Thracian Spirituality
According to the classical Greek version, Orpheus was the son of the Muse Calliope and the God Apollo, according to most sources he was born in Thrace or Peira in northern Greece. Orpheus was a favorite of the muses, who received from his father a miraculous lyre (an ancient musical instrument) as a gift and already as a child he proved to be a talented musician. What he loved most of all was playing the lyre. When Orpheus played the birds stopped flying and gathered around him to listen, people stopped their work and came to hear the wonderful melody, everyone suddenly saw their friend in a different, positive light, and the world seemed a good place to live in. Even the trees listened intently, and the feeling was that the entire universe was stopping in its tracks and listening. Orpheus was a wonderful musician like no other and it seemed that when he played, he was in other worlds, day and night Orpheus amazed with his playing, it was his passion, his love, his life, and only one thing in the world he loved more – the nymph Eurydice who also loved him.
Life seemed perfect for Orpheus: he had a vocation which he loved more than anything, he had uniqueness, a destiny, and most importantly – he had love. He intended to marry Eurydice and live happily ever after. But life had other plans for him. Life has surprising turns and in every great joy there is a kernel of destruction. And so, on the appointed day of wedding, Eurydice was bitten by a poisonous snake and died. Orpheus was overcome with grief; he decided to take advantage of his wonderful musical skills and do something that no one had done before – go down to the underworld and rescue his beloved from the grip of death.
Many difficulties awaited him on the way: slippery dark rocks, unexplored abysses, the three-headed dog Cerberus that threatened to devour him and the terrible River Styx. He overcame all difficulties with the help of his lyre and courage. Finally, he stood before the ruler of the underworld – Hades – and played before him a sad song about human beings who hardly touch upon happiness, immediately it is taken from them.
The music and song were so touching that even the hardened Hades shed a tear and agreed to release Eurydice from the underworld, on the condition that on their way up Orpheus would walk forward and not look back. A seemingly simple condition, but it turns out that everyone fails in it.
On their way up, when Orpheus saw the light at the end of the tunnel, he was suddenly overcome by a desire, a spirit of madness that took hold of him, and glanced back to see if Eurydice was still with him. That was enough: Eurydice was there but immediately she was dragged back to the underworld and the rocks closed in on her forever. All she managed to say was: “farewell”.
Orpheus was overcome with grief: it was not enough that his beloved had been taken from him forever, not enough that he had made the entire long and difficult journey in vain—but it was all his fault, and worse still, it was due to a brief moment of negligence. Orpheus could not bear the sorrow, the guilt, and the consequences of his actions, and he lost his mind—driven mad by despair. He spent the rest of his life as a madman in the forests of Thrace, until he accidentally stumbled upon an ecstatic ritual of the priestesses of Dionysus (Bacchus) – women who would get drunk and wild in the Mountains. They tore him to pieces and that’s how his life ended. The enraged Dionysus sent the Maenads against him, the Lyre was shattered, and Orpheus limbs were scattered everywhere, his head thrown into the water floated singing as far as the island of Lesbos, where a temple was erected in his honor.
This is the Greek version. According to Greek sources Orpheus lived in the 8th century AD and is related to Homer and Hesiod (he was their spiritual father), but it turns out that the story of Orpheus and his descent into the underworld had another version that was common among the Thracians, according to this version of the story Orpheus had a different and better ending, he lived to very old age and was a king, priest, teacher and prophet.
Acccording to the Thracian version, after losing Eurydice, Orpheus wandered through the woods, maddened and in pain, until one night, just before dawn, he climbed a high mountain. Some identify this mountain with the site of Tatul in the Rhodope Mountains, while others associate it with Mount Pangaion in Greece. There, he witnessed the beautiful sunrise. In that moment, he realized that everything that dies will be resurrected; life is a cycle of birth and death, and his attempt to preserve Eurydice in her physical form had been a futile effort, doomed to fail. Death cannot be overcome—but one can be reborn as an eternal soul in the spiritual world.
Orpheus understood that as long as Eurydice lived in his thoughts and in his love, they would remain united forever. He had discovered the secret of eternal life and spent the rest of his days sharing this revelation with others through sacred music and dance that expressed universal truths. His teachings included spiritual initiation, the interpretation of sacred texts, and guidance toward a life of purity within spiritual communities. Thus was founded what would later become known as the school of the ‘Orphic Mysteries’.
