The ideas and achievements of the ancient Greeks are an inseparable part of our culture. It’s worth looking at their secret knowledge and esoteric thought as well – and at what the peoples the Greeks called barbarians believed.
Gods, temples and oracles
Towards the end of the Age of Aries, in the 6th century BC – the period when the world’s great religions and philosophies were taking shape – the Greeks worshipped a vast pantheon of cosmic gods and other deities, spirits and heroes. These had their own priests, places of worship, temples and altars.
The Greeks asked the gods for intercession and advice. They came to a temple, paid a set fee and, after some time, a priest or priestess delivered the answer. Such a temple was known as an oracle – Latin oraculum, a word linked with the idea of a “short prayer”. In those days people also divined from the flight of birds, from their surroundings and natural phenomena, from wax, from the crowing of a cockerel and in many other ways.
Medicine, magic and Hippocrates
With the Persian Wars, astrology and palmistry, magic and demonology found their way into Greece. Greek physicians healed with incantations and herbal mixtures. The sick were treated in temples, where offerings were brought for their recovery.
Hippocrates (c. 460–370 BC) came from this era. He was the first to formulate the theory of the four fluids of the human body – phlegm, blood, yellow bile and black bile – from which the doctrine of the four temperaments later arose: sanguine, phlegmatic, choleric and melancholic. The Hippocratic Oath is sometimes compared to the classic oath of the magician: “I swear to lead a pure and moral life and to cultivate my art, refraining from doing any harm or injustice.”
The use of incantations, astrology and other divinatory tools was not forbidden at the time. The only crime was using them to harm someone. The Greeks distinguished between thaumaturges – wonder-workers – and goetes, that is, sorcerers or black magicians. They believed the former were helped by the gods and the latter by evil demons.
The mysteries and the Orphics
Mystical cults that grew out of ancient folk festivals held an important place – the mysteries in honour of Demeter, Cybele, Dionysus and other deities linked with birth, fertility and death. At first these were exuberant rites: there were processions with torches and images of the gods, incantations were spoken, miraculous healings took place, and participants fell into ecstasy and gave themselves over to orgies. Towards the end of the Age of Aries, secret societies began to form – closed groups to which only the chosen were admitted and in which the rites in honour of the gods continued.
One such society was the Orphics. They took as their patron Orpheus, to whom they ascribed greatness. They had their own schools, whose chief rule was asceticism and strict discipline. Orphic cosmogony had features of the cosmogonies of the East: according to it, Phanes, the deity of sunlight and the yearly cycle, was born from an egg cast into water, and he was depicted surrounded by serpents and the twelve signs of the zodiac.
The Orphics especially revered Dionysus, who was associated with the fertility cult. It’s worth knowing that originally there were two figures named Dionysus, who only later merged into one. The first was known as Dionysus-Bacchus, god of wine; the second as Dionysus Zagreus, the great hunter, son of the Serpent. The first eventually reached Olympus; the second perished. Apollo, god of the sun and of harmony, was also worshipped.
The Greeks never developed a concept of the Absolute, not even in the form of a single supreme God. Even so, among the multitude of Greek gods and deities, the archetype of Zeus remained the highest.
Pythagoras and the mystery of numbers
One of the best-known Greek scholars was Pythagoras (c. 580–500 BC) – a great mathematician, regarded as the father of numerology. He travelled widely, studying in Persia, Babylon and Egypt. On his return he founded a school in Croton. Anyone who wished to join took a vow of silence lasting from two to five years. They then received the rank of akousmatikos, a listener – an outer disciple – and could hear teachings delivered from behind a curtain. Only later did the pupils become mathematikoi, or inner disciples, and after a rite of purification they could take part in the mysteries.
The teaching of Pythagoras in the form we know today was formulated not so much by him as by his pupils and successors – such as Pindar, the magus Apollonius and the philosopher Plato.
For the Pythagoreans, number was the most important means of understanding the world. It also served as a symbol of many things and concepts, eventually becoming an archetype similar to the archetypes of the zodiac signs. Another means of understanding was the alphabet: numbers were denoted by letters, and the meanings of the letters added up to the meaning of the whole word. All this formed the foundations of numerology.
The world is harmony, the Pythagoreans taught. They discovered the mathematical ratios between musical intervals and linked them with the elements, geometric figures and the heavenly bodies, of which – they believed – there were ten.
The cosmos, the soul and metempsychosis
For the Greeks, the cosmos was a single living being. They regarded the Sun as living fire and the chief life force of the cosmos. The Stoics Chrysippus and Posidonius taught that the cosmos is rational and permeated by spirit, and that the human soul is part of it. The soul comes from the cosmos and returns to it after the death of the body, to be reborn again – this journey is essential for it to reach perfection gradually. The Greeks called rebirth, or reincarnation, metempsychosis.
The barbarians
The Greeks called anyone who wasn’t Greek a barbarian. At the close of the Age of Aries and the dawn of the Age of Pisces, these included the Egyptians, the Semites and the Persians. Here, however, we are concerned with other barbarians – the ancestors of the later inhabitants of western Europe.
Their history begins with the Migration Period in the 5th century AD, after the fall of Rome. From an astrological point of view, a span of about five hundred years is of interest. Five-hundred-year historical periods are linked not with the precessional chronology but with planetary cycles. Neptune orbits the Sun in about 165 years, Pluto in about 250 years. The two planets meet in the same region of the sky roughly once every 500 years, and according to astrologers this is when great transformations take place in the life of humanity. The period from the fall of Rome to the Great Schism of 1054 was the era of Europe’s Christianisation, when the old ideas of the Age of Aries, and even of Taurus, were replaced by the new symbols of the Age of Pisces – the symbol of Christ.
Celts, Germanic peoples and Scandinavians
The Germanic-Scandinavian tribes and the Celts deserve a closer look. In Greek times some of the Celts lived in Asia Minor, where they were called Galatians. Celtic peoples also lived in Italy, Spain and other lands, and over time their centres shifted to northern Europe. The Welsh, the Bretons and the Irish, among others, are descendants of the Celts.
As they conquered former Roman provinces with a well-developed culture, the barbarians fell under its influence – some even lost their native language. Their cosmogony was similar to that of the Greeks. Among the Germanic-Scandinavian peoples, Zeus-Jupiter corresponded to Thor, wielder of thunder; Mars to Tyr (Ziu); Mercury to Odin (Wotan), god of wisdom and writing; and Venus to Freya.
The barbarians believed in spirits that governed everything everywhere – undines and kobolds, elves and sylphs. They also had their own scripts: ogham among the Celts and runes among the Germanic peoples.
Druids and the fire festivals
The druids were the priests of the ancient Celts in Gaul, Britain and Ireland – guardians of knowledge and legend. They kindled and tended the sacred fire, prepared medicines, poisons and herbal potions, made prophecies and taught pupils. They also had their own mysteries. From the Celtic festivals of Beltane (the night of 30 April to 1 May) and Samhain (the night of 31 October to 1 November) there later grew the Christian notion of the witches’ sabbath.
From the archive of our esoteric magazines. Written by astrologers and esoteric specialists working with our editorial team; edited and translated for HOROSCOP.SPACE. © All rights reserved.
