Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism

This short book is incredibly dense and requires an informed reader of pretty much everything from the Presocratics to “modern” academic scholarship (from philology to philosophy). Finding Orphic material is hard enough these days, but for those interested a copy of GRS Meads ORPHEUS is key. He is more sympathetic than many of the other works although it’s best to be thorough and have read others especially the multitude of available translated Orphic Myths. Familiarity with the works of the Presocratics, especially Parmenides and some Empedocles is necessary, as well as Plato (especially on Socrates) and the Neoplatonists. Ideally, a grounding in Egyptian history and myth will help as well. There are plenty of references because this small folio is actually a critique of recent scholarship.Given that, and perhaps having had a personal sapiential experience, you will find a veritable goldmine of information here. It confirms “Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth”, which is the title of an earlier work by Uzdavinys. There is much here to demonstrate that exoteric religion today is a degenerate form of knowledge, edited by later cultures to suit their own needs. It goes to the heart of Perennialism. This is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but for the mystically inclined philosophic seeker, of which there are relatively few IMO, it can be revelatory, assuming they have done their homework.

This is an amazing book that sheds light on the ambiguity of the Orphic beliefs. It shows how it seem to have started in Egypt, bu the main source of what we know are in the Platonic dialogues. It was amazing to see the circle of birth, life and death; the punishment or reward in between, and how Plato thought that if you were a philosopher for three life times in a row you would become the God that was trapped in your flesh. Once one would have achieved apotheosis then at the end of that life time they would be able to dine in the Tower of Cronus with the rest of the Gods.

The author was not only an astute scholar, but combined noetic wisdom in this insightful exposé of the Orphic-Pythagorean-Platonic tradition or "stream of consciousness." Modern academia would be well advised to reconsider the true function of philosophy as an aspect of the perinneal wisdom and its transformative power as opposed to the current vogue of dry intellectualism.

Clearly a master on the subject. Not many books show the relationship between Orpheus and Platonism in such a concise and clear way.

Amazon user reviews of Mr. Uzdavinys's monograph show that, for a certain type of reader, this brief book repays close study. The monograph is not intended for beginners; rather for a species of seasoned scholars. It favors an audience already familiar with its subject matter and vocabulary, some of its terms being defined in (and -- if Google be a guide -- only in) the same author's Dictionary of Spiritual Terms. Here's a sample from page 3: "The telestic madness is anagogic, and leads the soul to its forgotten origins through the theurgic rites of ascent or other sacramental means of purification. The inspired telestic liturgies (telestike, hieratike telesiourgia, theophoria) are not necessarily to be regarded straightforwardly as 'operations on the gods', thus deliberately and incorrectly equating the animated cultic statues located in the context of particular ritual communications with the invisible metaphysical principles themselves. Otherwise, tacitly or not, the polemical premises for a certain iconoclastic bias are maintained."There's no denying that such sentences require brainpower, and one could devote pages to unpacking the subtexts of just the verbiage quoted. Nevertheless, the outstanding impression I get from this text is not its braininess but its intellectual passion. The author's intelligence is harnessed, first, to refining linguistic surfaces so that these better correspond to truths he seeks to penetrate. It is harnessed, second, through wide and alert reading, to discover short-cuts and correspondences between disparate textual canons, correspondences that might illuminate truths he seeks to penetrate. To me, these are the strengths of the book, both driven by an almost unremitting passion.For non-experts these strengths are compromised by Mr. Uzdavinys's reluctance to conduct his explorations within a well-defined framework. Cross-disciplinary scholarship often proves fruitful indeed, as seen in Robert Hahn's Archaeology and the Origins of Philosophy, Thomas Mcevilley's The Shape of Ancient Thought, and Peter Kingsley's Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic, to name but three scholarly works notable for their cross-disciplinary surveys of existing literature. It may be that Mr. Uzdavinys has published work with similar surveys. But not here. Here citations (and there are many) are strung along the thread of argument like beads of different colors and sizes. Now the author considers hermeneutics, now history, now theology, now deconstructionist philosophy ... and at all times he assumes that readers will be clear about which hat he is wearing in any given passage.In my view there's risk for confusion. On page 41, for example, the author avers that "According to the Hellenic tradition, Pythagoras published his writings in the name of Orpheus." Clearly he is discussing reception here; what goes unsaid is that there isn't one bit of historical evidence to suggest that Pythagoras ever wrote anything. Yet in other passages, historical evidence about documents is treated as significant. On page 85, for example, Mr. Uzdavinys declares the importance of the role Homer's works played in the codification of "the heroic past and a shadowy afterlife ... in sixth century BC Athens." But no sooner has this codification been declared than the author asserts, "Of course, the Homeric poems were read as Pythagorean or Stoic philosophical allegories, and Proclus defended Homer by linking his poetry with the god Apollo..." Now, there may well be some pertinent correspondences between discussions of Homer in sixth-century BC Greece and in fifth century AD Rome, but if so they are not articulated. And short of that follow-through, this sort of historical foreshortening seems a bit high-handed. The beads serve the thread here. Textured reality is being used to serve the virtual dimensions of theory, with a result not far from what a more common writer, driven by more common passions, might produce as obvious polemic.I don't mean to suggest that Orpheus and the Roots of Platonism is a screed, but maneuvering its snares to glean genuine insights requires a wealth of previous and practiced reading. This monograph is intended for experts and will best be consumed by them. To vary a phrase above: More casual readers may find, tacitly or not, that the iconoclastic premises for a certain polemical bias are maintained.

Excellent!

An absolute gem of a book delving deep into ancient & possible prehistoric metaphysics.Once you get used to the bouncing around from one historical period & culture to another it makes for a deeply satisfying read.

Algis Uzdavinys did an absolutely superb job of explaing the Orphic doctrine as it is. Modern scholars totally gloss over the esoteric and mystical foundation of these pre-Christian religious and philosophical systems, they simply don't get it.

--------------Author sets out to argue that Platonism is a a modernized and distorted composure of the teachings of the Orpheus-cults and Pythagoras-cults, respectively. I personally believe that the author is right about that, but this book could have used a good editor. It is more like a lot of minutiae, rituals, symbolism, and tentative parallels thrown around at large, mixing and matching from the sources with no trace of internal jugdment. The book could have been shortened some 80% (and it is already very short). The most important take-away from this book is that Plato is no mere rationalist but also a 'mystical' thinker with a non-rational agenda (besides his rational one). Paradoxically, though, this book never really argues the thesis, it just spams sources. The inner narrative structure of the book is paper-thin.