According to this version, Orpheus was an enlightened teacher who received his knowledge in Egypt and the East—namely Persia and India. He was regarded as the founder of the initiatory paths: practices of spiritual initiation designed to prepare a person to connect with the divine element within. The prerequisites of Orphism included vegetarianism, celibacy, purification, the study of sacred texts, and belief in reincarnation and the immortality of the soul. Some Bulgarians believe to this day that Orpheus lived long before the Greek era, and that his birthplace and burial site are located in the Rhodope Mountains.
According to Professor Alexander Fol, who was the “father” of Thracology (the study of the history, religion and culture of the ancient Thracians), the Thracian aristocracy had a belief in an original local Orphism that was learned in small and secret circles of followers. There are two Orpheus: the Greek one is the singer, the poet and the musician, and in contrast the Thracian Orpheus is a divine figure who leads people to spiritual knowledge. The Thracian Orpheus is a combination of king – priest – musician and teacher of wisdom, to whom the forces of nature and the world beyond are no secret.
According to Professor Martin Litchfield West, Orpheus is described as a musician and healer, charmer and tamer of beasts of prey. there is a connection between Orphism and shamanic practices that came to Greece from the north in the 6th-7th centuries BC and included a new understanding of death and birth, dissolution and reconnection, transformations and journeys in the spirit. All of these entered Orphic literature. And so, the severed head of Orpheus was preserved and used as an oracle, in the same way as the heads of Siberian shamans were used until the 9th century and as appears in the ancient Celtic tradition.
Greek mythology tells us that Orpheus participated in the Argonauts’ journey of the Golden Fleece and brought all his boat friends to the island of Samothrace to be initiated there. According to Professor Bremer, Orpheus gives the rhythm to the rowers on the Argonauts’ ship. Musicians are outside the normal social order, as they have a special connection with the muses. Orpheus was associated with initiation and secret societies, he is the founder of the mystery tradition, poet and prophet, Homer and Hesiod are his descendants, physical or spiritual, and Orpheus is the first and oldest of the poets.
In the Rhodope Mountains in Bulgaria, you can find the cave from which Orpheus descended to the underworld and the place from where he saw the sunrise and was enlightened. Later, he was buried in the same place at the top of which is an impressive Megalithic complex called Tatul. Other places associated with Orpheus in Bulgaria are the City of Plovdiv, the Seven Lakes in the Rila Mountains, and the village of Gela where he was born. The Bulgarian people preserved this image and memory in the remote Mountains, where people who consider themselves as his followers live, they know how to talk to animals as Orpheus did and use music and dance to reach ecstatic and spiritually pure states as he taught
Orphic life
The Thracian aristocracy adopted, as mentioned earlier, the doctrine of Orphism and created Orphic societies open only to initiates, they practiced mystical rituals with an emphasis on dance and music and had allegorical interpretation of the mythological stories. The Orphics were vegetarians, lived a life of purity, dealt with the unseen worlds and the afterlife. Some say they believed in ten different energies that make up the unseen world, as in Kabala.
Orphism was widespread among the Thracians and among the Greeks and later also throughout the classical world. Those sanctified in the way of Orpheus refused to eat meat. The practical meaning of vegetarianism was the avoidance of blood sacrifices; eating meat was linked in ancient times to myths about the Gods, the deed of Prometheus and the religious life of the Greek City, eating meat was part of a covenant that was renewed between Gods and humans and a religious ceremony. The vegetarianism of the Orphic life distinguished a person from the Greek urban culture and mythology. From a religious point of view, “the turn to vegetarianism indicates both the decision to atone for the original sin and the hope to return, at least partially, to the state of the Helian happiness” (Eliade). The deep meaning of choosing vegetarianism was liberation from the general Greek cultural karma.
