Traditional and Initiatic Symbolism in the Alexander Romance, Part I
The esoteric meaning of a little-known text…
I find endlessly fascinating the many insights with which a close reading of forgotten or neglected texts can sometimes reward the patient student.
Take, for instance, the little-known Alexander Romance. This is a curious little book that was once very popular in the ancient and medieval worlds; it is a Greek confection, likely composed in Alexandria not long after the great conqueror’s death. The Romance survives in a number of recensions, of which the earliest was likely merely a somewhat embellished but fairly straightforward historical account of Alexander’s life and campaigns; it was probably more in the nature of a popular adventure tale based on the myriad incidents in the young captain’s eventful life, rather like what we would now call genre fiction.
In later recensions, however, the embellishments became much more extravagant. These are the episodes that are of interest to the Traditionalist. They’re also what attracted the imagination of Traditional civilizations throughout the medieval period, from European Christendom to the Muslim empires of Central Asia, and even beyond—to the Mongol states of the later Middle Ages, and even the jungle empires of Southeast Asia, at the periphery of the known world.
To anyone familiar with the wonder-tales of the Arab and Christian travelers and geometers of the Middle Ages, certain recognizable themes and motifs are apparent. To the modern scholar, and many modern readers, these episodes in which Alexander the Great and his hosts encounter strange creatures and stranger lands, and experience an assortment of peculiar and often unexplained events, are nothing more than the confabulations of the Romance’s various authors and continuators over the centuries of its transmission.
This is, of course, a typically myopic and incurious modern outlook. That is why it is always important to take a closer second look at some of these forgotten works, for it is often possible to discern adumbrations of The Mystery, as well as initiatic secrets and traditional symbolism, in some of the most obscure and overlooked texts.
It is important, of course, to distinguish the historical Alexander the Great from the hero presented in the Alexander Romance; even so, the Alexander known to us from history is truly one of the “Great Men,” and his story contains many of the elements of the heroic and the mythical, even without embellishments. He is, without doubt, one of those individuals that—although mired in time and contingency and the flux of Becoming, as are we all—drew nearest in his lifetime to the pole of timelessness, and fixity, and Being. God often sees fit to visit such men upon the world, as a demonstration of what men may aspire to become, if nothing else, and sometimes as a terror and a punishment to civilizations grown decadent.
These men who are “above time” and “against time” were formerly much more common, and appeared more frequently, than now; but they are still cast up on the shores of time now and again, and our decadent and dark-age civilization of the Kali-Yuga would do well to beware, for our own tryst with one of these history-shaking heroes or villains (depending on your perspective) is long overdue.
Nevertheless, we find especially in the “wonder-letters” of the Romance—in which Alexander writes of his adventures in the strange places of the earth to his mother, Olympias—a series of accretions that contain, for those with eyes to see, a plethora of Traditional symbolism and initiatic imagery.
To begin with, in the Romance, Alexander’s parentage is attributed not to Philip II, but to Nectanebo, last of the Egyptian pharaohs, who is represented as a great sorcerer, and who cuckolds Philip’s wife Olympias while the Macedonian king is away on campaign. This establishes in the first place the magical lineage of Alexander, who is descended from one initiated in the Egyptian mysteries.
But it is in the account of Alexander’s further wondrous adventures at the ends of the earth, after defeating the Persian king Darius at the Battle of Arbela, and which are related through the device of a letter by Alexander to his mother Olympias, that we find the truly interesting elements of Traditional and initiatic symbolism. These adventures, I have no doubt, are merely contingent accretions—like barnacles encrusted on the prow of an old ship—of much more ancient themes and motifs upon the story of Alexander, who with his golden hair and indomitable πόθος is the perfect Golden Age hero, mired in the Kali-Yuga and ever striving to reach the Hyperborean Center of the World—though fated never to reach it.
The adventure begins roughly where the standard histories leave off, after Alexander “subdued Media and Armenia, Ebesia and all the kingdom of Persia that had formerly belonged to Darius.”1 After consolidating his conquests, Alexander explains to his mother that he contracted guides to take him and his army “deep into the desert, in the direction of the constellation of the Plough.” In other words, Alexander wishes to explore the country of the Septentrion, the Seven Stars of the Great Bear or ἡ Ἄρκτος. Immediately, then, we are given to understand that Alexander, the Golden Age hero, wishes to explore the regions of the North, which is traditionally understood to be the seat of the primordial tradition for this cycle, and is therefore synonymous with the hidden center that has become occluded and withdrawn during the Dark Age.
