EP 68 — A Shaman in Ancient Greece

A shaman suddenly appears in ancient Greece to proclaim that Pythagoras, the founder of philosophy, is divine. Behind the scenes, Apollo lurks.

Listen as the Greeks are shocked at what unfolds!

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PODCAST #68 — A Shaman in Ancient Greece

Welcome to episode 68 of GARNER'S GREEK Mythology. We have listeners in more than 190 countries ... So welcome to everyone, wherever you are.

I'm your host, mythologist PATRICK GARNER … 

Today’s episode has an unusual twist. It’s about a powerful shaman or healer who travels from what we now know as Mongolia to ancient Greece. 

One would think this would have raised an eyebrow or two of the Olympic gods. But instead, he was invited by one of the most influential of them.

The Greek god was Apollo, and he sent for Abaris. Abaris was a powerful shaman who could access the world of good and evil spirits. 

Shamans dealt with physical and spiritual matters and guided their people through rituals and exotic ceremonies. Typically, shamans entered a trance, during which they practiced prophecy and healing.

Shamanism is not associated with Greece. It was thought to have been common in parts of Asia and even North America.

However, we know ancient people travelled and traded, so there could have been interaction between northern Asia and Greece.

Then, in 2010, the plot thickened, as they say! The eminent Classics scholar Peter Kingsley published a small book titled A Story Waiting to Pierce You. 

He describes the ancient threads connecting Mongolia to Greece. It is a controversial premise among classic historians. 

Kingsley asserts that shamans originated in Mongolia, then over time found their way into Tibet to the south and North America over what is now the Bering Strait to the east. He says the shaman Abaris eventually made it to Greece.

Why?

Apollo sent him to find the mystical philosopher Pythagoras. This would have been in the 6th century BC.

Many of you know that Pythagoras was believed to be the son of Apollo. Pythagoras himself encouraged the belief, describing himself as half divine.

So, sent by Apollo, Abaris came to Greece filled with Apollo’s spirit. Kingsley says he came in a state of ecstasy, that he was elated and joyous. 

His mission was to affirm that Pythagoras was godly and to correct anyone who doubted it. 

But before we delve into this remarkable tale of divinity …

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Now, to the episode.

…

We talked about Pythagoras in episode 33 of Garner’s Greek Mythology. He is believed to have lived between 580 and 500 BC.

Although he is considered to have founded philosophy, he is primarily remembered today for the Pythagorean theorem. 

You may remember it:  The square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.

I remember in high school math wondering why I was having to learn this stuff. Boring, right? No one mentioned that Pythagoras was a philosopher, even a magician. 

Or that he was possibly divine. If my teacher had done so, I might have found Pythagoras far more interesting.

So what we have here is a unique mathematician.

As we discussed in that earlier episode, Pythagoras travelled extensively, including to Egypt, where he is likely to have encountered the theorem that is now associated with his name. 

(You’ll note that many times, essential ideas are attributed to public figures to give them credibility.)

Today’s historians say the Pythagoras theorem is likely Babylonian, dating back at least a thousand years before his birth.

He popularized its use in Greece, and his name was attached to the formula. But, there’s much more to Pythagoras than this. The theorem is one of the least interesting things about him.

His home base was initially in Samos, a Greek island off the coast of Turkey. He later established his school in Croton, a Greek colony in southern Italy.

And of course, when the shaman Abaris came to Greece, he headed straight for Pythagoras’ school. 

Abaris was a Mongol. And at the time, Mongolia was the epicenter of shamanism. 

He travelled over 1,500 miles to reach Greece, starting from a distant point in northern Asia east of the Black Sea.

Mostly, the shaman walked, and he did so with exceptional speed, rarely stopping to eat or sleep. That was part of their mystique. No ordinary travelers could match their speed or endurance.

Yet, regardless of the ancient documentation regarding Mongols making occasional contacts with Greeks, modern historians considered such a feat unthinkable. 

To trek from the Far East to Greece, crossing mountains and countless rivers, surmounting language problems, robbers, enemies and untold dangers, was unimaginable. 