According to Eliade, a number of passages from Plato’s writings hint at the main Orphic concept regarding immortality: “The soul is imprisoned in the body (Soma) as the body is in the grave (Sama), hence the physical existence is more like death and the death of the body is therefore the beginning of life. However, this “true life” is not achieved automatically, but only with the efforts of a life of purity and initiation. The soul is judged according to its achievements and failures, and after a while it is reincarnated. Similar to what appears in the Indian Upanishads, the Orphic believes in the indestructible existence of the soul, which causes it to reincarnate again and again, until her final redemption.” The essence of Orphism is refinement and development, and these were achieved through music, dance, poetry, healing, interpretation, community life and study.
According to the Orphic myth of Dionysus Zagreus, before the current cycle of Gods and men there existed instinctive deities, twisted giants called Titans. When they heard that a divine child was born – Dionysus – they became jealous and tore the body of the young Dionysus to pieces and swallowed his parts, but the Goddess Athena managed to save his heart and bring it to his father Zeus, who swallowed the heart and gave birth to a second Dionysus.
Zeus fought in the titans and burned them. Humans were created from the ashes of the Titans, and therefore man has a Dionysian-divine element in him and Titan-monstrous nature at the same time, because the ashes of the titans contained the body of the child Dionysus. By purification, initiation rites and maintaining an Orphic life, it is possible to eliminate the titanic part in oneself and become a Bacchus, reach a Dionysian divine state.
Orphic initiation included the repetition of prayers and mantras, fasting, purification rituals and bathing, ceremonies involving sacred singing and dance, the enactment of a drama of death and rebirth, and possibly a ritual meal. At the end of the process, the initiate was granted grace and released from the wheel of life—an endless cycle of death and rebirth, through which the soul passes in order to purify the titanic element within.
The Orphic teachings were based on sacred writings. Franz Cumont, a world expert on classical period religions, describes Orphism as a religion of salvation based on books. Indeed, the oldest text in Europe found in the Museum in Thessaloniki is the Papyrus Devrani which dates to the end of the 5th century BC. In this scroll the author takes one of the Orphic hymns and explains that in fact everything is an allegory. A hint of this can be seen in the first verse: “You the apprentice, close the door.” The author relies on the theories of the pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras, who argued that the stories of the Gods represent forces of nature and the act of creation.
According to Eliade, “Papyrus Devrani reveals a new Orphic Theogony that focuses on Zeus. In Orphism there is a dualism of body and soul close to Platonic dualism, and on the other hand – a series of myths, beliefs, and rules of conduct and initiation that ensure the separation of the “Orphic” from the rest of humans – and that leads to the separation of the soul from the universe.”
Some claim that Orphism was merely a literary and ideological stream of thought, while others see it as a way of life that was fulfilled within the framework of spiritual communities such as the one established by Pythagoras in Crotone in Sicily. The discovery of the Thracian aristocracy’s connection to an advanced and independent Orphic system strengthens the assumption that it was a way of life. Orphic practices constituted the essence of a religious lifestyle, practiced as part of a spiritual community, rather than as a one-time initiation rite.
Aeschylus, the Greek tragedian, wrote a now-lost play in which he described the Orphic cult, just as the dramatist Euripides depicted the cult of Dionysus in his play The Bacchae. According to Aeschylus’s play, Orpheus would ascend each morning to a mountain called Pangaion to bow to the sun, which for him symbolized the possibility of being reborn into the eternal world.
The Orphic doctrines were recognized and appreciated by the Jews of Alexandria. Aristobulus, a Jewish philosopher of the 2nd century BC, claimed that Orpheus had learned from Moses, suggesting that there existed a common ancient wisdom shared by all humanity. Professor Guy Stroumsa of the Hebrew University expands on the connection between Orphism and Judaism, arguing that Orphism represents the first appearance of a modern religion—one that promotes personal redemption, social ethics, and moral living, rather than priestly rituals and temple sacrifices.
Orphism was a spiritual school in which the mysteries of the heavenly spheres were taught through dance and music—the secrets of eternal life and the path to enlightenment. Orpheus’s music brought calm and order to the soul and expressed the structure of the divine worlds. His descent into the underworld symbolizes the entry of divine light and order into the depths of the subconscious, calming the passions and urges to allow a new awareness to emerge. Orpheus is the only figure said to have descended into the underworld and returned, meaning he visited the world beyond and could reveal its nature to us. Thus, the School of the Orphic Mysteries taught a path to eternal life, self-perfection, and inner purity.