It is obvious, therefore, that what follows is in the nature of a formula, descended from ancient tradition, which has merely accreted upon the historical and contingent story of Alexander the Great, who attains in the Romance the status of the King or Ruler of the World. Even in the historical legendry, Alexander is very nearly granted this almost mythical status of ruler of the world; but in Traditional and initiatic symbology, the meaning of this title is much more than merely a proud superlative.
The adventures and episodes that Alexander and his satellites encounter in the ensuing narrative are in fact descriptions of mystical degrees, with Alexander standing in for the initiate, even though it is suitably obscured from the profane and vulgar in the language and tone of a popular romance.
For instance, the first adventures had by Alexander and his army concerns deadly encounters with savage and beast-like men or creatures. He comes first into a forested land, the country of the Phytoi, which is perhaps to be translated as “those who are shaped by nature,” or “the artless ones.” In other words, they are savage men, without science or culture or language. They are described as being 36 feet tall, with forearms and hands “like saws.” Alexander and his soldiers prevail over these giants, even though a hundred men are lost in the battle.
Afterwards, they encounter another savage race, the Ochlitae, whom they eventually defeat at the cost of 180 men lost; these men live in caves, guarded by lion-like creatures with three eyes. Afterwards, Alexander advances into the country of the “Apple-eaters,” where they find a giant, hirsute savage—a wild man figure much like Enkidu of the Gilgamesh epic—whom his men capture. Alexander orders a naked woman to be given over to the savage man, whereupon he eats her. Eventually, the commotion attracts the notice of the brute’s fellow savages, and Alexander is forced to put the swamp in which they live to the torch, in order to chase them away.
These episodes are plainly meant to represent the early initiatic degrees of the overcoming of the self—the hero of the Golden Age must subdue that which is animal and savage in his nature. The Phytoi represent the monstrous and bestial nature that indwells all human creatures; the Ochlitae represent the savage but still recognizably human; and the Apple-eaters represent the passions of unconquered sexual lust. The animal, the savage, and the lustful—each must in turn be conquered by the initiate, even as Alexander and his men did.
A following episode is a parable about hubris and overreach, counseling patience and fortitude in the one who seeks initiation and enlightenment. In this adventure, Alexander and his army reach a river where are trees that grow from sunrise to noon, and then decay and shrink until sunset; the temporal symbolism in this imagery, illustrating the fleetingness and transience of human life and human endeavor, is impossible to mistake. The trees exude an aromatic sap, which Alexander covets, so he orders men to go and collect this sap; but these men are beaten by invisible spirits, and a voice is heard, declaring that Alexander and his army will be struck dumb if they do not desist from gathering the sap.
This is couched in unmistakably initiatic language, in which the initiate is warned against overreaching himself, and striving after knowledge, gnōsis, ere he is prepared and ready for it. The episode immediately following this one involves the encounter with the so-called “River of Black Stones,” or, according to some sources, ὁ ποταμὸς τῶν ἐναντίων, the “River of Opposites” or “River of Contradictions”:
“‘In the river there were black stones. Anyone who touched one of them became as black as the stone itself. There were also many snakes and many kinds of fish, which could not be cooked by fire, but only in freezing cold water. One of the soldiers, in fact, caught one of these fish, washed it and put it into a bucket, and shortly found it cooked.’”2
We are also told that there are birds in this river, which if touched will burst into flames. This river represents the Trial of Selection for the initiate, who is made to understand that not all forms of knowledge are equal, and that some forms of knowledge may pollute (i.e., “turn black”) the seeker, and that others may have the opposite of the intended effect (which is the meaning of fish that are cooked in cold water, or birds that self-immolate when touched).
Afterwards, Alexander and his men continue to plunge into the country of the North, that is to say, Hyperborea; in this country, they “could not even see the sun, and the sky remained black for a period of ten days.”3 Finally they come to a sea, wherein is an island not far from shore; Alexander orders his men to construct a flotilla of small boats, and embarks to explore and if possible conquer this strange and mysterious island.