To the modern mind, such an effort was beyond astonishing — it was regarded as impossible.

Then, Kingsley published his unsettling book.

…

Abaris had one mission. Apollo sent him to Greece to affirm to the Greeks that Pythagoras was the god’s son... or even something more unimaginable.

Pythagoras had many signs of divinity. His followers had seen his thigh, and many claimed it was solid gold. 

Only those conceived by gods could manifest such a marvel. And other signs marked him as exceptional.

Beyond these physical manifestations, Pythagoras had an immense intellect. He proclaimed that numbers defined every aspect of the world.

He declared that numerals in a harmonic array defined the underlying structure of everything. Music was sound, yet sound was numbers.

He saw mathematical logic in the movement of tides and the turning of the stars, in the arc of the moon and the circling planets.

Today, we might say that he had developed algorithms to explain physical phenomena.  Over time, he expanded his findings to something he called the "music of the spheres" or "harmony of the cosmos." 

His new ideas blended mathematics and music, reflecting his belief in the fundamental integration of the universe. To Pythagoras, all was logical and pure.

His declarations became the foundation for what we now call philosophy. But like many who develop new and radical ideas, Pythagoras gathered more enemies than friends.

His intimations that he was a son of Apollo were quietly mocked. Some said he was blaspheming the gods themselves. 

In response, Pythagoras retreated to the shelter of his school. He focused on numerology and stopped speaking publicly. 

New students were not allowed to see him until they had passed months of tests to affirm their loyalty.

If the public were to reject his revelations, he would, in turn, reject the public.

…

All the while, Apollo watched. None of this escaped him. He reveled in Pythagoras' discoveries, and he lamented the mockery.

Although Apollo had endless ways to confirm Pythagoras’ divinity publicly, he chose to send a shaman, a man from far away whom no Greek knew.

Abaris came from a land that the Greeks called beyond the beyond. They had a name for this strange place: it was called Hyperborea. 

Although no one knew anyone who had seen it, legend said that you could get there if you tried.

All you had to do was walk eastward until you could walk no further. Yet, even then, you would not have reached Hyperborea.

For this land that Abaris called home was so far away that, to any Greek, it may as well have been a place of dreams. 

No ordinary human would ever arrive, no matter their efforts. Once you had traveled as far as you could, you had to continue. 

Abaris the shaman had been raised in this distant land of mysteries. Yet, even in his homeland, he was unusual. His people didn’t call him Abaris. 

He was such an accomplished shaman that they called him Skywalker.

Thousands of years before the film industry made the name Skywalker popular in the West, it was a sacred name given to half-divine people in Mongolia and in Tibet. 

Whereas Abaris was real, Luke Skywalker was a fictional character in the Star Wars franchise. He was trained as a Jedi, but it was all a Hollywood concoction.

If you were a Skywalker in Mongolia, you were someone with genuine magical powers. And there was more to the name, for Skywalker also meant arrow.

When Abaris ventured west to Italy, to Croton, he carried an arrow. One Greek source said that the arrow was three-pronged and made of gold.

The arrow was more than an oddity. Mongolians were the most skilled and effective archers the world had ever seen.

They didn’t view arrows as mere weapons. Instead, they considered each arrow to be the secret to their military successes. 

The Mongolian arrows were said to sing and fly through mountains. They could penetrate forests. But as extraordinary as this sounds, these were ordinary Mongolian arrows.

Arrows made of silver or gold were more potent. They were rare and sacred. Such devices were crafted solely for shamans.

For a shaman like Abaris, a golden arrow was not simply an object: it was alive. It was the seat of his power. 

His people believed that such an arrow exceeded the power of any other arrow. Such a magical shaft had the unfailing power to surmount impassable landscapes.

Like a ballistic missile, an arrow endowed with incantations could effortlessly steer and guide itself and any companion through the air.

Beyond these powers, an arrow was believed to take its shamanic owner into another world, into a state of ecstasy.

