chapter 10 the monism of darkness and the dualism of limit and ...

MONISM OF DARKNESS - DUALISM OF LIMIT AND INDETERMINACY 81
12. A wide range of testimonies focuses on and suggests the
existence of one Orphic (Archaic and Classical) cosmogonic tradition
the basic features of which are:
(i) Night as the very first principle, and
(ii) the Cosmic Egg 37 which is transformed into the basic
elemental parts of the World (Earth-Sky/Aether-Ocean) when
Phanes = Protogonus = Eros is manifested as the first creative Cosmic
principle that articulates order.
(i) belongs to absolute, multi-potent Limitlessness (\AappleÂÈÚ›·), (ii)
to the outcome of the concentration and polarisation of unlimited
mobility: the mutual canceling-out of the opposite results of
Indeterminacy’s chaotic orgasm of powerfulness is suspended;
conditions of ordered productivity are introduced and established to
the effect that stable and permanent structures and enduring things
can now be attained. (ii) therefore corresponds to the third stage of
reality’s procession. As the second stage one should postulate the
confluence of Indefiniteness which alone can actively effect a stable
result. What remains for us to determine is the precise form, symbol
and image of such focusing and coming-together of Indeterminacy in
early Orphism. In Pythagoreanism the solution is to be found in the
other pole of Dualism, in the principle of Limit, which polarises the
other principle of Infinity and thus establishes the stability of
existence 38 . Orphism insists on the primordial Monism of Darkness:
the confluence should, therefore, be an internal determination of
Indeterminacy: thus the theories of liquid (circular) Flux and airy
Whirl suggest themselves, of the Great Stream and the Cosmic Din - e
(¢›ÓË).
The three first hypostatic stages of Cosmogony that we found as
primordial successive situations in the process of World-Ordering are
succinctly described by Apion in his analysis of Orphic theology
(Clement of Rome, Homilies VI, 4 = OF 55). He starts from an
absolute con-fusion of hylozoic chaotic substance, an indefinite depth
of matter that is found in a continuous orgasm of barren mobility
inexhaustibly consuming itself in spasms of mutually annihilating
activities, a self-conflicting dynamism of overflowing energy that is
spent in internal oppositions endlessly producing imperfect minglings
that do not come to fruition but are aborted because of the intrinsic