But ere he may reach this nameless island, the young conqueror hears weird voices lauding his achievements in life, while also prophesying his demise (“soon you will find yourself without men”). This is an old, old formula in initiatic rites; the voices remind Alexander (or the initiate) that, although his ambition in life was great, and his conquests many, it is all vanity, for soon he will be “without men” (that is, without friends or help) and his achievements will come to naught—he shall be as all other men, naked before God—in the life that is after death.
It is a sort of memento mori, and the island may be easily identified with Thyle or Thulé or Tula, or Avalon, or Shvēta-dvīpa (the “White Island”), or the Islands of the Hesperides, or Montsalvat or Montsalvatsche, or the Aztlan of Mesoamerica, or any number of half-fabulous isles, continents, and mountains that appear in legendry the world over.
Consistent with all the legends of our own cycle, the “White Island” or “Island of the Blessed,” which is really the supreme or primordial center, must remain concealed during the Kali-Yuga, and so Alexander (who is a part of the material world, our world, and is destined for other things in this life) fails to reach the island…else he would be as Enoch or Elijah, or Heracles, or Sir Galahad in the Grail legends, becoming a part of the invisible world and thus a transcendent man who has experienced the initiatory death.
Incidentally, it’s worth mentioning Pindar’s description of the Island of the Blessed (“νᾶσος μακάρων”) in his Second Olympian Ode, upon which he locates the τύρσις Κρόνου, the “tower of Cronus” or “fortress of Cronus”—which may also be translated as the Tower of Time.4 Those who are familiar with Greek mythology will rightly point out that Cronus (or Saturnus, the “Lord of the Golden Age”) is the father of Zeus, and is a Titan who ruled prior to the advent of the Olympian deities; furthermore, despite a seemingly arbitrary homonymous similarity, there is no real identification between “Cronus” and “Chronos,” which is the Greek word for “time.”
That is, however, not entirely true. The similarity of “Cronus” and “Chronos” was more than superficial; Cronus, the lord of the Titans and king of the Golden Age, was often assimilated to Chronos as a time god among the ancients, who accepted both the linguistic and formal legitimacy of the correlation between the two similar-sounding names. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate to read the “tower of Cronus” as the Tower of Time, and to understand this as a reference to the axial nature of the Country of the Pole, which is where the Island of the Blessed is located in the Alexander Romance, as it is in many other mythological tales. The Tower of Time indicates that the White Island, or Thulé, or the Island of the Blessed, is positioned outside of time, beyond temporal succession, in Eternity, which is in accordance with its polar situation—for the Pole is at the Center of Time, and is identical with Being, which is the principle round which the world of time, of temporal succession, of Becoming, forever revolves.
It is no great surprise, therefore, that neither Alexander nor any of his men can reach this island, which is guarded by monstrous creatures and warded by invisible voices, any more than they can remove themselves from time, from succession…from the world of Becoming. There are further symbolisms here in the appearance of the cancri, the crabs, together with the many other strange creatures, wild men, and other beasts that Alexander’s army encounters en route to Hyperborea, which all have a zodiacal and astrological signification; moreover, the Tower of Time or τύρσις Κρόνου is not entirely inaccessible to men, as proven by certain myths in which the hero manages to invade this keep that sits at the edge of Eternity, and win thereby the ability to collapse temporal succession and cognize in perfect simultaneity the past and future of the universe.
That, however, is a discussion for another time…so to speak. In any case, I’ve waxed overlong in this essay, and this is as good a place to stop as any, I suppose. But there’s much more of traditional and initiatic interest to explore in this intriguing story, which I’ll do my best to explicate in the second part of my symbological exegesis of the Alexander Romance…
The Greek Alexander Romance, trans. Richard Stoneman (London, England: Penguin Books, 1991), pg. 115.
Ibid., pg. 117.
Ibid., pg.. 118.
“Those who have persevered three times, on either side, to keep their souls free from all wrongdoing, follow Zeus’ road to the end, to the tower of Cronus, where ocean breezes blow around the island of the blessed, and flowers of gold are blazing…” (Olympian 2: ΘΗΡΩΝΙ ΑΚΡΑΓΑΝΤΙΝΩ ΑΡΜΑΤΙ, 68-72).
Fascinating! I've had the Alexander Romance on my reading list for a decade and have never gotten around to it. Maybe I need to.