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Pythagorean Shamanism

by Alexander Kealey

Reprinted by the gracious permission of the author. The original document can be found on Dr. Kealey's website

Every age tends to mythologize its origins. The modern West has looked to

Athens as the source of its culture, its particularly "western" values ofdemocracy, philosophical reason and science. Athenian religion has been

stripped from that list of values, of course, because we look to Jerusalem

for that. But, as my colleague Prof. Christos Evangeliou has conclusively

argued, we look back to a distorted and mythicized conception of Greece that

s mostly made in our own image.1 We think of Greek thought as "Apollonian"

and dismiss its Dionysian voice. The fact is that Greece was never

"western" in the sense we have imagined it to be. Greek philosophical,

scientific and political thought is very much steeped in the oriental

raditions of Egypt and Mesopotamia, even sharing connections with India.

While this is true of Athens, it is even more so the case with various

non-Athenian Greek colonies, Crete, Turkey and Southern Italy, for example.

Southern Italy was the stronghold of Pythagoreanism. Pythagoras (or

Pitaghora,2 as he was known in India) actually got the Pythagorean Theorem

of geometry from the Vedic mathematicians of India. I am not going to

expound Pythagoreanism3 here (see Notes, below, for further reading) except

o point out that it was an integral philosophy which had not dichotomized

reason and intuition, science and mysticism, philosophy and shamanism, as

modern Western philosophy has. The Pythagorean was a philosopher and a

scientist and a shaman and a mystic and a healer. This is the kind of

philosopher I have aspired and endeavoured to become.

One of the "Great Fathers" of Western philosophy is the Pythagorean,

Parmenides, who lived in Southern Italy. Plato tried, illegitimately, to

claim himself as heir to Parmenides and he succeeded, but in this respect he

fooled us because, although he was well versed in Pythagorean philosophy, he

did not make the grade as far as his abilities in healing, shamanism or

mysticism went. That distinction went to Zeno who became the butt of

character assassination by a jealous Plato.4 Parmenides was a Lover of the

Goddess and a priest of Apollo. In line with our mythicized image of

Athens, we think of Apollo only as the God of Reason, but he was also the

God of the Underworld! That juxtaposition is contradictory to the dualisticmodern Western mind, for the Underworld represents the Unconscious (which is

why we dropped the Plutonic characteristics from the appelation Apollonian).

Our God today is all Light and we wonder why our Darkness is so

pathological!

In Southern Italy and elsewhere in the Greek world we often find temples to

Apollo erected at the mouths of caves, conduits to the Underworld. A

Pythagorean practice was to go down into a cave for a vision quest. These

nspirations served as the basis for resolving issues of deepest ethical

significance both for oneself and for the benefit of others. Parmenides

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was a master shaman in this practice for he was given the responsibility to

engage in such cavernous "incubation" for bringing forth laws for his city.

He was thus a philosopher-king, an ideal Plato could only conceive as

utopian. Nevertheless Plato did pass on this idea of this tradition in his

Allegory of the Cave, albeit in a reverse way: the ones in the Cave were

gnorant prisoners and he put the Sun outside the Cave. The Pythagoreans,

however, knew that the Sun of Inner Illumination was to be found only in the

Darkness. It is possible that Plato's only shamanistic experience came via

he psychedelic ritual of the Eleusinian Mystery School initiation5 and thathis inspired his famous theory of the Forms.6 His teacher Socrates was

evidently more of a shaman but his shamanism was "underground" in a more

socially alienated sense. Some scholars have argued that Socrates was an

llegal user of the "controlled substance" of the Eleusinian mysteries and

hat this profaning of the mysteries was the real reason (the charge was

mpiety and corruption of youth) for his death sentence (first

philosopher-victim of the War on Drugs!).7 These were critical events in

he castration of philosophy. The Pythagoreans were greatly respected by

he Romans but they eventually succumbed to the tyranny of Christianity and

continued only in abated form in the Hermetic/occult underground. Something

of their spirit still influenced Orthodox Christianity, however, as isevident in the more mystical orientation of Greek theology and in such

Pythagorean-like brotherhoods as the Erevna in Cyprus.8

NOTES

1. The Hellenic Philosophy: Between Europe, Asia and Africa by Christos

Evangeliou, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghampton University,

1997.

2. Pitaghora in Sanskrit means father (pitr) of fearlessness (aghora) or

"deeper than deep, but illumined"; aghora also refers to Tantric yogis who

worshipped the union of Shiva and Durga/Shakti.

3. See The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library compiled by K.S. Guthrie,Phanes Press,1988;

and The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Pythagoras.

4. Based on the research of Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom The

Golden Sufi Center, 1999.

5. The Road to Eleusis

6. Gordon Wasson, Persephones's Quest, Yale University Press, 1986, p.41.

7. Carl Ruck, "Mushrooms and Philosophers" in Persephone's Quest, ibid.

8. See books by Kyriacos Markides: The Magus of Strovolos, Homage to the

Sun, and Fire in the Heart. For a good comparison between Western and Greek

Christianity see Karen Armstrong's A History of God, Ballantine, 1993.