29

Appendix 29

We might call it Lethe, and feel happy about it, were it not for the deplorable uncertainty of Lethe’s localization, with respect to the celestial itinerary of the soul particularly. The Milky Way being as large as it is, it does not help to state that one has to look for a galactical section. Worse, it remains unclear at which occasion the souls were supposed to drink from the water of this river of forgetfulness, whether they did so shortly after having arrived in Hades or before their re incarnation, or at both times. Although the supposition of an intake of Lethe right at the entrance of Hades would deprive the underworld jurisdiction, together with the good or bad recompenses for former conduct, of its significance, both views were upheld. (See Stoll, in Roscher s.v. Lethe, col. 1957; O. Gruppe, *Griechische Mythologie und *Religionsgeschichte [1906], pp. 403-405, 1036-41. On p. 760, n. 8, Gruppe quotes a passage, according to which a soul which has not yet crossed the river Lethe comes back to molest the living.)

Our most competent witnesses for Orphic-Pythagorean tradition take Lethe for the last “station” before rebirth, e.g., Plato in the myth of Er (Republic 10.620), and Virgil in the sixth book of the Aeneid (748-51), but only Macrobius (Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, trans. by W. Stahl [1952], 1.12.8) pretends to know the source of the drink: the constellation Crater, the “bowl of Bacchus.” This does not make sense [1] but, anyhow, he makes the souls descend through the northern intersection of Galaxy and zodiac, taking the southern crossroads, between Scorpius and Sagittarius for the entrance, which fits the “Hades-constellations” of the Sphaera barbarica. Yet we have observed, in other parts of our globe (see pp. 242f.), some uncertainty concerning entrance and exit: the Nicaraguan “Mother Scorpion at the end of the Milky Way” receives the souls of the dead, and takes care of the babies going to be reborn, whereas the Cherokee appear to assume the entrance at the “Northern End” of the Milky Way (Gemini-Taurus), from where the souls migrate to the “Spirit-Star” in Scorpius.
We are not informed precisely
whether the souls follow the Milky Way for a whole half-circle,
either turning to the north or to the south,
or whether they go first in one direction and return later on the same way.

The latter seems to be expressed in the Vishnu Purana
which restricts the “Way of the Fathers” to the region on the north of Canopus,
and south of three lunar mansions in Sagittarius and Scorpius; the “Road of the gods” (devayana) runs north of three lunar stations in Taurus and Aries, and south of the Seven Rishis, the Big Dipper. *Vishnu *Purana 2.8 (Wilson trans. [1961], p. 186) reads:

On the north of Agastya,
and south of the line of the goat (Ajavithi, i.e., the said three nakshatras in Scorpius and Sagittarius) lies the road of the Pitris.
There dwell the great Rishis, the offerers of oblation with fire, reverencing the Vedas,
after whose injunctions creation commenced,
and who were discharging the duties of ministrant priests:
for as the worlds are destroyed and renewed,
they institute new rules of conduct,
and reestablish the interrupted ritual of the Vedas.
Mutually descending from each other,
progenitor springing from descendent,
and descendent from progenitor,
in the alternating succession of births,
they repeatedly appear in different houses and races along with their posterity, devout practices and instituted observances,
residing to the south of the solar orb,
as long as the moon and the stars endure.

In a similar direction might point the report given by Pausanias about the oracle of Trophonios in a deep cave (9.39.8): the visitor comes first to “*fountains of water very *near to each other. [2] Here he must drink water called the water of forgetfulness (Lēthēs hydōr), that he may forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto, and afterward he drinks of another water, the water of memory (hydōr mnēmosynēs) which causes him to remember what he sees after his descent.” Not enough, after the oracle has been given, and the inquirer ascended from the chasm (9.39.13), “he is again taken in hand by the priests, who set him upon a chair called the chair of memory (epi thronon mn.) and they ask of him, when seated there, all he has seen or learned. After gaining this information they then entrust him to his relatives. These lift him, paralyzed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings . . . Afterwards, however, he will recover all his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him.” [3]

Nor does this “chair of memory” remain without its partner: Apollodorus (Epit. 1.24) tells us of the “Chair of Forgetfulness,” to which Theseus and Pirithous “grew and were held fast by coils of serpents.” That we learn also of “houses” of Lethe (Plutarch, Consolatio ad Appolonium, ch. 15, 110E, quoting an unknown poet) does not make this quarter more lucid. On the Etruscan Bronze Liver of Piacenza, letham, the river, divides the lower — otherwise empty — side into approximately equal parts — the invisible southern arch of the Milky Way?

Considering this state of confusion and uncertainty, we abstain from calling it rightaway either the drink of forgetfulness or the drink of memory, although one or both of them could very well be found upon the shelves of Ishara tamtim, alias Mother Scorpion.

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1. Macrobius’ “uranography” is most embarrassing. He claims that “so long as the souls heading downwards still remain in Cancer they are considered in the company of the gods, since in that position they have not yet left the Milky Way. But when in their descent they have reached Leo, they enter upon the first stages of their further condition . . . The soul, descending from the place where the Zodiac and the Milky Way intersect, is protracted in its downward course from a sphere, which is the only divine form, into a cone . . .” We have remarked already (p. 242) that Macrobius, in calling the “Gate of Cancer” the crossroads of Galaxy and zodiac, talks of signs, not of constellations. And so he does, when pinning down the “bowl of Bacchus” — Crater — “in the region between Cancer and Leo": Crater is “between” Leo and Virgo, i.e., south of these constellations. How the souls, coming “down” from those crossroads of Galaxy and ecliptic, i.e., between Taurus and Gemini, should get hold of Lethe in Crater, south of Leo and Virgo, remains a mystery. Macrobius was, apparently, not in the habit of looking at the sky, and in this respect he was a very modern character.

2. So are the rivers of lust and mourning (Hēdonē and Lypē) of Theopompus (Book 8 of his Philippika which have been compared to our rivers by E. Rohde (“Zum griechischen Roman,” Rh. Mus. 48 [1893], pp. 123f.). In Polynesia we meet near together the “water of life” and the “water of death” (see R. Williamson, Religious and Cosmic Beliefs of Central Polynesia [1924], vol. 1, pp. 334, 344; vol. 2, pp. 169f.).

3. Of considerable interest are several terrestrial rivers called Lethe, mentioned by Gruppe (Griechische Mythologie [1906], p. 817): they are flowing at the foot of several “White Rocks” (Leuketēs skopelos), one among which has the name agelastos petrē, the laughterless rock.