Music Welcome to snoozecast. The podcast is

sign to helpozecast.com slash plus. This episode is brought to you by glimmering foliage. Tonight, we'll read from Pythagoras and the Delphic Mysteries written by Edward Shure and published in English in 1909. This work is part of Shure's larger cycle, The Great Initiates, which presents the lives and teachings of spiritual figures like Krishna, Hermes, Orpheus, Plato, and Jesus through a blend of historical research and philosophical interpretation. In this volume, Shurei's attempts to reconstruct the hidden life of Pythagoras not only as a mathematician but as a mystic reformer and initiate into the sacred traditions of ancient Egypt, Greece and India. Shurei's writing reflects the 19th century fascination with esoteric knowledge and spiritual evolution. While modern scholarship may question some of his interpretations, the result is a richly imaginative account that captures how Pythagoras was viewed not just as a historical figure,

but as a symbol of harmony, wisdom, and the mystical power of number.

Let's get cozy.

Close your eyes. Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now, take a few deep breaths. The soul of Orpheus had passed like a divine meteor across the troubled heavens of a new born Greece. When the meteor had disappeared, the land was again wrapped in darkness. After a series of revolutions, the tyrants of Thrace committed his book to the flames, over through his temples, and drove away his disciples. The Greek kings and numerous cities followed this example, more jealous of their unbridled license than of that justice, which is the source of pure doctrine. They were determined to a face his very memory, to leave no sign of his existence, and they succeeded so well that a few centuries after his death, a portion of Greece even doubted whether he had ever lived. It was in vain that the initiates kept alive his tradition for over a thousand years, in vain that Pythagoras and Plato spoke of him as divine, the sophists saw in him no more than a legend regarding the origin of music, even at the present time, Savant stoutly denied the existence of Orpheus, basing their assertion on the fact that Homer never mentioned his name. The silence of these poets, however, is fully explained by the interdict under which the local government had placed the great initiator. The disciples of Orpheus lost no opportunity of rallying all the powers under the supreme authority of the Temple of Delphi. And it never tired of repeating that the differences arising between the diverse states of Greece must be laid before the Council. This was de-spleasing to demagogogs and tyrants alike. Homer, who probably received his initiation in the sanctuary of Tyre, and whose mythology is the poetical translation of the theology of Sankhani Aton, Homer the Ionian might very well have known nothing of the Dorian Orpheus whose tradition was kept all the more secret as it was the more exposed to persecution. As regards, Hesiod, who is born near Parnassus, must have known the name and doctrine of Orpheus through the temple at Delphi, but silence was imposed on him by his initiators, and that for good reasons. And yet Orpheus was living in his work, in his disciples, and even in those who denied his very existence. What is this work? Where can the soul of his life be sought? In the ferocious military oligarchy of Sparta, where science was despised, ignorance erected into a system, and brutality exited as being the complement of courage, or shouldn't rather be sought in the turbulent democracy of Athens, ever ready to convert itself into tyranny?

Or in the many towns and cities of greater Greece and Asia-Miner, of which Athens and Sparta offer us two opposing types? No, the soul of Greece is not there.

It is in her temples, in her mysteries. It is in the sanctuary of Jupiter, at Olympia, of Juno, at Argos. It rains over Athens with Minerva. Sh sheds its beams over Delphi with Apollo, who penetrates every temple with his light. Here is the center of Hellenic life, the heart and brain of Greece. Here come for instruction poets who translate sublime truth into living images for the masses,

