In the Phaedo, Plato gives voice to the doctrine that the true philosopher makes death and dying the object of their study—that they are continually engaged in the practice of dying.[1] At Phd 64a, Socrates states, “…the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner…is the practice of dying”. This conception of the vocation of the philosopher is indebted to a much older mystical, magical, and initiatory tradition whose teachings are aimed, not at conceptual analysis or deductive proof, but at a direct, revelatory encounter with the divine. The idea that the philosopher is to be engaged in the study and practice of dying—while utilized by Plato for his own philosophical ambitions—arises out of an “Orphic-Pythagorean” matrix of ideas. Plato’s formulation of the goal of the philosopher as the gradual ascent, through the use of dialectic, to a visionary and transcendent participation in the noetic world of Forms, is for him impossible in the absence of the already existing spiritual traditions that he draws upon. The eschatological and mythical matrix of ideas characteristic of the Orphic-Pythagorean’s is present at every turn of the dialogue, and it is against this background that we will come to see the deeper resonances of the meaning of philosophy as the preparation for and practice of dying.
For the philosopher to die before they die is not for them to resist the changefulness and deception of the world of the senses as such, strictly adhering to the truths of conceptual a priori reason; but rather, to be initiated into an entirely new dimension of being. It is to enter into a living, breathing reality that draws us down into the deepest part of ourselves, opening up a field of vision where physical bodies are invested with noetic qualities, where what we take to be the conditions of life turn out in fact to be the conditions of death, and where the experience of dying turns out to be the source of all we take to be sacred and valuable in life. As Vishwa Adluri notes, this philosophical tradition “combines initiatory ritual and near-death experience, myth and mantic insight with rational, philosophical inquiry…it aims to bring about a philosophical transformation, leading the initiate from his mortal existence to immortal being”.[2] The Phaedo contains the genuine seeds of a hieros logos, a sacred text, which, when rightly interpreted and understood, itself constitutes an initiation.
There is no better place to begin than with the myth and the end of the Phaedo, which presents us with a striking picture of reality: we who think we live on the surface of the earth are really living deep within its hollows; we think that we are alive, living on the surface of the earth, but we are really dead, living in the underworld. Socrates states,
There are many strange places upon the earth, and the earth itself is not such as these who are used to discourse upon it believe it to be in nature or in size, as someone has convinced me.
(Phd, 108c6)
Socrates begins by describing the sphericity of the earth, but then, almost immediately states,
Everywhere about the earth are numerous hollows of many kinds and shapes and sizes into which the water and the mist and the air have gathered.
(Phd, 109b2)
And that,
We, who dwell in the hollows of it, are unaware of this and think that we live above, on the surface of the earth.
(Phd, 109c3)
We think we are living on the surface of the earth, when in fact we are living within its variegated hollows. We are like a creature living at the bottom of the ocean who thinks that they live on the surface. We would be as shocked to perceive “the true heaven, the true light, and the true earth” (Phd, 110a) as a fish would, who penetrating above the surface of the water perceived the contents of our world (Phd, 109b-110a)
The true earth— “in the pure sky where the stars are situated” (Phd, 109b)—is exceedingly more beautiful than this subterranean earth we live in, which is “spoiled and eaten away” (Phd, 110a2), mired by decay and corruption. This counterfeit earth that we live in is a kind of veil of the beauty and majesty of the true earth, whose shape is of a “spherical ball made up of twelve pieces of leather” (Phd, 110b-c), and composed of a kaleidoscopic array of colors brighter and purer than any we have ever seen. Everything in this other world shines with a light more glorious than any perceived by our natural eyesight, everything is magnified and more intensely experienced— “our precious stones here are but fragments…all stones there are of that kind, and even more beautiful” (Phd, 100d). Not only are the objects and features of the true earth more alive and purer than any in this subterranean world, but its inhabitants too are
…without disease, and they live much longer than people do here; their eyesight, and hearing and all such are as superior to ours as air is superior to water and ether to air in purity, they have groves and temples dedicated to the gods, in which the gods really dwell, and they communicate with them by speech and prophecy and by the sight of them; they see the sun and moon and stars as they are and in other ways their happiness is in accord with this.
