TFBT: Ben's Curriculum, Part I

A nice you man named Ben, contacted me one day.  He was interested in learning about Greek mythology in the esoteric sense.    I think he was hoping for personal spiritual growth by studying these old “truths”.   Here is the basic out-line of the curriculum for our one-on-one course.

1.    Read Hesoid’s Theogony. If you want to understand Greek myth, you will need to know the vocabulary and characters.  This small book is the most concise and clear explanation of the Ancient Greek universe.

2.    There is no such thing as Death.    Ben, a practicing person of faith, seemed to have the hardest time with this idea.  Originally the Titans when they defeated one another buried losers in a hole in the ground; Tartarus. 

o   Tartarus. There were brothers of the first generation of Titans called the Hekatonkheires.  They were tossed into Tartarus twice only to be revived later.  The Titan army Zeus defeated was buried too, only to be released later on and relocated to the Isle of the Blest, because as Pindar says “Even immortal Zeus released the Titans” “And they live untouched by sorrow in the Islands of the Blessed along the shore of deep swirling Oceanus, happy heroes for whom the grain-giving earth bears honey-sweet fruit flourishing thrice a year, far from the deathless gods, and Kronos rules over them; for the father of men and gods released him from his bonds. (Hesiod, Works and Days 156)   

o   Hades.  For mortals the hole in the ground was called “Hades” after the god-king of the place.  It was dark, gloomy, and dank, just like you’d expect for a hole in the ground.  But the souls that squeaked and flitted about the place were not dead.  With the proper sacrifices from the world above, they could speak and weep, feel for their beloved and on occasional still aid the living.

o   Shores of the Great River Ocean.  The Titans were original stuck in their mother’s womb due to the agression of their father Uranus.  Since their mother was the Earth, their womb was in fact an underground tomb.  Their eventually release was the proto-event foreshadowing the eventual release of the Hekatonkheires the first time and forever the second time.  As the fallen gods had hope of a world beyond Tartarus, so did mankind have hope of worlds beyond gloomy Hades.  Humanity too could attain the shores of the Great River Ocean at places like the Isle of the Blest, Elysium fields, the Luece Island and other places.  Shoot some of the Ancient Greek heroes made it to Mount Olympus.  To attain such paradises, one simply had to attain the Mysteries at Eleusis or do it the hard way; become a “Hero”.

§  Heroes.     Don’t think of the knightly hero of European lore.  Think of a celebrity.  In this case someone who famously challenges the gods.  Win or loss such men and women prove themselves someone special.  Their tombs and shrines become sacred place to the locale and they become guards of the land and its people.  The “heroes” live alternately in the Isle of the Blest and simultaneously at their shrine.

So what I intended as a skimpy outline, took more time than I expected.  This will be the first post in the series.   By the way, the Ancient Greeks thought the Ocean was a fresh water river.