sages who propagate these truths in subtle dialects. The spirit of Orpheus is felt wherever beats the heart of a mortal grace. We find it in the poetry and gymnastic contests in the Delphphic and Olympian games, a glorious project instituted by the successors of the Master with the object of drawing nearer together and uniting the twelve Greek tribes. We are brought into direct contact with it in that assembly of the great initiates, a supreme arbitrary tribunal which met at Delphi, a mighty center of justice and concord, in which alone Greece recovered her unity in times of heroism. Yet Greece in the time of Orpheus, her intellect, and unsullied temple-guarded doctrine, her soul, a plastic religion, and her body, a lofty court of justice with Delphi, as its center, had begun to decline early in the seventh century. The order sent out from Delphi were no longer respected. The sacred territories were violated. Men of mighty inspiration had disappeared. The intellectual and moral tone of the temples deteriorated. The priests sold themselves to politicians. From that time, the mysteries themselves became corrupted. The general aspect of Greece had changed. The old agricultural royalty was succeeded either by tyranny, pure and simple, by military, aristocracy, or by democracy. The temples had become powerless to check the threatening ruin. A new helper was needed. It was therefore necessary to popularize esoteric teaching. To enable the thought of Orpheus to live and expand in all its beauty, the knowledge of the temples must pass over to the lay classes. Accordingly, under different disguises, it penetrated the brains of civil legislators, the schools of the poets, and of the philosophers. The latter felt in their teachings the very necessity orfius had recognized in religion that of two doctrines, the one public and the other secret, manifesting the same truth in different degree and form, ensued it to the development of the pupil. This evolution gave Greece her three great centuries of artistic creation and intellectual splendor. It permitted the orific thought at once the initial impulse and the ideal synthesis of Greece to concentrate its entire light and radiate it over the whole world before her political edifice. mind by internal dissensions, tottered beneath the power of Macedonia and to finally crumble away under the iron hand of Rome. Many contributed to the evolution we are speaking of. It brought out natural philosophers like Thales, legislators like Salon, poets like Pindar and heroes. It had also a recognized head, an initiate of the very first rank, a sovereign organizing creating intelligence. Pythagoras is the master of lay as Orpheus is the master of sassardotal grease. He translates and continues the religious thought of his predecessor, applying it to the new times. His translation, however, is a creation, where he coordinates the orific inspirations into a complete system, gives scientific proof of them in his teachings, and a moral proof in his institute of education, and in the order which survived him. Although appearing in the full light of historical times, Pythagoras has come down to us as almost a legendary character. The main reason for this is the terrible persecution of which he was the victim in Sicily, and which cost so many of his followers their lives. His memory and teaching are only perpetuated by such survivors as were able to escape in degrees. Plato, at great trouble and cost, obtained through, Archidas, a manuscript of the Master, who it must be mentioned, never transferred to writing, his esoteric teachings except under symbols and secret characters. His real work, like that of all reformers,

was affected by oral instruction. The essence of the system, however, comes down to us in the golden verses of lysis, the commentary of Heracles, fragments of phylo- and Plato. To sum up, the writers of antiquity are full of the spirit of the Croton philosopher. They never tire of relating anticootes depicting his wisdom and beauty. the neoplatonists of Alexandria, the Nostics, and even the early fathers of the Church, quote him as an authority. These are precious witnesses through whom may be felt continually vibrating that mighty wave of enthusiasm, the great personality of Pythagoras succeeded in communicating to Greece, the final eddies of which were still to be felt 800 years after his death. His teaching regarded from above an unlocked with the keys of comparative esoterism

affords a magnificent whole, the different parts of which are bound together by one fundamental conception. In it we find a rational reproduction of the esoteric teachings of India in Egypt. Pythagoras crossed the whole of the ancient world before giving his message to Greece. He saw Africa and Asia, Memphis and Babylon, along with their methods of initiation and political life, his own troubled life resembles a ship driving through a storm, pursuing its course with sails unfurled, a symbol of strength and calmness in the midst of the furious elements. His teachings convey

the impression of a cool, fragrant night after the bitter fire of a difficult day. They call to mind the beauty of the firmament unrolling by degrees. It's sparkling archipelagoes and ethereal harmonies over the head of the seer. And now we will attempt to set forth both his life and his teaching apart from the the obscurities of legend and the prejudices of the schools alike. Yn yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n y