My purpose is to tell of bodies which have been transformed into shapes of a different kind. You heavenly powers, since you were responsible for those changes, as for all else, look favourably on my attempts, and spin an unbroken thread of verse, from the earliest beginnings of the world, down to my own times. Ovid, The Metamorphoses
Wrong? I accept the word. I willed, willed to be wrong! Prometheus from Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
How bootiful and how truetowife of her, when strengly forebidden, to steal our historic presents from the past postpropheticals so as to will make us all lordy heirs and ladymaidesses of pretty nice kettle of fruit. She is livving in our midst of debt and laffing through all plaores for us (her birth is uncontrollable), with a naperon for her mask and her sabboes kickin arias (so air! So solly!) if yous ask me and I saazk you. Hou! Hou! Gricks may rise and Troysirs fall (there being two sights for ever a picture) for in the byways of high improvidence that’s what makes lifework leaving and the world’s a cell for citters to cit in. James Joyce, Finnegan’s Wake
Io, the daughter of King Inachus, was turned into a cow to protect her from the wrath of Zeus’ lawfully wedded wife, Hera. Hera rightly suspected her amorous husband of sleeping with the voluptuous mortal. Rather than let Io fall into the hands of Hera, he transformed her into a cow. Hera’s suspicions were not allayed and asked her husband for the cow. Zeus, unable to refuse without arousing her suspicions, gave up Io. 
Io was kept under the watchful eye of the herdsman, Argos. He took Io away from her family to a distant mountain pasture, selected for its high visibility. With his thousand eyes, he could see anyone coming from any direction. The gods finally grew weary of seeing the poor woman a prisoner of the jealous Hera. Zeus sent Hermes down to rescue her. Hermes openly approached Argus, disguising himself as a poor shepherd and seduced Argos with the skilful playing of his pipes. Argos invited Hermes to sit with him and play more tunes. Hermes began to tell Argos the tale of how the musical instrument came into being, lulling the watchful herdsman to sleep. Hermes slew him as Argos slumbered.
Io was set free but still trapped in her bovine form. She wandered far to the lands in the north where, according to Aeschylus, she met the Titan, Prometheus, along the shores of the sea, crucified atop a cliff in the Scythian wilderness. There, he revealed to her the prophecy that Herakles, a child in the lineage sprung from her loins, would eventually free Prometheus, the bringer of fire to mankind. First she would go on many adventures on the way to land of Egypt before she would be restored to her original form. All this was related by Prometheus as he was taught by his Titian mother, Themis:
I tell you this as proof that my prophetic mind
Sees more than meets the eye. Now to you all I’ll tell
The rest, resuming at the point where I broke off.
Where the Nile’s outflow lays its bank of silt, there
Stands
On the last edge of land the city of Canopus;
And here at last Zeus shall restore your mind, and come
Upon you, not with terror, with a gentle touch;
His hand laid on you shall put life into your womb,
And you shall bear a dark-skinned son to Zeus, and name him
From his begetting, ‘Child of a touch,’ Ephasos…
And from [Io's] children’s children shall be born in time
(To trace each step would take too long) a fearless hero
Famed as an archer, who shall free me from these bonds.
Prometheus in a speech to Io and the chorus,
the daughters of Oceanus, from Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
Herodotus locates the cause of the centuries long conflict between the Greeks and the non-Greeks, in the person of Io. Herodotus records the Persian account that states the Phoenicians robbed Io from her father while trading with the Greeks. As for the Phoenicians they deny they stole Io from her father at all. She gave herself up of her own free will to the captain of their trading ship and when she fell prgenant to him, she was too ashamed to face her family and fled with the captain. Later, the Greeks would steal Medea and, when the Phoenicians protested, the Greeks would reply that the Phoenicians offerred no compensation for the theft of Io. Alexander, the second son of the king of Troy, Priam, therefore felt justified in stealing Helen from Menalaus of Sparta.
The Persians according to The Histories, thought this all quite absurd. After all, a woman was rated no higher than any other possession and it seemed disproportionate to risk the lives of men for the sake of a woman. Herodotus also believed a story he heard in Egypt that Helen was not even in Troy at the time of The Illiad but was in Egypt. It seemed disproportionate for Priam to risk his sons and his people over a woman. Helen was not even in Troy and the Greeks would not believe Priam when he told them so. Homer tells the story otherwise because it makes for more interesting epic poetry. To conquer Troy after camping for ten years outside the walls and to come up empty handed, would have been farcical. If it turned out to be true (and we can never know now at our present distance from the events)) then this lends some weight to Herodotus’ theory that the centuries long conflict between Greeks and non-Greeks, particularly the Persians, should have its origins here in this difference.
