, he returns from thence and takes possession of the oracle, which has meantime been guarded by Themis.

“And so also with the myths about Typhon and the Titans, which were really battles of daimons with daimons, the vanquished fleeing and the wrong-doers being punished by the God, like Typhon for transgressing against Osiris and Cronus against Uranus, of whom the honours have either diminished or entirely ceased, since they were transferred to another world. . . . And many other stories too like these can be taken from the sacred myths.

“‘But’, remarked the stranger, ‘there is nothing strange in our calling some daimons by the names we usually give the gods, for every daimon is wont to be called by the name of the god to which it is assigned and from which it derives its power and honour. For with us one is assigned to Zeus, another to Athene, another to Apollo, or Dionysus, or Hermes. Some of them have been rightly so called, but many have become possessed of names of gods that have no appropriateness in them and even signify the very opposite of their natures.’”

And when Cleombrotus stopped, we all thought what he had said to be very extraordinary. And on Heracleon asking what all this had to do with Plato, and how had he (the last speaker) played the tune for the argument, Cleombrotus continued: “You do well to remind one that he (Plato) at once abandoned the idea of an infinity of worlds, and that as to a definite number he could not make up his mind, for though he conceded the probability (of there being a plurality) up to the number of five, on the hypothesis of one world for each element, yet he watched (? analysed) himself on one only. And this seems to be the peculiarity of Plato, while others were exceedingly apprehensive of this plurality as though they who did not limit the world-stuff (hyle) to one (world), would in going beyond that number be immediately involved in a limitless and embarrassing infinity.”

“But”, I interposed, “did the stranger lay down any limit to the plurality, as Plato did, or did you fail to question him when in his company?”

And Cleombrotus answered: “Why, I was not likely not to be in good form about such things and a ready listener when he showed and made himself so affable. He told me that the number of worlds was neither infinite, nor one, nor five, but that there were one hundred and eighty-three of them,^[2] arranged in the figure of a triangle of which each side contained sixty; and of the remaining three one is set at each angle. And those on the sides touch each other, revolving steadily as in a choral dance. And the area of the triangle is the common hearth of all, and is called the “plane of truth,’ in which the logoi and ideas and paradigms of all things

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which have been and which shall be, lie inmovable; and the eternity (lit., æon) being round them (sc., the ideas, &c.), time flows down upon the worlds like a stream. And the sight and contemplation of these things is possible for the souls of men only once in ten thousand years, should they have lived a virtuous life. And the highest of our initiations here below is only the dream of that true vision and initiation; and the discourses (sc., delivered in the rite) had been carefully devised to awaken the memory of the sublime things there above, or else were to no purpose. Such were the myths I heard him tell of these things, just as though he were going through an initiatory rite and ceremony, without affording any demonstration or proof of what he said.”

G. R. S. Mead, F.T.S.

Footnotes

↑ Hesiod speaks of “The long-haired nymphs, daughters of Jove, that bears the ægis”, and divides rational entities (λογικοι) into four classes, viz., gods, daimons, heroes and men, just as the Purânas tell of four classes of beings born from the body of Brahmâ, viz., gods, asuras (translated demons (?) ), pitris (progenitors) and men. Plutarch also says that, according to the same authority, the men of the “golden race” were classed among daimons. In the course of the dialogue some other interesting pieces of information concerning these daimons are contributed in order to support the hypothesis that oracular responses were dictated by such entities. For instance Xenocrates, the companion of Plato, is said to have found certain correspondences between certain kinds of triangles and this classification of beings. Of triangles he assigned the equilateral to the gods, seeing that it is equal in every way; the scalene to men, seeing that it is unequal in all its sides; and the isosceles he compared to the nature of daimons, seeing that it was partly equal in its properties and partly unequal, just as the nature of daimons was between that of gods and men.
↑ The following speaker of the dialogue, Demetrius the Grammarian, a native of Tarsus who had resided some time in Britain, asserts that this idea is neither Egyptian nor Indian, but Dorian. And in fact that it was put forward by a certain Petron of Himera in Sicily. But the treatise of this philosopher Demetrius had not read, nor did he think it was any longer extant. The Theosophical student, however, will not be at much pains to see in Petron's 183 worlds, grouped round the triangle of divine fire, the world of ideas, another proof of the septenary classification of worlds as taught by so many philosophers in antiquity. We can deal with the number 60 in two ways; either by disregarding the nought (a frequent “blind” in esotericism) and reducing it to 6, or by splitting it up into its factors 5 × 12. In the first case we have the three worlds of manifestation divided into six planes and synthesized by the spheres at the angular points of the triangle, seven in all (see diagram, Secret Doctrine, Vol. I., p. 200). In the second, 5 × 12 is the numerical expression of the famous “Platonic solid”, the dedecahedron, a figure contained by twelve pentagons, the type of a world. The triangle signifies the triple aspect of the world of ideas, the arûpa planes of cosmos, separated from the three rûpa planes of manifestation, by the horizon of the eternity or æon, an arrangement that may be easily understood by the symbology of the interlaced triangles.

[1] Hesiod speaks of “The long-haired nymphs, daughters of Jove, that bears the ægis”, and divides rational entities (λογικοι) into four classes, viz., gods, daimons, heroes and men, just as the Purânas tell of four classes of beings born from the body of Brahmâ, viz., gods, asuras (translated demons (?) ), pitris (progenitors) and men. Plutarch also says that, according to the same authority, the men of the “golden race” were classed among daimons. In the course of the dialogue some other interesting pieces of information concerning these daimons are contributed in order to support the hypothesis that oracular responses were dictated by such entities. For instance Xenocrates, the companion of Plato, is said to have found certain correspondences between certain kinds of triangles and this classification of beings. Of triangles he assigned the equilateral to the gods, seeing that it is equal in every way; the scalene to men, seeing that it is unequal in all its sides; and the isosceles he compared to the nature of daimons, seeing that it was partly equal in its properties and partly unequal, just as the nature of daimons was between that of gods and men.

[2] The following speaker of the dialogue, Demetrius the Grammarian, a native of Tarsus who had resided some time in Britain, asserts that this idea is neither Egyptian nor Indian, but Dorian. And in fact that it was put forward by a certain Petron of Himera in Sicily. But the treatise of this philosopher Demetrius had not read, nor did he think it was any longer extant. The Theosophical student, however, will not be at much pains to see in Petron's 183 worlds, grouped round the triangle of divine fire, the world of ideas, another proof of the septenary classification of worlds as taught by so many philosophers in antiquity. We can deal with the number 60 in two ways; either by disregarding the nought (a frequent “blind” in esotericism) and reducing it to 6, or by splitting it up into its factors 5 × 12. In the first case we have the three worlds of manifestation divided into six planes and synthesized by the spheres at the angular points of the triangle, seven in all (see diagram, Secret Doctrine, Vol. I., p. 200). In the second, 5 × 12 is the numerical expression of the famous “Platonic solid”, the dedecahedron, a figure contained by twelve pentagons, the type of a world. The triangle signifies the triple aspect of the world of ideas, the arûpa planes of cosmos, separated from the three rûpa planes of manifestation, by the horizon of the eternity or æon, an arrangement that may be easily understood by the symbology of the interlaced triangles.

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