In the Dark Places of Wisdom

«It’s not what it seems, just as the things around us aren’t what they seem. If you read on you’ll see it’s all about deception— about the total deception of the world we live in and about what lies behind.» — Kingsley enuncia el asunto del libro como engaño: el mundo en que vivimos no es lo que parece, y el libro trata de eso y de lo que hay detrás

«It might seem to be a story about things that happened a long time ago. But really it’s about ourselves. The details will probably be unfamiliar, very unfamiliar. And yet their significance reaches to the roots of our own being.» — el desplazamiento que pide al lector: lo que parece historia antigua es, según Kingsley, asunto propio, y su significado llega a la raíz del propio ser

«But what’s most unfamiliar of all is what’s closest to us, and which we’ve forgotten. It’s like a limb that’s been anaesthetized or that’s been unused for a long, long time. W hen we start feeling it again it’s so strangely unfamiliar just because it’s such an essential part of us.» — la figura con que explica esa extrañeza: lo más ajeno es lo más cercano y olvidado, como un miembro anestesiado que al volver a sentirse resulta extraño por ser parte esencial de uno

«It could be said that this process of awakening is profoundly healing. It is. The only trouble with saying this is that we’ve come to have such a superficial idea of healing.» — Kingsley llama sanador al despertar que propone y acota enseguida el término: el problema es que la idea corriente de sanación es superficial

«And yet what we want to be healed of is often what will heal us if we can stand the discomfort and the pain. We want healing from illness, but it’s through illness that we grow and are healed of our complacency.» — la inversión que sostiene: lo que se quiere curar es lo que cura si se soporta la incomodidad, y es por la enfermedad que se sana la complacencia

«We’re afraid of loss, and yet it’s through what we lose that we’re able to find what nothing can take away from us.» — el mismo giro aplicado a la pérdida: por lo que se pierde se encuentra lo que nada puede quitar

«We run from sadness and depression. But if we really face our sadness we find it speaks with the voice of our deepest longing; and if we face it a little longer we find that it teaches us the way to attain what we long for.» — y a la tristeza: encarada, habla con la voz del anhelo más hondo y enseña el camino de lo que se anhela

«Every way leads to hell and there’s no way out, nothing left for you to do.» — el callejón sin salida con que abre el capítulo *Our Ancestors*, presentado como suerte y no como desgracia

«Then, if you’re ready, you’ll start to discover inside yourself what you always longed for but were never able to find.» — lo que Kingsley sitúa del otro lado de ese callejón: el hallazgo dentro de uno mismo de lo que siempre se buscó fuera

«This life of the senses can never fulfil us, even though the whole world will tell us the opposite.» — la tesis de la que cuelga el libro: la vida de los sentidos no colma, aunque el mundo entero diga lo contrario

«if we want to grow up, become true men and women, we have to face death before we die. We have to discover what it is to be able to slide behind the scenes and disappear.» — la condición que pone para madurar: encarar la muerte antes de morir, saber pasar detrás del escenario y desaparecer

«O ur western culture carefully keeps us from such things. It keeps going, and thriving, by persuading us to value everything that’s unimportant.» — la objeción cultural: según Kingsley, la cultura occidental aparta de esas cosas y se sostiene persuadiendo de valorar lo que no importa; la capa de texto parte la mayúscula de *Our*

«And that’s why over the past hundred years so many people have turned away, turned to the East, anywhere— for some form of spiritual nourishment, for a taste of something else. At first it was the great religions of the East; now it’s small tribes and hidden cultures.» — de ahí, dice, el giro hacia Oriente de los últimos cien años, primero a las grandes religiones y ahora a tribus pequeñas y culturas ocultas

«But we belong to the West. The more we find in the East or anywhere else the more it makes us inwardly divided, homeless in our own land. We become cultural tramps and vagabonds. The solutions we find are never fundamental answers. They only create more problems.» — y su reserva sobre ese giro: cuanto más se encuentra fuera, más dividido queda uno en su propia tierra, y las soluciones halladas no son respuestas de fondo

«But what we haven’t been told is that a spiritual tradition lies at the very roots of western civilization.» — la afirmación que el libro se propone sostener: una tradición espiritual está en la raíz misma de la civilización occidental

«But they weren’t mystics as we might understand mystics: that idea of mysticism only came into being much later. They were intensely practical— so practical that,» — el deslinde del término: Kingsley llama místicos a esos antiguos y a la vez niega que lo fueran en el sentido moderno, porque esa idea de mística es muy posterior; el tramo se corta donde la frase pasa de renglón

«Almost singlehandedly they laid the foundation for disciplines that were to make the West what it now is: chemistry, physics, astronomy, biology, rhetoric, logic. But they did all this with an understanding we no longer have, because their knowledge came from a wisdom that to us is no more than a myth.» — lo que les adjudica: haber fundado química, física, astronomía, biología, retórica y lógica desde un saber que hoy pasa por mito

«They also knew they would be misunderstood. They realized they were dealing with children who would walk away with the pieces that took their fancy and fail to see the whole.» — según Kingsley, la incomprensión estaba prevista por ellos mismos: trataban con niños que se llevarían las piezas que les gustaran sin ver el conjunto

«Fragments of what they said are kept in the hands of a few scholars, who do just what Jesus described.» — la queja sobre la custodia moderna de esos restos, formulada con la imagen evangélica que la frase siguiente desarrolla

«They hold the keys of knowledge but hide them; and they don’t go in themselves or open the doors for anyone else.» — el pasaje evangélico aplicado a los estudiosos: tienen las llaves del conocimiento y las esconden, ni entran ni abren a nadie

«And yet for contact with that tradition a price has to be paid. A price always has to be paid, and it’s because people weren’t willing to pay the price that things have ended up the way they have. The price is what it always has been: ourselves, our willingness to be transformed. Nothing less will do.» — el precio que Kingsley pone a ese contacto: uno mismo y la disposición a ser transformado, sin rebaja

«W ithout our involvement words are only words. And that tradition didn’t exist to edify, or entertain, or even to inspire. It existed to draw people home.» — y la razón por la que no basta mirar: sin implicación las palabras son solo palabras, y esa tradición no existía para edificar ni entretener ni inspirar, sino para traer a la gente de vuelta a casa

«This isn’t a hoo k to satisfy your curiosity or create more curiosity. It’s about men who took everything away from the people 11 icy taught and gave them nothing that can be imagined m return.» — la advertencia sobre el propio libro: no es para satisfacer curiosidad, y trata de hombres que lo quitaban todo sin dar a cambio nada imaginable; la capa de texto imprime *hoo k* por *book* y *m* por *in*

«To most of us this will sound like craziness, sheer nonsense. And that’s exactly what it is, because it comes from beyond the senses. It just so happens to be the same nonsense that gave rise to the western world— a nonsense so powerful but so elusive that people have tried for thousands of years to make sense of it, and always failed.» — Kingsley acepta el cargo de sinsentido y lo vuelve argumento: es el mismo sinsentido que dio origen al mundo occidental y que nadie ha logrado explicar

«So MANY OF us today are concerned about the extinction of all the species that the western world is wiping out. But there’s hardly anyone who notices the most extraordinary threat of all: the extinction of our knowledge of what we are.» — la comparación con que cierra el capítulo: junto a la extinción de especies, la extinción del conocimiento de lo que somos

«For we’re not just twenty or forty or seventy years old. That’s only an appearance. We’re ancient, incredibly ancient. We hold the history of the stars in our pockets.» — la afirmación sobre la edad propia: no veinte ni setenta años sino una antigüedad enorme, con la historia de las estrellas en el bolsillo

«That knowledge that’s gone missing has to do with the past. And yet it has nothing to do with the past as we understand the past. We are the past. Even our tomorrows are the past acting itself out.» — y su idea del pasado: no el pasado como se entiende, sino nosotros mismos, con el mañana como el pasado representándose; la capa de texto parte *tomorrows* al fin de renglón

«We only move into the future when we turn to face our past and become what we are.» — la única entrada al futuro que admite: volverse hacia el propio pasado y llegar a ser lo que se es

«They were called Phocaeans, and the name of their town was Phocaea. It was a small place perched on the west coast of what’s now known as Turkey, just a little to the north of what’s now the city of Izmir.» — Kingsley sitúa a los foceos: su ciudad estaba en la costa occidental de la actual Turquía, un poco al norte de Esmirna

«Those who have studied them call them the Vikings of antiquity. They were the most daring adventurers among the ancient Greeks, pushing at the frontiers of the unknown. W hat others dreamed of they converted into reality.» — el retrato que recoge de ellos: los vikingos de la antigüedad, los aventureros más audaces entre los griegos antiguos

«Old traditions say they were the first to travel out on a regular basis beyond Gibraltar into the Atlantic; that was in the seventh and sixth centuries BC. It was colonists from Phocaea who sailed down the west coast of Africa, and then up to France and England, to Scotland and beyond.» — lo que las tradiciones antiguas les atribuyen, según Kingsley: haber sido los primeros en pasar regularmente Gibraltar hacia el Atlántico en los siglos VII y VI a. C.

«P ho ca ea means city of seals’. The Phocaeans themselves were amphibians, always focused on the ocean. They wrote most of their history in water— and the sea doesn’t leave many traces.» — la etimología que da del nombre y su consecuencia documental: los foceos escribieron su historia en el agua y el mar deja pocas huellas; la capa de texto espacia el nombre

«Samos was the home of Pythagoras. At any rate it was his home until he sailed west and settled in Italy, around 530 BC. The stories passed down from century to century in the ancient world were that Pythagoras learned his wisdom by travelling to Egypt and Andalusia; to Phoenicia, a region roughly similar to the coastal areas of Lebanon and Syria; to Persia, Babylonia, India.» — el dato con el que enlaza Samos y Focea: según las historias antiguas, Pitágoras aprendió su sabiduría viajando a Egipto, Andalucía, Fenicia, Persia, Babilonia y la India, y emigró a Italia hacia el 530 a. C.

«Nowadays scholars like to laugh at such sto ries. They dismiss them as romantic fantasies, projected back onto a famous Greek islander by later Greeks who wanted to invent early connections between western culture and the East.» — la objeción de Kingsley al consenso: los estudiosos descartan esos viajes como fantasías románticas proyectadas sobre un isleño griego famoso; la capa de texto parte *stories*

«But it’s better to be a little more careful.» — y la reserva con que la formula: conviene tener un poco más de cuidado antes de reírse

«According to an old tradition Pythagoras’ father was a gem engraver.» — el hilo por el que reabre el asunto: una tradición antigua hace grabador de gemas al padre de Pitágoras

«It’s no surprise that later Greek writers say Pythagoras’ own father was a trader between Samos and Phoenicia.» — y su consecuencia: escritores griegos posteriores dicen que el padre comerciaba entre Samos y Fenicia

«There used to be another tradition about Pythagoras: a tradition based on the best of sources. It says he used to wear trousers. That’s very strange. Greeks didn’t wear trousers; only Persians and Iranian people did.» — la tradición que Kingsley llama extraña y bien fundada: Pitágoras usaba pantalones, prenda que ningún griego llevaba y sí persas e iranios

«Theodorus lived at the time of Pythagoras and Pythagoras’ father. He was a gem engraver, and a fine sculptor and architect as well. Ancient writers say he worked and learned in Egypt; recent findings from Egypt have helped dramatically to confirm what they say.» — el paralelo con que la explica: Teodoro de Samos, grabador de gemas, escultor y arquitecto, de quien los antiguos dicen que trabajó y aprendió en Egipto

«We know how he worked personally for kings of western Anatolia— what now is the western part of Turkey— and for the king of Persia. There are good reasons to link him with some of the finest architecture produced right in the heart of ancient Persia itself.» — y lo que añade sobre él: trabajó para reyes de Anatolia occidental y para el rey de Persia, con vínculos plausibles con la arquitectura persa

«And Theodorus wasn’t alone. By chance we happen to know of another Greek sculptor who worked for two generations of Persian kings, a long way away from his home. His name was Telephanes. He wasn’t from Samos hut from Phocaea.» — el segundo caso: Telefanes, escultor griego al servicio de dos generaciones de reyes persas, no de Samos sino de Focea; la capa de texto imprime *hut* por *but*

«But what’s important is that long-distance travel happened, and happened on a large scale. It was far more common in the ancient world than we’ve been led to believe, just as it was in the Middle Ages. And what’s most striking of all is that even when Greece was at the height of war with Persia and you’d least expect it, intelligent Greeks streamed out to Persia to learn, make money, find wiser people.» — la tesis que extrae de esos casos: el viaje de larga distancia era mucho más común de lo que se ha hecho creer, y en plena guerra con Persia los griegos inteligentes salían hacia allá a aprender y a buscar gente más sabia

«The best scholars have come to realize something rather hard to admit. Pythagoras’ most famous discoveries really weren’t his discoveries at all. They were already known for centuries in Babylonia, and the most that Pythagoras can be credited for is bringing the knowledge of them to Greece and adapting them to the world of the Greeks.» — lo que Kingsley dice que los mejores estudiosos admiten a regañadientes: los descubrimientos famosos de Pitágoras no eran suyos, se conocían desde hacía siglos en Babilonia, y a él se le acredita haberlos llevado a Grecia

«But even the scholars who’ve realized this haven’t seen how effortlessly Pythagoras’ home island explains the link with Babylonia.» — y la objeción que les hace: no han visto con qué facilidad la isla natal de Pitágoras explica ese vínculo con Babilonia

«They’re images that belonged to the cult of Gula, the Babylonian goddess of healing. And they didn’t arrive in Samos simply because of trade. They arrived there because religion and worship crossed the boundaries of countries, ignored the limits of language.» — lo que halla dentro del templo de Hera en Samos: bronces del culto de Gula, diosa babilonia de la sanación, llegados no por comercio sino porque el culto cruzaba fronteras

«Where there’s movement of goods and objects the way is open for travel. Where the paths of cultural contact exist there’s a standing invitation for the seeker. That should be obvious; at any rate it used to be. ‘Trade’ and ‘inquiry’— these were two terms the Greeks loved to group together because they knew they went hand in hand.» — la fórmula con que enlaza comercio y búsqueda: donde hay contacto cultural hay invitación permanente al buscador, y los griegos agrupaban *comercio* e *indagación* porque sabían que iban juntos

«And one of the imports stayed beautifully alive. Peacocks were introduced into all of the western world from the temple of Hera on Samos. They were bred in the temple grounds and treated as sacred to the goddess. They were carried to Samos, through Persia, from India.» — el ejemplo con que cierra: los pavorreales llegaron a todo el mundo occidental desde el templo de Hera en Samos, criados como sagrados, traídos de la India a través de Persia

«For a long time we’ve been told to believe that the ancient Greeks were a self-enclosed people, unwilling to learn foreign languages, creating western civilization all on their own. We haven’t quite been told the truth. The links with the East were there to begin with, behind everything that was to occur and has occurred since then. It’s good to bear this in mind.» — la objeción que resume el capítulo: no es cierto que los griegos antiguos fueran un pueblo cerrado que creara la civilización occidental por su cuenta; los vínculos con Oriente estaban desde el principio

«For religious and political and economic reasons— but ultimately everything came down to religion— Persia wanted to extend its empire to the ends of the earth. The Persians were thirsty. They no longer wanted to do business with Phocaea. They wanted Phocaea.» — la causa que da al ataque persa sobre Focea hacia el 540 a. C., con la jerarquía declarada: razones religiosas, políticas y económicas, pero todo se reducía en última instancia a religión

«The commander delivered his ultimatum: accept my terms or die. And no amount of protective walls was going to be of any use. The Persians had learned a trick and knew how to climb over them by building up mounds of earth outside.» — el ultimátum persa y por qué la muralla no servía: los persas sabían salvarla levantando terraplenes por fuera

«Pinned between the wall and the sea, the people of Phocaea came up with a trickof their own.They asked to have the night to think things over. The Persian commander said he knew what they were up to but wouldn’t interfere. Sometimes the wisest course of all is to allow others to trick you.» — el ardid foceo y la respuesta del comandante persa, que Kingsley convierte en sentencia: a veces lo más sabio es dejar que otros te engañen; la capa de texto pega *trickof their own.They*

«They took the images and sacred objects from the temples, everything they were able to carry; the heavy bronzework, stone carvings and paintings were all they left behind. And they set sail.» — lo que los foceos se llevaron al huir: las imágenes y los objetos sagrados de los templos, dejando atrás lo pesado

«They asked their neighbours on the island of Chios if they could buy a few small islands from them— islands scattered between Chios and the Asiatic mainland. The Chians refused. They knew how good the Phocaeans were at business and had no intention of encouraging competition on their doorstep.» — el episodio de Quíos: los quiotas se negaron a venderles islas por no alentar competencia comercial a su puerta

«They threw some iron in the sea and promised none of them would ever return to Phocaea until the iron floated on the surface. It’s an old oath, shared by East and West. You still find Chinese love poets swearing the same way centuries later: ‘We promised to love until iron floats on the river.’» — el juramento de no volver hasta que el hierro flotara, que Kingsley declara compartido por Oriente y Occidente y rastrea en los poetas de amor chinos siglos después

«Founding a colony was a serious business in those days, and it was normal to ask the oracle of the god Apollo at Delphi about where to go. Apollo might answer with a riddle: he usually did. But the answer was what mattered.» — el procedimiento que describe para fundar colonia: preguntar al oráculo de Apolo en Delfos, que solía responder con acertijo

«So people had gone from Phocaea to Delphi to ask for advice, and Apollo had suggested they build a town on Cyrnus. At least that’s what they thought he’d suggested. Cyrnus was a Greek name for Corsica and that’s where they’d decided to go.» — y el caso concreto: Apolo les sugirió Cirno, nombre griego de Córcega, o al menos eso entendieron

«Road: the route that was used for centuries by the kings of western Asia and of Persia, then by Alexander the Great— and, much later, by the Christians to spread their message to the West. It brought oriental influences in art and religion through to the western world even before Phocaea became famous, and it carried Greek influence back the other way. It made Phocaea a key point in the contact between ancient East and West.» — el Camino Real que ligaba Focea con Asia occidental y Persia, y que según Kingsley hizo de la ciudad un punto clave del contacto entre Oriente y Occidente; el tramo arranca después del marcador de plana, que el troceo reemite a media palabra en el corte de chunk

«in spite of the oath about the iron and the sea, around half the people just couldn’t go. It was simply too painful to leave everything behind: the longing for their home was too great. They made their way back and bowed to the Persians, weighed down by the curse of their broken oath.» — el desenlace del juramento: la mitad volvió a Focea y se sometió a los persas, cargando la maldición de haberlo roto

«So they did what they knew best— turned to piracy. It wasn’t long before their victims had had enough and joined forces to destroy them in a battle at sea.» — lo que hicieron los que llegaron a Córcega cuando faltó de qué vivir: piratería, hasta que sus víctimas se unieron para destruirlos

«The Phocaeans didn’t stand a chance. They were massively outnumbered. But they won. The only problem was that, as so often happens, in winning they almost destroyed themselves. They lost so many ships and ruined so many others, lost so many men for one reason or another, that there was no way they could stay on and risk another attack.» — el resultado de esa batalla, formulado como victoria ruinosa: ganaron y con ello casi se destruyeron

«The oracle at Delphi had advised the Phocaeans to build a home on Cyrnus. They had done exactly what Apollo said and been almost totally destroyed.» — el nudo del capítulo: habían hecho exactamente lo que Apolo dijo y quedaron casi destruidos

«It was then they met the man who changed everyi lil ng. He was just a stranger. He came from a place called I’osidonia, back some way up the western coast of Italy. lUit he put all their doubts to rest.» — la aparición del extranjero de Posidonia en la punta de Italia, que según Kingsley deshizo sus dudas; la capa de texto imprime *everyi lil ng* por *everything*, *I’osidonia* por *Posidonia* y *lUit* por *But*

«‘You got everything wrong’, the stranger said. ‘You i bought Apollo told you to build a place on Cyrnus; but t hat’s only what you thought. W hat he was really telling you all those years ago was to build a place for Cyrnus.’» — la corrección que el extranjero les da, en la voz que Kingsley le presta: no *en* Cirno sino *para* Cirno

«Cyrnus may have been a name for Corsica but it was also the name of a mythical hero, a hero who had been the son of the greatest hero of all time— Heracles.» — la clave de la corrección: Cirno era a la vez nombre de Córcega y de un héroe mítico, hijo de Heracles

«One word in Greek often meant the same as two or three words in another language. It easily allowed for double meanings, even in everyday talk.» — la propiedad del griego antiguo en que se apoya: una palabra valía por dos o tres de otra lengua y admitía dobles sentidos hasta en el habla corriente

«The hardness is what makes the difference between the human and the divine.» — la razón que da para esa dificultad: la dureza es lo que marca la diferencia entre lo humano y lo divino

«But all they had done was interpret the oracle too narrowly, understand it on the physical level instead of at the level of myth.» — el diagnóstico que hace del error foceo: interpretar el oráculo demasiado estrechamente, en el plano físico y no en el del mito

«They did build a place. They built it close to the stranger’s hometown of Posidonia. They settled, and lived there for centuries. And they changed what the world was to become. The name of their town was spelt and spoken in different ways by different people: Hyele, Elea, Velia.» — la fundación que resulta de todo esto, con los tres nombres que la ciudad tuvo

«more or less as it was told by the man often called the father of western history: Herodotus. He’s also known as the father of lies.» — la fuente que Kingsley declara para el relato: Heródoto, llamado padre de la historia occidental y también padre de las mentiras

«Modern archaeologists who have dug the earth and searched in places mentioned by Herodotus have been struck by how precisely the things they find confirm what Herodotus said.» — el contrapeso que ofrece: los arqueólogos modernos que han excavado en los sitios que Heródoto menciona quedaron impresionados por la precisión con que lo hallado coincide con lo que dijo Heródoto

«At the time when Herodotus was writing, in the fifth century BC, it was still assumed that the best writers wrote through inspiration— divine inspiration. Those who were inspired were inspired by the Muses and the Muses were like other gods. They weren’t limited by truth, or honesty; it was their divine right to lie most of the time and be truthful if they wanted.» — y su razón: se daba por hecho que los mejores escribían por inspiración divina, y las Musas no estaban atadas a la verdad

«And the more someone tried to insist he was just telling the truth, the more his listeners or readers would laugh inwardly and assume he was trying to trick them.» — el corolario que extrae: cuanto más insistía alguien en decir solo la verdad, más suponían sus oyentes que trataba de engañarlos

«And then there’s another question: the question of who we are to decide what are the truths and what are the lies. It’s so easy to think we have superior knowledge, that our understanding is better. We love to correct the errors of the past in terms of what we now think is true. But who’s going to correct our errors? Everyone used to know that the sun goes round the earth; now everyone believes they know that the earth goes round the sun. The trouble is that every great step in understanding always demolishes and overturns the knowledge that went before. People will only look back on us in the way we look back at the past.» — la objeción que se hace a sí mismo y al lector: quién decide qué es verdad y qué mentira, cuando cada gran paso del entender derriba el saber anterior

«The one thing worth doing is to get behind it all, to the essential that never changes.» — y adónde sale de esa objeción: lo único que vale la pena es llegar detrás de todo eso, a lo esencial que no cambia

«The fact is that there used to be men just like him in southern Italy: men who really existed. They were called the wise’ because their wisdom verged on the divine; because they were able to see beyond the surface and behind appearances; because they were able to interpret oracles and dreams and the riddles of existence.» — lo que sostiene sobre el extranjero de Posidonia: en el sur de Italia hubo hombres así, llamados sabios porque su sabiduría lindaba con lo divino y podían interpretar oráculos, sueños y enigmas

«Some of them came to be known as Pythagoreans— people who lived in the spirit of Pythagoras.» — y cómo se llamó a algunos de ellos: pitagóricos, gente que vivía en el espíritu de Pitágoras

«Men used to live by them. Sometimes they died by them when they got them wrong.» — el riesgo del oráculo: se vivía por ellos y a veces se moría por ellos, cuando se los entendía mal

«It would be much the same as if we were to live our lives now guided by the dreams we have in the night. There’s no security in that, none at all. It’s not for those of us who want to live a safe life— or at least what we imagine is a safe life, cushioned by our modern myths.» — la comparación con que mide ese riesgo: sería como vivir hoy guiados por los sueños de la noche, sin seguridad alguna

«Oracles are never what they seem. For oracles to be oracles they have to contain something hidden. The more you think you understand them the less you probably do. That’s where the danger lies.» — la definición que da del oráculo: para serlo tiene que contener algo oculto, y cuanto más se cree entenderlo menos se entiende

«As ancient Greeks said, the words spoken by oracles are like seeds. They contain a fullness, a pregnancy of meaning, dimensions of relevance that only become apparent with time.» — la imagen griega que recoge: las palabras del oráculo son como semillas, con una plenitud de sentido que solo el tiempo revela

«Human language is like a splinter: fragmented, isolated, sticking out in one direction. But the language of the gods is full of surprises that surround you from all directions and jump out on you from behind.» — el contraste con que la remata: la lengua humana es una astilla que apunta en una sola dirección, y la de los dioses rodea y salta por detrás

«Posidonia and the region around it, along with the rest of southern Italy, were the land of Heracles. This was the land he had once travelled, where he had experienced his mythical adventures and ordeals. Now Posidonia and the neighbouring areas were steeped in heroic tradition. The cults of Heracles and other heroes were more alive here than anywhere else. Stories of heroic experiences— like Heracles’ descent to the underworld— were central themes of the local religion, unforgettable parts of people’s daily lives. It’s no accident that Herodotus talks about a son of Heracles while mentioning a town immersed in the knowledge of everything to do with Heracles.» — y la geografía que la sostiene: Posidonia y el sur de Italia eran tierra de Heracles, con el descenso al inframundo entre los temas centrales de la religión local

«And yet there was one form of the language that was most famous of all, even to the Greeks, for its ambiguities and double meanings. That was the language of oracles.» — dónde se concentraba esa ambigüedad para los propios griegos: la lengua de los oráculos

«W hen gods spoke through oracles they spoke in a way» — y cómo hablaban los dioses por ellos, según Kingsley: de un modo que se corta al pasar de plana y sigue en la siguiente, *that’s hard for humans to understand*

«Writers in ancient Greece weren’t concerned with truth and lies in quite the same way we are. The approval for truth, the disapproval for lies: they’re something that only evolved very gradually to become what they are.» — la advertencia de método: los escritores de la Grecia antigua no se ocupaban de verdad y mentira como nosotros, y la aprobación de la una y la desaprobación de la otra se formaron muy despacio

«They had their own reality, their own function.» — y lo que Kingsley les concede: la mentira tenía realidad y función propias

«By directing the Phocaeans away from Cyrnus the island to Cyrnus the hero he did something very specific— something very important to understand.» — lo que Kingsley sostiene que hizo el hombre de Posidonia al llevarlos de la isla de Cirno al héroe Cirno: algo muy específico y muy importante de entender

«To the Greeks, founding a colony was closely bound up with oracles; but it was also bound up with heroes. The first people who ever founded colonies were the heroes from the mythical past.» — el marco que da a esa lectura: fundar colonia estaba ligado a los oráculos y también a los héroes, primeros fundadores del mito

«the hero held in his hand the mythical map for you to use and follow. So by pointing the Phocaeans away from the island to the hero, the man from Posidonia was pointing (hem straight to the roots of their own endeavour. He was directing them back into the heroic dimension, reconnecting them in their role as colonizers with their mythical source.» — y qué consigue el señalamiento del héroe: devolver a los foceos a la dimensión heroica y reconectarlos con su fuente mítica

«You find that to them heroes weren’t just figures in some mythical past. For them the heroic ideal was something that had to be lived in the present. The aim of one’s life, the life of a wise man, was to follow the way of the hero— to live his ordeals, his sufferings, his transformation. That’s what provided the spiritual purpose and the map of their existence.» — lo que Kingsley dice haber hallado en esos sabios del sur de Italia: el héroe no era figura del pasado mítico sino ideal que había que vivir en presente, con sus pruebas y su transformación

«You can still see how this imitation of the hero was adapted by Christianity to become the imitation of Christ.» — y la línea que traza desde ahí: esa imitación del héroe la adapta el cristianismo como imitación de Cristo

«The founding of Velia wasn’t what historians now like to make it— simply a matter of ships sailing into a harbour and houses and walls being built. When the Phocaeans settled in their new home it was because of oracles and heroes that they settled there. Apollo and a son of Heracles, heroes and oracles: those were the crucial factors behind the founding of the town of Velia.» — la tesis del capítulo: la fundación de Velia no fue solo barcos, casas y murallas, sino que Apolo y un hijo de Heracles, héroes y oráculos, fueron los factores decisivos

«They also created a town called Massalia, a little I urther on to the west. You’ll have heard of it by its later name: Marseilles.» — la otra fundación focea del siglo VI a. C.: Massalia, que hoy se conoce como Marsella

«Marseilles still exists. Velia disappeared a long time ago; until recently hardly anyone even knew where the (own once used to be. And yet Velia still lives on in a way i hat’s now almost impossible to understand, because its influence on the West has been so profound. The real origins of western philosophy, of so many ideas that shaped the world we live in, lie in Velia.» — el contraste con que presenta a Velia: desaparecida y casi ilocalizable, y sin embargo origen real de la filosofía occidental según Kingsley

«Y)u may think you know what I mean by philosophy. It’s very unlikely that you do. Centuries have been spent destroying the truth about what it once was. We only have eyes now for what philosophy has become— no idea of what it no longer is.» — la advertencia sobre el término: es muy improbable que el lector sepa qué entiende él por filosofía, porque siglos de destrucción dejaron ojos solo para lo que la filosofía llegó a ser; la capa de texto imprime *Y)u* por *You*

«The basic meaning of philosophy is love of wisdom. That means very little any more. We have plenty of room in our lives for knowledge and data, for learning and information, amusement and entertainment; but not for wisdom.» — el deslinde del término: filosofía significa amor a la sabiduría, y hoy hay sitio para conocimiento, datos y entretenimiento, no para sabiduría

«Since then the talking and arguing have pushed everything else out of the picture— until now we no longer know of anything else or can even imagine that there could be.» — y la consecuencia que le atribuye: desde entonces el hablar y el discutir desplazaron todo lo demás hasta que ya no se imagina que pudiera haber otra cosa

«W HAT ISN’T THERE, IN FRONT OF OUR EYES, IS usually more real than what is.» — la sentencia con que abre el capítulo *What’s Missing*: lo que no está delante de los ojos suele ser más real que lo que está; la capitular queda en renglón aparte

«W hat’s missing is more powerful than what’s there in front of our eyes. We all know that. The only trouble is that the missingness is too hard to bear, so we invent things to miss in our desperation.» — la formulación central: lo que falta es más poderoso que lo presente, y como la falta es insoportable se inventan cosas que echar de menos

«But when you want what’s so much greater than yourself there’s never a chance of being finally fulfilled.» — la distinción que hace entre querer cosas y querer lo que excede a uno mismo: en el segundo caso no hay posibilidad de quedar colmado

«People who love the divine go around with holes in their hearts, and inside the hole is the universe.» — la imagen con que describe a quienes aman lo divino: andan con agujeros en el corazón y dentro del agujero está el universo

«And there’s a great secret: we all have that vast missingness deep inside us. The only difference between us and the mystics is that they learn to face what we find ways of running away from.» — el secreto que enuncia: la falta es de todos, y la única diferencia con los místicos es que ellos encaran lo que los demás eluden

«Western culture is a past master at the art of substitution. It offers and never delivers because it cant. It has lost the power even to know what needs to be delivered, so it offers substitutes instead. W hat’s most important is missing, and dazzling in its absence. And what were offered is often just a substitute for something far finer that once used to exist, or still does exist, but has nothing in common with it except the name.» — la objeción cultural que sostiene: la cultura occidental es maestra en el arte de la sustitución, ofrece y no entrega porque ya no sabe qué hay que entregar

«Even religion and spirituality and humanity’s higher aspirations become wonderful substitutes. And that’s what happened to philosophy. W hat used to be ways to freedom for our ancestors become prisons and cages for us.» — y hasta dónde la lleva: religión, espiritualidad y aspiraciones altas se vuelven sustitutos, y eso mismo le pasó a la filosofía, que de vía de libertad pasó a jaula

«T here’s one man who influenced the western world in a way no one else did. He lies buried under our thoughts, under all our ideas and theories. And the world he belonged to is buried there too: a feminine world of incredible beauty and depth and power and wisdom, a world so close to us that we’ve forgotten where to find it.» — la presentación del personaje sin nombrarlo todavía, y del mundo femenino que dice enterrado con él

«To a few specialists he’s known as the central problem’ in making sense of what happened to philosophy before Plato. And there’s no coming to grips with the history of philosophy or wisdom in the West without understanding him. He lies on the central nerve of our culture. Touch him, and indirectly you’re in touch with everything else.» — el lugar que le adjudica: el problema central para entender qué le pasó a la filosofía antes de Platón, sobre el nervio central de la cultura

«He’s said to have created the idea of metaphysics. It’s said that he invented logic: the basis of our reasoning, the foundation of every single discipline that has come into existence in the West.» — lo que se le atribuye, en voz pasiva y no en la de Kingsley: haber creado la idea de metafísica y haber inventado la lógica

«There’s a well-known saying that the whole history of western philosophy is just a series of footnotes to Plato. W ith the same justification Plato’s philosophy in its developed form could be called a series of footnotes to that man.» — el giro que hace del dicho famoso: si la filosofía occidental son notas a pie de página de Platón, la de Platón podría llamarse notas a pie de página de ese hombre

«And yet it’s claimed that we know next to nothing about him. This is hardly surprising. Plato and his disciple Aristotle have become the great names, the intellectual heroes of our culture. But one of the drawbacks of creating heroes is that the taller we make them st and the longer the shadows they cast— and the more ihey’re allowed to conceal and push into the dark.» — la objeción que hace a esa ignorancia declarada: cuanto más altos se hacen los héroes intelectuales, más larga es la sombra que se les permite echar

«In fact we know a great deal about him, but without knowing it yet. Life is kind. It gives us what we need just when we most need it. Extraordinary things were discovered about him a little while ago: discoveries more amazing than most pieces of fiction. But scholars still refuse to understand the evidence or its significance— even though the discoveries only confirm what should already have been clear for thousands of years from the evidence that’s been available for so long.» — lo que sostiene contra ello: se sabe mucho sin saberlo, por hallazgos recientes que según él los estudiosos se niegan a entender

«The problem is that all this evidence forces us to start understanding ourselves, and our past, in a very different way. The easiest solution has been to silence it and cover it up. But there are things that can only be silenced for so long.» — la razón que da para ese silencio: la evidencia obliga a entenderse a uno mismo y al propio pasado de otra manera

«We could also talk about how some of those so-called philosophers were magicians. And we will.» — el anuncio que deja hecho: algunos de esos llamados filósofos eran magos

«But in the middle of all these uncertainties there’s one firm piece of ground— the existence of that man whose fundamental importance in shaping the history of western ideas is beyond denying.» — el punto firme que reclama en medio de las incertidumbres: la existencia de ese hombre y su importancia en la historia de las ideas occidentales

«His name was Parmenides. He was from Velia.» — el nombre, que Kingsley reserva para el final del capítulo

«We can still trace out how, well over two thousand years ago, the schools of Plato and Aristotle» — el punto en que Kingsley sitúa el cambio, mil años antes de nosotros, con las escuelas de Platón y Aristóteles; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«put the seal on what was to become the most enduring Athenian contribution to intellectual history in the West: instead of the love of wisdom, philosophy turned into the love of talking and arguing about the love of wisdom.» — y en qué consistió el sello ateniense según él: la filosofía pasó del amor a la sabiduría al amor a hablar y discutir sobre el amor a la sabiduría

«That’s the reason why mysticism has been pushed to the periphery of our culture: because the more we feel that nothingness inside» — la razón que da para el destierro de la mística: cuanto más se siente esa nada por dentro —el tramo se corta ahí, al pasar de plana—

«us, the more we feel the need to fill the void.» — y la continuación en la plana siguiente: *más se siente la necesidad de llenar el vacío*

«When you turn away from all the substitutes there’s suddenly no future any more, just the present. There’s nowhere to go, and that’s the ultimate terror for the mind. But if you can stay in this hell, with no way to the left or to the right or in front or behind, then you discover» — el paso que propone: dejados los sustitutos no queda futuro sino presente, y quedarse en ese infierno sin salida a ningún lado lleva al descubrimiento que la frase completa en la plana siguiente

«the peace of utter stillness— the stillness at the heart of this story.» — y lo descubierto: la paz de la quietud completa, la quietud que está en el centro de esta historia

«he oldest descriptions of parmenides are strange ones. They’re like markers on his grave. It’s good to look at them first because they say so much about what happened to him.» — cómo presenta las descripciones antiguas de Parménides: extrañas, como marcas sobre su tumba; la capitular queda fuera del tramo, en renglón aparte

«Plato wrote a dialogue about him. It’s called Parmenides. It presents him at Athens as a very old man, white-haired, arguing about philosophical issues in the presence of a very young man— Plato’s teacher Socrates.» — el primer testimonio que examina: el diálogo *Parménides* de Platón, que lo pone en Atenas de anciano discutiendo ante un Sócrates jovencísimo

«Plato manages to be carefully vague about just how old Parmenides was at the time of the debate: around sixty-five or something like that’. But that was old enough to present him as a man whose time is past. For ancient Greeks the age of sixty was a reasonable time to die.» — lo que Kingsley señala en esa puesta en escena: la vaguedad calculada sobre la edad, bastante para presentarlo como hombre cuyo tiempo pasó

«And yet there’s a problem. The whole of the Parmenides is a deliberate fiction. It has Parmenides debate abstract Platonic theories in a way he never could have or would have: what Plato describes never happened.» — la objeción que opone a fechar por ese diálogo: el *Parménides* es ficción deliberada y lo que Platón describe nunca ocurrió

«From beginning to end the setting of the Parmenides is skilfully designed with one purpose in mind. That’s to present Socrates and Plato— not Zeno or anyone else— as the legitimate heirs to Parmenides’ teaching.» — el propósito que le adjudica al montaje: presentar a Sócrates y a Platón, y no a Zenón, como herederos legítimos de la enseñanza de Parménides

«rearrange the past to suit your purposes, put ideas of your own into the mouths of famous figures from the past, have no concern for historical details.» — el principio que Kingsley dice reconocido en el círculo de Platón: reordenar el pasado a conveniencia, poner ideas propias en boca de figuras famosas y no cuidarse de los detalles históricos; el tramo arranca después de *well-recognized*, cuyo guion léxico el troceo parte al fin de renglón.