Many people studied at the Orphic School. One of the most famous was Pythagoras, who later opened his own spiritual School and spiritual community in Crotona, Sicily. One of the most famous of Pythagoras’ students was the slave Zalmoxis, who became enlightened, and following that returned to Thrace and Dacia (Romania) and opened there a spiritual School of his own.
Zalmoxis
Zalmoxis was a slave of Pythagoras from Thracian or Dacian (Romanian) origin, he learned the secrets of the spiritual path from his master and was initiated into the mysteries of Eleusis in Greece. after he got enlightened, he returned to Thrace (according to the Eliade, he returned to Romania – the land of the ancient Dacians) with a distinguished retinue, and built a banqueting hall, where he taught the people about the possibility of eternal life.
After a few years of teaching, Zalmoxis asked to be buried alive, but prepared an escape tunnel at the bottom of the grave beforehand, and so, after being “dead” for several years he reappeared and claimed to be resurrected, in this way he made people believe in his Divinity. After several more years he killed himself once more, but this time for real. This time he threw himself on daggers stuck in the ground, but the faithful disciples who were privileged to see the first “miraculous resurrection” refused to accept his death and believed that he would return from the dead once more, and that in the meantime he rules over the world beyond.
Eliade argues that in the regions of Dacian Romania there existed a kind of religion of Zalmoxis that involved rites of passage and came close to monotheism. A priest named Deceneus established the rules of the “sect”, among them the avoidance of excessive drinking of wine. Every four years the Dacians sent a messenger to Zalmoxis, a man who volunteered to fall on bayonets in order to pass to the next world. The cult of Zalmoxis was close to the Greek and Thracian Mysteries, it seems to be a mythical ritual script of death and rebirth, in which a person becomes immortal. The characteristic of the cult was hiding in underground caves, followed by an apparition accompanied by a ceremonial celebration, emphasizing the immortalization of the soul and belief in a blissful existence in the afterlife.
According to Strabo, a Roman historian, Zalmoxis learned from Pythagoras the way of the celestial bodies, astrology and the art of divination. He went to Egypt, where he studied magic, and became a prophet and magician. Zalmoxis became high priest in Thrace, but finally he retired to a cave on the summit of the holy Mountain Kogainon, “where no one was welcomed except the king and his servants, and later he was considered a God.” He established a divine decree that meat should not be eaten, he preached purity and refinement. His worship had a Pythagorean character and was led by hermits and holy men.
Plato says that Zalmoxis was a healer with a holistic approach, who healed the body and mind; he was a priest king of the Dacian tribes.
Be that as it may, Zalmoxis was one of the Thracians Gods. In the Thracian tomb temple of Aleksandrovo in central Bulgaria there is a painting of a naked adult man holding a double ax (a symbol of divinity), which is considered to be a representation of Zalmoxis.
Dionysus Sabazios
The Thracians had two spiritual paths; one was that of Orpheus, and the other – of a God named Sabazios, who was later identified with Dionysus. The first is related to ascension, sanctification, connecting with the higher part of man, while the second chooses first to go down low, to the instinct and the body, and there to discover the impulse of life – the Eros.
The Thracian rider-God Sabazios was identified with Dionysus. He is depicted as a rider on horseback, and his worship resembled that of the Bacchae—the priestesses of Dionysus who would venture into forests and mountains in ecstatic rites. The Thracian tribe of the Bessi was responsible for the Dionysus-Sabazios oracle at Perperikon.
Sabazios the “Rider” is said to have brought religion to Thrace from Phrygia and taught the Thracians to believe in the afterlife and the secrets of the spiritual worlds. Phrygia was an ancient kingdom in today’s Turkey, their capital was called Gordion and it is 85 km southwest of Ankara. The Phrygian king was called Gordias or Medias (general name), he was considered a friend of Dionysus Sabazios, who according to the Greeks is the embodiment of Dionysus and Zeus together. The spirituality of the Phrygians was advanced and refined and they were said to have mastered the secrets of magic.
