The symbolic distinction between purity and pollution was prevalent in Ancient Greece, not least among the Orphics. As a religious reform movement of the Axial Age, they authored a discourse which was polemically directed against the dominant Homeric tradition. This shows, for instance, in their eschatological reconception of the relationships between humans and gods, life and death. As part of an initiation ritual, they offered purifications, including self-defilement with blood and mud, with the purpose of releasing the initiate from the cycle of births (reincarnation). Allegedly, the initiation entailed a ritual staging of the realm of the dead – an imitatio mortis – in which the uninitiated were doomed to a hapless fate, whereas the initiated were introduced to a divine and carefree afterlife.