ORPHISM AS A PHILOSOPHY

(This entry immediately follows Orpheus, If He Existed. In entering the discussion of Bacchus by Russell, let us keep in mind that Bacchus in this and in a larger context is virtually indistinguishable from Dionysus.)

Bertrand Russell, rather surprisingly, calls Orpheus “a priest and a philosopher.” By the laws of logic it has to follow then that Orphism is both a religion and a philosophy. In this entry we shall find out what Russell has to say about it. We start where we left off with the first sentence of Russell’s transition from Orpheus to Orphism:

Whatever may have been the teaching of Orpheus (if he existed), the teaching of the Orphics is well known. They believed in the transmigration of souls; they taught that the soul hereafter might achieve eternal bliss or suffer eternal or temporary torment according to its way of life here on earth. They aimed at becoming “pure,” partly by ceremonies of purification, partly by avoiding certain kinds of contamination. The most orthodox among them abstained from animal food except on ritual occasions when they ate it sacramentally. Man, they held, is partly of earth and partly of heaven; by a pure life, the heavenly part is increased and the earthly part diminished. In the end, a man may become one with Bacchus, and is called “a Bacchus.” There was an elaborate theology, according to which Bacchus was twice born, once of his mother Semele, and once from the thigh of his father Zeus.

…The Orphics were an ascetic sect; wine, to them, was only a symbol, as later in Christian sacrament. The intoxication that they sought was that of “enthusiasm,” of union with the god. They believed themselves, in this way, to acquire mystic knowledge not obtainable by ordinary means. This mystical element entered into Greek philosophy with Pythagoras, who was a reformer of Orphism, as Orpheus was himself a reformer of the religion of Bacchus. From Pythagoras, Orphic elements entered into the philosophy of Plato, and from Plato into most later philosophy that was in any degree religious.

This uncanny connection between Orphism and Pythagoreanism, observed by Russell with a matter-of-fact solemnity, bolsters the direct ties between Orpheus and Pythagoras, and makes Orpheus, whether a man or a myth regardless, a bona fide pre-Socratic philosopher.