Knowing of these remarkable powers, Apollo used Abaris as his divine vessel, as his envoy. 

Abaris ventured into Greece as both Apollo’s divine representative and as the ambassador of Hyperborea.

There’s more. He came in a state of ecstasy, as a Skywalker who held a magic arrow. He carried the object, and it carried him wherever he needed to go.

This relationship partially explains how Abaris was able to travel so far and over so many obstacles. The golden arrow took him to Croton. It led him directly to Pythagoras.

And so we see the meaning of his title, Skywalker. As a shaman, holding his magical arrow, Abaris could walk on the skies at high speed, never losing his way.

…

Peter Kingsley calls Abaris an “ambassador from the beyond, a purifier.” What did he mean by “purifier”?

Before Abaris finally found Pythagoras, the shaman stopped at numerous temples and sacred groves along the way.

He never lingered, but his purpose was to chase away diseases and epidemics, just like Apollo. 

In his Apollonian role, he became famous for ending plagues and taking command of the wind. 

Like Apollo, he was veiled in mystery yet delighted in order. Chaos was disorder, and Abaris had a gift for sweeping turmoil aside.

Wherever he stopped, the Greeks treated him like a superstar. They had never seen a shaman, let alone a man carrying a golden arrow. That he could end plagues and stop epidemics was a bonus.

Word spread as he got closer and closer to Croton that the man was an emissary from Hyperborea, and that some Olympic god possessed him.

Who possessed him? Hermes, the god of fleet foot? Artemis, who loved arrows? Many said it could only be Apollo, as that god, like Abaris, cured plagues and celebrated purity.

When asked, Abaris said nothing, simply continuing along his way, carrying his golden arrow as he got closer to his destination. 

All who saw him observed that he owned one precious thing: the arrow. But then he gave it away.

…

Completing his mission, Abaris placed the golden arrow in the hands of one particular person. The recipient was none other than Pythagoras.

The gift was a gesture of the secret understanding between them. When Abaris unexpectedly appeared in Croton, Pythagoras understood.

He knew that, in addition to the gift being an act of trust, the offering of the arrow was a public admission that Pythagoras’ connection with Apollo was real. 

But here the tale gets more surprising still. Abaris himself found much more than he expected. He knew instantly that Pythagoras was hardly Apollo’s son: he was instead the living incarnation of the god. 

The man rumored to be Apollo’s son perfectly reflected the father. The shaman recognized the philosopher for who he really was.

There was no son, no half-divinity. Try as he might, Abaris could not distinguish between Pythagoras and Apollo himself. 

He saw before him the merger of divine and human. And he, Abaris, was the herald of this truth.

…

What’s interesting is that no Pythagorean disciple was able to see what was so apparent to Abaris. No Greek had yet declared him divine.

Instead, the Greeks reacted to Pythagoras with general disdain. They were critical of his school and jealous of his discoveries. 

His declarations that he was somehow associated with Apollo were derided. He was considered an egotist, a delusional blowhard.

Ironically, the confirmation of Pythagoras’ divinity came from a foreigner. As Kingsley notes, Abaris, in an instant, saw Pythagoras’ divinity. 

But what exactly did he see? The original Greek text refers to “the noble marks he observed in him and the proofs of identity revealed to him in advance.”

The Skywalker who sped like an arrow from Hyperborea to Croton shocked the Greeks with his unexpected pronouncement.

I’ve mentioned Apollo’s Pythia on many of these podcasts. She was his oracle at Delphi. The Greeks accepted her as a woman who channeled the god.

But could they accept this new revelation? At this moment, we would be wise to revisit how the Greeks viewed Apollo.

As Kingsley writes, “He was a god of plague and purification; of healing and utter destruction, so terrifyingly ruthless he could scare the living daylights out of every Greek divinity he went near …”

He was a god of “bows sending arrows that come when least expected, always arriving from far away.”

And “he was a god of impossible enigmas, all buried like brilliant sparks in an unbearable darkness where no one would dare to look.”

