1. Orpheus the Fisherman is here shown with his fishing pole, the line wound around it, a mesh bag in his elevated hand, and a fish lying at his feet.
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Having been drawn to the mystic gate by Orpheus's fishing line, the neophyte seen at Station 3 commences the night-sea journey, sunwise round the bowl. Like the setting sun, he descends in symbolic death into the earth and at Station 14 reappears to a new day, qualified to experience the "meeting of the eyes" of Hyperborean Apollo at Station 16.
2. A naked figure in attendance at the entrance, bearing on his head a sacred chest (cista mystica), and with an ear of grain in hand, offers the contents of the chest to:
3. A kilted male, the neophyte. He holds a torch in his left hand, symbol of the goddess Persephone of the netherworld, to whose mystery (the truth about death) he is to be introduced.
Yet his eyes still hold to those of his mystagogue, the Fisher. The raven of death perches on his shoulder, while with his right hand he lifts from the mystic chest an immense pine cone symbolic of the life-renewing principle of the seed, which the death and decay of its carrier, the cone, are to set free.
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4. A draped female figure, porteress of the sanctuary, bearing in her left hand a bowl and in her right a pail, conducts the neophyte within. For as the female power resident in the earth releases the seed-life from the cone, so will the mystery of the goddesses release the mind of this neophyte from its commitment to what Paul (using the language of the mysteries) termed "this body of death." On the early Mesopotamian cylinder seals, porters at the entrances to shrines carried pails, like that of this figure, of the mead of immortal life." The fish-men of Figure 7 also carry such pails. The neophyte is being guided to the sanctuary of the two goddesses:
5. Demeter enthroned, in her right hand holding the flowering scepter of terrestrial life, and in her left the open shears by which life's thread is cut; and
6. Her daughter, Persephone, as mistress of the netherworld, enthroned beyond the reign of Demeter's scepter and shears. The torch, her emblem, symbolic of the light of the netherworld, is a regenerative spiritual flame.
The neophyte now has learned the meaning of the raven that perched on his shoulder when he entered the mystic way and of the torch and cone that were placed in his hands. We see him next, therefore, as:
7. The initiated mystes, standing with his left hand reverently to his breast, holding a chaplet in his right.
8. Tyche, the goddess of Fortune, touches the initiate with a wand that elevates his spirit above mortality, holding on her left arm a cornucopia, symbolic of the abundance she bestows.
We are now just halfway around, at the point, as it were, of midnight, where:
9. Agathodaemon, the god of Good Fortune, holding in his right hand, turned downward, the poppy stalk of the sleep of death, and in his left, pointing upward, a large ear of the grain of life, is to introduce the initiate to:
10. The Lord of the Abyss. With his hammer in his right hand and on his left arm a cornucopia, this dark and terrible god is enthroned upon a scaly sea-beast, a sort of modified crocodile. His hammer is the instrument of Plato's Divine Artificer, by whom the temporal world is fashioned on the model of eternal forms. But the same hammer is symbolic, also, of the lightning bolt of illumination, by which ignorance concerning this same temporal world is destroyed. Compare the symbolism of the god Zervan Akarana in the initiations of Mithraism; also, the Indian divinities who both create and destroy the world illusion.
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in the classical mythologies he was Hades-Pluto-Poseidon; and in Christian mythology he is, exactly, the Devil.
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And so we move to the next station, of:
11. The Mystes, fully initiate. He bears a bowl, as though endowed with a new capacity. His hair is long, and his right hand, on his belly, suggests a woman who has conceived. Yet the chest is clearly male. Thus an androgyne theme is suggested, symbolic of a spiritual experience uniting the opposed ways of knowledge of the male and female; and fused with this idea is that of a new life conceived within. Above the crown of the head, symbolic center of realization, is a pair of spiritual wings. The initiate is now fit to return to the world of normal day. There follow:
12 and 13. Two young men regarding each other. As to the identity of these, there has been considerable academic disagreement. The French archaeologist Charles de Linas believed they represented Castor and Triptolemus. However, to this the late Professor Hans Leisegang of the University of Jena objected reasonably that in that case Castor would have been separated from his inseparable twin, Pollux. The pair, he suggested, might rather represent two mystes bearing scourges (for in certain mysteries scourging played a part).
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For myself, I cannot see why the two should not be identified as (12) the immortal twin Pollux and (13) the mortal Castor. For the mystes, departing from the sanctuary of his experience of androgyny (beyond the opposites not only of femininity and masculinity but also of life and death, time and eternity), must resume his place in the light world without forfeiting the wisdom gained; and exactly proper to the sense of such a passage is the dual symbol of the twins, immortal and mortal, respectively, Pollux and Castor.
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The last three figures of the series return us to the light world:
14. The returning mystes, clothed exactly as at Station 3, now bears in his left hand a basket of abundance and in his right a sage's staff. He is conducted by:
15. A draped female figure with pail and bowl, counterpart of the figure at Station 4. Vines and fruit are at her right and left: fulfillment has been attained. She leads the initiate toward the god to whose vision he has at last arrived, on whom his eyes are fixed:
16. Hyperborean Apollo, the mythopoetic personification of the transcendent aspect of the Being of beings, as the Lord of the Abyss at Station 10 represented the immanent aspect of the same. He sits gracefully with lyre in hand and a griffin reposing at his feet.
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Having circled the full round, the mystes now is in possession of the knowledge of that mover beyond the motions of the universe, from whose substance the sun derives its light and the dark its light of another kind. The lyre suggests the Pythagorean "harmony of the spheres," and the griffin at the god's feet, combining the forms of the solar bird and solar beast, eagle and lion, is the counterplayer to the symbolic animal-fish, the crocodile of night.
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