«Ail that’s surprising is how normal it’s become to take him seriously when we shouldn’t— and not take him seriously when we should.» — la objeción que hace al uso moderno de Platón: tomarlo en serio donde no debe tomarse y no tomarlo donde sí; la capa de texto imprime *Ail* por *All*

«Then time had just started to solidify around the Greeks and around what was to become of the West. Before, history had been what lived in your blood— what related to your ancestors. Individual towns or cities could keep their own careful records of the passing of the years; but that was strictly a matter of local concern. Now something else was happening. History was being structured into universal facts and figures. Mythology was changing into chronology.» — el cambio de época que describe para el siglo IV a. C.: la historia deja de ser lo que vivía en la sangre y se estructura en hechos y cifras universales, la mitología se vuelve cronología

«W hen the Greeks of his time looked behind them into the fifth century and beyond they were looking into a realm of myth, of local traditions that reached back to a world of gods and heroes. Plato was living in a period when writing about the past was still a matter of free enterprise. History as we know it was only just being made.» — y lo que veían los griegos de entonces al mirar atrás: un reino de mito y tradiciones locales, cuando escribir sobre el pasado era todavía empresa libre

«But what we don’t see is that the time on the clock is ancient. Our divisions of the day into hours or minutes or seconds are Babylonian and Egyptian inventions. Our time is steeped in the past; we live and die in the past.» — la observación con que enlaza: las divisiones del día en horas, minutos y segundos son invenciones babilonias y egipcias

«Greek historians in the centuries after Plato started making it their business to sound as accurate as possible about what happened in the past— just as we do. But with them things weren’t what they appeared to be, just as they aren’t now; and the greater their apparent precision the greater their guesses.» — la objeción que hace a los historiadores griegos posteriores: cuanto mayor su precisión aparente, mayores sus conjeturas

«Some of them made Parmenides’ birth date coincide exactly with the year of the founding of Velia. It was only a guess.» — el caso concreto: hacer coincidir el nacimiento de Parménides con la fundación de Velia era solo conjetura

«There’s no precise or reliable dating for Parmenides that survives. We just have rough indications; but they’re good enough. The indications are that he was born not that long after the Phocaeans arrived in southern Italy on their journey from the east— that he was among the first generation of children brought up by Phocaean parents in Velia, with the memories of Phocaea and of the journey from Phocaea still running fresh in their blood.» — la abstención de Kingsley sobre la fecha y lo que sí sostiene: nació poco después de la llegada focea al sur de Italia, entre los primeros niños criados en Velia por padres foceos

«I le seemed to me—to quote from Homer—someone ‘woriliy of my reverence and awe’. I spent some time in the mans company when I was very young and he was very old, and he gave me the impression of possessing a certain depth that was noble through and through. This makes me all the more afraid not just that we won’t understand what he said but that we’ll fail to a far greater extent to understand what it is he meant.» — el retrato que Platón pone en boca de Sócrates en otro diálogo, traducido por Kingsley: reverencia, temor y una profundidad noble, con el miedo declarado de no entender lo que Parménides quiso decir; la capa de texto imprime *I le* por *He* y *woriliy* por *worthy*

«The quotation from Homer raises Parmenides to the rank of an ancient hero, straight out of mythology. The trouble is that these were the words spoken by Helen to the great lord Priam — the ruler of Troy who was soon to be destroyed along with his kingdom.» — lo que Kingsley señala en esa cita: son las palabras de Helena al rey Príamo, señor de Troya a punto de ser destruido con su reino

«In fact it’s a skilful technique— Plato’s way of giving himself the freedom he needs to start interpreting Parmenides as he wants.» — y cómo lee el temor declarado de Sócrates: una técnica hábil que da a Platón la libertad de interpretar a Parménides como quiere

«But the impression of Parmenides’ inner depth: that’s something to remember.» — lo único de ese retrato que Kingsley pide retener: la impresión de profundidad interior

«The main speaker says: we’re going to have to resort to violence against our ‘father’ Parmenides. We’re going to have to kill the father.» — el pasaje del tercer diálogo en que apoya el título del capítulo: hay que ejercer violencia contra el padre Parménides, hay que matar al padre

«But we have to understand one thing. For Plato jokes are hardly ever just jokes. W hat for him is most serious appears as a game, and when he treats something with humour is often when there’s most at stake. That’s a part of what makes him engaging: it was appreciated very well in the ancient world, and it was appreciated in the Renaissance. He loved trying to catch his readers out by stating the most serious things in the most lighthearted ways.» — la advertencia de lectura que interpone: en Platón las bromas casi nunca son solo bromas, y lo más serio aparece como juego

«W hat is it that Plato killed? That’s what we’ll begin to discover in this book. And to see what Parmenides was is to see why Plato had to kill him. For if he hadn’t done what he did, the West as we know it would never have existed.» — la pregunta que ordena el libro y la respuesta que adelanta: ver qué era Parménides es ver por qué Platón tuvo que matarlo, porque si no, Occidente no existiría como es

«And the murder was so complete that now we don’t even know it ever happened, or what was killed.» — el alcance que le atribuye: el crimen fue tan completo que ya no se sabe que ocurrió ni qué fue lo muerto

«The only way we can suspect what happened is when we feel something missing inside. For what Parmenides represented: no one can ever get that out of the way. It will always find its way back. We can do without it for a while, but only for a while.» — y la única señal que queda, según él: sentir que algo falta por dentro, porque lo que Parménides representaba siempre vuelve

«ARMENIDES WROTE A POEM. It would be easy to imagine the father of philosophy producing very different things. But he I ust wrote a poem.» — el hecho que Kingsley pone de arranque de la segunda parte: el padre de la filosofía escribió un poema y nada más; la capitular P queda fuera del tramo y la capa de texto imprime *I ust* por *just*

«He wrote it in the metre of the great epic poems of (lie past— poetry created under divine inspiration, revealing what humans on their own can never see or know, describing the world of gods and the world of humans and the meetings between humans and gods.» — el metro que señala: el de la épica, poesía compuesta bajo inspiración divina, que revela lo que los humanos por sí solos no pueden ver

«And he wrote it in three parts. The first part describes his journey to the goddess who has no name. The second describes what she taught him about reality. Then the last part starts with the goddess saying, Now I’m going to deceive you; and she goes on to describe, in detail, the world we believe we live in.» — la división del poema que Kingsley describe: el viaje a la diosa sin nombre, lo que ella le enseña sobre la realidad, y la tercera parte que abre con la diosa anunciando que va a engañarlo

«Every single figure Parmenides encounters in his poem is a woman or a girl. Even the animals are female, and he’s taught by a goddess. The universe he describes is a feminine one; and if this man’s poem represents the starting point for western logic, then something very strange has happened for logic to end up the way it has.» — la observación con que cierra el punto: todas las figuras del poema son femeninas y lo enseña una diosa, de modo que si ese poema es el punto de partida de la lógica occidental, algo muy extraño pasó

«Any act of violence at all against your hither was the greatest crime there was— not to mention k i lling him. Patricide was about the most appalling crime t hat could be imagined. Even the word ‘patricide’ was a word best never pronounced at all. Gods could kill their fathers; but when humans were involved it became a crime of mythological dimensions.» — y lo que estaba en juego: toda violencia contra el padre era el mayor crimen, un crimen de dimensiones mitológicas cuando lo cometía un humano

«The journey he describes is mythical, a journey to the divine with the help of the divine. It’s not a journey like any other journey. But because it’s mythical doesn’t mean it isn’t real. On the contrary, anyone who makes that journey discovers the journeys we’re used to making are the ones that are unreal. Perhaps you’ve noticed it — that our awareness is completely motionless, never changes. W hen we walk down the road we’re really not going anywhere. We can travel around the world and we’re not going anywhere at all. We never go anywhere; if we think we do we’re just caught in the web of appearances, caught in the web of our senses.» — cómo lee Kingsley el viaje del poema: mítico, con ayuda de lo divino, y real justamente por mítico, frente a unos viajes cotidianos que declara irreales

«But there’s no need to struggle like this. It’s such a strain to have to explain one thing as meaning something else, and we’ve tired our minds out for so long avoiding what’s in front of us. Plato had good reasons for killing him over two thousand years ago; to go on killing him now is pointless.» — y su objeción: no hace falta explicar una cosa como si significara otra, y seguir matando a Parménides hoy es inútil

«I u the old days the best interpreters — of oracles, of i lie riddles of existence, of how birds sang and how they llt-w— knew that the greatest part of interpretation was m >1 to interfere but simply to watch, and listen, andallow i lie things observed to reveal their meaning.» — la regla de interpretación que Kingsley atribuye a los antiguos y adopta para leer el poema: no interferir, mirar, escuchar y dejar que lo observado revele su sentido; la capa de texto imprime *I u* por *In*

«Parmenides doesn’t say straightaway who the young women are who guide him on his journey. He was too I i ne a poet for that. Like the best of the Greek poets before him he knew how to use the technique of suspense and gradual explanation. Eventually he says who they are, but not to begin with.» — el recurso poético que le reconoce: suspenso y explicación gradual, sin decir de entrada quiénes son las jóvenes que lo guían

«They had come out of the Mansions of Night, and we know from the great Greek poets where those mansions are. They’re in the depths of the depths, at the edges of existence, where earth and heaven have their roots: they’re in Tartarus, where even the gods are afraid to go.» — adónde lleva ese rastro, según Kingsley: las Mansiones de la Noche que los grandes poetas griegos sitúan en el Tártaro, donde ni los dioses se atreven a ir

«And as the doorkeeper opens up to let them through, the gates move apart to create a huge chasm. The same Greek poets talk about the great chasm that lies just behind those gates. It’s the chasm of Tartarus, by the Mansions of Night.» — y el abismo que se abre al pasar las puertas: el abismo del Tártaro, junto a las Mansiones de la Noche

«Parmenides writes in a way that’s very simple, and very subtle. He deliberately uses images and expressions that were familiar to his listeners so he can evoke a whole setting or a scene. This is how poets wrote in his day. They wouldn’t say outright what they were talking about: they wouldn’t have to. They would talk in hints instead. There was no need to say ‘This is Tartarus’; they would use words and expressions that the great poets had used before them and the listener would understand.» — el modo de escribir que le atribuye: imágenes y expresiones familiares que evocan una escena entera, hablando por indicios y sin decir *esto es el Tártaro*

«That’s not to say they copied exactly what the poets before them had said. They didn’t: each new generation had to discover and describe reality for itself. But the basic reference points were always stable. Make everything explicit and you tire your listeners. Speak indirectly, through hints and pointers, and you give them credit for their intelligence; this is what they wanted, what they asked for. That’s how people used to speak and write in the old days. It was very subtle and very simple.» — y el límite que pone a esa lectura: cada generación tenía que descubrir y describir la realidad por su cuenta, aunque los puntos de referencia fueran estables

«The mares that carry me as ja r as longing can reach rode on, once they had come and fetched me onto the legendary road of the divinity that carries the man who knows through the vast an d dark unknown. A n d on I was carried as the mares, aware ju st where to go, kept carrying me straining at the chariot; and young women led the way. A n d the axle in the hubs let out the sound oj a pipe blazing from the pressure oj the two well-rounded wheels at either side, as they rapidly led on:young women, girls, daughters o f the Sun who had left the mansions o j N ight fo r the light and pushed back the veils from their faces with their hands.» — la apertura del poema de Parménides en la traducción de Kingsley: las yeguas que lo llevan por el camino de la divinidad, guiado por las hijas del Sol que dejaron las mansiones de la Noche; la capa de texto imprime *ja r* por *far* y espacia varias palabras

«There are the gates oj the pathways o f N ight and Day, heldfast in place between the lintel above and a threshold oj stone; and they reach up into the heavens, filled with gigantic doors. A n d the keys—that now open, now lock—are heldfast by justice: she who always demands exact returns.» — la continuación del poema traducido por Kingsley: las puertas de los caminos de la Noche y el Día, cuyas llaves guarda la Justicia, que exige siempre retribución exacta

«A n d the goddess welcomed me kindly, and took m y right hand in hers and spoke these words as she addressed me: 'W elcom eyoung man, partnered by immortal charioteers, reaching our home with the mares that cany you. For it was no hard fate that sent you travelling this road—so faraw ay from the beaten track o f humans—but Rightness, andJustice.» — el recibimiento de la diosa sin nombre en la traducción de Kingsley: lo toma de la mano derecha y le dice que no fue mala suerte lo que lo trajo por ese camino apartado, sino Rectitud y Justicia

«A n d w hat’s needed is fo r you to leam all things: both the unshaken heart ofpersuasive Truth and the opinions o f mortals, in which there’s nothing that can truthfully be trusted, at all. But even so, this too you w ill leam —how beliefs based- on appearance ought to be believable as they travel all through all there is.» — lo que la diosa le anuncia que debe aprender, según la misma traducción: el corazón inconmovible de la Verdad persuasiva y también las opiniones de los mortales, en las que nada hay de fiar

«There are some things nobody and nothing can take away from you. For Pellegrino Claudio Scstieri the fact that his discoveries were rushed into print hy others before he was able to get a word in edgeways could never change the reality of what he had found.» — cómo presenta a Pellegrino Claudio Sestieri y el hallazgo de 1958 en Velia, publicado por otros antes de que él alcanzara a hablar; la capa de texto imprime *Scstieri*

«Black holes out there in the universe are nothing compared to the black holes in our own past. Those holes are much more than ordinary gaps. They have the power to destroy our ideas about ourselves and bring us face to face with nothingness.» — la comparación con que mide esos hallazgos: los agujeros negros del universo no son nada junto a los del propio pasado

«You could say it all started with the man in a toga. Sestieri’s team found him in a large old building with a hidden gallery down by the harbour. He was around two thousand years old— from what we’d now call the time of Christ. Only about a century later the structure of the building was altered and that’s where he was discovered: buried in the new foundations. He was no longer needed for anything else.» — el objeto que abre la serie: una estatua de hombre en toga, de la época de Cristo, hallada enterrada en los cimientos nuevos de un edificio junto al puerto

«But the sculpture itself wasn’t what mattered. W hat was important was the inscription that can still be read on its base. And it wasn’t the only inscription. Two others were found in the same place, on bases that had hardly managed to survive intact; the statues they’d once supported were gone.» — y lo que Kingsley señala como importante: no la escultura sino la inscripción de su base, y otras dos halladas en el mismo sitio

«The three inscriptions were the first pieces in a puzzle, a puzzle that it would take the greater part of ten years to put together. But when Sestieri’s successor, Mario Napoli, finally held the last of the pieces in his hands he still didn’t see the message the puzzle had been spelling out. And no one else did.» — el planteo del enigma: diez años de piezas hasta que Mario Napoli tuvo la última en la mano sin ver el mensaje que deletreaban

«Oulis son oj Euxinus citizen of Velia healer Pholarchos in the 5ygthyear.» — la primera inscripción de Velia tal cual la imprime la capa de texto, con la corrupción del número de año: Oulis hijo de Euxino, ciudadano de Velia, sanador, *Pholarchos*

«Oulis son of Ariston healer Pholarchos in the 280th year ,md Oulis son of Hieronymus healer Pholarchos in the 446th year.» — las otras dos inscripciones, con el mismo patrón y los años 280 y 446

«Oulis was the name of someone dedicated to the god Apollo— to Apollo Oulios as he was sometimes called.» — lo que Kingsley sostiene sobre el primer nombre: Oulis designaba a alguien consagrado al dios Apolo, llamado a veces Apolo Oulios

«And as lor the title Oulios, it contains a delightful ambiguity. Originally it meant ‘deadly’, ‘destructive’, ‘cruel’: every god has his destructive side. But Greeks also explained it another way, as meaning ‘he who makes whole’. That, in a word, is Apollo— the destroyer who heals, the healer who destroys.» — la ambigüedad que señala en el título: originalmente *mortal*, *destructivo*, y también *el que hace entero*, de donde el destructor que sana y el sanador que destruye

«But a string of three inscriptions all starting with the same name, this name, isn’t a coincidence; and the way each of the men is referred to as Oulis makes one thing very plain. As the first people who published the texts already saw, these were men connected with Apollo not on a casual basis but systematically— from generation to generation.» — la conclusión que saca de las tres inscripciones, atribuida también a sus primeros editores: hombres vinculados a Apolo de forma sistemática y de generación en generación

«Every person mentioned on the inscriptions is called ‘healer’ as well. The Greek word is Iatros. But Apollo was known as Iatros himself: it was one of his favourite titles.» — el segundo término de las inscripciones: *Iatros*, sanador, que era además uno de los títulos preferidos de Apolo

«If you were to look up the ancient Greek dictionaries under the entry for Oulios you’d find the explanation Apollo. For he was a healer.’» — el apoyo lexicográfico que aduce: los diccionarios griegos antiguos explican Oulios como Apolo, porque era sanador

«So as healers these men were doing what Apollo did. Apollo was their god; and they were his representatives on earth.» — y la conclusión: como sanadores esos hombres hacían lo que Apolo, y eran sus representantes en la tierra

«This is where the Velians came from when they left Phocaea for the west.» — el enlace geográfico: los centros de culto de Apolo Oulios estaban en la costa de Anatolia, de donde vinieron los velienses

«There are so many signs— the coins they made, the design of their buildings, the details of their religion— that show how faithfully the Velians followed the ways of their ancestors.» — las señales que enumera de esa continuidad: monedas, diseño de los edificios y detalles de la religión

«The time periods on the inscriptions— 280 years, 379 years, 446 years— sound immense, and yet they correspond to reality. The three healers belonged to a tradition stretching back well over five hundred years, back to before Velia had even been founded by the Phocaeans.» — lo que Kingsley sostiene sobre las cifras de las inscripciones: corresponden a una tradición de más de quinientos años, anterior a la fundación misma de Velia

«So Parmenides’journey is down to the underworld, into the regions of Hades and Tartarus from where no» — la tesis del capítulo: el viaje de Parménides baja al inframundo, a las regiones de Hades y del Tártaro de donde nadie suele volver; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana y la capa de texto pega *Parmenides’journey*

«(me usually returns. And once you start to understand (Ins then all the other details fall into their place. He was ii ,i veiling in the direction of his own death, consciously ji id willingly; and the only way to describe that is in the language of myth, because myth is just the world of meaning we’ve left behind.» — y lo que Kingsley deduce de ahí: Parménides viajaba consciente y voluntariamente en dirección a su propia muerte, y eso solo se describe en lengua de mito; la capa de texto imprime *(me* por *one*

«A n d with soft seductive words the girls cunningly persuaded her to» — el paso de las puertas en la traducción de Kingsley: las jóvenes persuaden con palabras suaves y seductoras a la Justicia; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«push hack immediately, ju st for them, the bar that holts the gates. A n d as the doors flew open, making the bronze axles with their pegs and nails spin—now one, now the o th e rin their pipes, they created a gaping chasm. Straight through and on the girls held fa st their course for the chariot and horses, straight down the road.» — y la continuación en la plana siguiente: al correrse el cerrojo y abrirse las hojas se crea un abismo por el que el carro sigue derecho; la capa de texto imprime *hack* por *back* y *holts* por *bolts*

«he first thing the goddess does after Parmenides arrives is reassure him: reassure him that what brought him to her ‘was no hard fate’. Those words ‘hard fate’ have a very specific meaning in ancient Greek. They’re a standard expression for death.» — el argumento con que Kingsley lee el recibimiento: las palabras *hard fate* del poema son en griego antiguo expresión corriente para la muerte; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«Her reassurance would be pointless unless there was good reason to suppose death is what had brought him to her. She’s saying, without having to say it any more clearly, that you’d only expect to arrive where he has arrived if you were dead.» — y lo que de ahí infiere: tranquilizarlo no tendría sentido si no hubiera motivo para suponer que lo que lo llevó ahí fue la muerte

«So that’s what he has done— travelled the road of death while still alive, gone where the dead go without dying. For anyone else the place he’s come to would be deadly.» — la fórmula que da al asunto del libro: recorrer el camino de la muerte estando vivo, ir adonde van los muertos sin morir

«There’s just one passage in Greek literature that comes close to Parmenides’ description of his welcome. It’s a passage describing the welcome waiting for the great hero Heracles when he went down to the underworld alive: the queen of the dead greets him as warmly as she would greet her own brother.» — el único paralelo griego que admite: el recibimiento de Heracles vivo en el inframundo, saludado por la reina de los muertos como a un hermano

«Those huge gates he comes to— they’re guarded by Justice. Justice for the Greeks was a goddess, a goddess who had to be able to keep a watch on everything that’s happening in the world. But when it was a question of stating where she lives, the clearest answer from the Greek poets was that she shares the same house as the gods of the underworld’.» — otro indicio que reúne: las puertas del poema están guardadas por la Justicia, de quien los poetas griegos dicen que comparte casa con los dioses del inframundo

«People have been so baffled by his poem, made it out to be such a lifeless thing, baffled everyone else. That’s only because they refuse to see it against its background— in terms of the traditions he inherited and the place he came I torn. Cut something off from its roots and of course its got no life.» — la objeción que dirige a sus intérpretes: lo declaran desconcertante porque se niegan a leerlo contra su fondo, y algo cortado de sus raíces no tiene vida

«Vase after vase has been found in southern Italy painted with pictures of the underworld. Justice is there, together with the queen of the dead and the hero who’s able to reach her.» — la evidencia material que aduce: los vasos del sur de Italia pintados con el inframundo, con la Justicia, la reina de los muertos y el héroe que llega hasta ella

«Sometimes the hero is Orpheus— Orpheus the magician who managed to make the journey through the [lower of his songs. In Italy Orpheus wasn’t just some sentimental figure from myth. He was much more. He was the focus for mystical and poetic traditions about the underworld, and Velia itself was a centre for those traditions.» — el lugar que da a Orfeo en Italia: no figura sentimental del mito sino foco de tradiciones místicas y poéticas sobre el inframundo, con Velia como uno de sus centros

«One of the oldest Orphic poems described how Justice lives together with the other powers of cosmic law at the entrance to a vast cave: the cave that’s the home of Night.» — el poema órfico que cita: la Justicia vive con las demás potencias de la ley cósmica a la entrada de una gran cueva, la casa de la Noche

«She welcomes him ‘kindly’— the word means ‘favourably’, ‘kindly’, ‘warmly’— and gives him her right hand. Nothing was more important than finding a kind and favourable welcome when you went down to the world of the dead.» — el peso que da al adverbio del poema: nada importaba más que un recibimiento favorable al bajar al mundo de los muertos

«The alternative was annihilation. And there in the underworld the right hand signals acceptance, favour. The left hand means destruction. That’s why Orphic texts were written on gold and buried with initiates in southern Italy, to remind them how to keep to the right and how to make sure the queen of the dead receives them ‘kindly. The word on the texts and the word Parmenides uses— they’re one and the same.» — y el contraste que traza: la alternativa era la aniquilación, la mano derecha señala aceptación y la izquierda destrucción, y la palabra de las láminas órficas de oro es la misma que usa Parménides

«That’s what initiation was: to find out how you’re related to the world of the divine, know how you belong, how you’re at home there just as much as here. It was to become adopted, a child of the gods. For those people it was all a matter of being prepared before you die, making the connection between this world and that. Otherwise it’s too late.» — la definición que da de la iniciación: averiguar cómo se está emparentado con lo divino y quedar adoptado como hijo de los dioses, preparado antes de morir

«It’s such a perfect arrangemen t for wisdom to hide away in death. Everyone runs from death so everyone runs away from wisdom, except for those who are willing to pay the price and go against the stream.» — la fórmula con que explica el ocultamiento: la sabiduría se esconde en la muerte, y como todos huyen de la muerte todos huyen de la sabiduría; la capa de texto parte *arrangement*

«Later on in his poem he explains that night and darkness are the equivalent of ignorance. This can seem amazing: that he should go to the depths of ignorance in search of wisdom instead of straight to the light. But, in Greek, words that mean ‘unknowing’ also mean ‘unknown’; it’s the same with ‘ignorant’ and ‘ignored’.» — la equivalencia que Kingsley extrae del poema: noche y oscuridad equivalen a ignorancia, y en griego lo que significa *no saber* significa también *no sabido*

«Ignorance for Parmenides is only what’s ignorance in terms of ordinary human experience, with all its narrowness and limitations. It’s ignorance simply because it’s ignored, ignored by people who run from death. And what everyone ignores— that’s where wisdom lies.» — y la vuelta que le da: la ignorancia del poema lo es solo respecto de la experiencia humana ordinaria, y en lo que todos ignoran está la sabiduría

«To die before you die, no longer to live on the surface of yourself: this is what Parmenides is pointing to. It demands tremendous courage. The journey he describes changes your body; it alters every cell. Mythologically it’s the journey of the hero, the great heroes like Heracles or Orpheus. And yet to understand what’s involved we have to forget all our concepts of what it means to be a hero. In the Italy of Parmenides’ time the idea of what a hero is was far more profound.» — la fórmula que da título al capítulo, con su exigencia: morir antes de morir cambia el cuerpo y altera cada célula, y pide olvidar lo que hoy se entiende por héroe

«Already at the start of his poem Parmenides mentions the essential thing for making the journey— the longing, the passion or desire. He’s taken to where he goes, but he’s only taken ‘as far as longing can reach’.» — lo que señala como requisito del viaje en el propio poema: el anhelo, la pasión o el deseo, que marca hasta dónde se llega

«We usually think of a hero as a warrior, a fighter. And yet what gets Parmenides where he goes isn’t willpower; it isn’t struggle or effort. He doesn’t have to do anything. He’s just taken, taken straight where he needs to go. And the longing isn’t what gets him there, either: the strength of his longing simply determines how far he can go.» — y la corrección que hace a la idea de héroe: lo que lleva a Parménides no es voluntad ni esfuerzo, es que lo llevan, y el anhelo solo determina la distancia

«Our own longing hardly adds up to anything. It’s enough to take us lunging from one desire to another; that’s all. We scatter it everywhere in wanting this or that: satisfy our desires and never satisfy ourselves. And we never can be satisfied. Our longing is so deep, so immense that nothing in this world of appearances can ever hold it or contain it. So we break it up instead, keep throwing it away—want this, then that, until we’re old and exhausted.» — el contraste con el anhelo moderno: desparramado en deseos sucesivos, nunca colmado porque nada del mundo de las apariencias puede contenerlo

«Sometimes it appears as depression, calling us away I mm everything we think we want, pulling us into the darkness of ourselves. The voice is so familiar that we run I rum it in every way we can; the more powerful the call i lie further we run. It has the power to make us mad, and yet it’s so innocent: the voice of ourselves calling to ourselves. The strange thing is that the negativity isn’t in i lie depression— it’s in running from the depression. And what we’re afraid of really isn’t what we’re afraid of at all.» — cómo lee la depresión: la voz de uno mismo llamándose a uno mismo, con la negatividad no en ella sino en huir de ella

«Always we want to learn from outside, from absorbing other people’s knowledge. It’s safer that way. The trouble is that it’s always other people’s knowledge. We already have everything we need to know, in the darkness inside ourselves. The longing is what turns us inside out until we find the sun and the moon and stars inside.» — y dónde sitúa el saber: no en el conocimiento ajeno sino en la oscuridad de uno mismo, con el anhelo dando la vuelta al interior

«The underworld isn’t just a place of darkness and death. It only seems like that from a distance. In reality its the supreme place of paradox where all the opposites meet. Right at the roots of western as well as eastern mythology there’s the idea that the sun comes out of the underworld and goes back to the underworld every night. It belongs in the underworld. That’s where it has its home; where its children come from. The source of light is at home in the darkness.» — la tesis sobre el inframundo: lugar supremo de la paradoja donde los opuestos se encuentran, de donde sale el sol cada noche y adonde vuelve

«Those people were familiar with Orphic traditions; used them. Heracles was their hero.» — lo que dice de esos pitagóricos: conocían y usaban las tradiciones órficas, y su héroe era Heracles

«Pythagoreans tended to live close to volcanic regions. For them that was something very meaningful. They saw volcanic fire as the light in the depths of darkness: it was the fire of hell, but also the fire that all the light we know and see derives from.» — la observación que añade: los pitagóricos vivían cerca de regiones volcánicas y veían en el fuego volcánico la luz en el fondo de la oscuridad

«well understood that brute force and bravery weren’t enough to take a hero down to the world of the dead. He had to know what he’s doing, where he’s going; know how he stands in relation to the gods. He had to have been initiated into the mysteries of the underworld.» — lo que sostiene sobre la condición del héroe que baja: fuerza y valentía no bastaban, había que saber qué se hace y estar iniciado en los misterios del inframundo; el tramo arranca después del corte de plana

«ning of his poem he says he’s a man who knows’. People have realized for a long time that in ancient Greek this was a standard way of referring to the initiate— to those who know what others don’t and because of what they know are able to go where others won’t.» — la fórmula del poema en que se apoya: *un hombre que sabe*, manera corriente en griego antiguo de nombrar al iniciado; el tramo arranca después del corte de plana, que parte *beginning*

«Ifwe forget Parmenides came from southern Italy then everything goes wrong.» — la regla de lectura que impone: olvidar que Parménides venía del sur de Italia lo echa todo a perder; la capa de texto pega *Ifwe*

«WI lilt he writes about is beyond time and place; but to understand it you have to start from time and place.» — y su reverso: lo que escribe está más allá del tiempo y del lugar, pero para entenderlo hay que partir del tiempo y del lugar; la capa de texto imprime *WI lilt* por *What*

«It’s just a matter of knowing how to turn and face our own longing without interfering with it or doing anything» — lo que propone frente a la huida: volverse y encarar el propio anhelo sin interferir; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«u .ill. And that goes against the grain of everything were used to, because we’ve been taught in so many ways to r scape from ourselves— find a thousand good reasons for avoiding our longing.» — y por qué cuesta: va contra todo lo acostumbrado, porque se enseña a escapar de uno mismo y a encontrar mil razones para evitar el anhelo; la capa de texto imprime *u .ill* por *at all*

«This was well understood in southern Italy. A whole Italian mythology grew up around the figure of the sun god as he’s driven in his chariot by the horses that carry» — dónde sitúa la idea del sol que sale del inframundo: en la mitología italiana del dios sol conducido en su carro; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«him out of the underworld before they take him down again.That was true at Velia too. And for certain men and women known as Pythagoreans— people who had gathered around Pythagoras when he came out to southern Italy from the east— the same ideas were a basic tradition.» — y quiénes la sostenían en Velia: los pitagóricos reunidos en torno a Pitágoras cuando llegó del este al sur de Italia

«And they understood that there’s no going up without going down, tin heaven without going through hell. To them the fire in i lie underworld was purifying, transforming, immortalizing. Everything was part of a process and there were no short cuts. Everything had to be experienced, included; and to find clarity meant facing utter darkness.» — lo que adjudica a esos pitagóricos: no hay subir sin bajar ni cielo sin pasar por el infierno, y el fuego del inframundo era purificador, transformador e inmortalizador

«Deep down we’ve all agreed to look for light in the light and avoid everything else: reject the darkness, the depths.» — el acuerdo tácito que denuncia en el presente: buscar la luz en la luz y rechazar la oscuridad y las profundidades

«It was a question of going right through the darkness to what lies at the other end.» — y el contraste que traza con lo que aquellos hacían: atravesar la oscuridad entera hasta lo que está del otro lado, no mojarse los pies en las emociones

«So when Plato and his followers took over these ideas from the Pythagoreans they cleverly amputated the ambiguities: focused only on the true and the good and the beautiful, and cut out the need for the descent.» — lo que Kingsley adjudica a Platón y a sus seguidores al tomar esas ideas de los pitagóricos: amputar las ambigüedades, quedarse con lo verdadero, lo bueno y lo bello, y suprimir el descenso

«Then there were early Christians who talked about the ‘depths’ of the divine. Most of them were soon silenced. And there were Jewish mystics who spoke of ‘descending’ to the divine; they were silenced too.» — los dos casos paralelos que enumera: los cristianos antiguos que hablaban de las profundidades de lo divino y los místicos judíos que hablaban de descender, unos y otros silenciados

«The trouble is that when the divine is removed from the depths we lose our depth, start viewing the depths with fear and end up struggling, running from ourselves, trying to lift ourselves up by our bootstraps into the beyond.» — y lo que dice que se pierde con eso: al sacar lo divino de las profundidades se pierde la propia profundidad y se acaba huyendo de uno mismo

«But the knowledge of the other way was left only for a few heretics, and writers of oracles, and for the alchemists.» — quiénes conservaron el otro camino según Kingsley: unos pocos herejes, los escritores de oráculos y los alquimistas

«In that knowledge there’s no dogma. It’s too subtle for that. It’s not even a matter of attitude but simply a question of perception— the perception that light belongs in darkness, clarity in obscurity, that darkness can’t be rejected for the sake of light because everything contains its opposite.» — y de qué clase de saber se trata: no dogma ni actitud sino percepción de que la luz pertenece a la oscuridad y todo contiene su contrario

«That’s why Parmenides’ journey takes him precisely to the point where all the opposites meet: the point where Day and Night both come out from, the mythical place where earth and heaven have their source. And that’s why he describes the gates he comes to as having their threshold in Tartarus but ‘reaching up into the heavens’.» — la consecuencia que saca para el poema: el viaje lleva al punto donde los opuestos se encuentran, con las puertas que tienen su umbral en el Tártaro y llegan a los cielos

«This is the place that gives access to the depths and also to the world above. You can go up and you can go down. It’s a point on the axis of the universe: the axis that joins what’s above and what’s below. But first you have to descend to this point before you’re able to ascend, die before you can be reborn. To reach there, where every direction is available and everything merges with its opposite, you have to go down into the darkness— into the world of death where Night and Day both come from.» — cómo describe ese punto: eje del universo donde se une lo de arriba con lo de abajo, y al que hay que descender antes de poder ascender

«As soon as she’s welcomed him, the first thing the goddess does is call Parmenides ‘young man’. That’s just one word in Greek: kouros. A kouros is a young man, a boy, a son or child.» — el término del poema que Kingsley abre a continuación: *kouros*, joven, muchacho, hijo o niño

«There are experts who say this is Parmenides’ way of presenting himself as someone under thirty years old. Others say it’s the goddess’ way of confronting him with his lack of wisdom and experience. The truth is far more subtle.» — las dos lecturas que expone para objetarlas: que Parménides se presenta como menor de treinta años o que la diosa le echa en cara su falta de experiencia

«A kouros was the man of any age who still saw life as a challenge, who faced it with the whole of his vigour and passion, who hadn’t yet stood back to make way for his sons. The word indicated the quality of a man, not how old he was.» — y la definición que da: el hombre de cualquier edad que seguía viendo la vida como desafío y no se había apartado para dejar sitio a sus hijos; indicaba calidad, no edad

«It was also closely connected with initiation. The kouros stands at the borderline between the world of the human and the world of the divine; has access to them both, is loved and recognized in both. It’s only as a kouros that the initiate can possibly succeed at the great ordeal of making a journey into the beyond—just as Parmenides does.» — el vínculo que traza con la iniciación: el kouros está en la frontera entre lo humano y lo divino y solo como kouros puede el iniciado superar la prueba del viaje al más allá

«When Heracles dies and is made immortal, it’s as a kouros that he’s pictured rising up from the funeral pyre. And the situation of the nameless kouros face to face with the nameless goddess, just like Parmenides— this was a well-known scenario in the mysteries of initiation.» — las dos imágenes con que lo sostiene: Heracles inmortalizado se representa como kouros alzándose de la pira, y el kouros sin nombre ante la diosa sin nombre era escenario conocido de los misterios

«It was possible for an older person to perform die role of the kouros, but then he had to have the innocence and purity of a child.» — y el límite que pone: una persona mayor podía hacer ese papel, pero necesitaba la inocencia y la pureza de un niño

