God/Religion
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  • What are the gods like?
  • How should the gods be worshipped?
  • In what ways do the gods differ from humans?
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    Drinking and dancing with Dionysus
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    GOD
    Heraclitus believed in a God of some kind.  His exact theology cannot be determined from the fragments, but some characteristics can be determined.  God is more beautiful and wiser than men, just as men are higher than apes or children.  God sees things the way they really are, where as men have a tendency to confuse and divide things incorrectly.  God is seen as a set of opposites in B67, and compared to fire.  The reference to the thunderbolt in B64 combines the ideas of Fire, Zeus/God, and λόγος.  Also, both fire and God are called "want and surfeit" (B67 and B65).  I think it safe to see Heraclitus as a pnatheist, with a fiery, rational, all-pervasive God as the ordering principle of the universe.  He did not create the universe -- it has always been and will always be.  But He controls everything.  We might connect Heraclitus' God with war in B53 and the child in B20.

    gods
    Heraclitus talks about gods in the plural at many places, and these reference seem to be towards the traditional Olympian gods.  Heraclitus said that war made some things gods and others men.  Either his theology was not consistent (which is a possibility), or else he believed that the traditional gods are somehow less than his Divine God.  Perhaps the Olympian gods are all just aspects of the one God (see B15).  This would explain why the Fire/God/λόγος would be willing and unwilling to be called Zeus (B32): on the one hand, his God would be at the top of the world order; but on the other, it would not be the same as the Olympian conception of Zeus.

    Religion
    Heraclitus was very critical of popular religion.  He calls the mystery religions unholy.  He claims that the acts of worship to Dionysus would be shameful if they weren't being done to that particular god.  Guthrie, reading testimonia outside the fragments, sees the possibility of these acts being done in a good way, based on recognition that Hades (the god of death) and Dionysus (the god of life) are one.  In the fragments, though, no good acts of worship are mentioned.  Sacrifices are called vain -- how can a person cleanse himself with blood?

    Oracles
    I think it is clear that Heraclitus approved of the oracular style.  He saw his own book as oracular in nature.  He compared his style to that of the oracle at Delphi: he neither spoke directly, nor hid his meaning, but gave a sign (B93).  His views on the ecstatic prophetess Sibyl could also be considered similar to his own philosophy: both seem strange yet both are divine.  Some of the fragments bear resemblance to quotes at Delphi: B101 to "Know yourself," and B112 to "Nothing too much," while B116 bears resemblance to both (Kahn 116).