The Orphic Gold Tablets: "The Longed-For Crown"

I return now to my overview/commentary on Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets by Alberto Bernabé and Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal (Brill: 2008). If you missed my first few posts on this topic, you can see them here: First, Second, Third, and Fourth.

One of the key features of the inscriptions found on these gold plates is the expression of the desire of the deceased to obtain a crown at the end of their long journey in the Netherworld.  On one tablet we find this phrase, a form of which is common to many of the inscriptions:

I launched myself with agile feet after the longed-for crown. ((From L 9, 6 as cited in Bernabé and San Cristóbal, p. 121))

The Greek term used here is στεφανος (stéphanos), which is commonly translated as “crown”.  Interestingly, although I would have thought the answer would be quite straightforward, scholars have debated what kind of crown we are dealing with here, and what its meaning is in the religious context of these texts (p. 122). A number of theories have been offered:

• That the “crown” was a given place in the Netherworld that the deceased was trying to reach. Because stéphanos can mean “a crown of fortifications”, the theory was that the term was used to refer to some sort of fence that encircled the kingdom of Persephone, or the dwelling of the blessed. This theory is improbable due to the lack of any description of such a fence in any Orphic or Greek myths.
• Another similar theory is that crown refers to a cycle or “orbit” that the deceased enters into after death — an astral cycle as opposed to the earthly cycle of life that one must endure until freed from it by following the correct path in the afterlife.  This theory, however, is also unacceptable because there is no mention anywhere in the tablets of an astral or heavenly part of the afterlife experience–it all takes place in the Underworld of the Earth itself.
• The third theory mentioned is perhaps the simplest, but most logical: that the term crown should be taken literally to mean a physical crown that is placed on the head.  There is much precedence in Greek culture and religion for the use of crowns, both for the living and for the dead.

It is this third theory that the authors argue for and which we will discuss here.  In Greek culture, literal/physical crowns were used in banquets, funerary rites, triumph in athletic competitions, certain rituals, and in many mystical symbols (p. 123).

The Tree of Life as Nurturing Mother

Before moving on further into the contents of the Orphic Gold Plates, I would like to look with more detail into a motif touched upon in my last post in this series.  I described how the Orphic inscriptions instruct the soul that they are to pass by the guardians in order to be able to meet Persephone, the “Mother Goddess” who will help them through the rest of their journey through the Netherworld.  Although she was the mother of gods and mortals, her births were parthenogenic (virgin births). It seems that this Virgin Mother Goddess was an essential part of many ancient forms of initiation into the Mysteries, where she was seen as nursing the “newborn” initiate with milk. The Mother Goddess was often symbolically identified as the Tree of Life.

In an earlier post, I discussed the idea that the fountain of living waters (in the Orphic tablets identified as the waters of the goddess Mnemosyne), from which the soul must drink in order to secure its salvation, was also to be considered equivalent to the white tree, the Tree of Life. This connection is made explicit in the vision of Nephi (1 Ne. 11:25), where he explains:

And it came to pass that I beheld that the rod of iron, which my father had seen, was the word of God, which led to the fountain of living waters, or to the tree of life; which waters are a representation of the love of God; and I also beheld that the tree of life was a representation of the love of God.

In Egypt, the Tree of Life was often depicted as a goddess, or having a goddess within it, that nursed or poured forth living waters (or perhaps milk) to individuals.

In Nephi’s vision, remarkably, we also see this connection between the Tree of Life and the virgin mother.  In 1 Ne. 11, Nephi is shown the exceedingly beautiful and white tree that his father had seen in his dream. When Nephi asks the Spirit for the interpretation of the tree, he is immediately shown a rather unusual (to us) image — he is shown a virgin as beautiful and white as the Tree of Life.  This virgin, who we know as Mary, is presented to Nephi as “the mother of the Son of God, after the manner of the flesh” (1 Ne. 11:18).  Mary had the baby Jesus in her arms, and although we aren’t given this detail, was conceivably nursing the Child.  In response to his inquiry about the tree, this is what Nephi is shown — and he understands these images to represent the love of God.  It is amazing how this Book of Mormon vision fits so perfectly the ancient conception of what the Tree of Life represented.