«Contact with what’s timeless doesn’t leave you as you are, even though outwardly it can seem to. It takes .iway your past. That’s why the initiate has his old life lalcen away, is given a ‘second destiny instead— is born again, adopted by the gods. And the tough hero becomes a little child.» — lo que sostiene sobre el contacto con lo intemporal: quita el pasado, y por eso al iniciado se le retira la vida vieja y se le da un segundo destino

«Italian sculptures and paintings tell it all: the great hero Heracles as a bearded man reduced to the role of an infant, initiates with the bodies of new-born babies but the faces of old men and women.» — la evidencia figurativa que aduce: Heracles barbado reducido a infante, e iniciados con cuerpo de recién nacido y cara de viejo

«The hero doesn’t just hold in his hand the mythical map for the colonizer to follow. He also holds the map for the initiate, and it’s the map of immortality.» — el doble papel que da al héroe: el mapa mítico del colonizador y también el del iniciado, que es el mapa de la inmortalidad

«On the contrary, this is the only real maturity there is: the maturity of struggling beyond the physical world and discovering that you’re also at home somewhere else.» — y la madurez que reclama para ese volverse niño: la de ir más allá del mundo físico y descubrirse en casa también en otra parte

«T he world of the divine for Greeks was the world of the kourotrophos, nurturer of the kouros ’. This was a common title for their goddesses and gods.» — el término correlativo que introduce: *kourotrophos*, nutridor del kouros, título común de dioses y diosas griegas

«But the relationship is completely different from ordinary human relationships of dependence: it’s something far more paradoxical. For the world of the gods doesn’t only contain the nourishment that young men or women need. It also contains the most essential aspect of themselves.» — y en qué se distingue del vínculo humano: el mundo de los dioses no solo nutre al joven sino que contiene lo más esencial de él

«He’s a god as well, the exact image of the human kouros in the world of the divine; and the most important god of all for a human kouros was Apollo. Apollo was the divine kouros and the god of the kouros. He was his model, his immortal image and embodiment.» — quién es ese kouros divino: Apolo, modelo e imagen inmortal del kouros humano

«The first thing Parmenides is told when he arrives in die underworld is ‘Welcome young man, partnered by immortal charioteers.’» — la traducción que Kingsley defiende para el saludo de la diosa: *emparejado* con aurigas inmortales, no simplemente acompañado

«And yet it’s also to misunderstand the meaning of a word that in Greek always has the sense of partnership— of inseparability, intimacy, of an enduring bond that sustains and never ends. In human terms it can be the bond between brothers and sisters, but above all the intimacy of the partnership between a husband and wife.» — y la objeción filológica que hace a la traducción corriente: la palabra griega tiene siempre sentido de asociación inseparable, como la de marido y mujer

«He arrives as a kouros together with kourai, and it couldn’t be otherwise. The place he’s reached is a place where everything comes together with its opposite: earth and heaven, night and day, light and darkness but also male and female, mortality and immortality, death and youthfulness. And even the fact that his partners are daughters of the Sun, beings of light who are at home in the darkness, couldn’t be more appropriate. Later Parmenides explains how— in terms of the grand illusion we live in— humans themselves are originally solar beings, children of the sun.» — la lectura que remata el capítulo: llega como kouros con kourai al lugar donde todo se junta con su contrario, y más adelante el poema dice que los humanos son en origen seres solares

«Death for us seems just nothingness, where we have to leave everything behind. But its also a fullness that can hardly be conceived of, where everything is in contact with everything and nothing is ever lost. And yet to know that, you have to be able to become conscious in the world of the dead.» — y la definición de muerte que opone a la corriente: no nada sino plenitud donde todo está en contacto con todo, a condición de poder hacerse consciente en el mundo de los muertos

«Kouros is an ancient word, older even than the Greek language. Often it’s a title of honour, never an expression of contempt. W hen the great poets before Parmenides» — lo que sostiene sobre el término: más antiguo que la propia lengua griega, título de honor y nunca expresión de desprecio; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«used the term it was always to communicate a sense of nobility. It was the kouros, more than anyone else, who was a hero.» — y cómo lo usaban los grandes poetas anteriores: para comunicar nobleza, porque el kouros era más que nadie el héroe

«A kouros was often essential for gaining access to the world of the gods. He was needed for prophecy, for receiving oracles, for the magical process of lying down» — la función ritual que le atribuye: hacía falta para la profecía, para recibir oráculos y para el procedimiento mágico de acostarse; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«m a special place at night to obtain messages from the gods through dreams. He was needed because of his sensitivity, his ability to distance himself from the usual human thoughts; because he wouldn’t try to interfere unconsciously or consciously with what he heard and wceived.» — y en qué consistía ese procedimiento: acostarse de noche en un lugar especial para obtener mensajes de los dioses por sueños, con un kouros que no interferiría en lo recibido; la capa de texto imprime *m* por *in* y *wceived* por *received*

«FTEN WORDS ARE ONLY WORDS. SOMETIMES they’re not: sometimes they have the power lo open up a whole world— to give reality to things that have always been hovering on the horizon of our consciousness, just out of reach.» — la apertura del capítulo *Masters of Dreams*: a veces una palabra abre un mundo entero y da realidad a lo que rondaba el borde de la consciencia; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«W hen they’re faced with some new evidence they like to add one and one together and arrive at one and a half; then they spend years arguing about what happened to the other half. The half that’s missing is the ability to watch and listen— to follow the evidence where it leads, however unfamiliar.» — la objeción que hace a los estudiosos: ante evidencia nueva suman uno y uno y sacan uno y medio, y lo que falta es la capacidad de mirar y escuchar

«Pholarchos is a combination of two words: pholeos and archos. Archos means a lord, a chief, the person in charge. But it’s the first half that’s unusual.» — la descomposición que propone: *pholeos* más *archos*, señor o jefe, con la primera mitad como la inusual

«A pholeos is a lair where animals hide, a den. Often it’s a cave. Any other senses of the word derived from this.» — el sentido primario que le da: guarida donde los animales se esconden, a menudo una cueva

«The trouble is that those dictionaries were put together at a time when the language was almost dying out. Often the people who wrote them were just guessing, groping in the dark. There are no real answers here— only pointers on the way.» — la reserva que pone a los diccionarios griegos antiguos: se compilaron cuando la lengua casi se extinguía y a menudo sus autores adivinaban a oscuras

«In the whole history of the Greek language, through I mm the earliest times to how it’s spoken nowadays, [>holeos always has the same basic meaning. It’s a place where animals go into retreat: where they lie motionless, absolutely still, hardly breathing. They sleep there, or they stay in a state similar to sleep, or they hibernate.» — el sentido constante que reclama para la palabra: sitio de retiro donde los animales yacen inmóviles, casi sin respirar, durmiendo o hibernando

«That’s why expressions like ‘being in a lair’ or ‘lying in a lair’—pholeia and pholeuein were the words in ancient Greek— came to mean being in a state of suspended animation.» — y lo que de ahí derivó: *pholeia* y *pholeuein* pasaron a significar estado de animación suspendida

«They could be used to describe a woman from southern Anatolia who would go into a state of hibernation for months at a time. The only way you could tell she was alive was from her breathing. And early doctors would use the words to describe the state of apparent death, of suspended animation when the pulse is so quiet you can hardly feel it.» — los dos usos que documenta: la mujer del sur de Anatolia que hibernaba meses, y los médicos antiguos describiendo la muerte aparente

«So the men called Pholarchos on those inscriptions from Velia— they were in charge of a lair, a place of suspended animation. That doesn’t make much sense. It doesn’t even sound worth making sense of; but it is.» — la conclusión que saca para las inscripciones: los Pholarchos estaban a cargo de una guarida, un lugar de animación suspendida

«Those people called Pholarchos were healers, and healing in the ancient world had a great deal to do with states of suspended animation. It was all tied up in a clumsy-sounding word: incubation.» — y con qué lo enlaza: eran sanadores, y la sanación antigua tenía mucho que ver con estados de animación suspendida, es decir, con la incubación

«To incubate is just to lie down in a place. But the word had a very particular meaning. Before the beginnings of what’s known as ‘rational’ medicine in the West, healing always had to do with the divine. If people were sick it was normal to go to the shrines of gods, or else to the shrines of great beings who once had been humans but now were more than humans: the heroes. And they’d lie down.» — la definición que da del término: acostarse en un lugar, en un tiempo en que sanar tenía siempre que ver con lo divino y se iba a los santuarios de dioses o de héroes

«They would lie down in an enclosed space. Often it was a cave. And either they’d fall asleep and have a dream or they’d enter a state described as neither sleep nor waking— and eventually they’d have a vision. Sometimes the vision or the dream would bring them face to face with the god or the goddess or hero, and that was how the healing came about. People were healed like this all the time.» — cómo describe el procedimiento: en un espacio cerrado, a menudo una cueva, hasta soñar o entrar en un estado que no es sueño ni vigilia, y tener una visión

«W hat’s important is that you would do absolutely nothing. The point came when you wouldn’t struggle or make an effort. You’d just have to surrender to your condition. You would lie down as if you were dead; wait without eating or moving, sometimes for days at a time. And you’d wait for the healing to come from somewhere else, from another level of awareness and another level of being.» — lo que señala como decisivo: no hacer absolutamente nada, no forcejear, yacer como muerto y esperar la curación desde otro nivel de consciencia

«We still have priests, except that now they belong to a different religion. Underneath the surface of the rhetoiic and persuasion there’s not much to choose between modern science and ancient magic. But because there’s no knowledge left any more of how to find access to what’s beyond our waking consciousness we have to take anaesthetics and drugs. And because there’s no longer any understanding of powers greater than ourselves we’re denied any meaning to our suffering. So we suffer as liabilities, die as statistics.» — la objeción que dirige al presente: entre ciencia moderna y magia antigua hay poco que escoger bajo la retórica, y sin acceso a lo que está más allá de la vigilia quedan la anestesia y las drogas; la capa de texto imprime *rhetoiic* por *rhetoric*

«Two thousand years ago a man called Strabo wrote a passage describing the countryside of western Anatolia. He was talking about an area to the south of Phocaea, in a region called Caria. It was an area he knew well. This is where he once lived and studied.» — la fuente antigua que introduce: Estrabón describiendo la campiña de Anatolia occidental, en Caria, región que conocía bien

«But often they lead the sick into the cave instead and settle them down, then leave them there in utter stillness (,hesychia) without any food for several days—just like animals in a lair (pholeos). And sometimes those who are afflicted by illness have dreams of their own, dreams that they take very seriously. And yet even then they still rely on the others, as priests, to perform the role of guides and advisors by introducing them to the mysteries. For anyone else the place is forbidden territory, and deadly.» — la continuación del pasaje de Estrabón, con los términos griegos que Kingsley conserva entre paréntesis: dejan a los enfermos en quietud completa, *hesychia*, sin comer varios días, como animales en una guarida, *pholeos*

«Every detail in the account has its significance. But ids enough just to notice the incubation in a cave, the dreams, the state of utter stillness— and the fact that at i his cave in Caria the sick are described as lying for days on end ‘like animals in a lair.» — lo que Kingsley pide retener del pasaje: la incubación en cueva, los sueños, la quietud completa y la comparación con los animales en la guarida

«And there are the priests to guide them through the process, often keeping to the background but always lirmly in charge: the masters of dreams, lords of the lair.» — y la figura que de ahí extrae: los sacerdotes que guían el proceso, señores de la guarida y maestros de los sueños

«If thousands of years ago you followed the road lurther inland you came to a town called Hierapolis— and to another Plutonium, another entrance to the underworld. There the religious practices were almost identical to the ones at the Plutonium described by Strabo. And there at Hierapolis, right above the cave, was a temple to Apollo: an Anatolian Apollo, god of the sun.» — el segundo Plutonio que aduce: en Hierápolis, con prácticas casi idénticas y un templo de Apolo justo encima de la cueva

«For Apollo wasn’t just a god of healing. He was also a god of incubation. At Hierapolis itself, people slept in the sanctuary during the night for the sake of having dreams. And at the greatest incubation centres in Italy or Greece or Anatolia, Apollo was always there. If he wasn’t the chief god, he was somewhere in the background.» — la tesis del capítulo sobre Apolo: no solo dios de la sanación sino dios de la incubación, presente en los grandes centros de Italia, Grecia y Anatolia

«Often those centres were shrines of Asclepius, or they were shrines of heroes. The heroes were usually considered children of Apollo— and so was Asclepius. He owed his knowledge of healing to his father, and most of his incubation centres had once been centres for the worship of Apollo. Even after Asclepius became the most famous Greek god of incubation he still shared his own shrines, as well as the honours people gave him, with Apollo.» — cómo enlaza a Apolo con Asclepio: los héroes se tenían por hijos de Apolo, y también Asclepio, que debía a su padre el saber curar

«W hen magicians in the centuries after Christ wanted to experience revelations or receive knowledge through dreams, Apollo was the god they invoked through incubation in the darkness of the night.» — el alcance temporal que le da: los magos de los siglos posteriores a Cristo invocaban a Apolo por incubación para recibir conocimiento en sueños

«There at Istria a family of priests was dedicated to serving Apollo the healer, from generation to generation. And there, in the sacred temple area, two words were found inscribed on a slab of marble. The words were Apollo Pholeuterios.» — la pieza que le faltaba: en Istria, colonia del Mar Negro, una losa de mármol con las palabras *Apollo Pholeuterios*

«Archaeologists have worried about what the title Pholeuterios could mean. The man who discovered the inscription simply said ‘I confess I don’t begin to understand.’ Others have been more persevering: have tried to give it the meaning Apollo who hides away’ in the sense of Apollo who protects from evil’. But that’s impossible; Greeks wouldn’t express the idea this way. There’s only one thing it can mean. It means Apollo who hides away in a lair’— his title as the incubator god, the god of suspended animation.» — lo que dice de las lecturas propuestas y la suya: no *Apolo que protege del mal* sino *Apolo que se esconde en una guarida*, título del dios incubador

«These were old ideas, ancient practices— practices that had their home in western Asia and especially in Caria. For the Anatolian origin of the name Pholarchos is proved by Istria just as the Anatolian origin of the name Oulis is proved by Marseilles. Both words belonged to the traditions that the Phocaeans took out with them to Italy when they left the coast of Asia for the West.» — y el origen que les asigna: prácticas de Asia occidental y sobre todo de Caria, con Istria probando el origen anatolio de *Pholarchos* como Marsella prueba el de *Oulis*

«All three of the Greek inscriptions discovered at Velia by Sestieri mention a word that hasn’t been found a nywhere else in the world. It had only ever been encountered once before.» — el hallazgo léxico sobre el que gira el capítulo: las tres inscripciones griegas de Velia traen una palabra que no se había encontrado en ninguna otra parte del mundo

«Otherwise it’s unheard of in the whole of Greek and Latin literature. It’s Pholarchos.» — y el nombre de esa palabra, que Kingsley reserva para el final de la plana: *Pholarchos*, desconocida en toda la literatura griega y latina

«But that’s not to say you were left alone. There would be people in charge of the place— priests who understood how the process worked and how to supervise it, who» — la salvedad que pone al procedimiento de incubación: había gente a cargo del lugar, sacerdotes que entendían el proceso y sabían supervisarlo; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«hi i'w how to help you understand what you needed to know without interfering with the process itself.» — y en qué consistía esa ayuda: hacer entender lo que hacía falta saber sin interferir en el proceso; la capa de texto imprime *hi i'w* por *knew*

«And in the passage he describes a famous cave there, known as a Charonium or entrance to the underworld. Next to it was a temple dedicated to the gods of the un» — lo que Estrabón describe ahí según Kingsley: una cueva llamada Caronio, entrada al inframundo, junto a un templo de los dioses de abajo; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana a media palabra

«derworld: to Pluto— one of the titles given to Hades— and his wife Persephone, who was often referred to as ‘the Maiden’. It was usual Greek practice not to mention the divinities of the underworld by name.» — y a quiénes estaba dedicado: a Plutón, uno de los títulos de Hades, y a Perséfone, llamada la Doncella, porque no era costumbre griega nombrar a los dioses de abajo

«On the road leading from Tralles to Nysa there’s a village that belongs to the people of Nysa. And there, not far from the city of Acharaca, that’s where the Plutonium is—the entrance to the underworld. There’s a sacred precinct there, very well-endowed, and a temple to Pluto and the Maiden.» — el pasaje de Estrabón en la traducción de Kingsley: entre Tralles y Nisa, cerca de Acharaca, está el Plutonio, la entrada al inframundo, con recinto sagrado y templo

«And the Charonium is a cave just above the precinct. The place is quite amazing. For what they say is that people who fall ill and are willing to submit to the methods of healing offered by these two divinities come here and live for a while in the village together with the most experienced among the priests. And these priests lie down and sleep in the cave on behalf of the sick, then they prescribe treatments on the basis of the dreams they receive. It’s these same men who also invoke the healing power of the gods.» — la continuación del pasaje de Estrabón: los enfermos viven un tiempo en la aldea con los sacerdotes más experimentados, que duermen en la cueva en su lugar y prescriben según los sueños recibidos

«Apollo the healer as Pholeuterios in Istria, priests of» — el arranque de la conclusión del capítulo, que el troceo corta en el límite de chunk reemitiendo el marcador de plana a media frase

«Apollo the healer as Pholarchos at Velia: the two titles are obviously related, offshoots of the same tradition. Apollo was the god of whoever lies down like an animal in a lair. And as his human representatives, the healers from Velia were Lords of the Lair.» — y la conclusión completa: los dos títulos son brotes de la misma tradición, Apolo era el dios de quien se acuesta como animal en una guarida y los sanadores de Velia eran, como representantes suyos, Señores de la Guarida

«hese traditions linking apollo w ith incubation and caves and dark places: they have nothing at all to do with the Apollo we’ve become used to.» — el deslinde con que abre el capítulo *Apollo*: las tradiciones que ligan a Apolo con la incubación, las cuevas y los lugares oscuros no tienen que ver con el Apolo al que estamos acostumbrados; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«Nowadays he’s considered the divine embodiment of reason and rationality— as if a god could ever be reasonable in the sense that we attribute to the word. The history of how this notion came to be substituted for an awareness of the things he used to be is an absurd one, the way such stories usually are. It reaches back a long time, and the story hasn’t yet finished. Attempts have been made at rationalizing Asclepius but they never lasted long. The rationalizing of Apollo still goes on.» — la objeción que dirige a esa imagen: hoy se le tiene por encarnación divina de la razón, y la racionalización de Apolo sigue en marcha

«But he wasn’t clear at all. Above anything else he was a god of oracles and prophecy— and the oracles he gave out were riddles, full of ambiguities and traps. It was the people who believed everything was bright and clear who ended up in trouble.» — lo que sostiene contra ella: era ante todo dios de oráculos y profecía, y sus oráculos eran acertijos llenos de ambigüedades y trampas

«And yet, especially in Anatolia, he had a very different side. There songs were sung in his honour that were full of strange words, sung in an incantatory language no one could understand. And his oracles were spoken by his prophet in a voice heavy with trance: oracles full of repetitions and riddles, expressed in a poetry that at times hardly seemed poetry at all. For Apollo was a god who operated on another level of consciousness with rules and a logic of its own.» — el otro lado que le atribuye, sobre todo en Anatolia: himnos en lengua encantatoria que nadie entendía y oráculos dichos en voz pesada de trance

«Sometimes it’s said that when magicians during the centuries after Christ invoked Apollo through incubation in the middle of the night, this was a proof of how his brightness had already faded away— along with the famous brightness of the classical world.» — la lectura que expone para objetarla: que la invocación nocturna de Apolo por los magos posteriores a Cristo probaría que su brillo ya se había apagado

«But the fact is that he was always associated with darkness and night. At Rome, where Greek colonists introduced the worship of Apollo the healer, the best time for incubation at his temple was in the middle of the night. And back in Anatolia there were ancient temple traditions that involved locking Apollo’s priestess up with her god in the evening. When she came out the next morning she was able to prophesy because of her mystical union with him during the night.» — y lo que opone: siempre estuvo asociado a la oscuridad y a la noche, con incubación de medianoche en Roma y con la sacerdotisa encerrada de noche con su dios en Anatolia

«W hen people started trying to make Apollo reasonable, philosophically acceptable, they were simply looking at the surface and avoiding what’s underneath.» — la objeción que hace a la operación entera: mirar la superficie y evitar lo que hay debajo

«Really his links with the sun go back far into the past, but formal statements from Greeks identifying the sun with Apollo only start appearing at a certain time, which was also the time when Parmenides was alive. And what’s important about these statements is the way they indicate that the identification was esoteric— a matter for initiates only, for people familiar with the silent names of the gods’.» — lo que señala sobre la identificación de Apolo con el sol: las declaraciones griegas formales empiezan en tiempos de Parménides y presentan la identificación como esotérica, propia de iniciados

«Now it’s so easy to assume that Apollo and the sun are all a matter of brightness and light. But that’s to forget where the sun is most at home: in the darkness of the underworld. And it’s also to miss what those statements about the sun and Apollo actually say.» — y la advertencia que pone: suponer que Apolo y el sol son asunto de brillo es olvidar dónde está el sol más en casa, en la oscuridad del inframundo

«One of them happens to be the oldest mention in ancient literature of Orpheus’ descent to the underworld. It explains how Orpheus came to be so devoted to Apollo. Tradition made him a priest and prophet of Apollo, sometimes even made him his son. But this account says it was only after he went down to the world of the dead and ‘because he saw the things to be seen there just as they are’ that he understood why the sun is the greatest of the gods— and is identical to Apollo.» — el testimonio que aduce: la mención más antigua del descenso de Orfeo, donde solo tras bajar al mundo de los muertos entiende que el sol es el mayor de los dioses

«The poem described him as making one major discovery that he brought back to the world of the living. This was the fact that Apollo shares his oracular powers with Night.» — y el hallazgo que el poema atribuía a Orfeo: que Apolo comparte sus poderes oraculares con la Noche

«And for most people they didn’t any more. Experience of another world through incubation holds little value once you start to place all your trust in the apparent powers of reason.» — y la explicación que da de ese desenlace: la experiencia de otro mundo por incubación vale poco cuando se confía todo a los poderes aparentes de la razón

«According to an Orphic poem Apollo and Persephone went to bed together, made love. The tradition makes perfect sense in every possible way. For something that’s hardly ever noticed is how the healing powers of Apollo and his son Asclepius brought them into an intimate relationship with death. To heal is to know the limits of healing and also what lies beyond. Ultimately there’s no real healing without the ability to face death itself.» — la tradición órfica que llama la más simple y la más mítica: Apolo y Perséfone se acostaron juntos, y no hay sanación real sin capacidad de encarar la muerte

«This explains why, in Caria, either of them could equally well be the gods at incubation centres where people came to lie down in utter stillness like animals in a lair. The stillness is the stillness of death, but that’s how the healing comes.» — lo que con eso explica: que en Caria uno u otro pudieran ser los dioses de los centros de incubación, porque la quietud es la de la muerte y así viene la curación

«And it explains as well why a strange pattern keeps repeating itself in the descriptions of hero-figures who were associated with Apollo. Priests and servants of Apollo themselves, they also had the closest links with the cult and worship of Persephone.» — y el patrón que cierra el capítulo: las figuras heroicas ligadas a Apolo tienen a la vez los vínculos más estrechos con el culto de Perséfone

«E DOESN’T SAY WHO SHE IS. Right at the beginning of his poem he describes how he’s taken on the ‘road of the divinity, and when you read the original Greek there’s just a hint that the divinity is feminine— just the slightest suggestion, that’s all. It would be hard even to start to explain how he used the ambiguity of language to say and not say at the same time. But that’s the way Parmenides worked.» — la observación que abre el capítulo *Goddess*: el poema solo insinúa en griego que la divinidad del camino es femenina, y así trabajaba Parménides según Kingsley; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«And when at last he meets her he simply calls her ‘goddess’. People have offered the strangest of reasons why, given all sorts of explanations for who she is. There are some who claim he didn’t give her a name because really she’s not a goddess at all, just a philosophical abstraction. Others say she must be Justice; that she’s Day or Night.» — las lecturas que expone para descartarlas: abstracción filosófica, la Justicia, el Día o la Noche

«But she’s none of those. Justice is her doorkeeper, and when later in the poem she comes to talk about Night and Day she says they’re two illusory opposites in a world of deception. That’s no way to talk about yourself.» — y la objeción interna que opone: la Justicia es su portera, y del Día y la Noche el poema dice que son opuestos ilusorios de un mundo de engaño

«Parmenides has come down to the underworld, to the goddess who lives in the realms of the dead. The Greeks called her Persephone.» — la identificación que Kingsley sostiene: la diosa sin nombre es la que vive en los reinos de los muertos, a quien los griegos llamaban Perséfone

«He arrives at her home just beyond the gates of Night and Day, by the chasm of Tartarus and the M ansions of Night. The great Greek poets knew very well the name of the goddess who has her home in the underworld. Just past the gates used by Night and Day, next to the chasm of Tartarus and the Mansions of Night, is the home of Hades and his wife: Persephone.» — el argumento topográfico que da: los grandes poetas griegos sitúan justo ahí, pasadas las puertas y junto al abismo del Tártaro, la casa de Hades y su esposa

«The goddess who welcomes Heracles so warmly when he goes down as an initiate to the underworld is Persephone. And in paintings of her, made during Parmenides’ own lifetime, you can still see exactly how she greets him. She welcomes Heracles into her home by reaching out and giving him her right hand.» — el segundo argumento: quien recibe a Heracles iniciado es Perséfone, y las pinturas de la época de Parménides la muestran tendiéndole la mano derecha

«And in the Orphic texts that were written on gold for initiates, the goddess who’s expected to receive them ‘kindly — just as Parmenides’ goddess receives him ‘kindly— is Persephone.» — y el tercero: la diosa que en las láminas órficas de oro debe recibir *amablemente* al iniciado, con la misma palabra que usa Parménides, es Perséfone

«There were good reasons for not mentioning gods or goddesses by name. At Athens ‘the goddess’ was Athena. I Everybody knew who she was. It was perfectly clear from the context: no ambiguity, no risk of confusion.» — la razón que da para el nombre omitido: en Atenas *la diosa* era Atenea y el contexto bastaba

«For the Greeks, and not only for the Greeks, a name was power. The name of a god is the power of the god. You don’t invoke a divinity in vain. And there’s also the sense of divine power as a vastness— or a closeness— that’s beyond the limitation of any conceivable name.» — y la razón de fondo: el nombre de un dios es su poder, y la potencia divina excede todo nombre concebible

«This was true above all of the gods of the underworld. People didn’t talk about them a great deal. Their nature is a mystery.» — dónde valía eso sobre todo: los dioses del inframundo, de los que no se hablaba mucho

«And right from the beginning he was connected not only with night but with caves and dark places, with the underworld and death. This is why, at the Anatolian» — el vínculo que traza desde el principio: no solo con la noche sino con las cuevas, los lugares oscuros, el inframundo y la muerte; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«town of Hierapolis, Apollo’s temple was right above the nivc: leading down to the underworld. And it’s why at ot her famous oracle centres in Anatolia his temples were built just the same way— above a cave giving access to the underworld that was entered by his priest and by initiates» — y el caso anatolio con que lo apoya: en Hierápolis el templo de Apolo estaba justo encima de la cueva que bajaba al inframundo, como en otros centros oraculares

«There was also a famous Orphic poem. It had been written by a Pythagorean in southern Italy, but hardly any traces of it have been allowed to survive. It presented Orpheus making his journey to the underworld at the site of a dream oracle, next to a volcanic crater. In other words he made his descent in another state of consciousness,in akindofdream,usingthetechniqueofincubation.» — el poema órfico escrito por un pitagórico del sur de Italia: presentaba a Orfeo descendiendo junto a un cráter volcánico en un oráculo de sueños, es decir por incubación; la capa de texto pega las últimas palabras sin espacios

«We know less about the poem than about the response it evoked from religious authorities centuries later. Orpheus was mocked for his imaginary wisdom, attacked for spreading his ‘false notions’ through the world. And there was a famous writer called Plutarch—» — la reacción posterior que documenta: Orfeo fue burlado por su sabiduría imaginaria y atacado por difundir nociones falsas; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«lie was a good man, a good Platonist, with good sources ol information about the ideas generally accepted at Delphi in his time— who put the official position clearly on record. ‘Apollo and Night have nothing in common.’» — y la posición oficial que Plutarco dejó por escrito, según Kingsley con buenas fuentes sobre lo que se aceptaba en Delfos: Apolo y la Noche no tienen nada en común; la capa de texto imprime *lie* por *He*

«Apollo is a god of healing but he’s also deadly. The queen of the dead is the embodiment of death; and yet it was said that the touch of her hand is healing.» — la reciprocidad que traza: Apolo sana y a la vez es mortal, y de la reina de los muertos se decía que el toque de su mano cura

«It’s such an old situation: one that’s repeated time and time again in approaching the history of ourselves.» — la observación general con que enmarca el caso del nombre omitido: es una situación vieja, repetida cada vez que se aborda la propia historia

«The answers to the questions we ask stare us in the face but we prefer to look somewhere else— anywhere else.» — y en qué consiste: las respuestas miran a la cara y se prefiere mirar a cualquier otro lado

«It’s a strange thing. Because they’re there the more you speak about them here the less you say. They belong to another dimension, not this, and what’s silence here is language there. Here their speech is just an oracle or» — la formulación con que cierra: por pertenecer a otra dimensión, cuanto más se habla de ellos aquí menos se dice, y lo que aquí es silencio allá es lengua; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«riddle, and here their smile can seem like sadness.» — y el remate de esa frase en la plana siguiente: aquí la sonrisa de ellos puede parecer tristeza

«It’s possible to enter that dimension, go through death while still alive. But afterwards you don’t talk very much. W hat you’ve seen is shrouded in silence. There are things that just can’t be said.» — lo que sostiene sobre quien entra en esa dimensión: se puede pasar por la muerte estando vivo, pero después se habla poco y lo visto queda envuelto en silencio

«something different to your words because death is the place where all words come from— like sparks that have their origin in fire. Then what’s said has a certain power, but not because the words mean something outside them or point somewhere else. They have power because they contain their significance and meaning inside them.» — lo que Kingsley dice del habla de quien volvió: las palabras tienen poder no por apuntar a otra cosa sino porque contienen su significado dentro

«More than in the case of any other divinities it was normal not to give a name to the gods or goddesses of the underworld. Then the silence was deliberate. Any risk of confusion was accepted as a part of the mystery; ambiguity was inevitable. Things were left unclear in the same way that Parmenides doesn’t leave anything too clear about the identity of his goddess.» — la regla que reconstruye para los dioses de abajo: el silencio era deliberado y la ambigüedad inevitable, igual que en la diosa sin nombre del poema

«And all across the Greek world there was one particular divinity who was constantly left unnamed— but especially through southern Italy and the regions surrounding Velia. In ordinary language, in poetry, in the statements given by oracles, it was normal simply to refer to the queen of the dead as ‘goddess’.» — la divinidad que señala como constantemente innombrada, sobre todo en el sur de Italia: la reina de los muertos, llamada simplemente *la diosa*

«So it’s not only clear from the details of Parmenides’ journey who his goddess is: it’s even clear from his unclarity.» — la conclusión que saca: la identidad de la diosa se ve tanto por los detalles del viaje como por la propia falta de claridad

«Mainly the worship of Persephone was in the hands of women, and women hardly wrote at all. Sometimes icmples built for her and her mother Demeter aren’t mentioned in one single document or report from the ancient world. Nobody knows about their existence until dieir remains happen to be found somewhere, inside or on the edge of famous towns.» — por qué el culto de Perséfone deja poco rastro escrito, según Kingsley: estaba sobre todo en manos de mujeres, que apenas escribían

«Well over two hundred years ago, back in the eighteenth century, a local baron from southern Italy came across an old inscription on a patch of land that turned out to be the area of ancient Velia. He took it back home: ‘che tengo in mia casa’, I have it in my house. The inscription was written in Latin, with Greek words scattered through it. It described a formal dedication from the people of the city to Persephone.» — el episodio del barón del siglo XVIII: halló en el terreno de la antigua Velia una inscripción latina con palabras griegas que dedicaba la ciudad a Perséfone

«Over time the language the Velians used to speak had changed from Greek to Latin; but even so they still kept using Greek words in their Latin inscriptions. By modern standards they were extremely conservative people, like so many Italian settlements of Greeks. They held fast to their old words and traditions.» — la explicación que Kingsley opone: los velienses pasaron del griego al latín conservando palabras griegas en sus inscripciones, porque eran gente muy conservadora

«Other signs of Persephone’s importance at Velia also started to emerge. A block of stone was found engraved with a dedication to her: j ust her name and her husband’s name carved in Greek on the rock. And an area sacred to the worship she shared with her mother, Demeter, had been unearthed in a field half-way between Velia and Posidonia— a town steeped in the worship of Persephone, the same Posidonia where the stranger came from who once told the Phocaeans how to make sense of Apollo’s oracle.» — las otras señales que reúne: un bloque con dedicatoria a la diosa y a su esposo, y un recinto compartido con Deméter a medio camino entre Velia y Posidonia

«It’s the same story as with the inscriptions for the Oulis healers, those priests of Apollo: later evidence pointing back to earlier traditions with five hundred years in between.» — la forma que reconoce en ese dato: evidencia tardía que apunta a tradiciones anteriores con quinientos años de por medio

«But there are some things that don’t change. And what draws us is what somehow was already known to us at the beginning.» — el remate del capítulo: lo que atrae es lo que de algún modo ya se sabía al principio

«O GO DOWN TO THE UNDERWORLD WHEN you’re dead is one thing. To go there while you’re alive, prepared and knowingly, and then learn from the experience— that’s another thing entirely.» — la distinción con que abre el capítulo *Iatromantis*: bajar al inframundo muerto es una cosa, bajar vivo, preparado y a sabiendas, y aprender de la experiencia es otra; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«The formal side to incubation was simple enough. Usually you’d lie down in a special place where you wouldn’t be disturbed. Sometimes it was a room inside a house or temple; often it was a cave or other place considered a point of entry to the underworld.» — el lado formal de la incubación: acostarse en un sitio donde no molestaran, a veces un cuarto y a menudo una cueva tenida por entrada al inframundo

«And people didn’t do this just when they were sick. There used to be experts at incubation— masters at the art of going into another state of consciousness or allowing themselves to go if they were drawn there.» — y quiénes la practicaban fuera de la enfermedad: expertos en incubación, maestros en el arte de entrar en otro estado de consciencia

«There was a man from Crete: in the Cretan dialect he was known as a kouros. Legends about him described how he slept for years in a sacred cave and learned everything he knew through a dream. It was said that for him dreams were his teachers— that really he had no human teacher because his teacher was his dream.» — el caso cretense que aduce: un kouros que durmió años en una cueva sagrada y aprendió todo por un sueño, sin maestro humano

«Afterwards he became famous for his ability to heal whole cities; and the traditions about him made it quite clear where his powers of healing came from. They came from what he discovered about the world of the dead and the judgement of the dead, from ‘his encounters while dreaming with gods and the teachings of gods and with Justice and Truth’.» — y de dónde venía su poder de sanar ciudades enteras según las tradiciones: de lo que descubrió sobre el mundo y el juicio de los muertos, y de sus encuentros oníricos con la Justicia y la Verdad

«It’s not difficult to see the links within links and patterns within patterns: to be reminded of Parmenides’ descent to the world of the dead, of his encounters with gods and the teachings of gods, of the way he keeps referring in his poem to the divine figures of Justice and Truth.» — el paralelo que traza con Parménides: el mismo descenso, los mismos encuentros con dioses y las mismas figuras de Justicia y Verdad en el poema

«The reports about him say he taught his closest disciples to do the same thing, and the language of the leports shows it was the practice of incubation that he taught them. The mysteries of the underworld remained central for later Pythagoreanism— and so did the role that Pythagoreans kept giving to incubation. For this wasn’t a tradition of people who were fond of ideas and beautiful theories. They were people who knew how to die before they died.» — y lo que transmitió según los informes: la práctica de la incubación a sus discípulos más cercanos, en una tradición de gente que sabía morir antes de morir, no de aficionados a las teorías

«For a long time— and long before the discoveries at Velia were ever made— historians noticed the way that Parmenides’ account of his mythical journey connects him with incubation and with people who were experts at incubation: with people who justified their teachings on the basis of journeys they made into another world, who saw it as their job to bring back what they found and describe what they learned.» — lo que Kingsley reconoce como ya advertido por los historiadores: el relato del viaje conecta a Parménides con la incubación y con quienes fundaban su enseñanza en viajes a otro mundo

«Making the connection between them and Parmenides is nothing new. The trouble is knowing what to do with it. W hen it has been acknowledged it’s only acknowledged reluctantly. It couldn’t possibly be relevant to the man known as the founder of western logic; the implications are far too great for how we understand ourselves and the origins of the culture we live in.» — la objeción que dirige a ese reconocimiento: se admite a regañadientes porque las implicaciones para el fundador de la lógica occidental parecen demasiado grandes

