The Getae (“Goths” according to some medieval historians) or "Dacae" (Dacians) are actually
Sarmatian by origin – hence their Sarmatian "dragon banners". They were Scythian tribes, partly
Thracianized in the Balkans, who, as a result of an internecine conflict around
the middle of 2nd millennium B.C.A., split from their Indo-Aryan relatives in
Central Asia – Massagetae ("Great Getae") beyond the Oxus River
and/or Dahae in Bactria, known also from the Chinese chronicles as Yue-zhi (Old Chinese: *(n)Gu-tie
– “Getae”) and Da Xia (“Bactrians”). Herodotus
(IV; 11) wrote about this migration of the Scythinas, but he didn't make the
connection with the Getae, since he thought them to be Thracian.
"Zalmoxis"
is indeed an Indo-Aryan name – Jālamokśi,
which means "Liberated from the Net",
that is from the "Indra's Net"
(Skt. Indrajāla – hence "Darzalas",
as they called the demiurge), which is synonymous with Māyā (the illusion of reality). The epithet "Gebeleizis"
from other hand means "Cave Dweller"
(Skt. Gehabilaji or Gehabailaji), referring to his cave,
where he lived for three years,
coming out in the fourth one (Herodotus,
IV; 95), which represents the cycle of cultivating of the "immortal embryo" in the internal
alchemy, symbolized in the calendar by the five days, added to every fourth
year of 13 months. This is not a religion, but a spiritual way of liberation
from the material world of the "Great
God" Darzalas or the demiurge, whose cult the Dacae (Skt. Dakśā - "intelligent or able ones") rejected and despised, thus being
essentially opposed to the Druidic religion of Orpheus and the
Judaeo-Christianity. Zalmoxianism was about achieving the "immortality", i.e. the eternal
state of the spirit, completely liberated from matter, space and time, life and
rebirth, which was called metaphorically "bird" or "walker in
the emptiness" (Skt. khaga)
(cf. Plato’s myth in “Phaedrus” about
the souls, becoming “birds”, while
following their divine guides, and thus transcending the material world “beyond the sphere of the stars”). Hence
this school was named "the Way of the Birds" (Skt. Khagāyana), which gave the name of the
sacred mountain and river “Kogaionon”,
where Zalmoxis have lived according to Strabo (VII; 3.5). Zalmoxis taught the
mystical "Language of the Birds",
expressed through the sacred dance and song, which were also called "zalmoxis",
according to the information of Hesychius (“Salmoxis: Kronos,
dance and song”). Those were spiritual
practices, guided by immortal spirits (Skt. "khagā" or Gk. "daimones")
– the daemons, serving as mediators to the god Kronos, who sleeps in a cave of golden rock on an island in
North Atlantic, as wrote Plutarch (De Faciae, 26) – and Zalmoxis was
traditionally identified by the ancient authors with Kronos or also with Heracles
(as the ancestor of the Scythians, coming with Geryon’s cattle from the island
Erytheia in the Atlantic Sea – Herodotus, IV; 8-10).
It is possible thus,
that Socrates has been initiated in this tradition by a Thracian healer, as it
is alluded in Plato's dialogue "Charmides"
(he was given an incantation, i.e. a mantra to use together with herbs
for “healing the soul” together with
the body) and hence most likely came the mystic relation with his famous personal
"daimon" (daemon), talking about which cost him his life by
the false accusation of introducing a "foreign
cults" (Zalmoxianism?) amongst the Athenian youth (false, because Zalmoxianism
is not a dogmatic cult, but a spiritual method, which not requires to be a “Zalmoxian”
in order to practice it, so it wouldn’t be correct to define Socrates as such –
he was just initiated, not believer or follower of some religion). Plato in his
turn maybe was also initiated by Socrates himself, but he was prudent enough to
keep his mouth shut about those things, so they remain a mystery (the “unwritten doctrines”), only alluded
vaguely in some of his Epistles. Still, his inspiration, which was coming from
the same source, made his quasi-Pythagorean school similar to the teachings of
Zalmoxis and so this fact contributed to the legend, that Zalmoxis allegedly had
learned from Pythagoras.
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