The Ashes Of Empedokles (Οι Στάχτες του Εμπεδοκλή)

-From The Meletic Tales.

In the distant shadow of Etna, where the earth still whispered of fire and philosophy, there stood a modest village clinging to the hillsides like a child to its mother’s robe. The soil was black with memory, and the winds carried old tales—some forgotten, some feared, and some that still sparked a quiet awe in the hearts of wanderers.

Amongst these tales was that of Empedokles—the thinker, the seer and the man who dared to claim unity with the elements themselves.

The tale this story tells is not of his life. It begins long after he stepped into the volcano’s mouth, where legend claimed he vanished in a blaze of fire to prove his transcendence. This tale begins centuries later, with a boy named Neokles, who believed nothing and yet hoped everything might still be true.

Neokles was the son of a shepherd and a weaver. His life was simple, tethered to hills, flocks and the rhythms of the loom, but from a young age, he found his mind often wandered far from wool and pastures. He would sit beside the stream for hours, watching the reflections distort and reform, convinced that the water spoke in a language too ancient for the tongue.

One evening, as dusk spread her indigo veil across the fields, Neokles sat under the scorched fig tree at the village’s edge. His grandfather, a man called Xanthippos with bones like dried olive wood and eyes that had long stopped blinking at wonder, joined him.

‘Grandfather, is it true what they say about Empedokles? That he was a god who returned to the fire?’ Neokles asked.

Xanthippos gave a dry chuckle. ‘A god? No, lad. A man—flesh and folly like the rest of us, but he believed in the oneness of all things, and perhaps that belief made him burn brighter than most’.

‘Did he really leap into the volcano, as the legend says?’

‘So they say. Some people say it was pride. Others say it was proof. Me? I say the truth’s been scorched away with time, but the ashes are still there, somewhere in the mountain’s breath’.

Neokles looked toward Etna. It loomed in the distance, blue in the twilight, like a sleeping lion.

That night, Neokles dreamt of fire. Not fire that burnt—but fire that revealed. When he woke, he knew something had changed.

At sixteen, Neokles left his family and took only a satchel with figs, olives, and a small scroll of Empedokles’ fragments, gifted to him by a travelling philosopher who once passed through the village and saw something in the boy’s questions.

He journeyed northwards, where the volcanic soil gave way to ancient ruins, and the air still hummed with forgotten voices. His feet were blistered, and his coin was few, but his mind was afire. He visited temples now quiet as tombs, spoke with hermits and healers and listened—always listened.

It was in the town of Katana, nestled close to Etna’s southern flank, that Neokles met Photina, a woman older than him by years but younger in spirit. She taught letters to orphans and tended to dying cypress trees as though each were sacred.

‘You seek the ashes of a man who no longer exists’, she said, when Neokles confessed his search.

‘I seek the meaning that lived in him. Not just the man, but what he saw, what he tried to show the world’, he said.

Photina’s brow softened. ‘Then you do not chase fire—you chase the truth, but beware, the truth burns longer than a flame’.

She offered him shelter, and over many evenings, they spoke. Of Meleticism, of the soul’s path towards awareness, and of how the ancients, even though veiled in myth, still breathed wisdom if one listened beyond the story. Neokles began to write—not with ambition, but with longing. Thoughts became lines. Lines became reflections. Always, the mountain called.

One day, a storm rose sudden over the region. Thunder cracked the skies and Etna growled in her sleep. Neokles and Photina stood beneath the trembling sky, eyes fixed on the summit.

‘When she awakens, she reminds us. That everything changes. That we’re not above the earth—but of it’, Photina answered.

Neokles whispered, ‘All things are one… fire, air, earth, and water. It is love that binds them together’.

‘You quote the dead well,’ she smiled sadly. ‘But have you lived those words?’

Neokles had no real answer. That night, he packed his satchel again. ‘I must climb. Not to find glory, but to face something’.

Photina did not protest. ‘Then take this.’ She handed him a small vial. ‘It’s ash from the earth beneath the old fig tree. A symbol, if nothing else. Let it remind you that even what burns lives on’.

He embraced her, then turned towards the path that wound through cinder and silence.

The climb was not heroic. It was harsh, slow, and filled with doubt. Winds howled like forgotten spirits, and the path was littered with obsidian tears, but Neokles endured. He reached a ledge where the sky met the blackened rock. There, the air shimmered with heat and silence.

He took the vial of ash and poured it into the wind. It scattered like memories, and he spoke aloud, although no one heard him but the mountain.

‘Empedokles, if you burnt for truth, then I stand not to idolise you—but to see what you saw. Not with eyes, but with being. I do not ask the fire to consume me. I ask it to clarify me’.

He sat. He meditated. Hours passed, perhaps days. Time melted, and in that stillness, something arose in his awareness. Not a vision. Not a voice, but a knowing.

That Empedokles did not leap to escape life—but to become it. That the elements were not just substances—but mirrors. That love, the binding force, was not merely affection—but the conscious awareness that all is part of the same flow.

When Neokles descended, he was not the same.