«You can call them magicians if you want because that’s exactly what they were, except that then there was no difference between mysticism and magic. The Greeks weren’t always sure what to call them— these people with a mysterious wisdom who were never quite what they seemed, who appeared to have died while still alive. But there was one particular name that fitted them perfectly. The name was Iatromantis.» — el nombre con que cierra el capítulo: se les puede llamar magos, porque entonces no había diferencia entre mística y magia, pero el nombre que les cuadraba era *Iatromantis*

«In the nineteenth century the great scholars of western Europe couldn’t find the inscription any more.» — lo que pasó con esa inscripción en el siglo XIX: los grandes estudiosos de Europa occidental ya no pudieron encontrarla

«proof that it was a forgery so they dismissed the baron as a fool or a liar. He wasn’t either.» — y el juicio que emitieron: las palabras griegas mezcladas con el latín probaban falsificación, y al barón lo tacharon de necio o de mentiroso

«Two thousand years ago Roman writers described the great temple there that had been built for Demeter and Persephone long before them— at a time when Parmenides will still have been a young man. They pointed with pride to the fact that the temple was designed on Greek models.» — la evidencia romana que aduce: escritores romanos describían el gran templo de Deméter y Perséfone, construido cuando Parménides era joven y diseñado según modelos griegos

«Those Roman writers were quite correct. When you look at the evidence from Rome, from Velia, also from Phocaea, it doesn’t just show that the worship of Persephone and Demeter was taken up to Rome in the early days of Velia’s existence.» — lo que concluye de ese testimonio: el culto de Perséfone y Deméter subió a Roma en los primeros tiempos de Velia

«It also shows that this was the same worship the Phocaeans had once practised in Anatolia and the n carried with them whe n they sailed out to the west.» — y el segundo paso: era el mismo culto que los foceos habían practicado en Anatolia y se llevaron al oeste

«Italy was a fine soil for Persephone. The land was fertile with ancient goddesses; and centuries later it was» — la fertilidad religiosa que atribuye a Italia: tierra llena de diosas antiguas; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«Persephone who would provide most of the imagery and inspiration for the Catholics’ Virgin Mary.» — y la línea que traza hasta el cristianismo: Perséfone daría la mayor parte de la imaginería y la inspiración de la Virgen María de los católicos

«Then there was Pythagoras. W hen he left his home island of Samos for Italy he took Anatolian traditions with him— techniques of incubation, techniques for descending to the world of the dead. As a sign of how dedicated he was to the goddesses of the underworld he made his new home in southern Italy into a temple: built» — lo que dice de Pitágoras: llevó de Samos a Italia técnicas de incubación y de descenso al mundo de los muertos, y convirtió su casa del sur de Italia en templo; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«a special underground room where he’d go and stay motionless for long periods of time. Afterwards he’d describe how he had gone down to the underworld and i nine back as a messenger from the gods.» — y en qué consistía: un cuarto subterráneo donde permanecía inmóvil largos periodos, tras lo cual contaba que había bajado al inframundo y vuelto como mensajero de los dioses

«For a long time the significance of incubatory traditions in the ancient world has been lost. We assume the» — la pérdida que declara: se perdió el sentido de las tradiciones de incubación en el mundo antiguo; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«ideas that shaped western culture are just ideas, that it i locsn’t matter where they came from. We have no room lor other states of consciousness— above all no time for anything to do with death. And yet no amount of explaining away Parmenides’ journey, of taking the pieces we want and ignoring the rest, can cover up his conneci ion with those people.» — y el supuesto moderno que objeta: que las ideas que formaron la cultura occidental son solo ideas y da igual de dónde vinieron, sin sitio para otros estados de consciencia; la capa de texto imprime *i locsn’t* por *doesn’t*, *lor* por *for* y *connec-i ion* por *connection*

«And they explained how right from the start it had been maintained by Greek priestesses of the goddesses who were specially» — el detalle romano que Kingsley subraya: el templo lo mantuvieron desde el principio sacerdotisas griegas de las diosas; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«iruined, and sent northwards to Rome, generation after generation, from Velia.» — y su procedencia: formadas y enviadas al norte, a Roma, generación tras generación, desde Velia; la capa de texto imprime *iruined* por *trained*

«Sometimes they did this for the sake ofhealing others, but the main point of incubation really wasn’t the healing at all. That’s simply how it seemed. W hat was most important was the fact that the healing comes from another level of being,» — lo que Kingsley sostiene que estaba en juego: a veces incubaban para curar a otros, pero lo principal no era la curación sino que viene de otro nivel del ser; la capa de texto pega *ofhealing* y el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«from somewhere else. For these were people who were able to enter another world, make contact with the divine, receive knowledge directly from the gods.» — y quiénes eran esos expertos: gente capaz de entrar en otro mundo, hacer contacto con lo divino y recibir conocimiento directamente de los dioses

«HEY DISCOVERED IT IN 1960. IT WAS LYING near the building with the hidden gallery where the Oulis inscriptions had been found.» — el cuarto hallazgo de Velia: un bloque hallado en 1960 junto al edificio de la galería oculta donde aparecieron las inscripciones de los Oulis; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«Carefully it was labelled for the official records— ‘Inventory number 20067, November 2nd I960’— and put away. It wasn’t even made public knowledge for another ten years. The delay was appropriate.» — cómo se archivó: con número de inventario y fecha, sin hacerse público durante otros diez años

«THE THREE WORDS WERE Ouliades Iatromantis Apollo.» — las tres palabras de la inscripción, tal cual las imprime la capa de texto: Ouliades, Iatromantis, Apolo

«Ouliades is more or less exactly the same word as Oulis, just a longer form of the name. Literally it means ‘son of Oulios’. The connection with Apollo— the healing Apollo, Apollo Oulios— is implicit in the word itself; it would be crystal clear even if Apollo wasn’t also mentioned, as he is, on the inscription.» — lo que dice del primer término: forma larga de Oulis, literalmente *hijo de Oulios*, con Apolo implícito en la palabra misma

«Now, with one example of Ouliades and three of Oulis, there could be no doubt. These people at Velia were maintainers of a cult of Apollo: priests of the god, his ‘sons’ and descendants, carriers of his name.» — y la conclusión que saca del conjunto: los de Velia mantenían un culto de Apolo, eran sacerdotes del dios, sus hijos y portadores de su nombre

«The place where it was most popular of all was one particular area of Anatolia. That was the mountainous region to the south of Phocaea called Caria— the same Caria where Apollo Oulios was worshipped, where Apollo’s title Pholeuterios came from, where it was natural to compare lying down at an incubation shrine with lying down in a pholeos or lair.» — de dónde viene el término según Kingsley: de Caria, la región montañosa al sur de Focea donde se veneraba a Apolo Oulios y de donde procede el título Pholeuterios

«A Iatros is a healer; a Iatromantis is a healer of a very particular kind. He’s a healer who’s a prophet, a healer who heals through prophecy. But this isn’t to say much at all unless we understand what prophecy used to mean.» — la definición que da del segundo término: un sanador que es profeta, que sana por profecía, a condición de entender qué era profetizar

«Nowadays we think it has to do with telling the future. And yet that’s just the result of centuries spent trivializing what for the Greeks was something very different. It used to mean giving a voice to what doesn’t have a voice, meant acting as a mouthpiece for the divine. It all had to do with being able to contact and then talk from another level of consciousness.» — y el deslinde que hace: no adivinar el futuro sino dar voz a lo que no la tiene y hablar como boca de lo divino, desde otro nivel de consciencia

«The greatest prophets in ancient Greece were as famous for looking into the past and into the present as i hey were for looking into the future. They were able to see things in the present that are so obvious we miss them, and see the things in the past that hold us down and hold us back.» — lo que sostiene sobre los grandes profetas griegos: eran tan famosos por mirar al pasado y al presente como por mirar al futuro

«Healers known as Iatromantis worked in the same way. For them the prophecy was what came first— the ability to look behind the scenes, see what others don’t. The healing followed as a matter of course.» — el orden que declara en ese oficio: primero la profecía, la capacidad de ver detrás de la escena, y la curación venía por añadidura

«That’s not to say they didn’t use techniques. They did. They were famous for their use of incantations: for chanting or repeating words in a way that can seem awkward or senseless but that has a certain effect, is able to induce a change in someone who says or hears them. And they used techniques of breath control to help break the hold of the senses, create access to an awareness beyond space and time.» — las técnicas que les atribuye: encantamientos y repetición de palabras que inducen un cambio, y control de la respiración para romper el dominio de los sentidos

«As far as they were concerned the things we need to be healed of are often things we’re not even aware of; and the knowledge we think we have of what’s right for us or wrong with us is part of the ignorance we need to be healed of.» — y su idea de la enfermedad: aquello de lo que hace falta curarse suele ser lo que no se advierte, y el saber propio sobre lo que a uno le conviene es parte de la ignorancia que hay que curar

«And there’s one other factor that all these different titles share in common. Just like the name Ouliades, Iatromantis was a word that had the closest of links with Apollo. Greeks applied it either to Apollo himself or to someone they considered his son.» — el rasgo común de todos esos títulos: *Iatromantis* se aplicaba a Apolo mismo o a alguien tenido por hijo suyo

«To most people nowadays a dream is nothing. It’s just a dream and that’s that. And yet for people in the ancient world there were dreams and there were dreams. Some were meaningful, others weren’t; and some could take you into another kind of reality altogether.» — el matiz que recupera: para los antiguos había sueños y sueños, unos con sentido y otros no, y algunos llevaban a otra realidad

«If you look at the old accounts of incubation you can still read the amazement as people discovered that the state they’d entered continued regardless of whether they were asleep or awake, whether they opened their eyes or shut them. Often you fi nd the mention of a state that’s like being awake but different from being awake, that’s like sleep but not sleep: that’s neither sleep nor waking.» — lo que las relaciones antiguas de incubación describen: un estado que continúa se esté dormido o despierto, ni sueño ni vigilia

«People weren’t bothered about giving it a name. They were more concerned with the experience than with trying to define it; and besides, for them the experience was an initiation into another world, a mystery. It was best just to say what it’s not. If we want to we can talk about ecstasy or trance or a cataleptic state or suspended animation, but these are only ways of shooting in the dark. They say more about the physical body than about the state itself.» — y por qué no lo nombraban: les importaba más la experiencia que definirla, y éxtasis, trance o catalepsia dicen más del cuerpo que del estado

«A Iatromantis was someone who was a master of this state of awareness. Waking is a form of consciousness, dreaming is another. And yet this is what we can live for a thousand years but never discover, what we can theorize or speculate about and never even come close to— consciousness itself.» — lo que Kingsley sostiene que dominaba el iatromantis: no la vigilia ni el sueño sino la consciencia misma, sobre la que se puede teorizar mil años sin acercarse

«It’s what holds everything together and doesn’t change. Once you experience this consciousness you know what it is to be neither asleep nor awake, neither alive nor dead, and to be at home not only in this world of the senses but in another reality as well.» — y qué es esa consciencia según él: lo que sostiene todo y no cambia, donde se está en casa en este mundo de los sentidos y en otra realidad

«For the Greeks the god of this other state of awareness was Apollo. In his consciousness space and time mean nothing. He can see or be anywhere; past and future are as present as the present is for us. And so he was a god of ecstasy, trance, cataleptic states— of states that take you somewhere. There was a single word in Greek to express this; it meant ‘taken by Apollo’.» — el dios de ese estado según los griegos: Apolo, en cuya consciencia el espacio y el tiempo no significan nada, con una sola palabra griega para decir *tomado por Apolo*

«Apollo’s ecstasy was different from the ecstasy of Dionysus. There was nothing wild or disturbing about it. It was intensely private, for the individual and the individual alone. And it happened in such stillness that anyone else might hardly notice it or could easily mistake it for something else. But in this total stillness there was total freedom at another level.» — el deslinde entre los dos éxtasis: el de Apolo no era salvaje sino íntimo y tan quieto que apenas se notaba

«To convey a sense of this freedom, one name given to those priests of Apollo was ‘skywalker’— a term used as far east as Tibet and Mongolia in just the same way.» — el nombre que recoge para esos sacerdotes de Apolo: *skywalker*, término usado del mismo modo tan al este como el Tíbet y Mongolia

«These people didn’t exist independent of the physical world, and their freedom showed through at every level of their existence. It’s no accident that they came I rom the towns and areas of Greece most famous for daring and adventure, for contacts with foreigners, for long-distance travel. W hat’s also significant is the way all of them either lived on the eastern edges of the Greek world— the Black Sea, Anatolia, Crete— or were born into families that had emigrated from there.» — lo que observa sobre su procedencia: venían de las ciudades griegas más dadas a la aventura y al trato con extranjeros, o de familias emigradas del borde oriental

«And so many things about them are so close to the shamanic traditions of Central Asia or Siberia that the similarities have been noticed time and time again. Nowadays this tends to create a problem. Most historians have their particular field of interest, are afraid of what lies outside. They like to say the Iatromantis is a purely Greek phenomenon and dismiss the similarities as a coincidence. But they’re not a coincidence at all.» — el paralelo chamánico que sostiene y la objeción que le hacen: los historiadores tienden a llamar al iatromantis fenómeno puramente griego y a dar las semejanzas por coincidencia

«Just a few traces survive of the poetry those people wrote describing their own journeys. But those traces are informative enough. They contain clear evidence of familiarity with Iranian languages as well as with the myths of Central Asia, Mongolia, Tibet. And that’s only a part of the picture. Objects and inscriptions have also been found that show a continuity of shamanic traditions stretching all the way from the boundaries of Greece across Asia to the Himalayas and Tibet, Nepal and India.» — y lo que de esa poesía sobrevive: familiaridad con lenguas iranias y con mitos de Asia Central, Mongolia y el Tíbet, además de objetos e inscripciones

«Ever since the Oulis inscriptions were discovered people had passionately been hoping to find the proof of an ancient medical tradition in Italy, a tradition» — lo que se esperaba hallar en Velia: la prueba de una tradición médica antigua en Italia; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«(hat would rival the famous school of Hippocrates. And really they’d found far more than that. But this fragment of marble was to prove nothing but an embarrassment— something to leave aside, mention as little as possible and be done with. For what it points to has no place on the map of our understanding.» — y lo que Kingsley dice que se halló en cambio: mucho más que una escuela rival de la de Hipócrates, pero algo que no cabe en el mapa del entendimiento actual y quedó como incomodidad; la capa de texto imprime *(hat* por *that*

«Their knowledge was entirely different from what knowledge is to us. And they got it from incubation. The basic function of a Pholarchos or Lord of the Lair— that was their function as well. They were experts at working» — de dónde sacaban su saber: de la incubación, con la misma función del Pholarchos o Señor de la Guarida; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«with dreams and through dreams: at listening to them, learning from them, healing with them. Iatromantis and Pholarchos, like Oulis and Ouliades, were two names pointing to the same thing.» — y en qué eran expertos: en trabajar con los sueños y a través de ellos, de modo que *Iatromantis* y *Pholarchos* apuntan a lo mismo, como *Oulis* y *Ouliades*

«A iatromantis was concerned with indivisible oneness. His concern was very practical. What for us are impossible» — el carácter práctico que le atribuye: se ocupaba de la unidad indivisible y su ocupación era muy práctica; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«barriers were, for him, just places to put his feet. When you become familiar with a world beyond the senses, space and time don’t hold much reality any more.» — y la continuación: lo que para nosotros son barreras imposibles eran para él sitios donde poner los pies

«Because the state of consciousness they knew is beyond time and space isn’t to say that it’s separate from time and space: by its very nature it’s separate from» — la precisión que hace: que ese estado esté más allá del tiempo y del espacio no lo separa de ellos; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«separation. This has become so difficult to appreciate. I?i i her we deny the existence of other states of awareness, nr else we put them in a hierarchy somewhere out of i each. And yet the separation is only in our own minds.» — y el remate: está separado de la separación, y la separación solo está en nuestras mentes

«And even more significant are the earliest Greek reports about Iatromantis figures— reports about how they’d travel up to and down» — la evidencia que aduce para el paralelo chamánico: los informes griegos más antiguos sobre figuras de iatromantis; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«from regions far to the north and east of Greece, how they’d pass through areas inhabited by Iranian tribes that were shamanic cultures in their own right and then on into Siberia and Central Asia.» — y adónde viajaban según esos informes: a regiones al norte y al este de Grecia, por zonas de tribus iranias de cultura chamánica y de ahí a Siberia y Asia Central

«W e think now of East and West. But then there were no» — la advertencia con que cierra el capítulo: hoy se piensa en Oriente y Occidente, pero entonces no había líneas reales; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«real lines to be drawn. The oneness experienced by the Iatromantis on another level of awareness left its mark in the physical world. Even to talk about influence is to limit the reality of what was one vast network of nomads, of travellers, of individuals who lived in time and space but also were in touch with something else.» — y lo que sostiene: hablar de influencia limita lo que era una vasta red de nómadas y viajeros que vivían en el tiempo y el espacio y estaban en contacto con otra cosa

«i mg in the traditions of Indian yoga as well: this is more than a coincidence. W hat would soon be covered over . ind rationalized in Greece was preserved and developed i n India. W hat in the West had been an aspect of mystery, of initiation, became classified and formalized in the hast. And there the state glimpsed or experienced by Greeks— the state that could be called a dream but isn’t an ordinary dream, that’s like being awake but isn’t being awake, that’s like being asleep but isn’t— had its own names. Sometimes it was simply referred to as the ‘fourth’, turiya. It became better known by the title of samddhi.» — la línea que traza hacia la India: lo que en Grecia se cubrió y racionalizó se conservó y desarrolló allá, donde el estado tuvo nombres propios, *turiya* y *samadhi*; la capa de texto imprime *samddhi*

«Nothing would be easier than to think these traditions never took root in the West, or to believe that even if they did they were never of any importance for the history of western culture. But that’s not the case. Just one of the people whose poetry has repeatedly been mentioned over the past century—without anyone quite understanding the why or the how— as an example of shamanic poetry in the West is Parmenides.» — y la consecuencia que extrae: Parménides es uno de aquellos cuya poesía se ha citado repetidamente como ejemplo de poesía chamánica en Occidente

«And in spite of the links they had with Persephone, the god of those Greek shamans was Apollo.» — el dios de esos chamanes griegos, pese a sus vínculos con Perséfone: Apolo

«OR CENTURIES PEOPLE HAVE BEEN UPSET WITH Parmenides because he wrote a poem. It was Aristotle who already made things very clear a long time ago: a philosopher’s job is to speak as plainly as possible, call a spade a spade. As far as he was concerned, philosophy and poetry don’t mix. A poem by a philosopher is simply doomed from the start.» — la objeción antigua que abre el capítulo: Aristóteles dejó claro que filosofía y poesía no se mezclan y que el oficio del filósofo es hablar con la mayor llaneza; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«Later on, philosophers found Parmenides’ poem extremely obscure. Many of them were Platonists: for them Plato was a far greater authority than Parmenides ever could be and it was Plato’s dialogues that presented the true Parmenides. Parmenides’ own poetry was just a clumsy second best— a bad attempt at saying in verse what he would have been much better advised to discuss in prose.» — cómo siguió la objeción entre los platónicos: el verdadero Parménides estaba en los diálogos de Platón y su propio poema era un mal segundo

«You still find people complaining today about how bad he was at saying what he should have said: about how it’s so ‘hard to excuse Parmenides’ choice of verse as a medium for his philosophy’.» — y cómo llega hasta hoy, citando la queja corriente: cuesta excusar la elección del verso como medio para su filosofía

«His ear for sound was remarkable. He used it carefully to produce specific effects. He felt free to break the rules of poetic metre, to commit what easily could be considered mistakes. This wasn’t because he was careless, or clumsy, but because it allowed him to express dramatically through sound and unexpected rhythm the point that he wanted to make.» — lo que le reconoce como oficio: un oído notable y la libertad de romper el metro para expresar por el sonido y el ritmo lo que quería decir

«The flow of his poetry is unusual. Normally Greek poets liked to lead up to a climax at the end of each line. W ith Parmenides it’s the other way round. That could seem like a weakness until you realize it has to do with the fundamental nature of his poem. Instead of exploding outwards into countless details it implodes: draws us inwards, back into the depths of ourselves.» — el rasgo formal que señala: al revés de los poetas griegos, sus versos no estallan hacia afuera en un clímax final sino que implosionan y llevan hacia adentro

«Parmenides does something very peculiar at the start of his poem. He keeps repeating himself, using the same words over and over again.» — el rasgo del poema que abre el argumento del capítulo: al empezar, Parménides repite las mismas palabras una y otra vez

«There’s a kind of unwritten rule in studying the first of the western philosophers: never start at the point where they start. That would mean having to take their concerns and interests seriously, having to understand them on their own terms. So people start in the middle instead— anywhere rather than right at the beginning. The trouble is that unless you start at the beginning everything immediately becomes confused.» — la regla tácita que denuncia en el estudio de los primeros filósofos: no empezar nunca por donde ellos empiezan, porque eso obligaría a tomarlos en serio

«It’s as if you wanted to go and visit someone to hear him talk; but as soon as you’re there you sit down, cross one leg over the other and start imagining what you think the person will say later on instead of listening to what he has to say now. It would have been better never to have gone.» — la comparación con que la ilustra: ir a oír a alguien y ponerse a imaginar lo que dirá después en lugar de escuchar lo que dice ahora

«But the fact is that in the first four lines of the original C ireek he uses the word for ‘carry’ four times. And that’s o n ly the beginning. A poor poet could perhaps repeat the same word once and it would be an accident. This is no accident.» — el dato con que responde: en los cuatro primeros versos del griego usa cuatro veces la palabra para *llevar*

«Greek poets followed strict rules: either they took the greatest care to avoid repeating words or they used repetition for a very specific reason. Even with a poet far less skilful than Parmenides, using the same word four times in as many lines would be quite deliberate.» — y la regla de oficio que aduce: los poetas griegos evitaban repetir o repetían por una razón muy precisa

«This type of insistent repetition wasn’t common in the ancient world. But it existed. It was a technique for creating an incantatory effect, and the purpose of the incantation was magical. Either it could be used for healing or it could be used to draw people into another state of consciousness. So right at the start of his poem Parmenides is drawing his listener into the world of incantations and magic, of healing and other states of awareness— the world of the Iatromantis.» — la función que le atribuye: técnica de efecto encantatorio con propósito mágico, para sanar o para llevar a otro estado de consciencia, de modo que el poema empieza metiendo al oyente en el mundo del iatromantis

«But Parmenides’ use of repetition is something more than that. It doesn’t just evoke the journey. It’s a way of actually creating the journey: of inducing the state that makes it possible.» — el paso que da sobre el uso del tiempo verbal: la repetición no evoca el viaje, lo crea, induciendo el estado que lo hace posible

«The repetition of the word for ‘carry’ is what carries. Through his words he draws the listener, and the words he uses are words of power.» — la fórmula con que lo cierra: la repetición de la palabra *llevar* es lo que lleva, y sus palabras son palabras de poder

«Philosophy has come to mean discussion, trying to use the mind to reach meaning with the help of words— and yet never really succeeding. But in Parmenides’ time things were very different. Then the words of a philosopher were words of power. They weren’t words in search of meaning but words that contained their own meaning inside them.» — el contraste que traza con la filosofía posterior: discusión que busca sentido con palabras y nunca acaba de lograrlo, frente a palabras que contienen su sentido dentro

«And yet they don’t appreciate the source of the fascination. Those poems are incantatory texts. Their writers were magicians and sorcerers.» — la conclusión que saca sobre esos poemas: son textos encantatorios y sus autores eran magos y hechiceros

«This is the fact that, right at the start of his poem, he describes himself as a ‘man who knows’ even before he reaches the goddess or receives the knowledge she has to give him. If he already knows before he makes the journey there’s no real reason to make it at all.» — la objeción que se plantea a sí mismo: si ya es *un hombre que sabe* antes de llegar a la diosa, no habría razón para el viaje

«As a ‘man who knows’ he’s an initiate— someone who’s able to enter another world, to die before dying. And the knowledge of how to do that is what leads him to the wisdom given by Persephone.» — y la salida que da: como *hombre que sabe* es un iniciado, alguien capaz de morir antes de morir, y ese saber es lo que lo lleva a la sabiduría de Perséfone

«One fine scholar once explained Orpheus’ situation perfectly. ‘He doesn’t need to ask the divinities of the underworld for a knowledge he already has because it was the effectiveness of this knowledge of his that allowed him to make the journey into their world in the first place.’ And Orpheus’ knowledge was the initiate’s knowledge of incantations, of the magic power of words— of poetry ‘that has an effect capable even of reaching into the world of the dead’.» — el paralelo que toma de un estudioso al que no nombra: Orfeo no pide a los dioses de abajo un saber que ya tiene, porque fue ese saber el que le permitió el viaje

«Parmenides’words aren’ttheory or discussion. They’re a language that achieves what it says. And his use of repetition isn’t bad poetry; isn’t amateurish or careless. It demonstrates in a direct and tangible form what Orpheus was believed to have done in myth. For this is his song.» — lo que de ahí concluye para el poema: una lengua que logra lo que dice, y la repetición no es mala poesía sino la forma tangible de lo que Orfeo hacía en el mito; la capa de texto pega varias palabras

«For us a song and a road are very different things. But in the language of ancient Greek epic poetry the word for ‘road’ and the word for ‘song’, oimos and oime, are almost identical. They’re linked, have the same origin. Originally the poet’s song was quite simply a journey into another world: a world where the past and future are as accessible and real as the present. And his journey was his song. Those were the times when the poet was a magician, a shaman.» — la etimología en que se apoya: *oimos* y *oime*, camino y canto, casi idénticas y del mismo origen, de modo que el canto del poeta era el viaje

«The words shamans use as they enter the state of ecstasy evoke the things they speak about. The poems they sing don’t only describe their journeys; they’re what makes the journeys happen.» — el paralelo chamánico que cierra el argumento: los poemas del chamán no describen sus viajes, los hacen ocurrir

«And shamans have always used repetition as a matter of course to invoke a consciousness quite different from our ordinary awareness: a consciousness where something else starts to take over. The repetition is what draws them into another world, away from all the things we know.» — y la función de la repetición entre ellos: invocar una consciencia distinta de la ordinaria, en la que algo más toma el mando

«But there’s one problem with all of this. If you look closely at the poem itself, you start to see it was written with consummate craft. The skill is so clear when you care to look. Scholars in the last few years have been amazed to discover that Parmenides created some of the most powerful and haunting lines of poetry ever written.» — lo que Kingsley opone a esa queja: mirado de cerca, el poema está escrito con destreza consumada, y los estudiosos de los últimos años quedaron asombrados con sus versos

«But his subtlety, his fondness for ambiguity, the ways he plays with sound and meaning, are much more than poetic skill. For the language he uses isn’t an ordinary one. It’s the language of oracles and riddles, of hints and» — lo que declara que es esa lengua: no solo destreza poética sino la lengua de los oráculos y los acertijos; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«double meanings, addressed to those who know or really want to know: the language of initiation.» — y a quién va dirigida: a los que saben o de veras quieren saber, en la lengua de la iniciación

«There are just a couple of scholars who have noticed how Parmenides keeps on repeating words. They talk about how naive’ and ‘amateurish’ a poet he was, how much ‘carelessness’ he shows;» — lo que dijeron los pocos estudiosos que notaron la repetición, en las palabras que Kingsley les cita: poeta ingenuo y aficionado, con mucho descuido

«There were philosophers who made the situation quite clear: they explained how the words in their poems were seeds that were meant to be absorbed so they could grow and transform the nature of the hearer, give rise to a different awareness. And just a couple of those words» — lo que esos filósofos declaraban según Kingsley: que las palabras de sus poemas eran semillas para absorber, capaces de transformar la naturaleza del oyente; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«whispered in your ear can stop you in your tracks, change your life forever.» — y su efecto declarado: un par de esas palabras susurradas al oído detienen a uno en seco y le cambian la vida

«In a sense, those who notice Parmenides’ practice of repeating words and then dismiss it as awkward or naive» — la concesión que hace a sus críticos: quienes llaman torpe e ingenua esa repetición; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«have missed the point entirely. But in another sense they’re perfectly right in what they say.» — y el giro que le da: yerran el punto por completo y en otro sentido tienen toda la razón

«In the modern world repetition and naivety go hand in hand. Sophistication is the highest virtue— the search for endless variety, for ways to keep scattering our longing in entertainments and distractions, in different things to» — el diagnóstico que hace del presente: repetición e ingenuidad van de la mano y la sofisticación es la virtud suprema, con el anhelo desparramado en entretenimientos; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«So we get everything upside down and back to front, mistaking sophistication for maturity and hardly noticing that there’s nothing more repetitious than the desire for variety.» — y la vuelta que le da: se confunde sofisticación con madurez sin notar que nada hay más repetitivo que el deseo de variedad

«But what’s extraordinary is that the crucial thing we need for breaking free is already inside us: our longing. And the voice of our longing is repetition, insistently calling out to what’s beyond anything we’re familiar with or even understand.» — lo que sostiene sobre el anhelo: es lo que hace falta para romper el muro de las apariencias, y su voz es la repetición

«As you start being drawn behind appearances you begin to touch the bare bones of existence, to discover another reality behind the scenes. And you can never take anything at face value any more.» — lo que describe que ocurre entonces: se tocan los huesos de la existencia y se descubre otra realidad detrás de la escena

«You start to see the underlying principles behind events, the basic patterns that keep repeating themselves time after time; and repetition begins to show itself in everything. Instead of appearances being an obstacle, t hey help you on your journey. And everything starts speaking with the voice of your own longing.» — y el vuelco que sigue: las apariencias dejan de ser obstáculo y todo empieza a hablar con la voz del propio anhelo

«That’s why the repetition in Parmenides’ account of liis journey soon spreads to all the details he describes. At (irst it’s just a matter of the way he’s carried and continuously carried ‘as far as longing can reach’. But then he starts explaining how object after object that he encounters on his journey is ‘held fast’; and in whatever moves he keeps seeing the same pattern of spinning in a circle. The chariot wheels spin on the axle, the doors spin on their axles as they open into the underworld.» — cómo aplica eso al poema: la repetición se extiende a cada detalle, con objetos *sujetos firmemente* y el mismo patrón de giro en rueda y en puerta

«Each single thing that exists is being reduced to a small part of the pattern created by the interplay of night and day, of light and darkness. For those are the fundamental opposites that, as Parmenides will explain later on, repeat themselves endlessly in different combinations to produce the universe we think we live in.» — adónde lleva esa reducción según Kingsley: cada cosa queda reducida a una parte del juego de noche y día, luz y oscuridad, los opuestos que producen el universo que creemos habitar

«And it’s all very practical— very real. This is what happens when instead of trying to run away from repetition you find the courage to face it, go through it. Then you arrive at something that’s beyond any sort of repetition because it’s completely still and timeless.» — el carácter práctico que reclama: encarar la repetición y atravesarla lleva a algo que está más allá de toda repetición, quieto e intemporal

«Usually we’re so full of ideas and opinions, of fears and expectations, that we can hardly hear anything beyond the noise of our own thoughts; and so we miss the most important things. Or even worse, we just dismiss them as insignificant. It’s not for nothing that people weren’t allowed even to listen to Pythagoras’ teachings until they had practised being silent for years.» — lo que interpone antes del detalle siguiente: el ruido de los propios pensamientos tapa lo importante, y no por nada a los oyentes de Pitágoras se les exigían años de silencio

«There’s one simple detail in Parmenides’ account of his journey to the underworld that’s so easy to miss. During the whole of his journey there’s no mention at all of any noise— apart from one single sound. That’s the sound the chariot makes as the daughters of the Sun draw him along: ‘the sound of a pipe’.» — el detalle que pone en el centro del capítulo: en todo el viaje no se menciona más ruido que el del carro, *el sonido de un caramillo*

«And this is where were brought face to face with one of the most obvious examples of repetition. For after Parmenides mentions the sound of the pipe he uses the same word again to explain how the huge doors spin open, rotating in hollow tubes or pipes’.» — y la repetición que señala: la misma palabra vuelve para explicar cómo giran las puertas, en tubos o caramillos huecos

«This use of the word is extraordinary. It’s the only time in the whole Greek language that it’s ever applied to doors or parts of doors, and scholars have pointed out that Parmenides must have chosen it for a particular reason: not simply to describe what the doors look like but also to give a sense of the sound they make.» — el argumento filológico que da: es el único caso en toda la lengua griega en que la palabra se aplica a puertas, elegida para dar el sonido y no solo el aspecto

«On his journey everything that moves has to do with the sound or the appearance of pipes. The doors with their axles imitate the axle on the chariot, the spinning of the doors copies the spinning of the chariot’s wheels, and there’s just the suggestion— nothing more— that the sound of t he chariot is echoed by the sound of the opening doors.» — cómo lee esa red de ecos: todo lo que se mueve en el viaje tiene que ver con el sonido o el aspecto de los caramillos

«That’s the way repetition works. It blurs differences, blends one thing into another. It can only be explained up to a certain point because in fact it has to do with another kind of awareness. And so you’re faced with an apparent choice. Either you stand back, and walk away, or you allow yourself to be taken.» — lo que sostiene sobre la repetición misma: difumina diferencias y solo se explica hasta cierto punto, porque tiene que ver con otra clase de consciencia

«T he word for ‘pipe’ that Parmenides keeps using is syrinx. It had a very particular spread of meanings. Syrinx was the name either for a musical instrument or for the part of an instrument that makes a piping, whistling sound— the sound called syrigmos. But there’s one aspect of these words that you have to bear in mind: for Greeks this sound of piping and whistling was also the sound of the hissing made by snakes.» — el término griego y su abanico de sentidos: *syrinx*, el instrumento y el sonido silbante, *syrigmos*, que para los griegos era también el siseo de las serpientes

«Ancient Greek accounts of incubation repeatedly mention certain signs that mark the point of entry into another world: into another state of awareness that’s neither waking nor sleep. One of the signs is that you become aware of a rapid spinning movement. Another is that you hear the powerful vibration produced by a piping, whistling, hissing sound.» — los dos signos que las relaciones griegas de incubación describen al entrar en el otro estado: un giro rápido y una vibración potente de silbido o siseo

«In India exactly the same signs are described as the prelude to entering sam&dhi, the state beyond sleep and waking. And they’re directly related to the process known as the awakening of kundalini—of the ‘serpent power’ that’s the basic energy in all creation but that’s almost completely asleep in human beings. W hen it starts waking up it makes a hissing sound.» — el paralelo indio que traza: los mismos signos como preludio del *samadhi* y del despertar de la kundalini, el poder serpiente que al despertar sisea; la capa de texto imprime *sam&dhi*

«As well as giving examples for how to use the magical repetition of words to go into a state of trance, it has a section sometimes referred to as the recipe for immortality. The recipe is strictly esoteric, only for transmission from a spiritual ‘father’ to his adopted ‘son’. It’s a recipe for going through an inner process of death— for being brought almost to the point of physical extinction, far from ‘any human being or living thing’— so that the initiate can be born into a world beyond space and time. And it involves making a cosmic journey while in another state of consciousness to the real origin of all human life: the sun.» — lo que contiene el gran papiro mágico de París según Kingsley: una receta de inmortalidad estrictamente esotérica, transmitida de padre espiritual a hijo adoptivo, para atravesar un proceso interior de muerte

«First, magicians used to make that particular hissing sound as part of an exercise in breath control to help them enter an altered state of awareness.» — la primera razón que da: los magos hacían ese siseo como ejercicio de control de la respiración para entrar en otro estado de consciencia

«And second, the sound of a syrinx was a call for silence. This is something that makes sense even on a very obvious level when you consider how hissing or whistling at people is still a way of silencing them. To ancient mystics and magicians the journey into a greater reality was a journey made through silence, in silence and into silence. The noise of a syrinx is the ultimate password. It’s the sound of silence.» — la segunda: era llamada al silencio, y el viaje a una realidad mayor se hacía por el silencio y hacia el silencio

«But the recipe for immortality is also categorical about one detail. Before an initiate can be accepted in the realm of the gods he first has to convince them he belongs there. The way he’s told to do this is to say the words ‘I too am a star, wandering around together with you, shining out of the depths.’ And this is when he has to keep making the sound of a syrinx.» — la fórmula que la receta pone en boca del iniciado: *yo también soy una estrella, errante con ustedes, brillando desde las profundidades*

«Greek mystical texts explain that this hissing or piping sound, this sound of silence, is the sound of creation. It’s the noise made by the stars, by the planets as they coil and spin in their orbits. Sometimes, depending on how loud or quiet it is, you can hear it in the whistling or roaring of the wind.» — lo que los textos místicos griegos dicen de ese sonido según Kingsley: es el sonido de la creación, el ruido de las estrellas y los planetas al girar

«There are also traditions that say this is what’s meant by the famous harmony of the spheres: the sound Pythagoras once heard in a state ofecsiasy, in toul si illness,» — y con qué lo empalma: la armonía de las esferas que Pitágoras oyó en estado de éxtasis, en quietud total; la capa de texto corrompe *ecstasy* y *total stillness*

«An Anatolian oracle of Apollo, delivered in the form of a poem from one of his temples that was built just above a cave leading down to the underworld, states the matter very clearly. It explains how after a person comes into contact with the source of this sound then ‘there’s no tearing one’s heart away, because it allows no separation’.» — el oráculo anatolio de Apolo que cita, dado desde un templo levantado sobre una cueva que bajaba al inframundo: quien entra en contacto con la fuente de ese sonido no puede arrancar de ahí el corazón