(Phd, 111b-c)
And then we come to the description of the hollows themselves. In the hollows of this earth in which we live are craters of varying sizes and depth, connected via a vast subterranean network of channels, rivers, and lakes.
All these are connected with each other below the surface of the earth in many places by narrow and broader channels, and thus have outlets through which much water flows from one to another as into mixing bowls (κρατῆρας); huge rivers of both hot and cold water thus flow beneath the earth eternally, much fire and large rivers of fire, and many of wet mud, both more pure and more muddy, such as those flowing in advance of the lava and the stream of lava itself in Sicily.
(Phd, 111 d2-e2)
This subterranean network of underground caves, through which rivers of fire, water, and mud flow, represents the various regions within the earth that we go when we die. The quality of the water and cavern to which one is sent corresponds to the kind of life one has lived.
Of the rivers that flow through these caverns and craters, four are given special mention. Oceanus is the biggest and flows around the outside of the earth; while the Acheron, which flows into the Acherusian lake, is where the majority of souls go after death. The Pyriphlegeton, “falls into a region burning with much fire and makes a lake lager than our sea, boiling with water and mud” (Phd, 113a-b), eventually flowing into Tartarus. It is the destination of those who have done violence against their parents suffering from an excess of anger and passion. The Cocytus, or Stygian, flows into the Styx and is the destination of those guilty of murder.
But not everyone is subject to such punishment, and knowledge of how things stand in the afterlife can aid in freeing one from such a fate.
Those who are deemed to have lived an extremely pious life are freed and released from the regions of the earth as from a prison; they make their way up to a pure dwelling place and live on the surface of the earth. Those who have purified themselves sufficiently by philosophy live in the future altogether without a body; they make their way to even more beautiful dwelling places…
(Phd, 114c)
Thus, we see that the practice of philosophy, with the purification it entails, is the one sure way of avoiding the unenviable state of those in the underworld, who think they are alive when they are really dead, and whose lives are themselves a continual punishment; and instead, being released from this prison and hell, make their way to the “beautiful dwelling places” in the true earth, where they live in the future “without a body”.
On one reading of the myth all of this may seem like a convenient strategy for buttressing the rational arguments that the dialogue seems primary concerned with, the arguments for the immortality of the soul, further assuaging the doubts that anyone evaluating the arguments on the basis of their argumentative force alone—such as Simmias an Cebes—might still have. However, on a deeper reading of the myth we will see that it communicates an ancient teaching—that we are already dead and simply don’t know it—a teaching which, when rightly interpreted, does something that no rational argument on its own possibly could; that is, initiate us by drawing us down into the depths of ourselves, causing us to die to that which we previously mistook for life, and awaken to a life that is only possible in death. It is in death that the life of the soul begins and through an experiential and revelatory gnosis, the philosopher’s soul is purified. This teaching, as we will see, is not original to Plato. Understanding the origins of the myth will help us better understanding the task given to the philosopher in the dialogue.
As Peter Kingsley has forcefully argued, the myth at the end of the Phaedo is at its most basic level, Sicilian, stemming from a poem written by a western Pythagorean writing under the name of Orpheus; and, that while the geographical features of the myth are descriptive of the geography of Sicily, its mythical content is distinctively Orphic.[3] The Orphic-Pythagorean background of the myth branches out, like the subterranean network of underground caves the myth itself describes, informing it at every turn. Once we have perceived the basic outlines of this archaic spiritual tradition, we’ll be able to see why the doctrine of dying before one dies lies at the heart of it.