Herodotus was the first to try and ascertain the truth of the tales, to “prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time” (Herodotus, The Histories Book 1). Herodotus was not a native Greek but came from a town in Asia minor, what is today a part of Turkey. Herodotus travelled extensively and was eventually made a citizen of Athens. Regardless of whether or not Herodotus wrote the truth (and he is often passing on a tale he heard in his travles, from the priests of Haephastus, for example, when he journeyed to Egypt), what is apparent is a massive swapping and exchanging of ideas between people of different nationalities and religions.
In The Histories Herodotus generally avoids speculating upon the gods, restricting himself to human concerns. He traces the origins of Herakles to the name for one of the Twelve gods in Egyptian culture. The tragic poet, Aeschylus, on the other hand, invented a mythological tradition about Io and her descendants as divine issue from the gods. The drama festivals were both religious ceremonies and (like most Greek gatherings) competitions. An analagous drama today would be the Eucharist. The fiery preacher in the gospel hour is a piece of histrionics. Confession could be compared – as a ritual – to a consultation with the oracle. Fire as spirit and the fundamental matter of the Heraclitian world is extinguished and one’s immortal soul is bought and sold with indulgences.
What is missing in the Christian tradition is competition. In the Biblical tradition, one is at war with one’s self. Jesus Christ fought the good fight and conquered death fo once and for all. “If a man should look upon a woman with lust in his heart then he has already committed adultery.” The kingdom of heaven is set in the hereafter. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and render unto God, what is God’s.” The battle is between the flesh and the spirit, the earthly existence and the kingdom of God. “Do your good deeds in secret and store your rewards in heaven where neither moth nor rust can touch them.”
The Greeks counted speech as vital. Histrionics was a part of the drama festivals. Rhetoric was fair sport and practised freely. In Aeschylus’ play, The Suppliants, Pelasgus, King of Argos, replies to the Egyptian herald come to Grecian shores to take back the fifty women, the descendants of Io, promised to the sons of Egypt:
KING : … As for these women,
If their goodwill were given, if pious argument
Won their consent, then you should take them; but this city voting in full assembly, with one mind resolved
Never to yield them up to force; and this decree
Is firmly nailed forever, fixed immovably.
What I have said is not inscribed on, or sealed
In scrolls of parchment: you have heard a free tongue speak
The plain truth. Now, out of my sight immeadiately.
HERALD : It seems we are to undertake a dangerous war.
Then may the male cause gain the victory and rule.
KING : You’ll find the men of this land too are males, and bred
On stronger drink than barley mead.
Aeschylus, The Suppliants
The Egyptian climate was not suited to the growing of vines and they drank barley mead instead of wine. The Greeks, however much they took from the Egyptians (Plato’s Phaedrus 274c-275c), appropriated those values useful unto themselves and made themselves equal to the task of self-mastery in their arts of ek-sistence. They did not submit themselves to the written word but to the free power of speech, spontaneous and true. The Egyptian religion became mummified in ritual but the Greeks were able to adapt their stories to their own livving ends. Women were not treated as equals (only men were permitted to vote in the Assembly) but their “goodwill” and their faculty of reason in “pious argument” was recognised by the great Greek tragedian and his audience (still it is not certain whether or not women were permitted to attend the plays). Drama festivals were competitive in nature.
What might be the meaning of the story of Io for that ubiquitous “us,” in a present day epoch of skepticism? Io entering onto the stage of Prometheus Bound. Prometheus was being punished for giving mankind the secret of fire. Joseph Campbell relates a tale from a North American Indian tribe of a similar divine origin for the invention of fire. Fire was an essential part of early human societies. Heraclitus wrote all things are compensation for fire and fire for all things, just as goods are for gold and gold is for goods. From fire, men learnt to forge stronger weapons and improve the hunting. And the waging of war on other men. Lightning strikes caused natural fires – Zeus throwing down his thunder bolts. Zeus wanted to destroy mankind, let them perish in the cold and start again. Prometheus committed a deliberate sin for the sake of mankind – a precursor of the Christ. Jesus, it is written, was without sin or blemish but the Son of God deliberately gave up the ghost and died alone on the cross: suicide can be interpreted as a deliberate sin against life and God’s will.
I may be drawing a long bow in an analogy between Dionysus, Prometheus and Jesus Christ but there is further evidence supporting a connection between Christianity and the pagans. Attic tragedy was developed out of religious rituals and performed at the festivals of Dionysus, the patron god of drama and of the mask. In a sense, Dionysus is always the star of the drama. It is his story that is being told and re-told in his various forms. Dionysus is also called in an epithet, the “twice-born.” The legends surrounding his birth, death and ressurection are similar to the story of Osiris, so much so that it is often thought that the Greeks imported Osiris from Egypt and called him Dionysus.