«This is the initiate’s approach to the sun. The sun is his god, his ‘god of gods’. It’s through the sun that he’s horn again— and for that to happen he has to travel in the path of the sun itself. One of his names in the mysteries was ‘sun-runner’. This was almost the last stage of initiation, and was the name given to someone who’s able to ride in the chariot of the sun.» — la clave que da para la receta: el sol es su dios de dioses, y uno de los nombres del iniciado en los misterios era *corredor del sol*, casi la última etapa

«So it’s no surprise to find that making the sound of ,t syrinx also has a very special link with the sun. And yet i he vividness of the details in the recipe that help to explain the link is quite amazing. For an extraordinary picture is presented to the initiate of how in reality the sun has a tube hanging down from it: a tube that’s not just an ordinary tube, but a musical pipe.» — y el detalle que le llama asombroso: la receta presenta al sol con un tubo colgando que no es un tubo cualquiera sino un caramillo

«But this reduction isn’t some philosophical theory. It’s the result of travelling behind appearances to» — la objeción que hace a leer esa reducción como teoría: no es teoría filosófica sino resultado de viajar detrás de las apariencias; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«what for ancient Greek poets are the roots of existence: into the darkness where all light comes from, where everything merges with its opposite.» — y adónde lleva ese viaje: a lo que para los poetas griegos antiguos son las raíces de la existencia, la oscuridad de donde viene toda luz

«The parallels between standard Indian accounts of the process and Parmenides’ account of his journey are» — lo que reconoce como ya estudiado: los paralelos entre las relaciones indias del proceso y el viaje de Parménides; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«ulivious enough; specialists in Indian traditions have wi i! ten about them and discussed them. But what hasn’t hern noticed is that the particular sound mentioned by I'.iimenides also happens to be the sound made by a hissing snake.» — y lo que añade: nadie ha notado que el sonido mencionado por Parménides es además el de una serpiente que sisea; la capa de texto imprime *ulivious* por *obvious*

«Repeatedly the initiate is told by the ‘father’ magician that on the different stages of his journey he has to keep producing a piping, whistling, hissing sound— the» — la instrucción que se repite en la receta: producir en cada etapa del viaje un sonido silbante y siseante; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«sound of a syrinx. There’s a whole number of reasons why this was so important. First, magicians used to make that particular hissing sound as part of an exercise in breath control to help them enter an altered state of awareness.» — y la primera razón que da: los magos hacían ese siseo como parte de un ejercicio de control de la respiración

«And it doesn’t take much to see how closely this is all connected to Parmenides’ account of his journey— to the persistent sound of piping as he’s guided along the route of the sun, in the chariot of the sun, by the daughters of the sun.» — y lo que con eso enlaza: el sonido persistente de caramillo mientras a Parménides lo guían por la ruta del sol, en el carro del sol y por las hijas del sol

«The texts that mention these things were written in the centuries after Christ, certainly a long time after Parmenides. But this type of tradition doesn’t come or go in the space of a day. Writings on papyrus like the example now at Paris were found in the same country where they were produced: in Egypt.» — la reserva cronológica que pone: esos textos se escribieron en los siglos posteriores a Cristo, mucho después de Parménides, y aparecieron en Egipto

«And yet they’re not really original documents, just copies made from copies. In them different ideas and practices are mixed, blended together; and there’s a whole history to the traditions they contain.» — y la salvedad que añade: no son documentos originales sino copias de copias, con ideas y prácticas mezcladas y una historia entera detrás

«Some of the ideas are Egyptian. But there are also tell-tale details that point back over hundreds of years to one particular area and period of the ancient world— back to Italy and Sicily in the fifth century BC. You can still trace the outlines of the journeys once made by those magical and mystical traditions, at a time when Greeks were starting to leave the homes they had created in the west so they could emigrate to the new centres of culture in Egypt.» — lo que Kingsley sostiene sobre su procedencia: hay detalles reveladores que apuntan a la Italia y la Sicilia del siglo V a. C., cuando los griegos de occidente emigraban a Egipto

«Scattered through passages in the magical papyri concerned with initiation into the mysteries of the sun on find references to Apollo and a huge snake— and to die magical power of the snake’s hissing. One of the first I icople in modern times ever to study the papyri already I icrceived the essentials over a hundred years ago. He saw that these references point back to ancient traditions I rom Delphi: traditions about Apollo’s fight with a snake of prophecy that used to guard the oracle there for the powers of earth and night, right next to a chasm opening into the underworld.» — lo que halla disperso en los papiros mágicos: referencias a Apolo, a una serpiente enorme y al poder mágico de su siseo, que un estudioso del siglo XIX ya remitió a las tradiciones délficas

«But he also noticed that they agree most closely with forms of those Delphic traditions best known from southern Italy.» — y el matiz que ese estudioso añadió: concuerdan sobre todo con las formas de esas tradiciones conocidas en el sur de Italia

«It’s easy to assume that the Delphic myth of Apollo fighting the snake is a straightforward case of a battle between the opposites— of Apollo as a celestial god overcoming the powers of earth and darkness. But something needs to be understood.» — la lectura corriente que expone para corregirla: el mito délfico como batalla de opuestos, con Apolo celeste venciendo a las potencias de la tierra y la oscuridad

«Alongside the intimacy of Apollo’s links with the underworld, there’s another aspect of him that also has been pushed into the dark. That’s his connection with snakes. In ritual and in art snakes were sacred to him.» — el rasgo de Apolo que dice empujado a la sombra: su conexión con las serpientes, que en el rito y en el arte le eran sagradas

«At Rome he was known for approaching people who came to visit his great incubation shrine by appearing to them in the middle of the night as a snake. This could seem unusual until you notice how normal it was for Greeks to describe him as assuming the form of a snake.» — el caso romano que aduce: se aparecía como serpiente a medianoche a quienes visitaban su gran santuario de incubación

«And it was only natural for the same pattern to keep repeating itself with Apollo’s son Asclepi us when— in the centuries after Parmenides— he gradually took over the healing powers that used to belong to his father. Asclepius would come, followed by hissing snakes, to people who approached him; or he’d come in the form ofa snake. The hissing, syrigmos, was the sound of his presence.» — y la continuidad con Asclepio: al heredar los poderes curativos de su padre llegaba seguido de serpientes siseantes o en forma de serpiente, y el *syrigmos* era el sonido de su presencia

«There have been scholars so determined to present Asclepius as nothing but a mild and gentle god that when they come to translate the words describing this side of him they simply miss them out. But the old texts are quite clear. If people weren’t already used to the sound of his presence then it would terrify them— like the sound of wild nature at its wildest when you’re all on your own— as they lay sleeping or in the state that’s neither waking nor sleep.» — la objeción que dirige a ciertos estudiosos: empeñados en presentar a Asclepio como dios manso y suave, omiten al traducir las palabras que describen ese lado suyo

«It was considered the navel of the earth. In the days when Greeks had sailed west to create new colonies for i hemselves in Italy they used to depend on it— and on its u.iditions— for their lives and for their futures.» — el lugar que da a Delfos: ombligo de la tierra, del que dependían los griegos que salían al oeste a fundar colonias

«At every great Delphic festival Apollo’s fight with the snake was dramatized, put to music. The drama became ,i crucial part of initiation into mysteries of Apollo not |tist at Delphi but across the rest of the Greek world. And i t was no secret that when Apollo killed the snake he was only a child, a kouros; or that the initiate who acted out his role had to be a kouros, too.» — el drama ritual que describe: la lucha de Apolo con la serpiente se representaba con música y era parte de la iniciación, con un kouros en el papel del dios niño

«The climax to the whole drama was the last act. This was the one that described how Apollo came to power, and it was called after the musical instrument used for imitating the hissing of the snake: the syrinx. That wasn’t its only name. This final act was also known as syrigmos— a sound the Greeks usually weren’t too fond of. But it was the sound made by Asclepius, as well as by the sun. And behind all that, as the sound of his victory over the power of darkness, it was sacred to Apollo.» — y el nombre del acto final: *syrinx* y también *syrigmos*, sonido que los griegos no querían, propio de Asclepio y del sol, y sagrado para Apolo como sonido de su victoria

«n & k M A J - E YPHT°I OYAIAAHl+Y * i^OI» — la lámina de la inscripción de Parmeneides tal cual la devuelve la capa de texto del troceo: la plana es solo la fotografía y el OCR entrega caracteres corrompidos, que se consignan sin restituir

«EPTEMBER, 1962. VELIA. Mario Napoli stumbled across it as he was searching through thesamebuildingwith thehidden gallery where the Oulis inscriptions had been found. It was the answer to everyone’s prayers. Lying buried upside down in the ground, exactly where it had been left nineteen hundred years ago to prevent people falling into a small drainage ditch, was a block of marble with another inscription. But this time the inscription wasn’t for some unknown person. It was for Parmenides.» — el hallazgo de 1962: Mario Napoli dio con un bloque de mármol enterrado boca abajo, con una inscripción que esta vez era para Parménides; la capa de texto pega *thesamebuildingwith thehidden*

«Close by, Napoli found a statue of Asclepius— a carved snake climbing up the left side of the god s carved robe.» — lo que apareció al lado: una estatua de Asclepio con una serpiente tallada subiendo por el lado izquierdo del manto

«Parmeneides son of Pyres Ouliades Physikos.» — el texto de la inscripción de Velia tal cual lo imprime la capa de texto: Parmeneides hijo de Pyres, Ouliades, Physikos

«Even the form of the name, Parmeneides, was significant. In all the written sources handed down from antiquity his name was always given as Parmenides— except in j ust one ancient manuscript. Long ago specialists had guessed from this single manuscript that the real form of his name had been Parmeneides; now the inscription showed they were right.» — lo que Kingsley señala en la forma del nombre: las fuentes antiguas daban siempre Parmenides salvo un manuscrito, y la inscripción dio la razón a quienes conjeturaban Parmeneides

«But suddenly the old, familiar facts were starting to take on a far wider meaning. Parmenides was becoming a man with a past in space as well as time: a past that linked him in every possible way to Anatolia.» — y el alcance que da a esos datos viejos: Parménides pasaba a ser un hombre con pasado en el espacio además de en el tiempo, ligado por todos lados a Anatolia

«This was new; it hadn’t been found applied to Parmenides before. And as everybody quickly saw, it tied him in with the line of Oulis healers mentioned on the oi her inscriptions from Velia. But those people weren’t just ordinary healers. They were ‘sons’ and priests of Apollo, healers belonging to a world of Iatromantis figures concerned with incubation and dreams and ecstasy: a world of magicians who spoke in poetry and oracles and riddles, who used incantations to enter other states of consciousness.» — la novedad del título Ouliades: lo ataba a la línea de sanadores Oulis, que no eran sanadores comunes sino hijos y sacerdotes de Apolo, iatromantis ocupados en incubación, sueños y éxtasis

«Now this inscription was saying that Parmeneides was one of them.» — y la conclusión que Kingsley saca de la inscripción: Parmeneides era uno de ellos

«Physikos is the origin of our word ‘physicist’. It used to mean someone who’s interested in the beginnings and the nature of the universe. But it’s also the origin of the English ‘physician’: it could be a way of referring to doctors or healers, as well.» — el último término y su doble descendencia: de *physikos* vienen tanto *físico* como *médico*

«Some experts argued that here it just means Parmeneides was concerned with primordial realities and the way things came to be what they are. Others insisted that it means he’s being presented as a doctor or physician, similar to the three Oulis healers.» — las dos posiciones del debate que siguió a la publicación: realidades primordiales por un lado, médico o sanador por otro

«And the argument was pointless. Both sides were wrong, both were right. ‘Physician’ and physicist’, ‘physics’ and ‘physical’ are all modern versions of a word that used to mean much more than any of them. Instead of trying to choose which of these senses fits the inscription best we have to get back behind them, back to where they all come from.» — y cómo Kingsley los trata: los dos bandos estaban a la vez equivocados y en lo cierto, porque el término antiguo valía más que cualquiera de sus versiones modernas

«A physikos was someone who’s concerned with the basic principles of existence, who’s able to touch the bare bones of what things are— and also use the knowledge that he finds. That’s why it became a normal term for describing magicians and alchemists.» — la definición que propone: alguien ocupado en los principios básicos de la existencia y capaz de usar ese saber, de donde el término pasó a nombrar a magos y alquimistas

«Latin texts as well; one Orphic hymn even gives the sun the title of syriktes, ‘the piper’.» — y el ejemplo con que lo apoya: un himno órfico da al sol el título de *syriktes*, el flautista

«Even in the case of the myth about the snake he fought» — el matiz que introduce sobre el mito délfico: ni siquiera al matar a la serpiente la destruyó para quitarla de en medio; el tramo se corta en el cambio de plana, que parte la frase

«and killed at Delphi, he didn’t destroy it just to get it oui of the way. On the contrary, its body was buried at the centre of his shrine. He killed it so he could absorb, appropriate, the prophetic powers that the snake represents.» — y la razón que le atribuye: enterró el cuerpo en el centro de su santuario para absorber y apropiarse de los poderes proféticos que la serpiente representa; la capa de texto imprime *oui* por *out*

«Pyres was a very rare name in the ancient world— and yet it was a familiar one at Miletus, the famous Greek city in that area of Anatolia once known as Caria.» — lo que añade sobre el nombre del padre: Pyres era rarísimo en el mundo antiguo y familiar en Mileto, la ciudad griega de la Caria anatolia

«The reason is quite simple. In the ancient world physikos was a standard way of referring to the earliest of the philosophers.» — el uso corriente que registra: *physikos* era en el mundo antiguo la manera normal de referirse a los primeros filósofos

«And this included the whole area of healing, except that healing then wasn’t the same as it’s now understood.» — y qué incluía esa filosofía práctica: el terreno entero de la sanación, entendida de otro modo que hoy

«And yet when Hippocratic writers adopted this position they weren’t simply attacking theoretical philosophers. They saw themselves as attacking people who were their competitors, who were also healers in their own right.» — y a quiénes atacaban en realidad, según él: no a teóricos sino a competidores que también eran sanadores por derecho propio

«For a long while now the beginnings of western philosophy have been presented as purely a matter of intellectual speculation, of abstract ideas. But that’s only a myth. Especially in Italy and Sicily the reality was very different. There philosophy had developed as something» — la objeción que dirige a la historia de la filosofía: presentar sus comienzos como pura especulación intelectual es un mito, y en Italia y Sicilia la realidad era muy distinta; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«ill embracing, intensely practical. And this included the whole area of healing, except that healing then wasn’t the same as it’s now understood.» — y qué era ahí esa filosofía: algo que lo abarcaba todo, intensamente práctico, incluida la sanación entendida de otro modo que hoy; la capa de texto imprime *ill* por *all*

«In fact you wouldn’t be wrong if you were to say that t he western rational medicine we’re so familiar with came into being as a direct reaction against the earliest of those philosophers— against people like Parmeneides who assumed the role ofphysikos.» — lo que sostiene sobre el origen de la medicina racional occidental: nació como reacción directa contra los primeros filósofos, contra gente como Parmeneides que asumía el papel de *physikos*; la capa de texto pega *ofphysikos*

«Our modern image of doctors and healing was first shaped by Hippocrates; and the famous school he founded soon felt the need to define its aims by excluding from medicine anything that didn’t specifically have to do with medicine. So it lashed out at those philosophers, attacking them because of the way they insisted that before you can really heal anyone you first have to know what men and women are in their deepest nature— what human beings are from the beginning, not just how they react to this or that condition.» — y cómo lo explica: la escuela de Hipócrates definió sus fines excluyendo de la medicina lo que no fuera médico, y atacó a quienes sostenían que antes de curar hay que saber qué son los hombres y las mujeres en su naturaleza más honda

«And the first great philosophical systems created in Italy and Sicily weren’t theoretical products at all. Then knowledge of how the universe came into being, or of the elements that make up reality, was meant to have a practical application.» — y lo que sostiene sobre los primeros sistemas filosóficos de Italia y Sicilia: no eran productos teóricos, y el saber sobre el origen del universo tenía aplicación práctica

«But above all it was bound up with healing— with getting one’s own life in order on every possible level and helping other people get their lives in order as well.» — con qué estaba ligado ese saber según él: con la sanación, es decir, con poner la propia vida en orden en todos los planos y ayudar a otros a hacerlo

«The problem in understanding this link between philosophy and healing doesn’t have anything to do with a lack of evidence. The evidence is there; the only problem is the blanket of silence that’s been thrown over it. For there’s one thing that makes the knowledge those early philosophers had so difficult to grasp and make sense of. This is the fact that it didn’t have its origin in thinking or reasoning.» — la objeción que hace al estado de la cuestión: no falta evidencia sino que hay un manto de silencio, porque ese saber no se originaba en el pensar ni en el razonar

«It came from the experience of other states of consciousness. Those philosophers, those people attacked in the Hippocraticwritings, happen to have been Iatromantis figures: they were mystics and magicians. And as far as they were concerned there’s no real healing until you come to discover what you are behind the world of the senses.» — y de dónde venía según Kingsley: de la experiencia de otros estados de consciencia, en gente que era iatromantis, mística y maga; la capa de texto pega *Hippocraticwritings*

«A i ime came— it was well before the inscription was i .1 rved for Parmeneides— when the word physikos started being used in a specifically medical context. It began being applied to people who were healers and doctors. At least that’s the way things seemed. But in fact the word was much more than an equivalent for physician’ or ‘healer’. It had a far wider scope.» — el cambio de uso que registra: *physikos* empezó a emplearse en contexto médico, pero nunca fue simple equivalente de médico o sanador; la capa de texto imprime *A i ime* por *A time*

«You can still read the clearest of statements from ancient writers explaining that healing and medicine are just a tiny part of physic’, of the fundamental understanding about reality and about what makes things the way they are. The term physikos— or physicus in Latin— was only applied to doctors when they started taking an interest in that greater world behind the world of medicine. And this is how things stayed right through to the Middle Ages and beyond.» — lo que los escritores antiguos declaran según él: la medicina es una parte mínima de la *física*, del entendimiento de fondo sobre la realidad

«For centuries this aspect of his teaching has hardly been noticed at all. Everything he had to say about these matters belonged to the last part of his poem: the part where the goddess describes the world we live in and declares that it’s all a deception. By putting things this way he was almost inviting people not to take any of it seriously. And that’s just what happened. The last part of the poem has been so neglected that only a few lines from it have even survived; the rest is lost, forgotten.» — el giro que añade: todo eso iba en la última parte del poema, aquella en que la diosa declara que el mundo es engaño, y de esa parte solo sobreviven unos versos

«And certainly for Parmeneides birth and age and death were only illusions. But that’s not to say he didn’t care for them, or take them seriously. For it’s when we don’t take care of illusions that they start becoming real.» — y la salvedad con que cierra: que nacimiento, vejez y muerte fueran ilusiones no significa que no le importaran, porque cuando no se cuida de las ilusiones empiezan a volverse reales

«Calling parmeneides a p h y s i k o s was a way of creating a subtle difference between him and the healers called Oulis. It didn’t mean he wasn’t like them, that he wasn’t concerned or involved with healing; on the contrary. But it was a way of saying he was something else, something more.» — lo que Kingsley lee en la diferencia de títulos: llamarlo *physikos* no lo apartaba de los sanadores Oulis sino que decía que era algo más; la capa de texto espacia la palabra

«The age of the Parmeneides inscription, its style, the Tape and size of the writing, the condition of the marble ii was carved on— every detail was more or less exactly the same as on the inscriptions for the Oulis healers. But in this case something was missing. There was no year, no date.» — lo que falta en la inscripción de Parmeneides frente a las otras: no lleva año ni fecha

«People immediately realized that the absence of a date was just as significant as anything the inscription does say. And the reason for the absence is quite simple. In this case a date wasn’t needed because Parmeneides himself represents the year zero: all the numbers on the other inscriptions— year 280, year 379, year 446— were being counted from him.» — y la lectura que se dio a esa ausencia: no hacía falta fecha porque Parmeneides es el año cero desde el que se cuentan los años 280, 379 y 446 de las otras

«Century after century this line of healers had continued to exist, looking back to Parmeneides as its source and dating its existence from him. To measure the age of a tradition or institution by dating it from its founder was nothing unusual in the ancient world. It was normal to acknowledge and then worship the person as a hero, beginning from the moment when he died. And there was one formal way of referring to such a person. This was to call him herds ktistes, the founding hero.» — la figura que de ahí resulta: una línea de sanadores que se databa desde su fundador, al que se veneraba como héroe, el *heros ktistes*

«The plainest evidence of all for these founding figures comes from the western coastal regions of Anatolia. Sometimes the priest is a figure lost in the mists of legend; sometimes he’s a clearly historical person. But what’s constant is a chain of succession created by ‘sons’ of Apollo, tracing its existence generation after generation back to the founding hero. For the links between heroes and the worship of Apollo were very close.» — de dónde viene la evidencia más clara: de la costa occidental de Anatolia, con cadenas de sucesión de hijos de Apolo que remontan al héroe fundador

«And that’s not even to mention the practice of creating special shrines for Iatromantis figures when they died and then treating them as heroes— heroes in the sense of people who had something extraordinary about them, somethingdivine, who through the lives they lived had gone beyond the limits of ordinary human possibility or experience.» — la práctica que añade: crear santuarios para los iatromantis al morir y tratarlos como héroes, gente que había ido más allá de los límites de lo humano

«Bn ' by bit and piece by piece the discoveries at Velia were pulling Parmeneides away from the usual image of him as a dry intellectual into a world of a totally different order. And that world was a reality: it’s only to us that it seems unreal.» — el balance que hace de los hallazgos de Velia: sacan a Parmeneides de la imagen del intelectual seco y lo llevan a otro orden de mundo, real aunque a nosotros nos parezca irreal; la capa de texto imprime *Bn '* por *Bit*

«here’s a peculiar piece of information about Parmeneides that’s been known for a long, long time. It’s such a small detail: something you mightn’t even notice. It’s that he adopted his successor, Zeno, as his son.» — el dato menudo con que abre el capítulo *The Line*: Parmeneides adoptó como hijo a su sucesor, Zenón; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«T he whole subject of adoption in the ancient world is a strange affair. Adopting someone two and a half thousand years ago wasn’t the same as it is now. The issue of how old you were really didn’t matter; the person you adopted could be grown up, too. Most of those taboos we have about adopted people contacting their natural parents— they simply didn’t exist. And often the reasons behind adoption were religious. For it had a profound connection with the mysteries.» — lo que sostiene sobre la adopción antigua: la edad no importaba, el adoptado podía ser adulto, y a menudo los motivos eran religiosos, con conexión honda con los misterios

«And yet in terms of solid evidence, in terms of the sheer numbers of examples still known, there’s one general area where adoption among the Greeks was more common than anywhere else. That was the western coastal regions of Anatolia— especially Caria as well as the islands lying offshore from Caria. And the plainest evidence of all comes from the inscriptions left behind by the great priestly families who used to live there.» — dónde estaba más documentada la adopción entre los griegos: en la costa occidental de Anatolia y sobre todo en Caria, por las inscripciones de las grandes familias sacerdotales

«But Anatolia also happens to have been a place where priestly traditions went hand in hand with the practice of healing. That’s how things stayed from the earliest times right through to the end of the classical world. Anatolian families of priests often tended to be families of healers as well;» — y el rasgo anatolio que enlaza con lo anterior: las tradiciones sacerdotales iban de la mano con la sanación, y las familias de sacerdotes solían serlo de sanadores

«As you’d expect, the process of being adopted into these families was tied up with initiation. In fact so much romance and mystique became associated with the process that writers of ancient novels loved to describe it. Here was a perfect way of giving local colour to the stories they set in the exotic coastal cities of western Anatolia— stories about loss and discovery, about unexpectedly being recognized and rescued and brought back to life when everything had seemed beyond hope.» — lo que añade sobre ese ingreso: iba ligado a la iniciación, y su romance y misterio los novelistas antiguos los usaban para dar color local

«This was with the line of ancient healers that made up the most famous medical school of all: the school of Hippocrates, situated on the island of Cos just off the mainland from Caria. There the basic principle of teacher adopting pupil was so important that it’s even referred to explicitly in the Hippocratic Oath.» — la comparación que los pocos historiadores atentos ensayaron: la escuela de Hipócrates en Cos, donde la adopción del discípulo por el maestro aparece en el propio Juramento

«On the contrary, scholars have already noticed that the real origins of the special significance Hippocratic tradition attached to this link between teacher and pupil don’t have anything to do with medical practice. They lie in the mysteries.» — y lo que esos mismos estudiosos notaron según Kingsley: el origen de ese vínculo entre maestro y discípulo no está en la práctica médica sino en los misterios

«In fact it’s no coincidence that Hippocrates happens to have been an Asklepiades or ‘son of Asclepius’, just as Parmeneides was an Ouliades or son of Apollo Oulios: that behind Hippocrates himself hovers the shadow of a lineage tracing its ancestry all the way back to Asclepius.» — el paralelo de linajes que traza: Hipócrates era *Asklepiades*, hijo de Asclepio, como Parmeneides era *Ouliades*, hijo de Apolo Oulios

«There’s a certain group of people that ancient writers used to say Parmeneides and Zeno had the closest of connections with. Guessing which group that was shouldn’t be too hard: it was the Pythagoreans in southern Italy. In fact both of them were quite often referred to as Pythagoreans themselves.» — la otra comparación que trae: los escritores antiguos ligaban estrechamente a Parmeneides y a Zenón con los pitagóricos del sur de Italia, y a menudo los llamaban pitagóricos ellos mismos

«There used to be a famous tradition about Pythagoras, that he went around from city to city and town to town» — la tradición sobre Pitágoras que aduce: iba de ciudad en ciudad y de pueblo en pueblo; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«not to teach but to heal’. And the first great philosophical systems created in Italy and Sicily weren’t theoretical products at all. Then knowledge of how the universe came into being, or of the elements that make up reality, was meant to have a practical application.» — y a qué iba, según esa tradición: no a enseñar sino a curar, de modo que los primeros sistemas filosóficos de Italia y Sicilia no eran productos teóricos

«So it’s no surprise to find that, apart from everything else, Parmeneides’ own poem contained detailed information on subjects like the growth of the foetus and sexual peculiarities and the nature of old age. And there’s nothing to be surprised at in the way that he came to be quoted as an authority by the greatest medical experts in the ancient world, or that according to traditions about him transmitted from Alexandria at the tip of Egypt through to the Arab world— as well as in southern Italy itself down to the thirteenth century— he was known as» — lo que con eso explica: que el poema tratara del crecimiento del feto, las peculiaridades sexuales y la vejez, y que se le citara como autoridad médica de Alejandría al mundo árabe y en el sur de Italia hasta el siglo XIII; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«the legendary head of a medical tradition who had healers for his successors. This was all a natural part of being a famous physikos.» — y como qué se le conocía: cabeza legendaria de una tradición médica con sanadores por sucesores, parte natural de ser un *physikos* famoso

«N owadays it could seem very strange for the founder of western philosophy to have been a priest. And it could» — la extrañeza moderna que Kingsley registra: que el fundador de la filosofía occidental haya sido sacerdote; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«seem even stranger for someone who’s a priest also to,be treated as a hero. But in fact this isn’t so strange at all. There are inscriptions from the ancient world that help to fill out a picture of chief priests being worshipped as heroes in their own right after they died. They were priests who had been responsible for giving out oracles of the gods, who became famous in the region where they’d lived either for founding new traditions or for creating new forms of old ones. And this was especially true in the case of people who had been priests of Apollo.» — y lo que opone a ella: hay inscripciones antiguas de sumos sacerdotes venerados como héroes tras morir, sobre todo sacerdotes de Apolo; la capa de texto imprime *to,be*

«And behind the Asclepius worshipped on Cos hovers the shadow of another god— the god who was his father, who used to share his healing shrines with him, who’s mentioned even before Asclepius right at the start of the Hippocratic Oath.» — el dios que pone detrás del Asclepio de Cos: su padre, que compartía con él los santuarios de sanación y aparece nombrado antes que él al comienzo del Juramento hipocrático; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«Nowadays it’s normal not to want to take these connections seriously. Parmeneides and Zeno were such creative, original writers; and the notion of belonging to a group or system, especially a mystical group like the Pythagoreans, seems so incompatible with anythingoriginal or creative. And yet that’s to miss one crucial point. Originally Pythagoreans weren’t so concerned with fixed ideas or doctrines as they were with something quite different: something that didn’t just tolerate creativity and originality but encouraged them, nurtured them, guided people to their source.» — la objeción moderna que registra y su respuesta: los pitagóricos originales no se ocupaban de doctrinas fijas sino de algo que alentaba y guiaba la creatividad hacia su fuente ; la capa de texto pega *anythingorigi-* y el troceo une la palabra al pasar de renglón

«This is why the Pythagorean tradition managed to stay so elusive— why it was so open-ended, blending with other traditions, defying our modern ideas of orthodoxy or self-definition.» — y lo que de ahí concluye: por eso la tradición pitagórica quedó tan escurridiza y abierta, mezclándose con otras y desafiando las ideas modernas de ortodoxia

«The evidence is still there to show how highly valued individuality and creative freedom once were in Pythagorean circles. That can sound such a paradox to us; we’re so used to thinking of religious groups or sects as made up of brainwashed, mindless men and women. But as a matter of fact this is one of the least paradoxical things about Pythagoreanism. The problem is simply a problem of understanding. Originality and creativity have come to be imagined in such superficial terms, and the cult of the individual has developed into such an effective form of brainwashing, that it’s not easy any longer even to conceive of anything else.» — el contraste que traza con la imagen corriente de las sectas: la individualidad y la libertad creadora se valoraban mucho en los círculos pitagóricos

«Becoming a Pythagorean wasn’t a casual matter of learning something and leaving. The process touched aspects of the human being so remote from ordinary experience that it can only be described in abstract terms, even though there was nothing abstract about it. You could say it was about what we fear most. It was about facing silence, about having no choice but to give up every kind of opinion and theory that we cling to, about not even finding anything to replace them for years on end.» — lo que describe del ingreso pitagórico: encarar el silencio y renunciar a toda opinión y teoría sin nada que las reemplace durante años

«Your whole life was turned upside down, from the inside out. And during this process the bond between teacher and disciple was essential. That’s why it was seen as the relationship between a father and an adopted child. Your teacher became your parent— just the same as through initiation into the mysteries. Becoming a Pythagorean meant being adopted, being introduced into a great family.» — el papel que da al vínculo con el maestro: relación de padre e hijo adoptivo, como en la iniciación en los misterios

«The background to the type of adoption practised by Pythagoreans was very simple. Essentially it was a process of rebirth: of becoming a child again, a kouros. And in this setting there was more to being adopted than meets the eye. The physical facts of heredity were never wiped out or cancelled. They continued to apply and have their obvious validity.» — el fondo que le atribuye: un proceso de renacer, de volver a ser niño, un kouros, sin que los hechos físicos de la herencia se borraran

«The adoption wasn’t just a part of a mystery. It was a mystery in itself. It meant being initiated into a family that exists on another level from anything were used to. Outwardly all the links with the past still existed. And yet inwardly there was an awareness of belonging somewhere else more than it’s ever possible to belong anywhere here — of being cared for more intimately than it’s possible to be cared for by a human being.» — lo que sostiene sobre esa adopción: era un misterio en sí, iniciación en una familia de otro plano, con conciencia de pertenecer a otra parte

«As for the people who played the role of teacher and initiator, they could seem human enough. But the role they played was far more than the role of a human parent. They were the embodiments of another world. At their hands you died to everything you were, to everything you’d learned to cling to as though it was your whole existence. That’s why they sometimes were referred to— in the cases where they were men— as ‘true fathers’. And the emphasis was on the word ‘true’. From the point of view of the mysteries the ordinary life we all know is only a first step, a preliminary to something else entirely.» — y el papel del iniciador: encarnaciones de otro mundo, llamados *padres verdaderos*, con el acento en *verdaderos*

«Among early Pythagoreans the importance attached to this process of interaction between ‘parent’ and ‘child’, of transmission from one to the other, was fundamental. It led to ethical demands that were tremendous. And these demands weren’t always formal requirements: often they had to be intuited instead. Even the Pythagorean legends still reflect the need that sometimes might be felt to be present physically at the teacher’s deathbed when he died.» — las exigencias éticas que le atribuye a esa transmisión: enormes, a menudo intuidas y no formales, hasta el punto de estar presente en el lecho de muerte del maestro

«But behind the specifics there was one central fact. This was the fact that the teacher is a point of access to something beyond the teacher. And behind one teacher (here’s a whole line of teachers, one behind the other. The leaching was simply transmitted from generation to generation, one step at a time, often in secret and sometimes in circumstances of immense difficulty.» — el hecho central que declara: el maestro es un punto de acceso a algo más allá del maestro, con toda una línea de maestros detrás

«The result was utterly paradoxical. People’s lives and even their deaths were surrendered to their teacher. And yet they surrendered to nothing. They became a part of a vast system; but through that system they found an extraordinary creativity. They became members of a family that was indescribably intimate— and totally impersonal.» — la paradoja que formula: se entregaban a su maestro y a la vez a nada, miembros de una familia intimísima y del todo impersonal

«Each teacher seemed to have a face but really was faceless: just one link in a chain of tradition reaching back to Pythagoras. And Pythagoras himself was nameless. Pythagoreans avoided mentioning him by name because his identity was a mystery— in the same way that they often avoided mentioning each other’s names or the names of the gods. As far as they were concerned, Pythagoras wasn’t only the man he had appeared to be. They knew him as a son of Apollo or, quite simply, as Apollo himself.» — y cómo cierra la línea: cada maestro era un eslabón hacia Pitágoras, a quien los pitagóricos evitaban nombrar porque lo tenían por hijo de Apolo o por Apolo mismo

«It’s really rather extraordinary how he chose to talk about ‘father Parmenides’— and about the possibility of patricide— at just the moment when he was trying to define the essence of his relationship to Parmeneides as one philosopher to another.» — lo que Kingsley subraya en Platón: que hablara de *padre Parménides* y de parricidio justo al definir su relación con él

«As a number of scholars have seen, it’s significant too. Exactly the same form of address, ‘father’, that Plato uses for referring to Parmeneides was used by Pythagoreans when referring to the man who happened to be their teacher. It was also the standard title given to initiators into the ancient mysteries, as well as being the formal name for someone who reaches the very last stage of initiation.» — y lo que otros estudiosos vieron en ese término: *padre* era la forma pitagórica de nombrar al maestro y el título del iniciador en los misterios antiguos

«And yet Plato doesn’t say Parmeneides was his own father. He’s more subtle and precise than that. Carefully he puts the reference to ‘father Parmenides’, along with the talk about patricide, into the mouth of one of the imaginary speakers in his dialogue. He doesn’t even give the speaker a proper name but simply presents him as a citizen of Velia— or Elea, as Plato preferred to say. And he quaintly refers to him as the ‘Eleatic stranger’.» — la precaución que señala en Platón: pone lo del padre y el parricidio en boca de un personaje sin nombre propio, el *extranjero eleático*

«Behind the black humour of the joke about patricide there’s also some real knowledge about the nature of the relationship between Parmeneides and his successor; only a little knowledge, that’s all. Too much familiarity with the facts isn’t needed when the aim is to recreate history in line with one’s own purposes.» — lo que concede que hay detrás del chiste: algo de saber real sobre el vínculo entre Parmeneides y su sucesor, solo un poco

«And Plato’s purposes are still very clear. Behind everything else, he wanted to be seen as Parmeneides’ heir. W ith any of the other philosophers who lived before him, he really didn’t care. But with Parmeneides the situation was different. Plato wanted the succession to his teaching not for Zeno or anyone else, but for himself.» — y el propósito que le atribuye: quería la sucesión de Parmeneides no para Zenón ni para otro sino para sí mismo

«In a sense you could say he succeeded. The fantasy came true. Nowadays there’s hardly anyone who doubts that he was Parmeneides’ rightful successor: that he took his teaching a stage further, improved it. He succeeded so well that no one really suspects any more how vast the chasm is separating Plato’s idea of philosophy from Parmeneides’— or suspects just how much has been left behind.» — el resultado que le reconoce: hoy casi nadie duda que fuera el sucesor legítimo, y ya no se sospecha el abismo entre su idea de filosofía y la de Parmeneides

«But in another sense he didn’t change a thing. The succession that he wanted to put an end to continued in southern Italy for hundreds of years quite undisturbed, quietly looking back to Parmeneides as its founder, preserving the traces of another reality entirely.» — y lo que opone: la sucesión que quiso cortar siguió en el sur de Italia durante siglos, mirando a Parmeneides como fundador

«For a long time people have puzzled over a mystery that once was described as ‘totally incomprehensible’. This is the riddle posed by the complete absence of any connection between Parmeneides, or his philosophy, and the culture they both grew out of: the culture of the Velians and Phocaeans.» — el enigma que recoge de la bibliografía: la ausencia total de conexión entre Parmeneides y la cultura veliense y focea de la que salió

