Tropaion

There is the common belief that reincarnation is a “good thing” and, a more common but hugely mistaken belief that Hellenic religion (ancient Greek religion) supports that “afterlife” belief. Both cases are not right in a sense. First, the Hellenic religion, taken for example the city-state mystical practice of Eleusis does not advocate any belief or idea of reincarnation, second, maybe for the Buddish is an acceptable and honored stage of a divine soul, but for the Orphic mystery cult that is not the case. For the Orphics reincarnation was the sentence of the human’s “original sin”, the death and eating of the divine child named Zagreus.

We know the Orphic myth of Zagreus. Zagreus was identified later as an epithet of a “father” god, Zeus and / or Dionysus, however, in the primary concept of this Orphic myth, Zagreus, was a child slaughtered and consumed raw by the Tirans. Zeus punished Titans by razed them with a thunderbolt. Prometheus mixed the Titans’ ashes wit clay from which the humankind was produced. This denotes the following: the human kind has divine (the parts of the dead Zagreus) and half condemned by gilt, the “Titanic”. The human kind was, therefore, condemned for continues mortal existence through a cycle of rebirths (the reincarnation).