One striking feature of the myth that has received much attention is the description of the sphericity of the earth that the myth opens with, a view which Kingsley notes was representative of contemporary Pythagorean cosmology.[4] But even more striking is then then dramatic situation that is depicted, that we are really living in the hollows of this earth, with the true earth far above. Plato appeals to an anonymous source for this doctrine, to ‘someone who has convinced him’ of it. The idea of the counter-earth is also Pythagorean in origin, and while there were several different ways of identifying this planet in antiquity, behind them all is the eschatological believe that this counterfeit, or anti-earth is “a place where the souls of the dead go to dwell”.[5] How this idea of the counter earth fits into the teaching of dying before one dies—as an eschatological account of the fate of the soul in the afterlife—will become clear shortly.
We can already see at the geographical level of the myth the influence of this Orphic-Pythagorean tradition, with its association between the rivers of fire in the underworld and the volcanic activity of Mount Etna, an association that existed long before Plato, and which drew on an essential feature of Sicily’s mythical geography, that “…the volcano, with its caves and caverns, is an opening into the underworld”.[6] Descent into the underworld is a regular feature of Orphic tradition, being essentially linked to practices of initiation in the ancient world.[7] The subterranean rivers portrayed in the Phaedo myth provide “a precise account”[8] of Sicily’s geography, leaving little doubt that the myth, at its deepest strata, is Sicilian in origin. The western Pythagoreans, living in Sicily during Plato’s time, and whom Plato himself visited and conversed with, would likely be the source of the myth at the end of the Phaedo.[9]
Further details confirm the Sicilian origin of the myth. The kratēres (Phd, 111d) that play such a central role in the myth, were unique and famous features of Sicily from both a geographical and a religious point of view, and “hollows” in the earth were a routine way of referring to Sicily’s craters, it’s caverns and caves. That the rivers would take on the quality of the earth they passed through was a noticeable feature of the landscape. Hot and cold waters were typical of descriptions of Sicily, therma hydata (‘hot waters’) themselves being a way of referring to Sicily’s hot springs, which were “essential components in local mythology about the underworld”.[10] As we can see, this isn’t a description of mere geography; but rather, a transportation of the physical geography of Sicily into another, mythical world, pointing us toward the eschatological dimension of the myth.
The Pyriphlegeton, the river of fire in the underworld, was not only linked to the streams of volcanic lava flowing through Sicily’s subterranean landscape, but was also understood as the place in the underworld to which souls, afflicted by unbridled passion and anger, would go as punishment when they died. The myth informs us that this is actually our condition now. We are in the underworld and simply don’t know it; we are living out a punishment for our former deeds. The fact that we don’t realize that this is the situation we find ourselves in is itself a part of the punishment. We are continually burned by our passions and anger, tormented by our ignorance and mired in the darkness, in a cyclical pattern that continues to repeat itself. This same exact situation is described in the small bit of myth given at Gorgias 493a, where the soul of the uninitiate is likened to one carrying a sieve leaking water.
Perhaps in reality we’re dead. Once I even heard one of the wise men say that we are now dead and that our bodies are our tombs, and that the part of our soul in which our appetites reside is actually the sort of thing to be open to persuasion and to shift back and forth. And hence some clever man, a teller of stories, a Sicilian, perhaps, or an Italian, named this part a jar [pithos], on account of its being a persuadable [pithanon] and suggestable thing, thus slightly changing the name. And fools [anoētoi] he named uninitiated [amuētoi], suggesting that the part of the souls of fools where their appetites are located is their undisciplined part, one not tightly closed, a leaking jar, as it were. He based the image on its insatiability. Now this man, Callicles, quite to the contrary of your view, shows that of the people in Hades—meaning the unseen [aÏdes]—these, the uninitiated ones, would be the most miserable. They would carry water into the leaking jar using another leaky thing, a sieve. That’s why by the sieve he means the soul (as the man who talked with me claimed). And because they leak, he likened the souls of fools to sieves; for their untrustworthiness and forgetfulness makes them unable to reattain anything.[11]
There are several important dimensions of this passage that deserve comment, but for the time being it will be worth noting that the structure of the Gorigas myth exactly parallels the structure of the Phaedo myth, as Kingsley observes. The fate and punishment of the soul in the underworld is described, and then our attention is brought to the fact that this condition is actually representative of our life here and now. We are already dead living out our punishment in the underworld. To be initiated is to wake up to this fact.