«In fact the answer to the riddle is very simple. The only lack of connection that exists is between Velian or Phocaean culture and the image of Parmeneides created by Plato. As for the reality covered over by the image Plato chose to construct, that’s quite another matter.» — y la salida que propone: la falta de conexión es solo con la imagen de Parmeneides creada por Platón

«He used to enjoy making jokes about the philosophers who’d lived before him. Humour was one of his most effective weapons in the struggle to establish his own ideas; and he loved presenting genealogies for earlier philosophers that were amusing, striking, frivolous. He didn’t even have to invent most of the details. There were entertaining accounts about the origins of philosophy already circulating in ancient Athens.» — lo que dice del método de Platón con sus antecesores: el humor como arma para imponer las ideas propias, con genealogías amenas y frívolas

«The one man he mentions in his writings, quite lightheartedly, as Parmeneides’ philosophical ancestor was someone called Xenophanes. You could say that linking Parmeneides and Xenophanes had a certain validity: both of them were associated in one way or another with Velia, and there’s even a superficial similarity between some of their ideas. But that’s all.» — el caso concreto: Jenófanes presentado a la ligera como antecesor filosófico de Parmeneides, con cierta validez superficial y nada más

«And yet what Plato said with his tongue in his cheek quickly came to be accepted as historical fact. His successor Aristotle took on trust, with only a little hesitation, that Xenophanes was Parmeneides’ teacher. W ith Aristotle’s own successor the hesitation had already disappeared. It’s an old, familiar pattern. Guesses evolve into certainties and dogmas are born.» — y lo que pasó con esa broma: Aristóteles la tomó por buena con poca vacilación, su sucesor ya sin ninguna, y así las conjeturas se vuelven certezas

«The precision of the details in the report is impressive— so impressive that no one has dared to question its essential accuracy or doubt that it must be based on historical fact. Scholars have been obliged to acknowledge its validity, accept it as authentic.» — lo que Kingsley dice del estatuto de ese informe: nadie se ha atrevido a cuestionar su exactitud esencial y los estudiosos han tenido que aceptarlo como auténtico

«They’ve hardly begun to realize what they were taking on board.» — y la objeción que les hace: apenas han empezado a darse cuenta de lo que aceptaban

«known on the island as Apollo Oulios.» — el nombre de ese dios en la isla de Cos: Apolo Oulios; el tramo arranca después del corte de chunk, que reemite el marcador de plana a media frase

«Having someone from Velia bring up the issue of killing Parmeneides is an extremely elegant idea: just as elegant as the way Plato makes Zeno discredit himself in that other dialogue known as the Parmenides. This was» — cómo lee el recurso de poner el parricidio en boca de un veliense: una idea elegante, tan elegante como hacer que Zenón se desacredite a sí mismo en el *Parménides*; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«one of the wonders of writing fictitious literature. You could create your own reality, make the characters do all the work for you.» — y qué le permitía: crear la propia realidad y hacer que los personajes hicieran el trabajo

«There’s one report tucked away in an ancient book written about the lives of the old philosophers that tells» — el testimonio que Kingsley opone a la versión de Jenófanes: un informe guardado en un libro antiguo sobre las vidas de los viejos filósofos; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«a very different story. It briefly notes the standard view about Xenophanes being Parmeneides’ teacher— and then goes on to say what’s not mentioned in any other surviving source. It explains that Parmeneides’ true teacher wasn’t Xenophanes at all because his real connections lay somewhere else entirely.» — y lo que ese informe dice: registra la versión corriente sobre Jenófanes y añade que el verdadero maestro de Parmeneides estaba en otra parte

«He took part in the teaching given by Ameinias the Pythagorean, the son of Diochaitas. Ameinias was a poor man, but a good one and a fine one: this was the man» — el pasaje de ese informe en la traducción de Kingsley: Parmeneides siguió la enseñanza de Ameinias el pitagórico, hijo de Diochaitas, hombre pobre pero bueno; el tramo se corta en el límite de chunk

«whose teaching he chose to follow. And when Ameinias died he built a hero-shrine for him, belonging as he did to a distinguished and a wealthy family. And it wasn’t through Xenophanes but through Ameinias that he was led to stillness (hesychia).» — y la continuación del mismo informe: al morir Ameinias le levantó un santuario de héroe, y fue por él y no por Jenófanes que llegó a la quietud, *hesychia*

«O BEGIN WITH, EVERYTHING WAS ROSES. The discoveries at Velia were welcomed by the learned world with open arms. They were greeted as truly sensational’, as calling for a total ‘change of perspective’. News about them hit the London papers— then it sank back into silence.» — cómo describe la recepción de los hallazgos de Velia: primero saludados como sensacionales y como exigencia de un cambio de perspectiva, luego el silencio; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«A handful of Italian scholars tried to keep up an interest in what they all could possibly mean. Otherwise, people hesitated in the face of the evidence and walked away. As far as anything to do with Parmeneides was concerned, their minds were already made up. He was the father of philosophy, founder of western logic. Long ago he’d been removed from any contact with life and made into an abstraction instead, an ideal embodiment of reason. A few archaeological discoveries were hardly going to change that.» — y por qué el mundo erudito se apartó, según Kingsley: la imagen de Parmeneides como padre de la filosofía y encarnación de la razón ya estaba decidida

«We honestly believe we re in control, that it’s we who search and look and make all the important discoveries in life and know exactly what’s important. Occasionally, very occasionally, we may happen to sense something entirely different: that it isn’t we who make discoveries at all because really the discoveries draw us to them at the right time and make us find them. It’s the discoveries that want to be found and understood.» — la inversión que propone: no somos nosotros quienes hacemos los hallazgos, sino los hallazgos los que nos atraen y quieren ser encontrados

«Just as we like to believe it’s we who ‘make’ discoveries, we also think we ‘have’ dreams. But what we don’t understand is that sometimes beings communicate to us through our dreams, in the same way that they try to communicate through outer events. It can be so difficult for them to draw the attention of the living, to struggle through from their world to this: unimaginably difficult. We have no idea, no inkling, of the particular kind of effort and focus that sometimes is needed.» — y el paralelo con los sueños: a veces seres se comunican por ellos, con una dificultad que no imaginamos

«There were early philosophers— and Parmeneides was one of them— who were quite specific about one point. This is the fact that everything is alive and death is just a name for something we don’t understand. It’s not an idea of theirs that you often find mentioned. If you take it seriously then it starts to take away too much of the importance of ourselves: raises too many doubts about the reality of what we imagine is reality.» — lo que adjudica a esos primeros filósofos, Parmeneides entre ellos: todo está vivo y la muerte es solo un nombre para algo que no entendemos

«The reasoning sounds perfectly sensible— provided you don’t stop to look at the evidence too long, or too closely.» — y la reserva con que Kingsley la recibe: suena sensata mientras no se mire la evidencia demasiado tiempo ni demasiado de cerca

«One of the points in what they said is undeniable. The way the Velian inscriptions were all produced together at the same time shows every trace of antiquarianism, of a self-conscious attem pt at celebrating and reviving the memories of days gone by. As a matter of fact the Greeks in southern Italy at that particular time tended to be very glad for any opportunity to parade their past. They’d come to feel so intimidated by the power of Rome that they wanted to prove they, too, had their own claims to fame and glory.» — lo que concede de esa objeción: las inscripciones se hicieron a la vez y tienen todas las trazas del anticuarismo, porque los griegos del sur de Italia querían desfilar su pasado ante el poder de Roma

«And that’s precisely the point. Those people had long memories— a fact that used to be appreciated far more than it is now. The Greeks who’d travelled out to Italy from the east and settled there were notorious in the ancient world for their conservatism, for the way they remembered and honoured and preserved their own past. Even today it’s still clear how faithfully they transmitted their religious and magical traditions from one generation to the next, century after century.» — y el giro que le da: esa gente tenía memoria larga, y los griegos emigrados a Italia eran notorios por su conservadurismo y por transmitir fielmente sus tradiciones

«Often these traditions were passed on in silence, strictly on a local basis, unknown or almost unknown to anyone outside. A regular time span for the process of transmission was over five hundred years. Sometimes it was closer to a thousand.» — el plazo que documenta para esas transmisiones: más de quinientos años de práctica local y silenciosa, a veces cerca de mil

«This had many implications; but in practice one of the most important things it meant is that evidence dating from a later age often tends to reflect the conditions of a far earlier period. Time and again archaeologists exploring the regions around Velia— towns to the south, or just to the north like Posidonia, or further to the north— discover that religious traditions still being maintained in the first or second centuries AD date all the way back to the sixth and seventh centuries BC.» — y la implicación que subraya: evidencia tardía suele reflejar condiciones muy anteriores, como muestran los hallazgos en torno a Velia

«And throughout the whole of the western Mediterranean there was one particular group of people who had a unique reputation for preserving their original ways and customs. They were more famous than anyone else for their conservatism. They held to the old forms of their language, especially the old Anatolian names, and kept some of the ancient priesthoods alive for nearly a thousand years. They were the descendants of the Phocaeans who back in the sixth century BC had sailed out to the west.» — quiénes tenían la fama máxima de conservar sus usos: los descendientes de los foceos que salieron al oeste en el siglo VI a. C., con sacerdocios antiguos vivos casi mil años

«W ith the new cities they built, the Phocaeans managed to create Anatolias in the west: in Italy and France. And their present was their past.» — la fórmula con que cierra: los foceos crearon Anatolias en el oeste, y su presente era su pasado

«There are no coincidences here. The only way that someone in Velia at the time when the inscriptions were made could have managed to preserve this patterning of details was if a continuous tradition had survived for five hundred years.» — la conclusión que saca del patrón de las inscripciones: solo una tradición continua de quinientos años podía conservar esa trama de detalles

«There’s no one who possibly could have remembered those three dates added after the name of each Oulis healer— ‘in the 280th year’, ‘in the 379th year’, ‘in the 446th year’— without the help not just of oral traditions but of something more substantial: written records.» — y el paso siguiente: nadie pudo recordar los años 280, 379 y 446 sin registros escritos además de tradición oral

«Over the last century details have emerged from Miletus about a special group of people. They were dedicated to Apollo. They held enormous political power in the city, as well as religious power; and they were known as the Molpoi.» — el grupo de Mileto que propone como modelo de esos registros: los Molpoi, consagrados a Apolo y con enorme poder político y religioso

«Names of the individuals involved are carefully listed, one underneath the other, in official inscriptions carved on great blocks of marble. These were people who knew mysteries of Apollo, and transmitted them. Fragments of evidence point to ancient links with heroic ‘sons’ of Apollo, with ritual piping in his honour— and with the same type of kouros traditions once known in Phocaea as well as Crete.» — lo que las inscripciones de los Molpoi conservan: listas de nombres de quienes conocían y transmitían los misterios de Apolo, con rastros de tradiciones de kouros

«From the late dating of some of the records you might think the whole lineage is only a fantasy. Its not. No more than a few of the marble blocks have been found; but even so, the details of the succession are documented from the early Christian era back to as far as 5 2 5 BC.» — y la objeción cronológica que despeja: pese a la fecha tardía de algunos registros, la sucesión está documentada desde la era cristiana hasta el 525 a. C.

«And things were much the same at Istria— the colony of Miletus on the Black Sea where Apollo was known as Pholeuterios, the god of lairs and incubation. There the evidence is even more fragmentary, just as it is at Velia. But we can still see how the family in charge of Apollo’s worship survived for seven hundred years.» — el caso paralelo de Istria: la familia a cargo del culto de Apolo se mantuvo setecientos años

«But simply to focus on the inscriptions is to overlook something far more important. This is the way that they agree with the poetry written by Parmeneides himself.» — y lo que llama más importante que las inscripciones: que concuerdan con la poesía del propio Parmeneides

«In both cases there’s the same fundamental involvement with incubation and dreams and other states of consciousness, with incantations andecstasy, with Apollo and the underworld. And it’s good to remember that— years before the archaeological discoveries were even made— aspects of Parmeneides’ poem were already being explained in terms of incubation, shamanism, the practices of Iatromantis figures. The new finds at Velia only help to fill out the background. They bring everything back down to earth.» — en qué consiste esa concordancia: incubación, sueños, otros estados de consciencia, encantamientos, éxtasis, Apolo y el inframundo, ya señalados antes de los hallazgos

«For thousands of years now, the beginnings of western philosophy have systematically been split off and dissociated from the kind of practices we’ve come to think of as ‘magical’. The process has been a long and determined one; it almost succeeded.» — lo que sostiene sobre la separación entre filosofía y magia: un proceso largo y decidido que casi lo logró

«W hen rationality is really combined with irrationality, then we begin to go beyond them both. Something else is created, something quite extraordinary that’s timeless— and yet entirely new. Then we start seeing the illogicality of everything that normally is considered so reasonable. And we come face to face with an implacable, fascinatingly coherent logic that there can seem a hundred good reasons for dismissing as completely absurd.» — lo que propone en cambio: combinadas de veras, racionalidad e irracionalidad se trascienden y aparece una lógica implacable y coherente que parece absurda

«This is the logic Parmeneides tried to introduce to the West: a logic that questions everything, that was meant to turn people’s lives and values upside down. But we managed to take the easy way out, the reasonable way. We turned his teaching upside down instead.» — y la lectura que da al desenlace: esa lógica debía poner del revés las vidas y los valores, y en cambio se puso del revés su enseñanza

«It’s quite an achievement. We’ve actually succeeded in creating the illusion that we’re wiser than people used to be.» — el remate del capítulo, sobre el presente: hemos logrado crear la ilusión de ser más sabios de lo que la gente solía ser

«Ignoring something needs no justifying when enough people are willing to ignore it. But in the case of the Velian discoveries there was one justification some experts felt able to give for shutting the door before they shut it.» — lo que observa sobre el desdén erudito: ignorar algo no pide justificación cuando bastantes están dispuestos a ignorarlo, aunque en el caso de Velia algunos expertos dieron una

«This was to point out what from a distance can seem the one real weakness in the evidence from Velia— the fact that it dates from five hundred years after Parmeneides. Certainly, they said, the details on the inscriptions can be taken to show how people with antiquarian interests at around the time of Christ might have liked to imagine Velia’s distant past. But to suppose these details could have any relevance to the period when Parmeneides himself was living: that’s ‘not correct’.» — y en qué consistía esa justificación: las inscripciones son de quinientos años después y solo dirían cómo se imaginaba Velia su pasado hacia la época de Cristo

«You’d have to have very good reasons for doubting the historical reality behind the Velian inscriptions, just» — el balance que hace: harían falta muy buenas razones para dudar de la realidad histórica tras las inscripciones de Velia; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«as you’d have to have good reasons to doubt what they imply: that Parmeneides was someone intimately associated with those Lords of the Lair. And yet there are none. The only real reasons are reasons to the contrary.» — y lo que esas inscripciones implican: que Parmeneides estaba íntimamente asociado a los Señores de la Guarida, sin razones reales en contra

«Talking about how philosophy and magic once were two halves of a whole might sound an interesting histori» — la precisión que hace sobre su propio asunto: hablar de filosofía y magia como dos mitades de un todo podría sonar a tema histórico interesante; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana a media palabra

«cal topic. But basically it’s not a matter of history at all. And neither does it mean we just need to be more aware of how irrationality has come to be separated off in our lives from rationality; nor does it even mean we should be making a greater effort to bring everything that seems unreasonable into some harmony with reason. If we think it’s enough to do any of that we’re still missing the main point, because all these distinctions between rational and irrational are only valid from the limited standpoint of what we call reason.» — y lo que opone: no es asunto de historia ni de armonizar lo irracional con la razón, porque esas distinciones solo valen desde el punto de vista limitado de lo que llamamos razón

«As for those philosopher figures who stand in the distant past at the beginnings of western culture, we’ve learned to excuse them— to make allowances for the way they failed to draw the conclusions we think they should have drawn. And yet the only allowances we need to make are for ourselves. Were in no position at all to judge those philosophers: they’re our judges. When we close the door on them, we’re only closing the door on ourselves.» — la inversión que propone frente a la condescendencia con los primeros filósofos: no estamos en posición de juzgarlos, ellos son nuestros jueces

«If you dismiss them you have to dismiss their whole Anatolian background; then you have to deny their links with Parmeneides’ poem. And even that’s only the beginning. For they’re also linked up with a whole network of other traditions about Parmeneides and the people close to him, traditions that have been known about but covered over for ages.» — el encadenamiento que señala: descartar las inscripciones obliga a descartar su fondo anatolio y a negar su vínculo con el poema

«Everything is stitched up together. It’s all of a piece. And our past is stitched up in it too— along with our future.» — la fórmula con que cierra el capítulo: todo está cosido junto, y nuestro pasado y nuestro futuro cosidos dentro

«ARMENEIDES’ TEACHER, AMEINIAS, WAS A poor man. Probably you’d have noticed nothing special about him at all if you passed him in the street. Outwardly there’d have been very little to set him apart from anyone else.» — cómo presenta a Ameinias: un hombre pobre en quien nadie habría notado nada especial al cruzarlo por la calle; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«In the report about his teacher he’s presented as someone who belonged to a distinguished and wealthy family. And were told in a rather obscure way that this explains why he built the hero-shrine for Ameinias.» — y lo que el informe dice de Parmeneides: de familia distinguida y rica, lo que explicaría de modo oscuro por qué levantó el santuario

«There have even been scholars who felt the connection is so artificial that the Greek text of the report must be wrong; that somehow it needs correcting.» — la reacción de algunos estudiosos ante esa conexión: la hallaron tan artificial que dieron por corrupto el texto griego

«So the circle completes itself again. The background to the report about Parmeneides and Ameinias agrees exactly with the background to the series of inscriptions from Velia: Parmeneides as a priest of Apollo the healer, the Anatolian god of incubation.» — y el círculo que da por cerrado: el fondo del informe sobre Ameinias coincide con el de las inscripciones de Velia, con Parmeneides como sacerdote de Apolo sanador

«In Parmeneides’ own time, building one for someone who’d died was extremely unusual— regardless of how rich or poor you were. As a rule people were buried with a simple ritual. Building a hero-shrine was another matter entirely. And it meant certain things. It involved creating a special hero-cult: meant marking off a precinct for the worship of someone who was considered more than the human being he or she had appeared to be.» — lo que sostiene sobre el santuario de héroe: en tiempos de Parmeneides era rarísimo, y suponía un culto propio en un recinto marcado

«Basically, to be treated as a hero was to be treated as a mythical being. It was the equivalent of being seen as belonging to another world, another race, another time. Deep inside us we’ve all had a glimpse of that world and that time at one moment or another. But to live what we’ve glimpsed, or allow it to be lived— that’s something else.» — la definición que da: ser tratado como héroe era ser tratado como un ser mítico, de otro mundo, otra raza y otro tiempo

«That makes it all the stranger how nobody has noted one very simple detail: the way that Ameinias being worshipped as a hero after he died is paralleled by the tradition of Oulis healers treating Parmeneides himself as a hero. In terms of understanding Parmeneides the parallel speaks volumes. You could say it means that heroes don’t simply appear out of nowhere; that sometimes it takes a hero to make a hero.» — el paralelo que nadie había notado, según él: Ameinias venerado como héroe por Parmeneides y Parmeneides venerado como héroe por los sanadores Oulis

«T he report about ameinias describes him as a Pythagorean. Like everything else in the report, the detail is significant. You only have to glance at the evidence that survives to notice how the whole question of heroes— their status, their true identity, the right attitude to adopt towards them, howto become one— played a crucial part in early Pythagorean tradition.» — el dato siguiente del informe y su peso: Ameinias era pitagórico, y la cuestión de los héroes fue central en la tradición pitagórica temprana

«But this isn’t to say we should lose sight of the fact that heroes along with hero-shrines were among the most fundamental aspects of ancient Greek religion. And they weren’t anything to do with commemorating the dead, with trying to honour the past or keep old memories alive.» — la salvedad que pone: héroes y santuarios eran de lo más básico de la religión griega y no tenían que ver con conmemorar a los muertos

«Hero-shrines were all about presence, living presence. They were about maintaining a correct relationship with the power the hero had become, and they were meant to create the circumstances that would allow this power to be as effective as possible in the present. The existence of a hero-shrine was supposed to be a blessing for the whole area: for the land and the local people, for nature and for visitors.» — y con qué sí tenían que ver: presencia viva, relación correcta con el poder en que el héroe se había convertido, para que actuara en el presente

«There was nothing casual about creating a hero-shrine— or about making it a part of your life. It was an opening to another world. If you went near one you had to pass it in total silence.» — el trato que exigía: no había nada casual en ello, era una abertura a otro mundo y se pasaba junto a él en silencio total

«This is why hesychia, the Greek word that means stillness’, automatically included the meaning‘silence’ as well. But according to the report about Ameinias, hesychia is precisely the quality that Parmeneides was expressing his gratitude to him for when he built the hero-shrine. It was the quality Ameinias had brought into his life— or rather had brought him towards.» — el término que enlaza con el informe: *hesychia*, quietud, incluía el sentido de silencio, y es justo la cualidad que Parmeneides agradecía a Ameinias

«Because heroes had been humans but also were more than humans, it was understood that they had a special relationship with what lies beyond the limits of ordinary human experience— with the world of the dead, the underworld.» — la relación que atribuye a los héroes: por haber sido humanos y algo más, tenían trato especial con lo que está fuera de la experiencia humana ordinaria

«If you look back you can see the extraordinary consistency— and simplicity— in the way early Christianity converted the places that once had been hero-shrines into shrines for saints. There was hardly anything anyone had to do except change the names. And the one most fundamental feature that the Christian worship of saints took over from the Greek worship of heroes was the practice of incubation.» — la continuidad cristiana que señala: el cristianismo temprano convirtió los santuarios de héroes en santuarios de santos cambiando poco más que los nombres, y heredó la incubación

«The link between hero-shrines and incubation was so close that wherever incubation was practised, heroes usually weren’t too far away. Most often incubation centres simply were centres for the worship of heroes.» — el vínculo que subraya: donde se practicaba incubación solía haber héroes cerca, y los centros de incubación eran casi siempre centros de culto heroico

«First of all he mentions the shrine and the cave and the mysteries, practised there in utter silence; and then he goes on to say there was another cave not far away where the local people also used to go. It was across the nearby mountain, beside a beautiful meadow known as ‘Asia’. According to tradition this cave was connected underground with the other cave at Acharaca. It was sacred to the same gods too, because here was the legendary site where Hades had married Persephone— the original place where he’d snatched her down into the underworld. And the monument that marked the spot was a hero-shrine.» — el segundo pasaje de Estrabón que trae: la otra cueva junto al prado llamado Asia, unida bajo tierra con la de Acharaca, sitio legendario del rapto de Perséfone, marcado por un santuario de héroe

«Scholars have translated the statement quite effortlessly. They say it means Ameinias converted Parmeneides to the philosophical life, to the contemplative life, ‘the quiet life’.» — cómo se ha traducido el punto clave del informe sobre Ameinias: que lo convirtió a la vida filosófica, contemplativa, la vida tranquila

«And yet these are just interpretations, not translations. As for the idea of one philosopher leading or urging another on towards his teaching, this is a theme that became familiar enough in the ancient world. It’s also true that the question of stillness eventually became a significant topic, in some Greek philosophical circles, as a result of direct contact with India. But that doesn’t explain the mention here of stillness with such specific reference to Parmeneides; and there’s nothing at all to be gained from converting such a particular detail into some commonplace.» — y la objeción que les hace: son interpretaciones y no traducciones, y no explican la mención de la quietud referida a Parmeneides

«There are a number of things about the word hesychia that are well worth noting. You could mention its close connections with healing— or the fact that it was a quality often associated with one particular god, Apollo. But that’s not what’s most crucial.» — lo que sí destaca del término: sus vínculos estrechos con la sanación y con Apolo, aunque no sea lo decisivo

«Ameinias is presented as a Pythagorean; and the Pythagoreans happened to attach extraordinary importance to stillness. This wasn’t just a matter of the silence imposed on people who wanted to become Pythagoreans. That was a part of the picture, but only a small part. For behind the silence there was a whole dimension of significance to the practice of stillness.» — lo decisivo según Kingsley: los pitagóricos daban a la quietud una importancia extraordinaria, más allá del silencio impuesto a los aspirantes

«The purpose was to free people’s attention from distractions, to turn it in another direction so their awareness could start operating in an entirely different way. The stillness had a point to it, and that was to create an opening into a world unlike anything were used to: a world that can only be entered ‘in deep meditation, ecstasies and dreams’.» — el propósito que les asigna: liberar la atención de las distracciones para que la consciencia operara de otro modo y se abriera un mundo al que solo se entra en meditación honda, éxtasis y sueños

«What Ameinias taught Parmeneides wasn’t anything to do with thinking as we understand thinking, or philosophical reflection. It had to do with incubation. The decisive characteristic of the tradition kept going for hundreds of years by those men called Pholarchos— by Lords of the Lair who traced their origin back to Parmeneides— also turns out to be the defining characteristic of what Parmeneides himself received from his teacher.» — la conclusión del capítulo: lo que Ameinias enseñó no era pensar ni reflexión filosófica sino incubación, la misma nota definitoria de los Pholarchos que decían venir de Parmeneides

«Anatolian families of priests in the service of Apollo the healer used to be outstandingly distinguished as well» — lo que Kingsley opone a la extrañeza de los estudiosos: las familias sacerdotales anatolias al servicio de Apolo sanador eran señaladamente distinguidas; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«as rich; and they happened to demonstrate these qualities most tangibly in one particular way. That was through the remarkable size and extraordinary workmanship of the shrines, tombs and monuments they used to build. This is plainest of all in traditions emanating from Miletus. But it’s especially clear in the evidence from Miletus’ colony at Istria— the same town where Apollo was worshipped as the god in charge of lairs, Pholeuterios.» — y cómo lo mostraban: por el tamaño y la factura de los santuarios, tumbas y monumentos que levantaban, sobre todo en Mileto y en su colonia de Istria

«They had power over health and sickness and death. If you approached them the right way they could heal you. Or theyd show their presence and guidance instead» — los poderes que atribuye a los héroes: sobre la salud, la enfermedad y la muerte, con curación para quien se acercara del modo correcto; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«in your ordinary, daily life through special signs and uncanny coincidences: by communicating through outer events. But there’s one method of communication that they preferred to any other. This was through people’s dreams.» — y el modo de comunicación que preferían: signos y coincidencias extrañas en la vida diaria, y sobre todo los sueños

«It all had to do with dreams, with other states of awareness. The outer techniques of stillness that Pythagoreans practised— the silence, the deliberate calm, physically not even moving— weren’t simply ends in» — con qué tenía que ver esa quietud pitagórica: con los sueños y otros estados de consciencia, y las técnicas externas no eran fines en sí; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«themselves. They were means that were used for the sake» — y qué eran entonces esas técnicas: medios usados en vista de otra cosa; el tramo se corta en el corte de chunk

«of reaching something else.» — la continuación de la frase después del corte de chunk: alcanzar algo más

«For hesychia and pholeos are two words that happen to belong together: repeatedly they occur side by side in ancient Greek. W hen Strabo tried to describe what happened at the incubation shrine near Acharaca he 181» — el argumento léxico con que cierra la pieza: *hesychia* y *pholeos* van juntas y aparecen lado a lado en griego antiguo, y Estrabón no fue el único que resumió con *hesychia* el yacer inmóvil como un animal en su guarida

«Parmeneides’ predecessor and his successors are united by one common factor. That’s stillness, the stillness experienced in incubation. This is what defined their basic focus, their mode of operation.» — la tesis del tramo: al predecesor y a los sucesores de Parmeneides los une la quietud experimentada en la incubación

«To suppose that Parmeneides himself—disciple of Ameinias, exemplar of the Oulis healers— could have been exempt from this same concern would be totally illogical. And in fact we haven’t even started to see what a central place he gave to stillness, or hesychia, in his teaching as a whole.» — y la conclusión que saca: suponer que Parmeneides quedara exento de esa misma ocupación sería del todo ilógico

«E ALL KNOW WHAT STILLNESS IS; OR AT LEAST WE think we do. It means peace and pleasantness, lying under the sun for half an hour with the thoughts racing through our minds about what to do later in the day. And if we’re honest, we’ll probably have to admit that the statement about Parmeneides being led by Ameinias to stillness sounds ridiculous. If it was a matter of the great Parmeneides being taught lofty truths about the universe and metaphysics and the nature of man and woman, this wouldn’t be a problem. But to be told that the one thing he learned from his teacher was stillness— that’s an absurd anticlimax.» — la objeción que Kingsley se plantea: que Parmeneides aprendiera de su maestro solo la quietud suena a anticlímax absurdo; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«The absurdity is a warning: an accurate sign of just how hopeless it is to try fitting Parmeneides, or the world he used to move in, into our normal frame of reference. As to how serious we are about heeding the warning, that’s another matter.» — y cómo lee esa absurdidad: una advertencia de lo inútil que es meter a Parmeneides en nuestro marco de referencia

«A strange piece of writing was produced during the centuries after Parmeneides. It’s called the Pythagorean Memoirs.» — el texto que introduce: los *Pythagorean Memoirs*, escritos en los siglos posteriores a Parmeneides

«In fact this has nothing to do with chance. It’s stillness that has the power to carry a human being into another reality: into a world of prophecy where future and past and present are all contained and where heroes, not humans, are at home.» — lo que sostiene sobre la vecindad de quietud y héroes en ese texto: la quietud es lo que lleva a un humano a otra realidad, un mundo de profecía donde están en casa los héroes

«That’s the real reason for the stillness practised in incubation. It was a method for coming as close as possible to the divine world. And this is why according to the normal terms of Greek religion incubation was strictly limited to special, sacred places— to territory where gods and heroes, not humans, were in charge. For the stillness itself was something that belonged to the heroes and the gods.» — la razón que da para la quietud de la incubación: acercarse cuanto se pueda al mundo divino, y por eso se limitaba a lugares sagrados

«From a certain perspective it’s true enough to say that the stillness of incubation was simply a technique, a means to an end, a way of contacting the divine. And yet that’s only how it seems to us. Really it was already the end itself, the ultimate paradox of the end that’s present at the beginning.» — y la corrección que hace a llamarla técnica: era ya el fin mismo, la paradoja última del fin presente en el comienzo

«At one point the writer of those Pythagorean Memoirs makes a statement that can sound extraordinary. He says that stillness is simply impossible for human beings. Men and women can try to be good— and they can even succeed. But stillness is something beyond their power.» — lo que el autor de esos *Memoirs* declara: la quietud es sencillamente imposible para los seres humanos, que pueden ser buenos pero no quietos

«In the writings left behind by people known as Pythagoreans certain things are considered basic facts of life. One of them is that as humans were always changing, restless. At every moment our bodies are moving— and not just our bodies but our thoughts and desires as well. Anybody who was able to maintain a visibly greater degree of stillness than people in general was assumed to be divine: considered someone who’s more than human, who belongs to another world.» — el supuesto pitagórico en que Kingsley lo apoya: los humanos cambian y se agitan sin parar, y quien lograba una quietud visiblemente mayor se tenía por divino

«Now it should be possible to see why Parmeneides needed someone very special and very powerful to lead him to stillness. And it should also be clear exactly why he built that shrine for Ameinias— why he established the worship of him as a being who was mysterious, divine. He created the hero-shrine because the stillness he’d been brought to was itself something mysterious and divine. It wasn’t human at all.» — y la explicación que de ahí da al santuario: Parmeneides necesitaba a alguien muy poderoso para ser llevado a la quietud, y por eso instituyó el culto de Ameinias como ser divino

«Life for us has become an endless affair of trying to improve ourselves: achieving more and doing more, learning more, always needing to know more things. The process of learning and being taught has simply become a matter of being fed facts and information— receiving what we didn’t have before, always being given something different from ourselves. That’s why whatever we learn never touches us deeply enough, why nothing really satisfies us. And the more we sense this the more we rush around trying to find other substitutes to fill the void we still feel inside. Everything pushes us outside ourselves— further away from the utter simplicity of our own humanity.» — el contraste que traza con el presente: aprender se ha vuelto recibir datos, y nada toca lo bastante hondo porque todo empuja fuera de uno mismo

«But once someone became a Pythagorean, it started to become a matter of learning less and less. There were fewer answers, and more riddles. Techniques could be provided forenteringotherstatesofconsciousness. O therwise, the emphasis was placed less and less on being given teachings and more and more on finding the inner resources to discover your own answers inside yourself.» — y lo que empezaba al ingresar: aprender cada vez menos, menos respuestas y más acertijos, con el acento en hallar los recursos propios; la capa de texto pega *forenteringotherstatesofconsciousness*

«This is why teaching through riddles was such an important part of Pythagorean tradition. Instead of being fed with ready-made answers you were just given the germ, the seed, of the answer: for the riddle contains its own solution.» — la función que da al acertijo: en lugar de respuestas hechas se daba el germen de la respuesta, porque el acertijo contiene su propia solución

«Your job was to feed the riddle, nurture it. And it was understood that, through the process of being tended and attended to, the riddle would become an organic part of yourself. As it grew it had the power to transform you. It could even destroy you. But the aim of the riddle was as clear as it was subtle— to shift the focus of attention away from superficial answers towards discovering what you hadn’t realized you’re already carrying around inside yourself.» — y qué se esperaba del discípulo: alimentar el acertijo hasta que se volviera parte orgánica suya, con poder de transformarlo o destruirlo

«Everything had been laid out for Parmeneides. As an Ouliades he occupied his place in a tradition reaching back to the days when the Phocaeans hadn’t yet left Anatolia: a tradition based on techniques of stillness and incubation. So the obvious question is how Ameinias could possibly fit in. And there’s a very simple answer. He doesn’t.» — la pregunta que se hace sobre Ameinias y la respuesta que da: siendo Parmeneides un Ouliades con toda la tradición dispuesta, Ameinias no encaja

«We already have everything we need. We just need to be shown what we have. And it’s the same with traditions. Even the strongest of them have to be revitalized, because it’s so easy for them to become weighed down as well. The life in them can die out without anyone even noticing, or wanting to notice. And usually it’s a complete outsider, a nobody— someone who doesn’t fit in, who logically is quite unnecessary— who has to inject the life that’s needed.» — lo que sostiene sobre las tradiciones: hasta las más fuertes tienen que revitalizarse, y suele ser un forastero lógicamente innecesario quien inyecta esa vida

«This is why the greatest teachers are often utter nobodies. They’re nobodies who give nothing at all. But that nothing is worth more than everything else. In some circumstances they might introduce you to a new system of knowledge, or demand that you change your lifestyle — and yet that’s not what the teaching is basically about. It’s just a trick to keep your mind focused while the real work is done on another level, somewhere else.» — la figura de maestro que propone: nadies que no dan nada, y ese nada vale más que todo, porque el trabajo real se hace en otro plano

«The fact is that these things have an uncanny way of protecting themselves. And even what at one moment might seem obvious in the next moment isn’t obvious at» — la razón que da para que nadie lo haya notado: estas cosas tienen un modo inquietante de protegerse, y lo que un momento parece obvio deja de serlo al siguiente; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«all. This is exactly what happens when you engage with a reality that, just like the reality of heroes, belongs to another world.» — y cuándo ocurre eso: al tratar con una realidad que, como la de los héroes, pertenece a otro mundo

«1 ;or the GREEKS, stillness had a whole side to it that they found intensely disquieting— and not just disquieting but also sinister, alien, profoundly inhuman.» — lo que dice del lado griego de la quietud: inquietante, siniestro, ajeno, profundamente inhumano; la capa de texto imprime *1 ;or* por *For*

«But stillness wasn’t associated only with heroes. Beyond even the heroes were the gods; and when Greeks wanted to describe in tangible terms the reality of a confrontation between humans and the divine, there was» — el paso que da más allá de los héroes: cuando los griegos querían decir en qué consiste el encuentro entre humanos y dioses; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«one particular quality that they sensed as characterizing the gods in contrast to people. This was their uncanny stillness. Gods stayed totally calm when humans would panic. They wouldn’t even change their expression when people ran through the whole range of emotions from joy to terror. They’d stay exactly the same: enigmatic. Even the most dramatic miracles or displays of power weren’t as effective a way of emphasizing the difference between humans and gods as the utter unshakability of divine stillness.» — y qué cualidad señalaban: la quietud inquietante de los dioses, que no cambiaban ni de expresión, más eficaz para marcar la diferencia que cualquier prodigio

«Pythagoreans were famous not just for their teachings but also for the secrecy of their teachings. And yet when you start to look closely at what have come to be considered the most esoteric of their doctrines, it turns» — lo que sostiene sobre el secreto pitagórico: eran famosos por sus enseñanzas y por el secreto de ellas, y miradas de cerca las doctrinas tenidas por más esotéricas; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«out that really they weren’t secret at all. In fact they were little more than window-dressing. They served a very valuable purpose: they aroused general interest, helped attract the people who eventually might become Pythagoreans.» — y qué resultan ser: poco más que escaparate, útil para despertar interés y atraer a quienes llegarían a ser pitagóricos

«You can see the same basic situation in the case of that man from Posidonia who helped the Phocaeans when they were totally lost. The Phocaeans had their oracle from Apollo, together with the guidance it contained. But in spite of that, or rather because of that, everything had become hopeless for them. It wasn’t just that the oracle had become a meaningless riddle. Their whole existence had become one living riddle.» — cómo aplica lo del acertijo al hombre de Posidonia: los foceos tenían su oráculo de Apolo y por eso mismo todo se les había vuelto desesperado, con la existencia entera convertida en acertijo