According to James Frazier, Dionysus comes from the provincial land of Thracia and is no invention of the Egyptians. To further complicate the matter, Herodotus attributes the origins of Dionysus (Osiris) and other Greek gods, to the Egyptians (The Histories Book 2 (49)). Isis was represented as possessing the horns of a cow – similar to Io, the mother of a lineage that would bear Heracles, the freer of Prometheus in the third play in the trilogy, Prometheus Unbound. The trafficking in ideas and beliefs is undoubtedly responsible for the similarities. The name and archetype may be local in origin and the rituals may have been imported to some degree. Like the native American folk tale Campbell relates, the cultures share the same socio-eckonomic stratum, the same relationship with the earth in terms of development, primarily existing as a people reliant upon the land for their prosperity. Hence the different aspects of the gods of nature, from Cemele to Dionysus.
The Roman, Ovid, related his tales of The Metamorphoses from Greek myths. Herodutus records a story wherein a nation consulted the oracle and they were told to accept the names of the gods from overseas. A similar transformation could have occurred in the translation of Egyptian gods to the Greeks (Osiris became identified as Dionysus, Isis as Demeter) and the Greeks into Roman (Zeus becomes Jupiter, Dionysus becomes Bachus). If stories were good and relevant, then they would be re-told and appropriated to the context of the present eckonomic conditions – regardless of the truth. The gods represent the natural forces upon which life is dependent. The early civillisations are agricultural and rely upon mother nature for their economic fortunes and failures. In twentieth century literature, the seven mouths of the Nile is compared to the seven orifices of a woman in Mailer’s Ancient Evenings. In Finnegan’s Wake, Joyce personifies the river Liffey running through Dublin as “Livia” (or “livving”),the wife of the patriarch, HCE.
Aeschylus’ plays predate the Christians by several centuries and the myths he drew upon for his subject matter and inspiration, were even older. The Greeks traced their origins back to the gods. The tragedies they write of all relate the same tale of the Fall, the loss of man’s divine origins – the tragedy of Achilles, for example. All the plays are essentially about Dionysus, the patron god of the dramatic festivals. Cities were dedicated to deities (compare to to today where city monuments like sporting stadiums are named after corporate sponsors). Descendants were traced back to divine stock – like Zeus taking Io, and thereby sowing the seeds for his own downfall when Prometheus should be set free by Heracles, a descendant from his own union with mankind. Not even the King of the Greek gods could “fly from Fate.”
The Greeks wedded fiction and necessity, ideal and practices. “We don’t know the truth about the past but we can invent a fiction as like it as may be” (Socrates in Plato, The Republic (382 d)). The myth informs the history behind the Greeks attitude towards themselves, the social values they held and the desire for knowledge arising from untruths. Lacking the truth of their orgins, but in need of a tradition, the Greeks invented the noble and base, town and country, in the festivals of Dionysus, the dramatic plays. The Gricks would be the outcome of the unity between the cultivated and urbane sity dweller with his symposiums and his Assembly, and the country hick who loved wine and worked all his days in the fields. The Gricks produced the ideal unity, the city-state:
When he obeys the laws and honours justice, the city stands proud…
But man swerves from side to side, and when the laws are broken,
And set at naught, he is like a person without a city,
Beyond human boundary, a horror, a pollution to be avoided. Sophocles, Antigone
Socrates would be the first truly “free tongue to speak” waking men up from the slumber of reason and begin the path to self-knowledge by way of self-doubt. In the Symposium, Plato hints that Socrates learnt the meaning of true love from a woman. Socrates was the wisest man in Athens because he knew that he was ignorant and strove to cure himself of this ignorance by questioning the experts – what is justice? What is courage? He refused to be intiated into the Elunisian Mysteries because he would not be permitted to speak about them.
Socrtates moved the scales from the stage to the street. He must have been himself, a great orator (for all the bad press he gave the Sophists and given his buffoonish depiction in Aristophanes’ The Clouds) as he was eventually charged with moral corruption. Rather than change his ways, he remained faithful to his own production, even unto death, paying a martyr’s price for a free man’s right to question ideas. Socrates was the first to fly in the face of common sense – self-preservation – and offer his body as a sacrifice for pure Idea, a suicide. Socrates gave up his present for the future in the writings of Plato, his beloved student.