As the years passed, Neokles returned to the village of his birth. His parents had long gone, and the fig tree had grown a single green leaf amidst its bark. He taught children beside the stream, under stars, in the wind. He planted trees. He spoke not of gods or volcanoes—but of unity, of self-awareness, and of the quiet truth that runs beneath the surface of all things that are connected to the Logos.

He came to be called ‘the watcher of ash’, by those people who remembered his climb, but he dismissed the name.

‘I am only what you are. A brief fire, flickering with meaning, he would say.

One day, a child asked him, ‘Did you find Empedokles?’

Neokles smiled. ‘No. But I found myself. Perhaps, that’s all he ever wanted’.

For it was said that when the wind blew just right, it carried more than sound—it carried memory.

In that memory, Empedokles still burnt. Not in fire, but in thought. Through Neokles, who chose not to leap—but to understand.

In Kalabria, far from the slopes of Etna, a scroll was found in the remains of an old clay urn. Its script was faded, but legible.

‘The ashes are not the end. They are the beginning. For what we burn away reveals what we always were. When you walk the earth with love in your gaze, fire in your heart, and humility in your breath—then you walk not as a seeker, but as one who has found’.

The scroll bore no signature, but some people claimed it was written by Empedokles.

Others said it was a fragment that survived from the fire itself, but the Meletic thinkers cared not for attribution. Only meaning.

Beneath the stars, young seekers still come to sit in silence amongst the trees, hoping not for answers, but for understanding.

For in the end, it was not fire that made Empedokles eternal. It was what he gave to those people who dared to look into it—and not flinch.

The years turned to decades. In the time after Neokles returned from Mount Etna, a quiet transformation settled over the hills. The village, once a place of simple trades and older customs, became something more—not a centre of philosophy, nor a pilgrimage site, but a place where silence was kept like a vow and questions were met not with answers, but with space.

Neokles, even though never calling himself a Meletic teacher, became one. He was not the sort to speak before a crowd or proclaim wisdom from the steps of a stoa. He preferred the company of individuals. One by one, they came—some with scepticism, some with pain, some merely with a restless curiosity. He would sit with them beside the fig tree or the quiet stream and simply listen.

‘I have travelled across the islands’, said one young man named Sosthenes, a student of rhetoric. ‘I’ve heard every argument, but I still cannot sleep. What good is knowledge if it gives no peace?’

Neokles drew a small circle in the dirt with a twig. He pointed to the centre.

‘This is you’. Then he pointed to the edge.

‘This is the world as you perceive it. Now imagine what lies beyond even that. Thought alone cannot carry you there. Not the clever word, nor the flawless syllogism. What you seek is not something to win, but something to return to’.

Sosthenes frowned. ‘Return? To where?’

‘To what you already are—but have forgotten’.

Another came, a widow named Eudokia, whose grief had left her hollow-eyed and brittle.

‘He was my soul. When he died, the world turned grey. I try to believe in the gods. I pray, but all I hear is silence', she said.

Neokles took her hand, and they sat for a long time without speaking. Then he said, ‘The silence is not absence. It is the beginning of presence. Grief is the earth of the soul—if you tend to it with gentleness, it shall give you something again. Not the same, never the same, but real’.

Others came too. A soldier who had left war but could not leave the war inside him. A girl who dreamt of the stars but feared she was too poor to matter. A merchant who had grown wealthy yet found no joy in any of it.

Each time, Neokles gave nothing that glittered—no proclamations, no miracles. Only attention. Only presence. He taught them to listen to the wind, to sit with the stream, to tend to the fire of their own questions without rushing to quench it.

‘Why do you never answer directly?’ The soldier once asked.

Neokles smiled. ‘Because you are not looking for my answers. You are looking for your own’.

As his hair greyed and his steps slowed, the villagers began to write down his words, even though he discouraged it.

‘What lives in words must be lived in practice. Let the wind carry them, not the parchment’, he would say.

They wrote anyway, not to preserve him, but to understand themselves.

Thus, the scrolls of the ash-bearer were born—not doctrine, not scripture, but true reflections: fragments of a life that had touched others like water on stone—soft, patient and indelible.

When Neokles felt the final autumn settling into his bones, he climbed once more to the fig tree. It had grown tall, its bark gnarled like ancient hands. Beneath it, a small child named Themistokles waited. The boy had been born in silence—mute from birth, but keen-eyed and unafraid.

Neokles often said the boy understood more than anyone.

‘Come, sit with me. There’s one last lesson. Or perhaps only a conscious thought’, he told him, lowering himself to the grass.

Themistokles sat cross-legged beside him, the fig leaves casting dappled shadows on their faces.

‘You know the story of Empedokles, don’t you?’ Neokles asked. The boy nodded.

‘I used to think his leap into the fire was the climax of the tale. A final act of truth, but I see now… it was only one moment. The mountain did not change. The people did. They remembered. They questioned. They wondered. And that, perhaps, is the real fire. Not in the leap—but in the legacy’.