The Sicilian referenced in the Gorgias passage should also clue us into the anonymous source of the Phaedo myth. That the Phaedo myth is Sicilian in origin, and almost certainly attributable to a western Pythagorean, points to the conclusion that this “wise man” also refers to this same Pythagorean. But as we will see shortly, the allegorical interpretation of the myth—that the condition described of the fate of the soul in the underworld is really our condition here and now—appears to be Orphic. The reference to the doctrine that “our bodies are our tombs” is a distinctly Orphic doctrine. At Cratylus 400c, Socrates states,
There’s a lot to say, it seems to me—and if one distorted the name a little, there would be even more. Thus some people say that the body (sōma) is the tomb (sēma) of the soul, on the grounds that it is entombed in its present life, while other say that it is correctly called ‘a sign’ (‘sēma’) because the soul signifies whatever it wants to signify by means of the body. I think it is mostly likely the followers of Orpheus who gave the body its name, with the idea that the soul is being punished for something, and that the body is an enclosure or prison in which the soul is securely kept (sōzetai)—as the name ‘sōma’ itself suggests—until the penalty is paid; for on this view, not even a single letter of the word needs to be changed.[12]
There is much in this passage that will require returning to, but for the present it is worth noting that the doctrine that the body is a tomb or prison of the soul is attributed to “the followers of Orpheus”. This may seem like it contradicts the assertion that the source of the Phaedo and Gorgias myth is a western Pythagorean, but that is only if we assume that Orphism and Pythagoreanism are mutually exclusive “traditions”. As Kingsley argues, the Phaedo myth is itself based upon an Orphic poem written by a Pythagorean.
As we have seen, waking up to the fact that one is already dead is tantamount to an initiation, a katabasis or descent into the underworld, and appears to be not only what the Phaedo myth is aiding us in realizing, but also clearly stated as the primary task of the philosopher—to practice dying, to wake up to the fact that one is already dead, is to be initiated. That such a doctrine surfaces in a dialogue infused with Orphic and Pythagorean ideas is no surprise. In fact, Kingsley argues that the myth itself is based upon an orphic poem. That orphic poetry served an initiatory function, as a class of sacred narrative texts whose proper interpretation yielded initiatory knowledge (gnosis) is well established. The now well-known example of the Derveni Papyrus is a perfect example of this. Orphic poems such as the Descent to Hades and Salvation, are geared toward the mysteries of Demeter and Persephone; that is, toward an underworld mystery. This suggests that the Phaedo myth itself is modeled upon such a sacred narrative text used by initiates in “much the same function in the relation to the mysteries in the west as the Homeric and Orphic hymns to Demeter served in relation to the mysteries at Eleusis”.[13] Thus, the Phaedo myth itself seems to be pointing us in the direction of the initiated point of view.
Kingsley argues that the myth itself is based upon the lost orphic poem, the Krater. Craters, as we have seen, play a large role in the Phaedo myth. Originally meaning a “mixing-bowl” used to mix wine and water, they came to be applied to “hollows” in the earth, volcanic craters, craters of fire and craters of water. As we have seen, these geographical features were applied specifically to Sicily, and were thought of as points of entry to the underworld, places of power where contact with the other world was made. And in this way the idea of the ‘krater’ is intimately linked to the hermetic text that goes by the same name. Kingsley writes,
It is a complex web of ideas, plainly due to the merging of different mystery traditions: the krater is not just the source of the liquid the initiate is expected to drink but also something he has to throw himself into so as to become pure and immortal, a ‘perfect man’ capable of reascending to heaven.[14]
Kingsley notes that the hermetic Krater suggests a form of pagan initiatory ritual. That seems to be precisely what we are seeing in the Phaedo myth itself, yet drawn out into the larger philosophical project that Plato is setting forth. Plato has included in the dialogue a sacred narrative text whose allegorical interpretation yields an understanding of the mysteries; mysteries that Plato’s philosopher-initiate is instructed to comprehend.