The Phrygians invented music and the two-reed flute that the satyrs played (from which the brass instrument and the Bulgarian flute probably evolved), they had a Phoenician script, and they wore a bonnet (which appears as the symbol of the French Revolution and in the seal of the United States Senate). Many of the spiritual traditions of the classical world came from Phrygia, but on the way, they probably passed through Thrace.
According to Greek mythology, Dionysus was born to a woman (princesses Semela) and the sky God Zeus. His mother died before he was born, and his father gave him up for adoption to shepherds in Mount Nisa. Already from a young age his life was surrounded by suffering and sorrow. He didn’t know who he was and from where his powers came from and what to do with them, so he became a violent child and unloaded every burden. When he grew up to be a teenager things got worse, he would get drunk become violent and lose his mind, wandering madly around the world, following the crises he experienced he decided to embark on a journey to the east to find the source of his restlessness, he went all the way to India, where he learned that there was God within him and reached enlightenment.
When he returned from the east he was already a God, but not an Olympian and distant sky God like Apollo, but a compassionate earth God who understands the pain and suffering of humans. And so, first thing he did is to rescue his mother Semela from the underworld, and then he married Ariadne, who wanted to commit suicide after the hero Theseus abandoned her.
He taught the Greeks the Dionysian mysteries, which included drinking wine, casting off the yoke of constraint, connecting with the human subconscious, and releasing the tangle of passions and desires within oneself—in order to discover the divine presence within. Those who did not agree to the strange and new rituals found themselves torn to pieces by the followers of God, or in an allegorical way – by the uncontrollable impulses of their subconscious.
Eliade describes the worship to Dionysus Sabazios as follows: “The ceremony was held at night in the Mountains by the light of torches, rhythmic music, banging on bronze bowls, cymbals and flutes. The faithful gave shouts of joy and began a stormy and furious circular dance. The women indulged in the wild dances and wore strange, long and fluttering clothes, sewn from skins of foxes with doe skins on them; they may have even worn horns. They held in their hands snakes dedicated to Sabazios and daggers. When they reached ecstasy, they would seize animals intended for sacrifice and tear them to pieces, eating the raw meat, thus completing their identification with God.” According to Eliade, the wild ecstatic experience was an inspiration for a religious vocation, for healing and the gift of divination.
Burial and initiation temples
An important element in the spiritual life of the Thracians was the belief in the afterlife, and therefore burial places (temples) were of great importance. The tomb temples of the Thracian aristocracy were built according to Orphic understanding of the worlds beyond, and the principles of sacred geometry and architecture.
Thousands of tombs of the Thracian aristocracy were discovered throughout Bulgaria in the last 40 years. Usually these are huge mounds surrounded by a circular wall. The circle symbolizes the sun. The Thracians believed in the holy fire’s spiritual light and the sun, their traditions included everything related to fire, and at the same time everything related to light, including star observatories and places of sunrise. Sun worship was associated with horse racing, walking on fire, and wearing masks, all of which were preserved in Balkan Folklore.
A typical Thracian burial temple is a mound with a corridor leading to an inner room, which is a kind of “womb.” In front of the corridor, which usually faces south, there is a platform where Orphic ceremonies—including music and dance—were held. Often, on the back (northern) side of the mound, there is a place dedicated to the worship of Dionysus, such as a wine press.
The entrance corridor usually includes a middle room that resembles a tomb, with a door or doorway leading to the inner room, which is typically round—thus creating a three-stage structure: beginning with the entrance corridor, which is sometimes long, continuing into an intermediate grave-shaped room, and ending in an inner oval, embryonic chamber.
It is interesting to note that some of the tombs temples were discovered without the remains of human bones in them, even though they were sealed, and hence they were not graves in the usual sense of the word, but rather symbolic tombs, and probably initiation temples of the person represented buried in them. The tombs temples differ in size from one another and follow sacred architectural proportions and relationships that connect them to sacred number systems, such as the numbers 6 and 12 or the decimal system. In some of them, paintings have been found, and in others, glyphs and reliefs on columns of various types. Some of the symbols are geometric, while others depict shapes or figures.
