Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)

I am, however, not inclined to attribute the origin of this symbolic expression simply to the imagery of Plato's poetic mind, but am far more inclined to believe that Plato was using a familiar figure of " Orphic " symbolism. The idea of not only an Ultimate Crater, but of many subsidiary ones in the celestial and invisible realms, is closely connected with the " Orphic " idea of a Vortex.

IN "ORPHEUS," MACROBIUS, AND PROCLUS

Orpheus is said to have called the ./Ether the Mighty Whirlpool.1 This forms the Egg or Womb of Cosmos ; it is a modification of Chaos or Rhea, the Eternallyflowing, the Mother of the Gods, the Great Container. Thus Proclus, in speaking of Chaos, says :

" The last Infinity, by which also Matter (SXq) is circumscribed, is the Container, the field and plane of ideas. About her is ' neither limit, nor foundation, nor seat, but excessive Darkness.' " 2

Plato, as we have seen, in his psychogony, speaks openly of this Cup or Crater (Mixing Space, or Vortex) in two aspects ; in it the Deity mixes the All-Soul of universal nature from the purest Cosmic Elements, and from it He also " ladles out " the souls of men, composed of a less pure mixture of these Elements.

Further, Macrobius tells us that Plato elsewhere indirectly refers to another aspect of this Cup.

" Plato speaks of this in the Phcedo, and says that the soul is dragged back into body, hurried on by new intoxication, desiring to taste a fresh draught of the overflow of matter,3 whereby it is weighed down and brought back [to earth]. The sidereal [astral] Crater of Father Liber [Dionysus, Bacchus] is a symbol of this mystery ; and this is what the Ancients called the

1 trt\<apiov xfop* (Simplicius, Ausc., iv. 123) ; magna vorago (Syrianus, Metaph., ii. 33a). Of. Prolegg. ch. xi., " The Orphic Tradition of the Genesis of the World-Egg."

2 Comment, in Tim., ii. 117. See my Orpheus, p. 154.

3 Gnostice, " the superfluity of naughtiness.'

Eiver of Lethe, the Orphics saying that Father Liber was Hylic Mind." x

We have here, therefore, a higher and lower Cup.
Proclus, moreover, speaks of several of such Craters,
when he writes :

" Plato in the Philebus hands on the tradition of the Vulcanic Crater . . . and Orpheus is acquainted with the Cup of Dionysus, and ranges many such Cups round the Solar Table."2

Elsewhere, again, Proclus tells us that the Demiurge is said "to constitute the psychical essences in conjunction with the Crater " ; this " Crater is the peculiar cause of souls, and is co-arranged with the Demiurgus and filled from Him, but fills souls " ; thus it is called the Fountain of Souls.3

If with these indications before us we might venture to generalize, we might say that, according to Orpheo- Pythagorean, Platonic, and Hermetic ideas, the " matter " of every "plane" was thought of as proceeding from such a Crater or Cup, from within without, and the elements thereof as being refunded into such a Cup or Centre or Eeceptacle — that is, from a more subtle, simpler, and inner phase to a more gross, complex, and outer phase, and vice versd. In other words, the Crater is the "monadic" or "atomic" state of the matter of any given phase or state of existence.

THE VISION OF ARHLEUS

With the above data before us, it will also be instructive to turn to the Vision of Aridseus (Thespesius)

1 Comment, in Som. Scip., XI. ii. 66.

2 Comment, in Tim., v. 316 (Taylor's trans.).

3 Taylor (T.), Theology of Plato, V. xxxi.

as related by Plutarch,1 a vision that may be compared with profit with the Vision of Er as told by Plato. Thespesius is being conducted through Hades, or the Invisible World in contact with earth-life, by a kinsman who has "passed over," as Spiritists would say, and curiously enough he there comes across a Chasm and a Crater — for part of the story runs:

"After these explanations he was conducted by his kinsman at great speed across an immense space, as it seemed, nevertheless easily and directly as though supported by wings of light-rays ; until having arrived at a Vast Vortex (^acr/xa) extending downwards, he was abandoned by the power that supported him.