The initiatory context of the dialogue itself couldn’t be any clearer; and given its indebtedness to Orphic-Pythagorean ideas, it becomes hard to escape the conclusion that dialogue itself is designed as a king of sacred text for the philosopher-initiate. By leading their soul to the underworld, to the recognition that one already dead, a vision of reality is conferred. As Socrates states at Phd 69c,
It is likely that those who established the mysteries for us were not inferior persons but were speaking in riddles long ago when they said that whosoever arrives in the underworld uninitiated and unsanctified will wallow in the mire, whereas he who arrives there purified and initiated will dwell with the gods. There are indeed, as those concerned with the mysteries say, many who carry the Thyrsis but the Bacchants are few. These latter are, in my opinion, no other than those who have practiced philosophy in the right way.
We can clearly see here the indebtedness of Plato’s conception of philosophy to the earlier mystery traditions that he received, a tradition whose purpose was to help people live in harmony with the sacred, to experience the living reality of the divine in this life so that a link to the divine could be established in this life and the next. The Hipponian gold leaf gives us a clear picture of this, with its depiction of “mystai and bakchoi in the netherworld proceeding on the sacred way towards eternal bliss, just as Eleusinian mystai are still celebrating their joyous festival in Hades…”.[15] And, as Peter Kingsley observes,
That’s why Orphic texts were written on gold and buried with initiates in southern Italy, to remind them how to keep to the right and how to make sure the queen of the dead receives them ‘kindly’… And for those people, just as in the case of Heracles, it was all a matter of finding their own link with the divine. That’s what initiation was: to find out how you’re related to the world of the divine, know how you belong, how you’re at home there just as much as here. It was to become adopted, a child of the gods. For those people it was all a matter of being prepared before you die, making the connection between this world and that. Otherwise it’s too late.[16]
With the Orphic-Pythagorean background of the dialogue now clearly in view, the contours of the initiatory insight that the dialogue presupposed—the cryptic teaching that one must die before one dies—can be addressed.
There is one idea in particular in the dialogue, an idea that we have already established as Orphic, which will enable us to deepen and amplify the meaning of ‘dying before one dies’. At Phd 62b, Socrates states,
There is the explanation that is put in the language of the mysteries, that we men are in a kind of prison, and that one must not free oneself or run away.
Likewise, as we have seen, at Cratylus 400c, Socrates says,
There’s a lot to say, it seems to me—and if one distorted the name a little, there would be even more. Thus some people say that the body (sōma) is the tomb (sēma) of the soul, on the grounds that it is entombed in its present life, while other say that it is correctly called ‘a sign’ (‘sēma’) because the soul signifies whatever it wants to signify by means of the body.
If the life of the body is a tomb, then what we normally take to be life is really death; and, if dying before one dies is to awaken to the reality or nature of the soul, then what we normally take to be death is really life and the source of everything we value and hold sacred.
The soma (body)/sema (sign) distinction here is relevant, for if the body is dependent for its life on the potency of the soul, then the body itself is a kind of projection, image, or sign of the soul in concrete form. The allegory of the cave comes to mind here; and, given the doctrine of Forms, this makes perfect sense as the basis and grounding for Plato’s own project. The body is the instantiation of the form of the soul; what we take to be our embodied life is a symbol and concretization of the archetype of the soul. To die before one dies is to recognize the body for what it is, a symbol of our true nature; and by extension, to recognize the symbolic character of the body is to understand that outer life itself, that we which we normally take to be most real, is the concretized symbol of the hidden inner world of the soul. Dying before one dies reveals that the happenings of the outer world and merely symbols of the soul that projects it. To forget this fact is to fail to be initiated, to confuse the symbol with that which symbolized, the sign for the thing signified. In such a condition the symbol dies and is detached from the source of life that sustains it. Here, life becomes a living death, and the only way to resurrect the symbol or sign is to wake up to the fact by dying.