He was also a god of “songs and poems bound up as magic incantations and of riddles wrapped inside a mystery that, understood, will tear you apart.”

Having a human who was, in effect, an incarnation of Apollo was alarming. It was one thing for Pythagoras to claim divinity, and another for this shaman to come along and confirm the rumors.

At the same time, it got worse. Once Abaris had made his public declaration that Pythagoras was not only Apollo’s son, but Apollo himself, Pythagoras did not attempt to dismiss the claim.

The whole matter shocked the locals and soon spread through the rest of Greece. Not only did Pythagoras affirm that he was the embodiment of Apollo, but he also called himself … Apollo Hyperborea.

The new pronouncement seemed like an insult to Greeks. Now, Pythagoras was saying that he, Apollo, was really from somewhere else, from somewhere far away, from beyond the beyond. That he was a god, and that scandalously, he was a foreign god.

It was outrageous. Hyperborea, indeed!

…

After Abaris’ visit, the rumors about Pythagoras being Apollo’s son ended. He was now, according to the shaman, Apollo himself.

Did any of this affect his school in Croton? It was called the Pythagorean Brotherhood. It was, for all intents and purposes, a philosophical, religious, and political community that taught mathematics, music, astronomy, and cosmology. 

That sounds innocent enough. But after Abaris visited Croton, the school met a complex and turbulent fate due to the new controversy. 

Those who had previously despised Pythagoras now viewed him as an utter fraud. Imagine a man posing as a god! He was a pretender, an impostor!

The school’s secretive nature did not help. Its involvement in local politics complicated matters. And then there were the radical ideas it promoted.

The school had flourished for several decades before Abaris’ arrival. It attracted intellectuals and had begun to exert significant influence on the city's politics.

Promoting Pythagorean ideals of harmony and order, the school was both a center for academic study and a tight-knit society with strict rules, rituals, and a hierarchical structure.

But its aura of superiority, in combination with Pythagoras’ bizarre self-promotion, became too much for the local community.

Around 510–500 BC, opposition culminated in a violent attack on the Pythagoreans, as his followers were called. A mob, possibly incited by the Brotherhood’s elitism, set fire to the Pythagorean meeting place in Croton. 

Many members were killed, and Pythagoras himself either fled or was killed during this event. Records are contradictory.

Some sources suggest he escaped to another Greek colony in southern Italy, but historians contradict each other.

We know that afterwards, 40 to 50 years passed quietly. In 450 BC, another wave of violence targeted the remaining community. 

Attacks led to further destruction of their centers. More Pythagoreans were killed or exiled. 

By the 4th century BC, the Pythagorean Brotherhood had largely dissolved as an organized institution due to the violent purges and the deaths of key figures. 

However, Pythagoras’ influence steadily grew. His ideas about harmony, order and mathematics were integrated into Platonism, Neoplatonism and — and more 1,500 years later — into Renaissance thought. 

Today, he is remembered as a philosopher and a somewhat quirky mathematician. The scandalous claims made by Abaris are treated as an embarrassment.

After all, if Pythagoras was Apollo, how could he have died? Gods live forever. It was all so absurd.

In Athens, 50 years after Pythagoras’ death, Plato acknowledged his brilliance as a thinker and dismissed his divine aspirations.

And what happened to Abaris, the shaman? He had given his sacred arrow to Pythagoras and fulfilled his mission for Apollo.

For the Skywalker, there was nothing left to do. He had had his say. Greeks either embraced the holy truth or were blind.

He had completed an almost impossible journey. A 1,500-mile journey was noteworthy, yet Apollo had possessed him.

Abaris disappeared as quickly as he had appeared. The Greeks recorded his visit and his claims. Yet, his departure was hardly mourned.

In time, the miraculous events were forgotten…  until Kingsley’s book.

...

AT THE END OF THESE EPISODES, I ALWAYS SAY, JOIN ME ... FOR ANOTHER EPISODE OF GARNER'S GREEK MYTHOLOGY. 

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AND thanks for listening ... THIS IS your host, Patrick Garner …