«In a sense you could say that the man from Posidonia gave them something: that he provided them with the answer they hadn’t noticed. But that’s only true on a very superficial level. Really he didn’t add anything essential to their situation at all. He was just there, in the right place and at the right time, to point to the solution already contained inside the riddle they were carrying with them— the riddle they’d become.» — y qué hizo ese hombre según Kingsley: no añadió nada esencial, solo estuvo en el sitio y el momento justos para señalar la solución ya contenida en el acertijo que ellos mismos eran

«Logically you would think that Parmeneides didn’t have any need for anybody’s teaching, least of all the teaching of a nobody like Ameinias. But that’s to forget one fundamental thing. The knowledge we already have is useless unless we can really live it, in and through ourselves. Otherwise it becomes a burden that can weigh us down or even destroy us, like the oracle of the» — la objeción lógica que se plantea: Parmeneides no habría necesitado la enseñanza de un don nadie como Ameinias, salvo que el saber que ya se tiene es inútil si no se vive y entonces pesa; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«Phocaeans. We already have everything we need. We just need to be shown what we have. And it’s the same with traditions. Even the strongest of them have to be revitalized, because it’s so easy for them to become weighed down as well. The life in them can die out without anyone even noticing, or wanting to notice. And usually it’s a complete outsider, a nobody— someone who doesn’t fit in, who logically is quite unnecessary— who has to inject the life that’s needed.» — lo que sostiene sobre las tradiciones: hasta las más fuertes han de revitalizarse, y suele hacerlo un forastero lógicamente innecesario

«EBRUARY 29, 1968. ‘Assolutamente sicura— it’s absolutely certain. There’s no doubt about it. It was there all along, just where you’d expect to find it. I’ve found his head! You don’t have to believe me. Anyone can see how perfectly it fits; every crack, every trace confirms it. And of course people did doubt, needlessly. For everything Mario Napoli wrote in his letter to a famous art historian from Switzerland was quite true. After nearly two thousand years— and after summer after summer of patiently sifting the Italian soil— the head of Parmeneides had at last been reunited with its base.» — el hallazgo de 1968: Mario Napoli anuncia por carta a un historiador del arte suizo que la cabeza de Parmeneides encaja con su base; la capitular queda fuera del tramo y el italiano se conserva tal cual

«The way all those inscriptions for Parmeneides and the Oulis healers, along with the matching sculptures, were produced together at the same time is more reminiscent of a portrait gallery or waxwork museum than of anything else. Clearly they were parts of one great systematic project aimed at commemorating an ancient Velian tradition. But the problem is that when you try to commemorate the past and keep it alive like this, that’s when the past is already dead.» — cómo lee el conjunto de inscripciones y esculturas: un proyecto sistemático de conmemoración, y conmemorar así el pasado es señal de que ya murió

«It’s no wonder that so soon— only a few years after they’d been created— those memorials had been broken up, turned upside down, walked all over and buried. The details preserved on the inscriptions were impeccably correct and self-consistent; but the essence of the tradition that the memorials represented, the living reality, had gone.» — y el destino de esos monumentos: rotos, volteados, pisados y enterrados pocos años después, con los detalles impecables y la realidad viva ida

«Parmeneides’ own teaching had been torn away from the background and context that had given it its meaning and life. W hat originally had been intended to involve every fibre of one’s being was converted into a dry logic that’s only good for complicating and torturing our minds. Now we don’t even remember what happened, and we’re no longer able to tell the difference.» — lo que dice que pasó con su enseñanza: arrancada del fondo que le daba sentido y convertida en una lógica seca buena para complicar y torturar la mente

«This all served its purpose— the way things always do. And there’s no right, or wrong. People just do what’s needed at the time. You could say that Plato and Aristotle, in particular, simply did their job: they made it possible for us to develop our intelligence in certain directions, to explore aspects of ourselves that we hadn’t known before. But then the time comes to be moving on.» — la abstención de juicio que interpone: no hay bien ni mal, y Platón y Aristóteles hicieron su trabajo permitiendo desarrollar la inteligencia en ciertas direcciones

«For history isn’t really the facts and figures we read about in textbooks; and the versions of the past that were so used to are like veils and coverings, hiding far more than they reveal.» — y su idea de la historia: no los datos de los manuales, y las versiones habituales del pasado son velos que ocultan más de lo que revelan

«Athens used to be a major centre of culture in the Mediterranean. It was only one of them; there were others, too. But it became an important centre for people who were so clever and ambitious that they led the West to believe it owes almost everything to them. We still believe them, and histories of the ancient world are still based on Athenian propaganda.» — la objeción que dirige a la deuda con Atenas: fue un centro entre otros, y las historias del mundo antiguo siguen basadas en su propaganda

«It was people at Athens who invented the fiction of a united Greece. But really there never was a united Greece, because so many Greeks wanted very little to do with Athens. A few talented Athenians perfected a bizarre game called ‘democracy’. They offered other Greek states and cities the opportunity to play— in return for their submission. If they refused to accept, they destroyed them. Many Greek centres of culture preferred to side with the Persians rather than with Athens. They considered them more civilized.» — lo que sostiene sobre la unidad griega: fue ficción ateniense, y muchos centros griegos prefirieron ponerse del lado persa por considerarlo más civilizado

«And there were Greeks who, as one historian wrote, found themselves in the position of deciding ‘to contribute to destroying once and for all what remained of the Athenians’. Those people had a very different story to tell from the one we’ve become accustomed to. It’s a strange story, preserved here and there as small fragments in ancient texts or as scraps of information hidden away in the most unlikely of places where hardly anyone cares to look.» — el testimonio que recoge de un historiador al que no nombra: hubo griegos que se vieron decidiendo contribuir a destruir de una vez lo que quedaba de los atenienses

«There’s one small statement about a well-known citizen of Velia: Parmeneides’ successor, Zeno. It’s hardly the most dramatic thing to be told. All it says is that he had a greater love for his home town—a plain, worthless kind of place that was only good at producing fine men— than for the arrogance of the Athenians. So he didn’t often visit Athens but passed his life at home.» — el dato sobre Zenón que trae: amaba más su pueblo llano y sin valor, bueno solo para producir hombres finos, que la arrogancia de los atenienses

«We in the West have become so totally, and unconsciously, identified with Athens that the most natural way to make sense of such a blatant affront is to explain it away: to say that the statement was obviously invented by some writer with a personal grudge, a little axe to grind. And yet there’s much more involved here than one person’s grudge.» — y cómo se suele desactivar ese dato: atribuyéndolo a un escritor con rencor personal

«In fact Velia was built exactly the same way as its sister city at Marseilles, or Phocaea itself—on a patch of land beside the sea that was so barren and worthless hardly any other Greeks would have dreamed of creating their home there. The ruggedness of all three settlements, the poverty of the land, were self-evident facts to anyone who knew about the places. And even today you can still see from the ruins just how fond the Phocaeans were of keeping to basics; of building their towns in harsh places, paradigms of plainness and austerity.» — lo que opone sobre la pobreza de Velia: se construyó como Marsella y como Focea en tierra estéril que ningún otro griego habría querido, con gusto por lo básico y lo austero

«But what’s even more informative than the statement itself is how it’s come to be treated— the ways people have found of discrediting it, dismissing it, disposing of it.» — lo que le parece más informativo que la frase misma: los modos en que se la ha desacreditado y desechado

«Scholars have insisted, for one thing, on changing the Greek text. And there are those who mistranslate the passage, as well. In place of any reference to ‘the arrogance of the Athenians’ they make it say that Zeno preferred his home town ‘to the magnificence of Athens’, or ‘before all the splendour of Athens’: a little indication of how deep the allegiance to Athens still goes.» — el primero de esos modos: traducir *la arrogancia de los atenienses* como *la magnificencia de Atenas* o *el esplendor de Atenas*

«It’s a peculiar affair. The Greek manuscripts clearly say that Zeno ‘didn’t often visit Athens’; but over a hundred years ago one editor decided to change the text here and make them say ‘he never visited Athens’ instead. Everyone who’s ever translated the passage or commented on it since then has accepted the change without question.» — el segundo: hace más de cien años un editor cambió *no visitaba Atenas a menudo* por *nunca visitó Atenas*, y desde entonces se aceptó sin discusión

«And yet there was no real reason to alter the text at all— except that the change has one remarkably devious advantage. If the passage is made to say that Zeno never went to Athens, then it plainly contradicts the picture Plato presents in his Parmenides of Zeno visiting Athens together with his teacher. And considering the immense authority Plato has managed to win as a respectable source of information about the ancient world, the contradiction proves just as plainly that the whole passage about Zeno and his dislike for the Athenians is a deliberate forgery.» — y la ventaja que Kingsley le atribuye a ese cambio: hecho así, el pasaje contradice el cuadro de Platón y queda descalificado como falsificación deliberada

«But of course there’s no contradiction, apart from the one that’s been invented.» — la objeción que opone: no hay más contradicción que la inventada

«W hen plato wrote his Parmenides he knew he was writing first-class historical make-believe: putting imaginary dialogue, brilliantly lifelike, into the mouths of real people who’d lived about a hundred years before him.» — lo que sostiene sobre el *Parménides* de Platón: sabía que escribía ficción histórica de primera, poniendo diálogo imaginario en boca de personas reales

«W ith the help of Platonists, especially, the fictions in his Parmenides and other dialogues snowballed. Soon everyone knew the names of the Athenians Zeno had taught— and exactly what he’d taught them. People started expounding the profound symbolism of the Parmenides, as well: of how philosophers had had to travel all the way to Athens so that their teachings could be analyzed, corrected, given their ultimate form by Socrates and Plato.» — y cómo creció esa ficción: con los platónicos se supo hasta el nombre de los atenienses a quienes Zenón enseñó y el simbolismo del viaje a Atenas para que Sócrates y Platón dieran forma última a las doctrinas

«If you look closely at the picture Plato painted, cracks start to appear. And if—as a couple of scholars have done— you look through the cracks you begin to glimpse quite another scene behind. For there’s evidence that does suggest Parmeneides and Zeno did come to Athens, not to have some theoretical conversation about Plato’s ideas but in a legal and political capacity: as ambassadors from Velia, as negotiators of peace.» — la otra escena que dice verse por las grietas: Parmeneides y Zenón fueron a Atenas en calidad legal y política, como embajadores de Velia y negociadores de paz

«And the evidence that there is suggests they didn’t come to ask the Athenians for help, or support, but that their purpose was to do what they could to prevent Athens from interfering with the delicate balance of power in southern Italy. Their main aim in visiting the city wasn’t to chat about philosophy. It was much more practical— far more practical than we might guess.» — y con qué fin, según esa evidencia: impedir que Atenas alterara el delicado equilibrio de poder en el sur de Italia, no charlar de filosofía

«Real teachers leave no traces. They’re like the wind at night rushing right through you and totally changing you but leaving everything unchanged, even your greatest» — el remate del capítulo *Like the Wind at Night*: los maestros verdaderos no dejan huellas y son como el viento en la noche que lo atraviesa a uno cambiándolo todo y dejando todo sin cambiar; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«weaknesses; blowing away every idea of what you thought you were and leaving you as you always have been, since the beginning.» — y la continuación de la frase en la plana siguiente: se lleva toda idea de lo que uno creía ser y lo deja como siempre ha sido desde el principio

«But, as always, there was an irony to the situation. You’d find it very natural to assume that the face on the sculpture must be the face of the man whose name is spelled out on the inscription at the base. It’s not. The delicate eyes and nose and hair carved in the fine white marble are simply standard, stereotyped features. They don’t show Parmeneides at all.» — la ironía que señala en el hallazgo de la cabeza: los rasgos tallados en el mármol son estereotipados y no representan a Parmeneides

«sculpture was created, at around the time of Christ, people had completely forgotten what he looked like.» — y la razón que da: cuando se hizo la escultura, hacia la época de Cristo, ya se había olvidado por completo su cara

«Times had changed. In the West the focus of interest had started shifting to other things instead. The love of wisdom had been replaced by philosophy, been made appealing and accessible to the curious mind. And what once demanded everything you are was gradually being» — el cambio de época que describe: el amor a la sabiduría reemplazado por la filosofía, hecha atractiva y accesible a la mente curiosa; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«turned into a pastime for people who love playing with toys.» — y en qué acabó lo que exigía todo lo que uno es: un pasatiempo para quienes gustan de jugar con juguetes

«e gave laws to the citizens.’ Several writers in the ancient world said this about Parmeneides. Some of them also mentioned that each year the leaders of Velia used to make the citizens swear they’d stay true to his original laws— and that Zeno, in turn, had been responsible for governing the city.» — el dato con que abre el capítulo *The Lawgivers*: varios escritores antiguos dicen que Parmeneides dio leyes a los ciudadanos, que cada año se les hacía jurar fidelidad a ellas y que Zenón gobernó la ciudad; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«One of these writers was Plato’s nephew. There were few people in a position to know better. He’d travelled out westwards together with Plato, and had managed to gain more direct access to information about political or legal history in southern Italy and Sicily than almost any other writer we know of.» — la autoridad que reconoce a uno de esos escritores: el sobrino de Platón, que viajó al oeste con él y tuvo acceso directo a la historia política y legal del sur de Italia y Sicilia

«Most historians haven’t had the faintest idea what to make of it. And if pressed, as a rule they’ll tend to say it can’t have any real significance because it has no bearing at all on Parmeneides’ philosophy: on the teachings in his poem.» — y lo que los historiadores han hecho con ese dato: declararlo sin importancia porque no tocaría la filosofía del poema

«Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. It’s quite amazing to watch how scholars are so occupied with squeezing an abstract, theoretical sense out of Parmeneides’ poetry that they manage not to notice one very simple fact. The central, most important part of his poem is formally presented as the record of a legal process, phrased in standard legal terminology.» — la objeción que opone: la parte central del poema se presenta formalmente como el acta de un proceso legal, en terminología jurídica corriente

«And already this neglected fact allows a glimpse into an ancient, secret drama. Moses brought his laws down from M ount Sinai; Parmeneides brought his back from the depths of hell.» — y la fórmula con que lo enuncia: Moisés bajó sus leyes del Sinaí y Parmeneides trajo las suyas de las profundidades del infierno

«Parmeneides was an Ouliades who was intimately involved with the service of Apollo; and Apollo had the strongest and closest of ties with lawgiving.» — el punto de partida que declara: Parmeneides era un Ouliades ligado al servicio de Apolo, y Apolo tenía lazos estrechísimos con la legislación

«There used to be a great philosopher who lived in Sicily. He was deeply influenced by Pythagoreans, and by Parmeneides in particular. He also happens to have been not only a magician but a Iatromantis as well: a ‘healer—prophet’, a healer who works through prophecy.» — el filósofo siciliano que introduce sin nombrarlo: influido por los pitagóricos y sobre todo por Parmeneides, mago y a la vez iatromantis, sanador que obra por profecía

«He wrote poetry, like Parmeneides. And in his poetry he mentions a tradition that eventually was carried down to Egypt as Pythagoreans started leaving Italy and Sicily for the great new city called Alexandria. According to this tradition, there are four basic vocations that can give human beings a special degree of closeness to the divine. The vocations are prophet, poet, healer, and political leader or lawgiver.» — la tradición que ese filósofo menciona y que los pitagóricos llevaron a Alejandría: cuatro vocaciones dan especial cercanía con lo divino, profeta, poeta, sanador y legislador

«These might sound a random enough collection to us. But in fact every one of them is connected to every other. And the clearest sign of their connectedness is the fact that they’re all activities sacred to the same god: Apollo.» — y lo que las une según Kingsley: las cuatro son actividades sagradas para el mismo dios, Apolo

«This isn’t simply a matter of biography, of interesting details from Parmeneides’ life. In fact it’s only when we notice how the roles of Iatromantis and of lawgiver influenced even the smallest aspects of his poetry that we can really begin to understand what he was saying.» — y por qué no lo trata como biografía: solo al ver cómo los papeles de iatromantis y de legislador tocan hasta lo menudo de su poesía se entiende lo que decía

«The highest authorities in preserving justice and supervising matters of law are to be priests— but not just any kind of priests. Quite specifically, they’re to be joint priests ‘of Apollo and the Sun’.» — lo que Platón fija en *Las leyes* para su ciudad ideal: las máximas autoridades en justicia han de ser sacerdotes conjuntos de Apolo y el Sol

«He went on to explain at great length how, after these people die, they’re to be treated and worshipped as heroes. And the overall features of what he describes— the lives of the priests, their deaths— aren’t his invention at all. It was shown some time ago that they derive from what he learned about at first hand on his visits to southern Italy and Sicily: in fact they faithfully reflect Pythagorean traditions and practices.» — y lo que Kingsley dice del origen de ese cuadro: no es invención de Platón sino lo que aprendió de primera mano en el sur de Italia y Sicilia, reflejo fiel de prácticas pitagóricas

«Pythagoreans governed whole cities in southern Italy according to their own principles. They managed to bring together the inner and outer, politics and the love of wisdom, theory and practice, in a way Plato himself was never able to imitate or achieve.» — lo que adjudica a los pitagóricos: gobernaban ciudades enteras según sus principios y unían política y amor a la sabiduría como Platón nunca logró

«And he was careful to include— among the most important and essential of all these matters of law— one particular issue that by now should be very familiar. This is the issue of the exact procedures to be followed by a lawgiver in building hero-shrines and establishing the worship of heroes.» — y qué incluyó entre los asuntos legales esenciales: los procedimientos exactos para levantar santuarios de héroes e instituir su culto

«One of the most crucial things they have to do is this: simply to follow the guidance that’s been given to people ‘through divine visions, or else through inspiration received by someone from the gods and then disclosed to others’.» — lo que Platón exige del legislador en esos casos: seguir la guía dada por visiones divinas o por inspiración recibida de los dioses y comunicada a otros

«So for all their high position, for all the influence and power you’d imagine they would have, the lawgivers aren’t supposed to take the initiative at all in matters of the greatest importance or do things in the way that they themselves might like. They’re not even allowed to. Their job is to follow and accept, take note and obey. Essentially they just have to let themselves be guided by the inspirations or visions once given to others, resisting any temptation to interfere. ‘In all these things the lawgiver mustn’t change even the smallest detail.’» — y el límite que les impone: no tomar la iniciativa en lo más importante sino seguir, aceptar y obedecer, sin cambiar el menor detalle

«Legends still survive about the greatest of the ancient lawgivers in southern Italy— lawgivers who happen to have been seen as particularly important figures by Pythagoreans. In social terms they might have been nobodies, the poorest of the poor. But this didn’t prevent them being taken seriously, or being treated with every possible honour, when they disclosed to others what today would be unthinkable: that gods had come to them in a dream and given them laws.» — las leyendas que aduce sobre los grandes legisladores del sur de Italia: podían ser los más pobres y se les honraba igual al declarar que los dioses les habían dado leyes en sueños

«We still know quite a few names of Greeks— and non-Greeks— who once were famous for having laws revealed to them in visions or dreams. You can find them listed in modern books alongside Parmeneides because, just as he described at the start of his poem how he’d received his knowledge of reality by meeting a goddess, they were said to have received their laws through encounters with a goddess or god.» — la lista que recuerda: griegos y no griegos famosos por recibir leyes en visiones o sueños, puestos junto a Parmeneides en los libros modernos

«But there’s one thing that hasn’t been noticed in the process of drawing up these lists. Parmeneides’ own reputation among the Greeks wasn’t only for being an inspired philosopher or poet. He was also known as a lawgiver himself.» — y lo que dice no advertido al hacer esas listas: la reputación de Parmeneides entre los griegos no era solo de filósofo o poeta inspirado sino también de legislador

«A t the end of his l a w s , in the very last lines and words he ever published, Plato added one extra dimension to his image of an ideal city. Since then, it’s been a cause of endless confusion. Historians have offered the most extraordinary explanations for it; others dismiss it as completely superfluous, redundant, a sign of growing senility.» — el añadido final de *Las leyes* y la confusión que produjo: se lo ha explicado de mil modos o descartado como superfluo y signo de senilidad; la capa de texto espacia el título

«He described how behind the governing body with the greatest apparent authority in matters of law there’s to be another even more powerful group of people, also made up to a large extent of those priests of Apollo and the Sun. This will be a group responsible not just for making or supervising laws but for continually deepening its understanding of their purpose, their source.» — en qué consiste ese añadido: un grupo aún más poderoso, también de sacerdotes de Apolo y el Sol, encargado de ahondar en el propósito y la fuente de las leyes

«And what’s strangest of all about this group of people is the name he decided to give it— as well as the time he specified for when they need to meet. He called it the Night Gathering; and in spite of the name he insisted that it has to assemble every single day not at the beginning or middle of the night but during the precise interval ‘from earliest dawn until sunrise’.» — y lo que Kingsley halla más extraño: se llama la Asamblea Nocturna y debe reunirse cada día desde el alba más temprana hasta la salida del sol

«Certainly he gave a reason for why it has to meet then, rather than at any other time: ‘because this is the time that will allow everyone involved the greatest leisure andfreedom from theirotheractivities and commitments’.» — la razón que Platón da para esa hora: es la que deja a todos más ocio y libertad respecto de sus otras actividades; la capa de texto pega varias palabras

«But whatever else most scholars have felt about Plato’s idea of a Night Gathering, they haven’t been able to help suspecting that this talk of schedules and free time is just a trivialization— a weak rationalizing of something else.» — cómo han recibido los estudiosos esa razón: como trivialización, racionalización floja de otra cosa

«They’re quite right. To understand what’s involved you only have to remember the Pythagoreans in southern Italy, and their appreciation for the lesson Orpheus learned when he went down through incubation to the world of the dead: that Apollo is fundamentally linked to Night because both their powers have one and the same source.» — y lo que Kingsley propone en su lugar: la lección que Orfeo aprendió al bajar por incubación, que Apolo está ligado a la Noche porque sus poderes tienen la misma fuente

«There’s also the oldest known account of Orpheus’ descent to the underworld, which happens as well to be the oldest known passage identifying the Sun with Apollo. The passage describes what Orpheus— priest of Apollo and the Sun— used to do after he’d gone down to the underworld and seen what there is to be seen there. It explains how ‘he would get up at night’, while people were still asleep, climb a mountain, and ‘wait from earliest dawn until sunrise so he could be the first to catch a glimpse of the Sun’.» — el pasaje más antiguo sobre el descenso de Orfeo, que es también el más antiguo que identifica al Sol con Apolo: se levantaba de noche, subía una montaña y esperaba del alba a la salida del sol

«The Molpoi weren’t j ust responsible for transmitting mysteries of Apollo, or ancient kouros traditions, from century to century. They were also lawgivers for the city. Inside Miletus itself they were in charge of domestic legal matters. And in relation to other cities they had another» — el ejemplo de Mileto: los Molpoi no solo transmitían los misterios de Apolo y las tradiciones de kouros sino que eran legisladores de la ciudad; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«role that was very plainly defined. They acted formally as ambassadors: as negotiators of peace.» — y el otro papel que tenían frente a otras ciudades: actuar formalmente como embajadores y negociadores de paz

«In the case of the philosopher and Iatromantis from Sicily, people have noticed for a long time that when» — lo que se ha notado hace tiempo de ese filósofo e iatromantis siciliano; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«he describes the four vocations he’s actually describing himself. He lived them all.» — y qué se ha notado: que al describir las cuatro vocaciones se describe a sí mismo, porque las vivió todas

«Ever since his visit to them while he was still fairly young he’d borrowed so much from them— especially his myths and mythical images.» — lo que Platón les tomó, según Kingsley: desde su visita de juventud les debía mucho, sobre todo sus mitos y sus imágenes míticas

«M ore than once in his lifetime Plato stated in no uncertain terms that the final, ultimate authority for a» — lo que Platón declaró más de una vez sin ambages: sobre la autoridad última de un verdadero legislador; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«true lawgiver has to be Apollo. ‘If we know what were doing’ then Apollo is the god to whom the most fundamental matters of law will be entrusted.» — y cuál es esa autoridad: Apolo, a quien se encomendarán los asuntos más fundamentales de la ley si se sabe lo que se hace

«And what he saw when the sun rose wasn’t just the object we see in the sky, but what he’d been shown in» — y qué veía Orfeo al salir el sol, según Kingsley: no solo el objeto que se ve en el cielo; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«Those south-Italian vases that show Orpheus while he’s in the underworld also show him together with the goddess Justice. W hen he comes face to face with Persephone, Justice is standing in the background. And there are passages from Orphic poetry that fill in a few of the gaps about this shadowy figure.» — la evidencia figurativa que trae: los vasos del sur de Italia muestran a Orfeo en el inframundo con la Justicia al fondo cuando se encuentra con Perséfone

«The name of her father was Law. And apart from her we’re told that there was another goddess who also kept watch beside her, right at the entrance to the cave of Night. While Justice has the job ofmakingsure that laws are respected and justice is done, this other goddess is the maker and creator of laws. She’s the divine lawgiver for the universe.» — lo que la poesía órfica añade sobre esa figura: su padre se llamaba Ley, y junto a ella vigila otra diosa que es la hacedora de las leyes, la legisladora divina del universo

«So when Parmeneides went down to the underworld, to the realms of Night and the goddess Justice, he was taken to precisely the place where all laws come from: to the mythical source of lawgiving where the lawgiver is given his laws.» — la conclusión que saca para el poema: al bajar al inframundo, Parmeneides fue llevado justo al sitio de donde vienen todas las leyes

«Parmeneides’ goddess Justice is simply a philosophical abstraction for scholars nowadays— a symbol for the rigour and correctness of his reasoning powers. But she has a greater significance than that.» — y la objeción que hace a la lectura corriente: hoy la Justicia del poema pasa por abstracción filosófica, símbolo del rigor de su razonar

«According to legend, it was after his encounter with Justice and Truth that the man from Crete was called to ancient Athens to heal the city of a massive plague. And the old stories about him— his name is Epimenides— give a good idea of what form this healing took. Partly it took the form of rituals demanding patience: involving the ability to watch animals, to follow them in their movements. Partly it was a matter of insisting that Athenians start putting an end to the barbaric subordination of women and treating them less harshly.» — lo que las leyendas cuentan de Epiménides de Creta: llamado a Atenas para curar una peste, con rituales de paciencia y la exigencia de tratar menos duramente a las mujeres

«But above all, Epimenides’ healing of the Athenians was explained as a matter of introducing ‘justice’ to the city by paving the way for new legislation and laws. This isn’t some arbitrary idea. On the contrary, here you can see how deep the connection went for a Iatromantis between healing and lawgiving: to give good laws to a city is to heal it.» — y en qué consistió sobre todo esa curación: introducir justicia en la ciudad preparando el camino a nuevas leyes, porque dar buenas leyes a una ciudad es curarla

«The goddess Justice opens the way to justice. It’s through encounteringjustice in another world, another state of consciousness, that you’re able to bring justice into this.» — la lógica que declara implícita: es por encontrar a la Justicia en otro mundo, en otro estado de consciencia, que se puede traer justicia a este; la capa de texto pega *encounteringjustice*

«There are other traditions that show Epimenides wasn’t the only person from Crete who was known for finding justice as the result of a dream. And even more importantly, they make it clear that Epimenides’ legendary experience of happening to fall asleep in a Cretan cave doesn’t simply refer to some accident or chance.» — lo que otras tradiciones muestran, según Kingsley: Epiménides no fue el único cretense que halló justicia por un sueño, y su sueño en la cueva no fue accidente

«For according to these traditions the great lawgivers of Crete were kouros figures who had their laws revealed to them, in a cave, through the ritual practice of incubation.» — y qué dicen esas tradiciones: los grandes legisladores de Creta eran figuras de kouros a quienes las leyes se les revelaban en una cueva por la práctica ritual de la incubación

«The myths aren’t only myths. They point to the actual use of incubatory techniques as a preparation for lawgiving. And they provide a perfect example of what later Greek writers meant when they said incubation had given humans two of the greatest blessings— healing, and good laws.» — la conclusión que saca: los mitos apuntan al uso efectivo de técnicas de incubación como preparación para legislar, que los griegos contaban entre los dos mayores dones de la incubación junto con la sanación

«And as far as Parmeneides himself is concerned, the fact that the best evidence for this direct link between incubation and lawgiving comes from Crete is rather significant. In the whole Greek world there are two particular places that offer the closest of parallels for the kouros rituals once practised on Crete. One is Miletus. The other is the town of Phocaea.» — el enlace que traza con Velia: los dos sitios del mundo griego con los paralelos más cercanos a los rituales cretenses de kouros son Mileto y Focea

«You find them again in the East, surviving in traditions that grew up around the figure known in Persian as javdnmard, in Arabic as fata. Both words mean ‘young man’, just like the Greek kouros.» — la continuidad oriental que sostiene: esas tradiciones sobreviven en el *javanmard* persa y el *fata* árabe, que significan joven igual que *kouros*

«Among Sufis and other mystics, especially in Persia, it was explained that there’s never a time when these ‘young men’ don’t exist somewhere on earth. The tradition they belong to is kept alive in a line of continuous succession that isn’t tied to any particular country, or religion. And it’s kept alive for one very simple reason: because the world we live in couldn’t survive without them. They’re the prophets, often ignored and almost always misunderstood, who keep existing because they have to.» — lo que se explicaba entre los sufíes y otros místicos, sobre todo en Persia: nunca falta en la tierra alguno de esos jóvenes, en una línea de sucesión no atada a país ni a religión, porque el mundo no sobreviviría sin ellos

«It’s only through them that the thread connecting humanity with reality stays intact. They have the responsibility of making the hero’s journey into another world, to the source oflight in the darkness, and bringing back the timeless knowledge that they find there. W ithout this knowledge or guidance, people would be totally deaf and blind. They’d be completely lost in their own confusion.» — la función que les atribuye: mantener intacto el hilo entre la humanidad y la realidad, haciendo el viaje del héroe y trayendo de vuelta el saber intemporal

«To a great extent this figure of thejavdnmardor fatd has its origin in the ancient heroic traditions of the Iranians. But it had other origins as well. One of the most significant was the traditions about early Greek philosophy that were carried down from Alexandria into the Egyptian desert and sometimes kept alive for centuries by small groups of alchemists before being passed on to the East— into the Arab and Persian worlds.» — el doble origen que le da: las tradiciones heroicas iranias y, por otro lado, las tradiciones sobre la filosofía griega temprana llevadas de Alejandría al desierto egipcio y conservadas por pequeños grupos de alquimistas; la capa de texto pega *thejavdnmardor fatd*

«Seen through the eyes of Arab alchemists, or Per,si.in mystics, the earliest Greek philosophers weren’t just thinkers or rationalists. They were links in an initiatory chain of succession. It was only later that their teachings were gradually swamped by intellectualism: that ‘the traces of the paths of the ancient sages disappeared’ and ‘their directions were either wiped out, or corrupted and distorted’.» — cómo veían a los primeros filósofos griegos los alquimistas árabes y los místicos persas, según Kingsley: no pensadores ni racionalistas sino eslabones de una cadena iniciática; la capa de texto imprime *Per,si.in* por *Persian*

«As for what those philosophers once wrote, it was expressed in riddles because they weren’t interested in giving easy or theoretical answers. Their concern was to make you realize inside yourself what others might simply think or talk about. They had the power to transform people, to lead them through a process of death and rebirth to what lies beyond the human condition; to bring orphans back into the family they’d always belonged to.» — y por qué escribían en acertijos: no daban respuestas fáciles ni teóricas, querían que uno se diera cuenta por dentro, con poder de llevar por una muerte y un renacimiento

«It was said that they’d been lawgivers— not just any kind of lawgiver but lawgivers who are prophets, who’ve received their laws from another world.» — el papel que además se les adjudicaba: legisladores, y no de cualquier clase sino profetas que reciben sus leyes de otro mundo

«he idea of people receiving laws through dreams or other states of awareness, of being given them in another world: this is as remote as possible from what we nowadays consider reality. In fact it’s so remote that we can hardly believe such an idea could ever have been more than just that— an idea. And yet it was.» — la distancia que reconoce entre esa idea y nuestra noción de realidad, y a la vez la afirma: fue una realidad; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«But even to go so far as to admit that once it was a reality in the West isn’t enough. It’s still to miss the point. That reality isn’t anything at all like the one we’re used to; and this is why at such a deep level we feel the need to deny its existence. For the fact is that we’re up against something we simply don’t understand.» — y la salvedad que añade: admitir que alguna vez fue real no basta, porque esa realidad no se parece a la nuestra y por eso se niega

«T o us nothing could seem more absurdly impractical than the idea of creating new laws by lying in total silence and stillness. But from the point of view of people who once did this, it’s our own ideas of practicality that are totally impractical.» — la inversión que propone sobre lo práctico: para quienes lo hacían, son nuestras ideas de lo práctico las totalmente impracticables

«We think that being practical means keeping hu>,\ getting on with our lives, rushing from one distraction u> another, finding more and more substitutes for what we dimly sense but don’t know how to face or discover. It’s here that the problems come in— problems in understanding our past as well as ourselves.» — y qué llama hoy práctico: seguir ocupados, correr de una distracción a otra buscando sustitutos; la capa de texto corrompe *busy*

«Some time ago a writer took the trouble to state in so many words what no other historian would dare to doubt, or would even bother to mention. He wrote that ‘there is not the slightest indication’ of Parmeneides’ philosophy having any possible bearing on our lives and what we do with our lives,» — la afirmación que Kingsley cita para objetarla: que no hay el menor indicio de que la filosofía de Parmeneides tenga relación con nuestras vidas ni con lo que hacemos con ellas; el tramo se corta antes de *life-career*, cuyo guion léxico el troceo parte al fin de renglón.

«life-style: that his teaching is purely speculative and theoretical.» — y el remate de esa misma frase: que su enseñanza es puramente especulativa y teórica.