We have already seen the literal, physical and geographical coordinates of the underworld transposed into the invisible world and fate of the soul through an allegorical interpretation of a sacred narrative text. Here the situation is no different: the physical life of the body, and the material world of the senses as such, is a symbol, or outer sign, of an interior and hidden world. To die before one dies is to pierce this veil. At this point it becomes hard to escape the conclusion that the dialogue itself is a kind of hieros logos, a sacred text whose proper interpretation culminates in a mystic insight, vision or revelation. While Plato may have attempted to place philosophy on a firm rational footing, his own ideas amount to little outside of the initiatory context on which they depend. As Rohde notes,
Plato is the most subtle of dialecticians; and, he almost carries subtlety to excess in his eager pursuit of every intricacy of logic—and of paralogism. But he combined to a remarkable degree the cold exactitude of the logician with the enthusiastic intensity of the seer; and his dialectic, after its patient upward march step by step from concept to concept, at last soars to its final goal in a single tremendous flight, in which the longed-for real of the Ideas reveals itself in a moment of immediate vision. So the Bacchant in his ecstasy saw divinity suddenly plain, and so too in the night consecrated by the mysteries the epoptês beheld the vision of the Goddesses in the torch-lit glare of Eleusis.[17]
While this vision of philosophy—whose goal transcends rational proof and argumentation—will gradually, over the millennia, be almost completely forgotten in the western world, a trace of it will survive in pockets and pools of initiatory wisdom that will largely continue to exist underground. Small groups of initiates, mystics and magicians, will preserve this ancient tradition, and keep the link to the divine intact for future generations. To die before our death is no vein denial of the body or the senses; but rather, a way of understanding what our actual condition here and now in life is, to wake up to the deeper strata of life that pulses through us all and sustains us.
[1] All references to the Phaedo are from the Grube translation.
[2] Vishwa Adluri, “Philosophy, Salvation, and the Mortal Condition,” in Philosophy and Salvation in Greek Religion, ed. Vishwa Adluri. (Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), p.6
[3] As should become clear, this entire essay is essentially an attempt to further understand Kingsley’s comments on the myth in Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic (APMM). See pgs. 71-213.
[4] Peter Kingsley. Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. Oxford University Press, 1995, p. 89.
[7] D. Felton. The Dead, in A Companion to Greek Religion, ed. Daniel Ogden. (Blackwell, 2007). “…stories of mortal heroes who journeyed to Hades to face death in person appear frequently in ancient Greek literature”. Heracles, Theseus, Orpheus and Odysseus “…metaphorically died and returned form the dead. In Heracles twelfth labor he undergoes a katabasis to capture Cerberus, and “significantly, before embarking on this quest Heracles went to Eleusis to be initiated into the mysteries of Demeter”. Likewise, “Orpheus’ legendry descent to Hades thus resulted in the actual cult of Orphism…” (p. 94).
[8] APMM, p. 82
[9] APMM, pgs. 79-112.
[10] APMM, p. 82
[11] Translated by Donald J. Zeyl.
[12] Translated by C.D.C. Reeve.
[13] APMM, pgs. 115-6
[14] APMM, p. 135
[15] Walter Burkert. Ancient Mystery Cults. Harvard University Press, 1987, p.22.
[16] Peter Kingsley. In the Dark Places of Wisdom. Point Reyes, The Golden Sufi Center, 1999, p. 64.
[17] Erwin Rohde. Psyche: The cult of Souls and Belief in the Immortality among the Greeks, Vol. 2. New York, Harper and Row. Translated by W. B. Hillis, p. 471
Liminal Matrices 
Leave a comment