He paused, breathing in the crisp scent of fallen leaves. ‘I never leapt. I sat. I listened, and somehow, I burnt all the same’.

He placed a small object into the boy’s hand. It was the same vial of ash Photina had once given him.

‘Pass it on—not as proof, but as a symbol. Let it remind you that the fire is always here, even in stillness’.

Themistokles nodded solemnly. No words passed between them. They were not needed.

That night, Neokles passed peacefully in his sleep, the fig tree rustling gently above him.

Many years later, in a school not far from Katana, a teacher named Alithea held up a thin scroll.

‘Children, today we read from the writings of Neokles the ash-bearer’, she said. ‘Who amongst you can tell me why he matters?’

A small girl raised her hand. ‘Because he climbed the mountain and found Empedokles?’

Alithea smiled. ‘No, my dear. Because he climbed the mountain and found himself. Through that, he reminded others how to look within’.

Another child, Themistokles’ grandson, added, ‘My grandfather told me Neokles once said, 'Fire reveals, but water remembers'.

‘Yes', Alithea nodded. ‘In Meleticism, we are taught that the soul must pass through both. The fire of clarity. The water of reflection’.

The scrolls were unrolled. On the page, written in faded ink, was one final passage from Neokles: ‘We seek truth as though it were a prize. but truth is not found. It is remembered—like the warmth of a fire long gone out, or the echo of a stream in dry seasons. If we would only quiet our minds and let the soul speak, we might realise we’ve always known it. From the moment we drew breath'.

In the hills near Etna, the fig tree still stands. Old now, its roots deep and sure. Beneath it, a stone bears no name, only a carving: four small symbols for fire, water, air, and earth—circling a fifth, faintly etched: a spiral of unity.

When the wind picks up, the villagers say they sometimes hear it—not a voice, not a ghost, but a presence.

The same silence Empedokles once sought in the flames. The same stillness Neokles found beneath the tree, and in that silence, a truth breathes: That we are not separate from the world. We are its question. And, if we are willing, its answer.

In that village, generations later, a small festival began to form—not grand nor loud, but intimate, held each year beneath the fig tree. Children would gather stones painted with the four roots: red for fire, blue for water, green for earth, white for air. In the centre, they’d place a fifth stone—unpainted, rough, untouched—to symbolise To Ena, the One.

Elders would tell the tale of Neokles, how he sat with the questions most were too afraid to ask, and how he showed that even ashes could nurture life again. Songs were sung without names, prayers whispered without gods, and yet all who attended left feeling as though they had been near something sacred.

Travellers sometimes stopped to ask what the occasion meant.

‘Is it in honour of a hero?’ They’d ask.

‘No’, it’s to remind us we are not broken pieces, but parts of the same whole', a child would reply.

The fig tree would sway gently in the breeze.

Thus, the story continued—not in parchment alone, nor in stone or ash—but in living breath, in the still gaze of those who listened, and in the quiet courage of those who dared to reflect.

Even in winter, when frost covered the hills and the fig tree stood bare against the grey, people still came. They did not seek warmth or spectacle—but presence. To sit beneath the branches, even in silence, felt like returning home to something long remembered.

Some brought small offerings—sprigs of thyme, a fragment of a scroll, a stone with a single word carved: The Nous, the Logos. None were required. All were welcome.

When they left, they often walked slower, spoke softer and looked at the world not as something to conquer—but something to understand, and to truly cherish.

Some said the tree had once stood in the garden of an ancient thinker. Others whispered it was planted by one who had no name but had understood life as no other. The truth didn’t matter. What mattered was how people felt beneath its reach. The fig tree never gave answers, but it received questions.

Children would press their palms to its bark and ask it if they would grow wise. The elderly would sit quietly beside its roots, speaking aloud not to be heard, but to let go. The tree never interrupted, never judged. Its presence was its teaching.

One winter evening, a traveller came and left behind a single copper coin at the base of the tree. Not for luck, not for trade—but for memory. On it was etched a word weathered by time: Sophronýnē—soundness of mind.

The next morning, the coin was gone, but the space it left remained—like silence after meaning.

Now and then, a gust would pass through the hills, and the air would seem to carry a scent not of smoke, but of something older—ash and ocean, thought and fire. Some people claimed it was the ashes of Empedokles, scattered across the earth, whispering in particles to those individuals still listening. Beneath the fig tree, they said, the ashes had once rested briefly, as if recognising kinship in stillness. Perhaps it was not the man, but the trace of his yearning—to belong to the natural elements, and yet transcend them—that lingered. Perhaps that yearning lived on in those people who sat there still and aware.

They did not speak of miracles. They did not argue doctrines. They simply observed the way the wind moved through the leaves naturally, the way time softened sorrow. Some brought small tokens—stones smoothed by the sea, olive branches, folded pages of poetry not signed. None claimed to know his soul, only to honour the clarity he once carried.

In that place, memory did not shout; it listened. It did not demand belief; it invited reflection. Those people who sat there for a while often left with quieter steps, as though something ancient and essential had stirred—like the breath of To Ena, the One moving through their own with the awakening of the soul.

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