«And yet Parmeneides himself offers a very different picture. There’s nothing theoretical or impractical at all in how— even before starting his explanation of reality— he describes the imaginary road that human beings wander along, knowing nothing’, going absolutely nowhere:» — y lo que opone: el propio poema describe el camino imaginario por el que los humanos vagan sin saber nada y sin ir a ningún lado

«For helplessness in their chests is what steers their wandering minds as they’re carried along in a daze, deaf and blind at the same time, indistinguishable, undistinguishing crowds.» — los versos de Parménides en la traducción de Kingsley: el desamparo en el pecho guía sus mentes errantes, llevados en aturdimiento, sordos y ciegos a la vez, multitudes indistinguibles que no distinguen

«O n the contrary, what he’s saying is so practical that it undermines every notion we have about what practicality really is. If you take it seriously, you can never live your life the same way again.» — lo que sostiene sobre ese pasaje: es tan práctico que socava toda noción de lo práctico, y tomado en serio no deja vivir igual

«But in all the time that’s been spent studying Parmeneides’poem, analyzing it and arguingand writing about it, nobody has ever dared to ask one straightforward question. Could he possibly be referring to us?» — y la pregunta que dice que nadie se atrevió a hacer: si podría estar refiriéndose a nosotros

«In fact it’s not so alarming that this very practical question hasn’t ever been asked. It’s not alarming at all, because it confirms in the most direct way possible just how accurate Parmeneides’ description is.» — cómo lee esa omisión: no le parece alarmante y la toma como señal directa de la exactitud de la descripción

«Always Plato is praised for his extraordinary creativity as a writer; for the wonderfully evocative quality of his myths and mythical imagery. W hat’s never noticed is the ways he chose to take over older mythological» — la objeción que dirige al elogio corriente de Platón: se alaba su creatividad y nunca se nota cómo se apropió de tradiciones míticas más antiguas; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«traditions and— through lack of interest, or simply as a result of misunderstanding— obscure their significance, jumble the details, blur the edges of what once had been the finest of distinctions. W hat’s never even mentioned is just how much was covered over and lost.» — y qué les hizo según Kingsley: oscurecer su sentido, revolver los detalles y desdibujar distinciones finísimas, sin que se mencione cuánto quedó tapado y perdido

«A fatcl or javdnmard was the man of any age who’s gone beyond time, who through the intensity of longing» — la definición que da de esa figura oriental: el hombre de cualquier edad que fue más allá del tiempo por la intensidad del anhelo; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana y la capa de texto imprime *fatcl* y *javdnmard*

«has made the initiatory journey outside of time and space and come to the heart of reality; who’s found what never ages or dies.» — y qué hizo: el viaje iniciático fuera del tiempo y del espacio hasta el corazón de la realidad, donde halló lo que no envejece ni muere

«At first sight there’s something rather alarming about how, over the centuries, scholars have developed the most sophisticated techniques for avoiding the simple implication of what Parmeneides says. Some have claimed— with total disregard for his own words— that he’s not talking about people in general, that he’s just» — lo que Kingsley llama alarmante a primera vista: las técnicas refinadas con que los estudiosos evitan la implicación simple del pasaje, como decir que no habla de la gente en general; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«criticizing one or two philosophers. Others see how absurd this explanation is, and accept that he’s referring to human beings as a whole. And there are even those who with measured reasonableness spell out the conclusion that the humans Parmeneides is referring to are clearly ‘ordinary’ mortals, ‘who only see their daily surroundings but cannot see through them’.» — y las demás salidas que enumera: aceptar que habla de los humanos en conjunto, o precisar que se refiere a mortales ordinarios que no ven a través de su entorno diario

«That’s why, after more than two thousand years of arguing and theorizing and reasoning, still no one is able to agree for very long with anybody else about anything important. And it’s why no amount of thinking will ever get us to the point of seeing the truth about ourselves— unless it brings us to the point of realizing that something else is needed.» — y lo que de ahí deriva: tras más de dos mil años de argumentar nadie logra acuerdo duradero sobre nada importante, y ningún pensar llevará a ver la verdad sobre uno mismo

«There’s one peculiar statement in an ancient text that always meets with a mixture of embarrassment and silence. It’s a statement that makes no sense at all if Parmeneides was only a theoretical philosopher.» — el testimonio antiguo que trae: una frase que produce vergüenza y silencio y que no tendría sentido si Parmeneides hubiera sido un filósofo teórico

«The writer adds that really there’s no greater danger or conceivable risk than failing to solve the riddle— in our lives and through them.» — el riesgo que ese escritor añade: ninguno mayor que no resolver el acertijo en la propia vida y a través de ella

«Nowadays it’s usually assumed that Pythagoreans were little more than impractical dreamers, their minds fogged and obsessed with mysticism because all that interested them was the existence of some nebulous other world.» — la imagen corriente de los pitagóricos que Kingsley recoge para objetarla: soñadores impracticables obsesionados con un otro mundo nebuloso

«The evidence indicates that the first Greeks who ever coined the word philosophy’ in the technical sense of love of wisdom were Pythagoreans— which is hardly surprising, considering their fondness for coining new words or giving existing ones new meanings.» — lo que sostiene sobre el término: los primeros griegos en acuñar *filosofía* como amor a la sabiduría fueron pitagóricos, aficionados a acuñar palabras

«But for them philosophy hadn’t become what it is for us. To them it was something that involved the whole of their being, that led to completeness and freedom. There were no half measures: wisdom demands everything you are.» — y qué era para ellos: algo que comprometía el ser entero y llevaba a la plenitud y la libertad, sin medias tintas

«He also governed the city he lived in; and he was the commander of one of the most powerful armies in Italy. For the Pythagoreans fought if necessary to defend their lives and laws and traditions— against local tribes, also against the Athenian threat.» — y lo demás que hacía: gobernaba su ciudad y mandaba uno de los ejércitos más poderosos de Italia, porque los pitagóricos peleaban por sus leyes y tradiciones

«And they fought in ways we have no idea of any more. The early history of weaponry in the West developed through them. They invented types of artillery, based on principles of harmony and balance, that remained the standard form of weapon for almost two thousand years. To them even war was a great harmony— played by the artillery commander, heard in the catapult strings.» — cómo peleaban según Kingsley: inventaron artillería basada en principios de armonía y equilibrio, y hasta la guerra era para ellos una gran armonía

«As far as they were concerned, harmony wasn’t some celestial ideal. And it had nothing at all to do with sentimental ideas of sweetness and peace.» — y el deslinde que hace del término: la armonía no era para ellos un ideal celeste ni tenía que ver con ideas sentimentales de dulzura y paz

«There used to be many stories about how he died, in complete silence, under torture; but common to all the versions is the central theme of him being murdered by a local tyrant when he was caught leading an armed conspiracy.» — lo que las historias antiguas cuentan de la muerte de Zenón: asesinado por un tirano local al ser sorprendido al frente de una conspiración armada, muerto en silencio bajo tortura

«And one ancient writer makes a statement that’s been translated as explaining how, when Zeno saw his life was over, he ‘committed the work of Parmenides to the flames as being precious as pure gold’.» — la frase de un escritor antiguo tal como suele traducirse: al ver acabada su vida, Zenón entregó a las llamas la obra de Parménides por preciosa como el oro puro

«And yet the original Greek doesn’t quite mean that. W hat it does say is that, through his suffering, ‘he tested Parmenides’ teaching in fire like gold that’s pure and true.» — y la traducción que Kingsley propone: por su sufrimiento, Zenón probó en el fuego la enseñanza de Parménides como oro puro y verdadero

«You might think this is all romantic invention— especially as the stories contain features typical of accounts about the heroism of Pythagorean women and men in the face of death. But as some scholars haverealized, there are very particular details in the stories of Zeno’s death that show they’re basically no fantasy at all; and recent archaeological discoveries quite close to Sicily have made it even clearer that inside them there’s a definite kernel of truth.» — la reserva que se plantea y cómo la resuelve: los relatos traen rasgos típicos del heroísmo pitagórico, pero algunos estudiosos hallan detalles que no son fantasía

«To be more precise: the details indicate that Zeno died smuggling arms out of Velia to help the people on a small, volcanic island just off the coast of Sicily defend themselves against the advancing power of Athens. And of course, as we all know, Athens won the day.» — y a qué apuntan esos detalles: Zenón murió sacando armas de Velia para ayudar a una isla volcánica junto a Sicilia contra el avance de Atenas

«erhaps you’ve noticed it out of the corner of your eye— how even the most seemingly ordinary events can sometimes have such an immense significance theyslip right through our awareness. And sometimes things can come to light, discoveries are made, that literally make no sense. The brain hardly registers them, or just refuses to register them at all.» — la apertura del último capítulo: los sucesos más ordinarios pueden tener un significado inmenso y pasar de largo por la consciencia, y hay hallazgos que el cerebro se niega a registrar; la capitular queda fuera del tramo

«The situation could be compared to thunder and lightning out in the countryside, so intense they can’t be seen or heard: invisible lightning, silent thunder. Our minds simply won’t acknowledge what’s happened. And it’s not only that everything seems to go on exactly as it did before; we’re not even conscious of anything happening.» — la imagen que da título al capítulo: trueno y relámpago tan intensos que no se ven ni se oyen, relámpago invisible y trueno silencioso

«But there, where our awareness doesn’t yet want to reach— that’s where the future lies.» — y dónde sitúa el futuro: justo ahí donde la consciencia todavía no quiere llegar

«The archaeologists are still digging at Velia, measuring the ancient streets, mapping out the remains of old buildings down to the nearest fraction of an inch. Everything goes on as it did before.» — la escena con que cierra sobre Velia: los arqueólogos siguen midiendo calles y trazando ruinas hasta la fracción de pulgada, y todo sigue como antes

«And as to those inscriptions for Parmeneides and the Oulis healers, and for the Ouliades who was alatromantis: they’re little more than statistics now, inventory numbers that might as well never have existed. Really there’s no need to go on pushing the evidence aside any more. It’s already forgotten; past history. But just for safekeeping everything’s been stored away in dark warehouses, well out of the public’s sight and reach.» — y el destino de las inscripciones: números de inventario guardados en almacenes oscuros, fuera de la vista del público; la capa de texto pega *alatromantis*

«You might be tempted to describe the way that Parmeneides and the people close to him have been treated in the last two thousand years as a conspiracy, a conspiracy of silence. And in a very basic sense you’d be right.» — lo que concede sobre el trato dado a Parmeneides en dos mil años: llamarlo conspiración de silencio sería en un sentido básico acertado

«But at the same time all these dramas of misrepresentation, of misuse and abuse, are nothing compared with what’s been done to the central part of his teachings— or the writings of his successors. And the dramas fade away almost into insignificance compared with the extraordinary power of those teachings as they still survive: a power that’s waiting to be understood again and used, not just talked about or pushed aside. This is what we’ll need to explore next, and start rediscovering step by step.» — y lo que declara mayor que ese trato: lo hecho a la parte central de sus enseñanzas, cuyo poder sigue esperando ser entendido y usado, no solo hablado

«Our wandering minds are so restless that they keep rushing this way and that, carrying us from theory to» — el diagnóstico que da: las mentes errantes corren de un lado a otro llevándonos de teoría en teoría; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«theory, from one sophisticated explanation to anoilu-i. But they don’t have the stillness that would ever allow the focus of our awareness to settle for more than the briefest moment on ourselves.» — y lo que les falta: la quietud que dejaría posar la atención sobre uno mismo más de un instante; la capa de texto corrompe *another*

«The text talks quite simply about the supreme wisdom of trying, ‘in word but also in action, to live a Pythagorean and Parmenidean way of life’. And it goes on to say that, for each of us, our whole life is a riddle» — lo que dice esa frase antigua: la sabiduría suprema de vivir, en palabra y también en acto, un modo de vida pitagórico y parmenídeo, con la vida entera como acertijo; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«waiting to be solved. The writer adds that really there’s no greater danger or conceivable risk than failing to solve the riddle— in our lives and through them.» — y el riesgo que el mismo escritor añade: ninguno mayor que no resolver ese acertijo en la propia vida y a través de ella

«The man who happens to have played the role of host when Plato travelled out to southern Italy to visit the Pythagoreans is sometimes pictured in modern literature» — el ejemplo con que muestra lo que era ser pitagórico: el anfitrión de Platón en el sur de Italia; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«as a quaint old eccentric, someone who loved spending his time inventing toys for children. And it’s quite true that he was an inventor. As a matter of fact he was one of a number of Pythagoreans who used to be mechanical designers and engineers.» — y cómo se lo pinta hoy frente a lo que era: viejo excéntrico inventor de juguetes, cuando fue uno de varios pitagóricos diseñadores mecánicos e ingenieros

«So everything that’s been mentioned so far— Parmeneides’ opening account of his journey to another world, the traditions about him, the finds at Velia— may seem a story in itselfor even a story within a story. But the» — el remate del libro: el viaje del poema, las tradiciones sobre Parmeneides y los hallazgos de Velia pueden parecer una historia dentro de otra; el tramo se corta al pasar de plana y la capa de texto pega *itselfor*

«story is far from finished, and this book t hat you’ve come to the end of is only the beginning: the first chapter.» — y cómo cierra: la historia está lejos de terminar y este libro es solo el primer capítulo; la capa de texto parte *that*

«pieces of the puzzle made that clear. But first there were other details to make sense of, details that it’s so easy to pass over. For they were the key to things we no longer know or can even imagine.» — el cierre del capítulo sobre los sanadores de Velia: quedan otros detalles que hacer encajar, fáciles de pasar por alto y que son la llave de cosas que ya no se saben ni se imaginan

«C o n t e n t s O ne This Book 3 Our Ancestors 5 Phocaea 11 Journey to the West 19 Fairy Story 25 What’s Missing 33 Killing the Father 39 Two Getting Started 49 The Man in a Toga 55 Dying Before You Die 61 Masters of Dreams 77 Apollo 87 Goddess 93 latromanlis 101 Ecstasy 106 The Sound of Piping 116» — el índice del volumen, tal cual lo imprime la capa de texto: las dos primeras partes, con los folios impresos de cada capítulo; el OCR da *latromanlis* por Iatromantis

«T hree Founding Hero 139 The Line 150 Walking Away 163 Ameinias 173 Like the Wind at Night 184 F our Playing with lays 195 The Lawgivers 204 A Matter of Practicalities 220 F ive Invisible Lightning 229 R eferences 233» — la segunda mitad del índice, con las partes tres a cinco y las referencias; el OCR da *Playing with lays* por Playing with Toys

«ABBREVIATIONS A P M M P. Kingsley, A n c ie n t p h ilo s o p h y , m y ste ry a n d m a g ic (revised ed., Oxford 1996)» — la primera entrada de la tabla de abreviaturas, con que Kingsley remite a su propio libro anterior: *APMM* es *Ancient philosophy, mystery and magic*, en la edición revisada de Oxford de 1996; la capa de texto espacia las letras

«H. Diels and W. Kranz, D ie F ra g m en te der V orsokratiker (6th ed., Berlin 1951—2) D.L. Diogenes Laertius, Lives o f the p h ilo so p h ers» — las dos abreviaturas con que cita los fragmentos y las vidas: *DK* es Diels y Kranz y *D.L.* es Diógenes Laercio

«K. Preisendanzand A. Hcnrichs, P apyri graecae m ag ica e (Stuttgart 1973 4); T he G reek m a g ic a l p a p y ri in tr a n s la tio n , ed. H. D. Betz (2nd ed., Chicago 1992)» — la abreviatura *PGM*, con las dos ediciones de los papiros mágicos griegos que Kingsley declara usar: la de Preisendanz y Henrichs y la traducción inglesa dirigida por Hans Dieter Betz; la capa de texto pega *Preisendanzand*

«W. Burkert, Lore a n d science in a n c ie n t P yth a g o rea n ism (Cambridge, MA 1972) Mourelatos A. P. D. Mourelatos, T h e ro u te o f P arm enides (New Haven, Conn. 1970)» — las abreviaturas *LS* y *Mourelatos*: el libro de Burkert sobre el pitagorismo antiguo y el de Mourelatos sobre la ruta de Parménides

«Phocaeans and the West: E. Langlol/., Dir k u lttiie lle im d Liu-o... H e lle n isie r u n g tier K iisten ties M ittelm e e rs (lurch d ie S lu ill I'lio ku h i H ulc in 1966); R. Carpenter, B e y o n d th e P illars o f H ercules (I ondon l'*71) 45 fi7» — el arranque de las referencias del capítulo *Phocaea*, con la corrupción del OCR a la vista: Langlotz y Rhys Carpenter como autoridades de Kingsley sobre los foceos y el occidente

«Ambiguity of oracles: W. B. Stanford, A m b ig u ity in G reek lite r a tu r e (Oxlord 1939) 115—28.» — la referencia sobre la ambigüedad de los oráculos: el estudio de Stanford sobre la ambigüedad en la literatura griega

«Truth and tire Muses: Hesiod, T h e o g o n y 27—8.» — de dónde sale lo dicho sobre verdad y Musas: la *Teogonía* de Hesíodo

«Plato’s P arm enides as fiction: J. Mansfeld, S tu d ie s in th e h isto rio g ra p h y o f Greek p h ilo s o p h y (Asscn 1990) 64—7; C. H. Kahn, P la to a n d th e So cra tic d ia lo g u e (Cambridge 1996) 34. Belittling of Zeno: M. H. Miller Jr., P la to ’s 'P a rm en id es’ (Princeton, NJ 1986) 28 34.» — las autoridades modernas en que Kingsley apoya que el *Parménides* de Platón es ficción y que rebaja a Zenón: Mansfeld, Kahn y Mitchell Miller

«Mansions of Night, gates of NightandDay, chasm of Tartarus: Hesiod, T h e o g o n y 736—66.» — la fuente de las Mansiones de la Noche, las puertas del Día y la Noche y el abismo del Tártaro: la *Teogonía* de Hesíodo; la capa de texto pega *NightandDay*

«‘The mares that carry me ...’: DK § 28 B1.» — la referencia del poema traducido: el fragmento B1 de Parménides en la numeración de Diels y Kranz

«The discoveries: M. Napoli, PS 140 2; M. Leiwo, A rctos 16 (1 982) 46—8; Fabbri Trotta 69—77; G. Pugliese Carratelli, T ra C adm o e O rfeo (Bologna 1990) 269—71; Velia: S tu d i e ricerche, ed. G. Greco and F. Krinzinger (Modena 1994) 42 3.» — las referencias de los hallazgos de Velia, con Mario Napoli a la cabeza y los estudios de Leiwo, Fabbri y Trotta, Pugliese Carratelli y el volumen de Greco y Krinzinger

«Orphic gold texts: A P M M 250—316. Initiation, adoption, children of the gods: Rohde 601 3.» — adónde remite para las láminas órficas de oro y para la iniciación como adopción: a su propio libro anterior y a la *Psyche* de Rohde

«W. Burkert, ‘Das Proomium des Parmenides und die Katabasis des Pythagoras’, P h ro n esis 14 (1969) 1 -30» — la abreviatura *Burkert*: el artículo de Walter Burkert sobre el proemio de Parménides y la catábasis de Pitágoras, referencia que Kingsley usa a lo largo del libro; entrada de bibliografía, releída entera en el crudo, con la guarda anticosido desactivada por el año entre paréntesis

«Pythagoras’ travels: Kingsley (1990), (1994a). His father: Kingsley (1994a) 2; Porphyry, L ife o f P y th a g o ra s 1; Iamhlichus, T he P y th a g o re a n life 2 (6.26—8.13 Deubner). His trousers: Kingsley (1994h) 192.» — las referencias con que Kingsley respalda los viajes de Pitágoras, su padre y sus pantalones: artículos propios y las vidas de Porfirio y Jámblico; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada, y la capa de texto imprime *1994h* por *1994b*

«‘The central problem’: K. von Fritz, G n o m o n 14 (1918) 9 I 2, Greek philosophy and the East: Burkert» — la referencia de la frase *el problema central* aplicada a Parmeneides, adjudicada a Kurt von Fritz, y el arranque del bloque sobre la filosofía griega y Oriente; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada, y el tramo se corta antes de una comilla angular que el OCR fabrica dentro del renglón.

«‘Apollo. For he was a healer’: S u d a , under ‘Oulios’; R E Supplementband xiv (1974) 930 1.» — de dónde sale la entrada lexicográfica que cita en el cuerpo: la *Suda*, bajo *Oulios*, y la *Realencyclopädie*; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Orphic traditions at Velia: DK i 2.2; Burkert 17; Sassi 383—96; B. O t t o i n A k t e n d e s X l l l . In te r n a tio n a le n K ongresses f u r K lassische A rc h d o lo g ie (Mainz am Rhein 1990) 400; SE G 40 (1990) § 904.» — las referencias de las tradiciones órficas en Velia, con Burkert, Sassi, Otto y los suplementos epigráficos; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Meanings of p h o leo s, p h o le ia , p h o le u e in : S. Musitclli, PP 35 (1980) 241—55.» — la autoridad en que Kingsley apoya los sentidos de *pholeos*, *pholeia* y *pholeuein*: el artículo de Musitelli; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Apollo Pholeuterios: D. M. Pippidi in Stele: to m o s e is m n e m e n N ik o la o u K o n to le o n to s (Athens 1980) 40—3 (‘1 confess ...’); S E G 30 (1980) §§ 798, 1225; G. Sacco, R ivista di f l o l o g i a e di istru zio n e classica 109 (1981) 36—40.» — las referencias de la inscripción de Istria, con la confesión de Pippidi de no entenderla que Kingsley cita en el cuerpo; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Apollo and incubation: Deubner 32—8, 55—6n.; C. Dugas, B C II 34 (1910) 23S—40; W. Dconna, R evue d e l ’h is to ir e d e s r e lig io n s83 (1921) 166— 8; A scl. ii 99, 191 n. 1; S. Eitrem, O ra k e l u n d M y s te r ie n am A u sg a n g d e r A n tik e (Zurich 1947) SI—2; F. Graf, N o rd io n isc h e K u lte (Rome 1985) 250—5.» — el bloque de referencias sobre Apolo y la incubación, de Deubner a Graf; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«‘Taken by Apollo’: Flerodotus, H is to r ie s4.13; Burkert, G no m o n 3S (1963) 239. ‘Skywalker’: L S ISO n., 162 n. (a ith r o b a te s); M. Eliade, S h a m a n is m : a rch a ic te c h n iq u es o f ecstasy (Princeton, NJ 1964) 410; K. Dowman, S k y d a n cer (Ithaca, NY 1996) 224.» — las referencias de *tomado por Apolo* y de *skywalker*, donde Kingsley pone lado a lado a Heródoto, a Burkert, a Eliade y el libro de Dowman sobre las dakinis tibetanas; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Parmenides’ journey and k u n d a lin t: S y m b o lo n 7 (1971) 76 = O. M. Hinze, T a n tra v id y a (Delhi 1979) 107.» — la única referencia que da para el paralelo con la kundalini: el artículo de Hinze; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada; la capa de texto imprime *kundalint*

«Recipe for immortality: P G M IV.475—829; A.-]. Pcstugicre, la rev e la tio n d ’H erm es T rism eg iste i (2nd ed., Paris 1950) 303 8; G. Powdcn, T h e E g y p tia n H erm es (Cambridge 1986) 82—4; A P M M 221, 313, 374 5.» — dónde sitúa la receta de inmortalidad: el papiro mágico PGM IV, con Festugière y Fowden y su propio libro anterior; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Harmony of the spheres: Plutarch 590c—d; Iamblichus, O n th e m ysteries 3.9 and T he P y th a g o re a n life 65; L S 357.» — las fuentes de la armonía de las esferas: Plutarco, Jámblico y el libro de Burkert sobre el pitagorismo; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«The Parmenides inscription: P. Ebner, R assegna S torica S a le rn ita n a 23 (1962) 6, A p o llo 2 (1962) 128—9 and Illu str a te d L on d o n N e w s, 31 August 1963, 306; M. Napoli, F S 140—1.» — las referencias del hallazgo de la inscripción de Parmeneides, incluida la nota del *Illustrated London News* del 31 de agosto de 1963; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Adoption and the Hippocratic school: C. J. de Vogel, P yth a g o ra s a n d e a rly P y th a g o re a n ism (Assen 1966) 239 41; L S 179; G. Rocca-Scrra, H isto ire des sciences m ed ica tes 19 (198S) 172—3; Fahbri—Trotta 7S; V. Nutton and H. von Staden in M ed ecin e et m o ra le d a n s 1’a n tiq u ite ( E n tre tie n s sur 1’a n liq u ite c la s siq u e , xliii; Vandceuvres/Geneva 1997) 196. Hippocrates, Asclepius, Apollo: S. Sherwin-White, A n c ie n t Cos (Gottingen 1978)256 89, 301 3, 338 60; J. Jouanna, J o u r n a l des S a v a n ts (1989) 17—22; G. Pugliese Carratelli, Tra C adm o e O rjeo (Bologna 1990) 276—7; von Staden 180, 185—91 . Asklepiades and Ouliades: O. Masson, J o u r n a l des S a v a n ts (1988) 180; S E G 39 (1989) § 1078.» — el bloque de referencias sobre la adopción en la escuela hipocrática y sobre Hipócrates, Asclepio y Apolo, con De Vogel, Sherwin-White, Jouanna y von Staden; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Parmeneides and Zeno as Pythagoreans: PP 21 (1966) 329; L S 280 n. Pythagorean creativity and originality: A P M M 9 2 —3, 160, 182, 191—4, 199, 319, 328—34. Fluidity of Pythagorean tradition: Kingsley (1990) 261 andn. 99;/lP/W/W328—34.» — las referencias de Parmeneides y Zenón como pitagóricos y de la fluidez de la tradición pitagórica; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada y con el OCR corrompiendo la sigla APMM

«‘Truly sensational’: M. Timpanaro Cardini, S tu d i classici e o rie n ta li 16 (1967) 172. ‘Change of perspective’: P. Merlan, K le in e p h ilo so p h isch e S c h rifte n (Hildesheim 1976) 10 (first published 1966).» — de quiénes son las dos frases con que abre el capítulo *Walking Away*: *truly sensational* de Timpanaro Cardini y *change of perspective* de Merlan; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Everything is alive: DK i 226.15—16, 353.10; W. K. C. Guthrie, A h is to ry o f G reek p h ilo s o p h y ii (Cambridge 1965) 69; A P M M 230.» — las referencias de que todo está vivo, con los fragmentos de Diels y Kranz y la historia de Guthrie; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«‘Not correct’: M. M. Sassi i n A t t i del v e n to ttesim o convegno di stu d i su lla M a g n a G recia (Taranto 1989) 258.» — de quién es el *no es correcto* que Kingsley discute en el cuerpo: Maria Michela Sassi; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Hero-shrines and incubation: Rohde 132—3; Deubner 6, 56 7; S. Eitrem, R E viii/1 (1912) 1114—16; W. R. Halliday, G reek d iv in a tio n (London 1913) 1 28—9; L. R. Farnell, G reek hero c u lts a n d ideas o f im m o r ta lity (Oxford 1921) 239; A. Brelich, G li eroi greci (Rome 1958) 107—1 1, 113— 15. And Christian saints; Rohde 151; Deubner 56—134; N. Fernandez Marcos, Los T h a u m a ta de So jro n io : c o n trib u cio n a! estu d io de la in c u b a tio c ristia n a (Madrid 1975); Burkert, G reek relig io n 2 0 7 .» — el bloque de referencias sobre santuarios de héroes, incubación y santos cristianos, de Rohde y Deubner a Fernández Marcos y Burkert; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Stillness as inhuman and divine: E. R. Dodds, E u rip id es: B acchae (2nd ed., Oxlord 1960) xliv, 154. P y th a g o re a n M em oirs: D.L. 8.31—3 (... k a th ' h a u te n . .. erem ei . . . m a n tik e n te p a sa n . . . erem ein ...); A. Delatte, La Vie de P yth a g o re d e D io g en e L aerce (Brussels 1922) 2 2 4—S (... m a n tik e ...);» — la referencia de la quietud como inhumana y divina, en el comentario de Dodds a las *Bacantes*, y las de los *Pythagorean Memoirs* en Diógenes Laercio; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«‘Assolutamcnte sicura’: letter from Mario Napoli to Hans Jucker, published in A luseum H e lv e tic u m 25 (1968) 183.» — la procedencia de la frase italiana con que abre el capítulo *Playing with Toys*: una carta de Mario Napoli a Hans Jucker publicada en *Museum Helveticum* en 1968; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Italian philosophy, practicality and healing: A P M M 217 32, 317 47. Hippocratic writers: O n a n c ie n t m e d icin e 20; A.-J. Fcstugicrc, H ip p o cra le: L 'A n c ie n n e M e d e cin e (Paris 1 948) 60 n. 70; Pugliese Carratelli 279; C. A.» — las referencias sobre filosofía italiana, practicidad y sanación y sobre los escritores hipocráticos; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada, y el tramo se corta al pasar de plana

«Plato’s nephew: Merlan 1 52; K. von Fritz, P la to n in S iz ilie n (Berlin 1968) 72, 133 4; I S 47; A P M M 177.» — las referencias del sobrino de Platón, con el *Platon in Sizilien* de von Fritz y remites propios; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Apollo and lawgiving: H. Vos, T h em is (Assen 1956) 20 1; (4. K. Morrow, P la to ’s C reta n c ity» — las referencias de Apolo y la legislación, con el *Themis* de Vos y la *Plato's Cretan city* de Morrow; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Justice, laws and the cave of Night: O. Kern, O rp h ico ru m jr a g m e n ta (Berlin 1922) 168—9 § 105 (... n o m o th e to u sa ...); West, T he O rp h ic poem s (Oxford 1983) 72-3, 109-10, 124, 213-14.» — las fuentes de la Justicia, las leyes y la cueva de la Noche: los *Orphicorum fragmenta* de Kern, con el término griego conservado entre paréntesis, y los *Orphic poems* de West; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Epimenides at Athens: Plutarch, S o lo n 12 (... n o m o th e sia s ... d ik a io u .. .)andD.L. 1.110; H. Demoulin, E p im e n id e d e C rete (Brussels 1901) 109—» — las fuentes de Epiménides en Atenas: la *Vida de Solón* de Plutarco, Diógenes Laercio y la monografía de Demoulin; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Zeno’s death: DK § 29 A1- 2, 6 9, with C). Casel, D c p h ih s a p h a r itm G raecorum sile n tio m ystico (Giessen 1919) 56; K. I,. Minar, Jr., A m erica n J o u rn a l o f P h ilo lo g y 70 (1949) 44—5; P. J. Hiclcndl in Par service to classical studies: essays in h o n o u r o f F rancis L e tte rs, ed. M, Kelly (Melbourne I960) 10—1 4; G. Calogero, S tu d i s u lV e le a tis m o (2nd ed., Florence 1 977) I 06 n. 2; T. Dorandi in A in si p a r la ie n t les an cien s: in h o norem je a n P aul D u m o n t (Lille 1994) 27—37.» — el bloque de referencias sobre la muerte de Zenón, de los testimonios de Diels y Kranz a Casel, Minar, Calogero y Dorandi; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Fighting against Athens: PP 2 1 (1966) 270 8 and 25 (1970) 62-3.» — la última referencia del volumen, sobre la lucha contra Atenas, en la revista napolitana *La Parola del Passato*; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«A C K N O W L E D G E M ENTS to Hirmer Fotoarchiv in Munich for permission to reproduce the image on the front cover to Van Gorcum in Assen for the detail from the oldest known manuscript that preserves the start of Parmenides’ poem (p. 48) and to Giorgio Bretschneider Editore in Rome for the pictures of the Parmeneides inscription (p. 138) and the matching head (p. 194)» — los créditos de imagen del volumen, con las tres procedencias y los folios impresos de las tres láminas: la cubierta de Hirmer Fotoarchiv, el facsímil del manuscrito del poema de Van Gorcum y las fotografías de la inscripción y de la cabeza de Giorgio Bretschneider Editore

«Mongolia, T ibet and the D estiny oe ti ii W ilsti r Woki d (The Golden Sufi Center 2010 ) “In this profoundly erudite and eloquent book is a startling ancient secrei llial will forever alter the way we think about the origins of western civilizat ion.”» — el anuncio editorial del otro libro del autor, *A Story Waiting to Pierce You*, con el elogio firmado por Pir Zia Inayat Khan; la capa de texto corrompe el subtítulo, y la página es publicidad de la editorial, no cuerpo de la obra

«“Peter Kingsley is more than a master storyteller. He is a magician who reveals the golden thread of truth which makes its way through time and space, secretly holding the fabric of our world together. A Story Waiting to Pierce You reveals the surprisingly mystical origins, and purpose, of western culture as well as what it means to participate in its eternal unfolding right now.” Adyashanti» — el segundo elogio de esa misma página editorial, firmado por Adyashanti

«In tro d u c in g th e se q u e l to In THE DARK PLACES O F V V lS D O M (The Golden Sufi Center 2004)» — el anuncio del volumen siguiente del autor, presentado por la editorial como la secuela de este libro y fechado en 2004; la capa de texto corrompe el título

«“Stunningly original, Reality is momentous in its implications.This book is aimed at one of the highest ends I can imagine— to restore to us the understanding that the original purpose of Greek philosophy was to launch the Western mind on a profoundly spiritual course. It shows, in a way which to my eyes is completely convincing, that the founders of philosophy were not just proto-physicists whose ingenious conjectures have long been shelved. They were spiritual giants whose understandings have not been surpassed and may never be surpassed.” Huston Smith, author of The World’s Religions and Forgotten Truth» — el elogio de esa secuela firmado por Huston Smith, que la lee como restitución del propósito espiritual de la filosofía griega; es texto editorial de contracubierta, no voz de la obra

«“Reality contains the purest and most powerful writing I have ever read.” Michael Baigent, author of Ancient Traces and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail» — y el elogio firmado por Michael Baigent en la misma página editorial

«PITER JKdNGSLEY works with the sacred tradition that gave birth to the western world. His insight into the history as well as the destiny of western civilization has changed many people on the deepest level, transforming their awareness not only of who they are blit also ol their purpose in the modern world. Recognized internationally lot his groundbreaking work, and the recipient of numerous academic awanh and honors, he travels and lectures widely. For further information visit www.peterkingsley.org» — la solapa de autor, tal cual la imprime la capa de texto, con el nombre corrompido: presenta a Kingsley como quien trabaja con la tradición sagrada que dio a luz al mundo occidental y remite a su sitio; es solapa editorial, no voz de la obra

«Apollo and the sun: M u se u m H e lv e d c u m 7 (HPili) 1H (1968) 182; P. Boyance in M e la n g e s C a rc o p irw (l'aiis Burkert 21 and Grazer B e itra g e 4 (1975) 73 4; H er I s la m ! n th i i 1 9911 446—7; F. Ahl, A m e rica n J o u r n a l o f P h ilo lo g y 101 (P*H '| 17! 4! ! !' Metzler in A n tid o ro n : F estschrift J iir Jiirg en T h im in e (Ktiilsiulif l^Hl) L I M C ii/1 (1984) 244—6;Schefer 196—7.» — el bloque de referencias sobre Apolo y el sol, con Boyance, Burkert, Ahl y Metzler; es la plana más castigada por el OCR de todo el volumen y se transcribe tal cual; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada, y el tramo se corta antes de una comilla angular que el OCR fabrica dentro del renglón.

«Velian dedication to Persephone: G. Antonini, La L u c a n ia i (Naples 179S) 302—S; J. C. Orelli, In sc rip tio n u m L a tin a ru m sele c ta ru m collectio i (Zurich 1828) § 2512; C orpus in sc r ip tio n u m L a tin a ru m x (Berlin 1883) § 98*.» — las referencias de la dedicatoria veliense a Perséfone que el barón del siglo XVIII copió: Antonini, Orelli y el *Corpus inscriptionum Latinarum*; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Aristotle on philosophical poetry: A P M M 43—4, S3. The Platonists: DK i 220.30—43; Mourelatos 36 n. 77. ‘Hard to excuse J. Barnes, T he P resocratic p h ilo so p h e rs (2nd ed., London 1982) 155.» — de dónde sale la queja *hard to excuse* sobre el verso de Parménides que Kingsley cita en el cuerpo: los *Presocratic philosophers* de Jonathan Barnes; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«J a v a n m a r d and fa ta : H. Corbin, E n Islam ira n ie n iv (Paris 1972) 178, 410 30 and L ’ho m m e et son a n g e (Paris 1983) 207—60; J. Baldick in A n n a li d e U 'h titu to lln iv e rs ita r io O rien ta le di N a p o li 50(1990) 345—61.» — las referencias del *javanmard* y el *fata*: Henry Corbin, *En Islam iranien* IV y *L'homme et son ange*, más el artículo de Baldick; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«‘The traces ... corrupted and distorted’: al-Shahrazurf in Shihab al-Din Yahya al-Suhrawardi, O pera m eta p h ysic a et m ystica ii, ed. H. Corbin (Tehran 1952) 5—6; A P M M 387.» — de dónde sale la frase sobre las huellas de los caminos de los antiguos sabios que Kingsley cita en el cuerpo: al-Shahrazuri en la edición de Corbin de las *Opera metaphysica et mystica* de al-Suhrawardi; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

«Early Greek philosophers in Sufism and Persian mysticism: Corbin, S p ir itu a l b o d y a n d c elestia l ea rth (Princeton, NJ 1977) 171; A P M M 375—91. In Arab alchemy: P. Lory, G a b ir ibn H a y y a n» — las dos referencias con que Kingsley cierra el hilo oriental: el *Spiritual body and celestial earth* de Corbin para los primeros filósofos griegos en el sufismo y la mística persa, y el *Gabir ibn Hayyan* de Pierre Lory para la alquimia árabe; entrada de bibliografía releída entera, con la guarda anticosido desactivada

Iniciación (recepción por grados / metamorfosis del ser) — El eje del libro: Kingsley lee el viaje del poema como descenso de iniciado, apoyado en la fórmula *a man who knows*, que declara manera corriente en griego antiguo de nombrar al iniciado; define la iniciación como averiguar cómo se está emparentado con lo divino y quedar adoptado como hijo de los dioses, preparado antes de morir.

Secreto (lo que se jura no fijar por escrito) — Kingsley niega que las doctrinas tenidas por más esotéricas de los pitagóricos fueran secretas: las llama escaparate que atraía aspirantes, y sitúa lo reservado en la enseñanza por acertijos, que da el germen de la respuesta y no la respuesta. También declara esotérica, propia de iniciados, la identificación griega del sol con Apolo.

Iniciación (recepción por grados / metamorfosis del ser) — La figura del *kouros* como bisagra: está en la frontera entre lo humano y lo divino y solo como kouros puede el iniciado superar la prueba del viaje al más allá; al iniciado se le retira la vida vieja y se le da un segundo destino.

Cadena de transmisión (quién tomó de quién) — La línea de sanadores de Velia se data desde Parmeneides como año cero y se sostiene quinientos años; Kingsley aduce los paralelos documentados de los Molpoi de Mileto, desde la era cristiana hasta el 525 a. C., y de la familia sacerdotal de Istria, setecientos años. Y prolonga la línea hasta el *javanmard* persa y el *fata* árabe, en una sucesión que no se ata a país ni a religión.

Crítica de fuentes (criterios de inclusión y descarte) — Kingsley objeta el uso de Platón como fuente: el *Parménides* es ficción deliberada montada para presentar a Sócrates y a Platón como herederos legítimos, y la broma sobre Jenófanes como maestro se volvió hecho histórico con Aristóteles y su sucesor. También señala dos operaciones sobre el texto griego de Diógenes Laercio: la traducción de *la arrogancia de los atenienses* por *el esplendor de Atenas* y el cambio de *no visitaba Atenas a menudo* por *nunca visitó Atenas*.

Prisca theologia (la teología antiquísima) — La frase que Kingsley toma de al-Shahrazuri sobre los primeros filósofos griegos: *las huellas de los caminos de los antiguos sabios desaparecieron* y sus indicaciones quedaron borradas o corrompidas y distorsionadas; para los alquimistas árabes y los místicos persas esos filósofos eran eslabones de una cadena iniciática.

Philosophia perennis (filosofía perenne) — Lo que Kingsley dice explicado entre sufíes y otros místicos, sobre todo en Persia: nunca hay un tiempo en que esos *jóvenes* no existan en algún sitio de la tierra, porque el mundo no sobreviviría sin ellos, y solo por ellos el hilo entre la humanidad y la realidad queda intacto.