The Thracian burial temples are one of the most wonderful things that Bulgaria has to offer. The tombs temples were built starting from the 5th century BC, and in terms of size and power they are no less impressive than the other monumental structures in the ancient world. Some of them have large carved stones weighing hundreds of tons that were brought from far away and it is not clear how they were fitted together. In some places the stones are of a special type and are usually connected to each other with iron strips.
Inside the Thracian tombs temples there is a reverberating sound effect, and it seems that they were built for this purpose. This fact strengthens the argument that they were places of initiation. The proportions of the buildings reflect the human body, and it is possible that the size of each tomb temple is related to the person who was initiated in it. According to my understanding of the Orphic way, these were places where a person was “buried” for three days, perhaps after using hallucinating plants, and certainly after participating in ecstatic ceremonies of dance and music, in which he probably also got drunk. The sharp transition from excessive stimulation to sensory deprivation resulted in the departure of the soul from the body and experiences of astral journeys, as occurs with shamans. The person would die to himself and experience the spiritual worlds for several days, after which the door would be opened and he would be reborn into the world, but in a different way than before.
The proportions of the room where the person was “buried” and the type of stone from which it was built helped to intensify the experience. The Orphic conception was that as space echoes sound so it can echo thoughts and feelings. Different shapes had a connection to one or other cosmic principles, and the ball or the egg symbolized the cosmic egg from which the world was created. The tomb temple inside the mound symbolized the cosmic womb from which the world was born, and it replaced the vaginal caves in the Mountains that had previously served initiation rites. The entrance of the tomb temple was often aligned with the sun on a specific day of the year, allowing sunlight to illuminate the interior. Silver plates that were discovered indicate that sacred marriage ceremonies were performed as part of the ritual—Kama Sutra-style depictions that can “awaken the dead”.
At the entrance to some of the tomb temples there is a doorway with three distinct decorations on three staggered lintels: on the outer lintel, meanders representing the winding River Styx; on the middle frame, an egg symbolizing rebirth; and on the inner frame, pearls that may symbolize the moon, the treasure, or the eternity they sought.
Inside the inner room, offerings related to a person’s life in this world and the next were placed. This is why gold and silver treasures have been found in the tomb temples, including masks, trophies, helmets, symbolic shields, horse harnesses (as the horse was considered an animal that knows the way to the world of the dead), and more. Objects related to the head such as a helmet or crown were placed in the north, while objects related to the legs such as knee pads were placed in the south, which shows that the temple referred to the human body.
Sometimes, the deceased was burned or torn to pieces, the large bones that survived the fire were placed in urns, and the urns were placed in six places around the tumulus – the burial temple. This is a possible explanation for the absence of skeletons in the inner chambers. The remains of man’s ashes recalled the myth of Dionysus Zagros and the creation of man from the ashes of the Titans. In this case the inner chamber of the empty tomb temples is related to the process of purification of the divine element in man from the titanic ashes towards the possibility of eternal life.
Various researchers have attempted to explain the meaning of the objects found in the tomb temples and the principles of their sacred architecture. Some Thracologists have concluded that the Thracians practiced a form of mystical numerology, similar to the teachings of Pythagoras. It should be noted that the Thracians dealt with the unseen worlds and the afterlife. Dunov suggests that the Thracians believed in ten different energies that make up the world, as in Kabala, this belief is also shared by Georgi Kitov the leading archeologist on Thracian sites.
In addition to the importance of numbers, proportions and spaces in the Thracian tomb temples, colors also had a meaning: blue – symbolizes the sky, both physical and spiritual. Black symbolizes the underworld, and red the earthly world. If you mix the three colors, you get the eternal color of dark purple (Orphninus), and therefore these are the three colors that appear in the decorations of the Thracian tomb temples throughout Bulgaria.
Many small figurines of human images associated with the Orphic cult were also discovered in the tomb temples, as well as representations of geometric bodies such as: triangles representing fire (according to the Pythagorean), cubes representing the earth, and a sphere represent the cosmic egg from which the universe was created.
In many “graves” a mirror is found, it was one of the sacred objects of Thracian Orphism. According to the Orphic myth, Dionysus Zagros was scattered into many parts whilst looking in a mirror, and this reflects the perception that there is a hidden reality, which is a reflection of the chaotic physical reality, and in which there is a divine order.