Looking back at the past, the Gricks possessed some self-irony still, a sense of humour and a healthy skeptical attitude towards Ideas. The sacrosanct rituals were recognised as staged and here Socrates upset the line between the divine and the mundane by putting Idea and Truth first. Socrates demythologised the Dionysiac and removed the mask. Here faith in the community’s own divine origins was lacking and man became the soul measure of things. The Dionysiac began its death throes with the death of Socrates and ended with the birth of Jesus, paving the way for a one Book, one World religion, a personal belief tied to universal salvation for one’s own soul in a kingdom that lies offstage in an afterworld – the “machine” as used by Euripedes to great effect in Medea and by Aristophanes for comic relief in The Clouds.
The search for origins does not lead to a pure idea but to the machine. We cannot assign an “error” to the history of ideas. Sit venia verbo: we have the right to only recognise the surface of things. The falling of the seasons was critical for a people reliant upon the land for their well-being and prosperity. Jordan Maxwell may be right in calling the Bible an astrological codex but this is not a whole truth nor does it take an iota from the worship of God in Christian churches, descended as Christianity is from pagan rituals and beliefs. Astrology marked the passing of the celestial bodies for the farmers to know when it was necessary to sow and when to reap.
The Earth is a space station. We’re all here to go! Do I hear any questions about that? William S. Burroughs, Dead City Radio
It makes sense to write and record knowledge for future generations. The Egyptians became a ruling civillisation with “more monuments which beggar description than anywhere else in the world” (Herodotus ibid 2.35). The exclusion of the Gnostic gospels from the canonic Bible is not exactly a “mistake.” Christianity is the outcome of a conflict of ideas. We cannot say there was some kind of over-arching conspiracy on the part of the Church to suppress the truth as a special example of tyranny nor did science usurp alchemy as if there was some logical succession of ideas explaining the cause and effect of human history, an evolution of the spirit.
With the performance of Everyman, the spirit of Christianity took a turn for the worst in the Dark Ages. The Inquisition was one more piece of Machavillean politicking amongst others. Machiavelli wrote his Prince as a manifesto for the Medici’s the rulers and patrons of the Renaissance in the Church and in the city of Florence. Machiavelli was trying to endear himself to the Medici’s. The Medici pope drained the Church’s coffers for feasts and orgies that would lead to the selling of indulgences.
The Christian religion is another melting pot of spiritual ideals cooked over fire, a stroytaling activity, striving with the chaos and the tragedy. Fidelity to divine origins for ourselves by reason and passion (a basic difference between the rulers and the ruled) for “Gricks may rise and Troysirs fall (there being two sights for ever a picture) for in the byways of high improvidence that’s what makes lifework leaving and the world’s a cell for citters to cit in.”
Between religious fundamentalism and secular science, the world has Christ-Prometheus-Dionysus on the cross and powers the machine. The Eucharist consecrates the everyday – “this bread is my body.. this wine is my blood… in remembrance of me.” The confession box is the Christian oracle for everyman. The collective meaning of the world as mother nature, has been altered, metamorphisised. The individual woman is empowered in the modern, atomistic society. Io is a satellite orbitting Jupiter.
The divine origin is a myth, a fable and a fairy tale we tell to children to isntil a little morality as they grasp for manners and learn to live with others.
Forgetting one’s sex in writing – I am emale, hermaphrodite – demonstrates an absolute faith in life itself. The Gricks saw necessity and conflict between the community and the individual, town and country, as the means of life, the primary process recognised in a creative evolution. They enshrined those practices in games and competitions that put the gods onstage and at a distance from themselves. The idea of freedom in itself, the eternal salvation for one’s soul, would seem absurd, because it would mean the end of striving. Time is at a standstill in eternity. We are now so far removed from these Gricks, the stories of their myths serve as a stage for mindless entertainment (Troy, 300) and the ruling idea as the idea of the whole, the omniversal, is absurd to us today. We “humans” know better. Science changed all that. We are not descended from gods and heroes but from apes.
As Heraclitus put it, you can never cross the same river twice. Only in stories and in dreams can I freely imagine myself and go on livving in the city-state, draw upon the wellsprings of the unconscious attached to the navel of the world, furnish the omniversity with archetypes, incorporate science and “spin an unbroken thread of verse, from the earliest beginnings of the world, down to my own time.” Jordan Maxwell no longer identifies his origins with the sacrificed goat nor the ideal unity of man in nature with the satyr, but with the aliens of Atlantis. In the beginning there was the Word. Enarmoured with “the machine,” science and technology, we no longer consult an oracle to divine a transcendental origin for the ubiquitious “us.” We number ourselves among the moderns. The occult died with Dionysus, the Grick hero with a thousand faces. The humans have preserved his memory in a facebook page. With a Herculean effort of literature, Promethus may live again.
