IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD II
~ In the Court of the Crimson King ~
- chapter 11 index -
pg. 1 - Moonchild | pg. 2 - The Dream The Illusion
pg. 3 - The Court of the Crimson King | pg. 4 - The Purple Piper
pg. 5 - Three Lullabies | pg. 6 - Orpheus
pg. 7 - The Keeper of the City Keys | pg. 8 - The Pilgrim's Door
pg. 9 - The Gardener | pg. 10 - The Yellow Jester
pg. 11 - The Dance of the Puppets | pg. 12 - Dionysus
pg. 13 - The Fool | pg. 14 - Logos
pg. 15 - The Magician | pg. 16 - Finis
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As a symbol of the transformative power of music, the purple piper is the album's clearest reference to the myth of Orpheus, who travelled to the underworld in the attempt to retrieve his dead bride (his anima) from Hades (the unconscious).
"Orpheus' journey to the underworld and back (as Virgil says, any fool can go down there, but to return--this is the labor, this is the task) is more than just a search for his lost wife Eurydice. Or rather, the search for his lost wife means the recovery of the organic connection with the rest of the universe."
- The Inner Meaning of Poetic Form
by Frederick Turner
"Orpheus, the son of Calliope, the muse of epics, was a wonderful musician who sang joyful music. Euridice, his bride died of a poisonous snake bite. All joy went out of Orpheus's life. He no longer sang of happiness, but of his sorrow. His music moved animals and even rocks, so why couldn't it move the cold heart of Hades?"
- Orpheus
"Orpheus sang his grief to all who breathed the upper air, both gods and men, and finding it all unavailing resolved to seek his wife in the regions of the dead (Hades). He descended by a cave situated on the side of the promontory of Taenarus and arrived at the Stygian realm. He passed through crowds of ghosts and presented himself before the throne of Pluto (Hades) and Proserpine (Persephone).
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As he sang these tender strains, the
very ghosts shed tears. Tantalus, in
spite of his thirst, stopped for a moment
his efforts for water, Ixion's wheel
stood still, the vulture ceased to tear
the giant's liver, the daughters of
Danaus rested from their task of
drawing water in a sieve, and Sisyphus
sat on his rock to listen. Then for the
first time, it is said, the cheeks of the
Furies were wet with tears. Proserpine
could not resist, and Pluto himself gave
way."
- Bullfinch's Mythology The Age of Fable
"Perhaps the most familiar image of Orpheus to the Italian Renaissance is that of Orpheus the civilizer. ...Orpheus the first poet is the first to soften the hearts of the ‘stony and beastly people’ and set them on the path to civilization."
"For Clement and the early apologists Orpheus prefigures the logos, which leads men to the truth and announces the coming of the New Jerusalem."
"And there is a corresponding deepening in the concept of humanitas. It is that by which man is defined and it consists in the capacity for love...Humanity is the love that extends throughout the universe as manifested in man. Thus, the effect of Orpheus' song is to lead man to love.
The singing of hymns can prepare man's spiritus to receive the influx of spiritus from a particular astral body. Music recovers its powers of magic, its ability to exploit and turn to advantage the forces of the phenomenal world. ‘Nothing is more effective in natural magic,’ says Pico, ‘than the hymns of Orpheus, if the proper music, mental concentration and other circumstances which the wise are aware of be applied.’
The astral deity most frequently invoked is the sun. Plato called the sun the offspring and visible image of God; Socrates as he greeted the rising sun often experienced a state of ecstasy; the Pythagoreans sang hymns to the sun on their lyres.
As the tabernacle of God, or the son and visible image of the highest deity, the sun in some way represents that deity within the sensible world. ‘Light is so to speak a sort of divinity in this temple of the world bearing a likeness to God.’ The invocation to the sun then is something more than an attempt to exert a magical control over the forces contained within phe-nomena; it is an attempt to lead the soul to an understanding of God.
The singer (or artist) performs in an inspired state ‘aroused by the Muses' frenzy’. The artist under the influence of this madness is free to range beyond his normal limits, he is lifted to the height of heaven like Ganymede on the back of the divine eagle."
- Orpheus and Ficino by John Warden.
"Orpheus' musical effects are also important as suggesting the theurgic or magic use that could be made of the Orphic Hymns. Music, in that it harmonized the dissonances in the soul produced by its conjunction with the body, could be used as a preparation for philosophic or religious contemplation... or, combined with magic rites, as a means to religious ecstasy."
- Orpheus the Theologian by D.P. Walker
"In the beginning was the logos' -- the word or sound scriptures worldwide express the idea that the first cosmic manifestation was vibration, whether sound, light, or breath, and that this primal vibration, differentiating into sounds, colors, or rhythmic breathing, formed the basis for all that has followed.
Orpheus...recognized that the healing power of music was grounded in its relation to the mathematical structure of the cosmos and humanity."
- Music and the Healing Arts By Sarah Belle Dougherty
"For Orpheus is the wind sighing through untold acres of pine forest. "The piper is no other than the wind, and the ancients held that in the wind were the souls of the dead." To this day the English peasantry believe that they hear the wail of the spirits of unbaptized children, as the gale sweeps past their cottage doors. The Greek Hermes resulted from the fusion of two deities. He is the sun and also the wind; and in the latter capacity he bears away the souls of the dead. So the Norse Odin, who like Hermes fulfills a double function, is supposed to rush at night over the tree-tops, "accompanied by the scudding train of brave men's spirits.
...the piper is the classic Hermes or Orpheus... His wonderful pipe is the horn of Oberon (who, like the pied piper of Hamelin, was a rat-killer), the lyre of Apollo , the harp stolen by Jack when he climbed the bean-stalk to the ogre's castle."
- Myths and Mythmakers
