transmigration of souls. Afterlife The Thracians did not believe in a discrete separation between the world of the living and the afterlife, as attested by how the Scaeii and the Cebrenii believed the threat of their king-priest Cosingas that he would climb a ladder to heaven to complain to "Hera" about them. Thracian religion conceptualised the soul as being immortal, unlike the Greek version of the afterlife whereby the souls of the dead became pale shadows in the underworld. Instead, the Thracians believed that the souls of the dead either returned to the world of the living or instead attained a greater form of happiness than they did during their mortal lives. Deceased kings were believed to become anthropodaemons after their death, hence why the Odrysian dynasty's founder Teres I quickly became assimilated to the hero Tereus mere decades after his death, and a paean was sung in honour of the hero , to whom the king Sitalces was assimilated, just like there was a song and dance of : once a Thracian ruler had died, he was believed to have become one with and indistinguishable from the Hero . Orpheus/ had promised the Thracians a paradise where they would join him instead of dying, Similarly to Iranian mystery cults, where Yima took only the souls of the good to Paradise, Orpheus/ was believed to welcome only good souls but not bad souls, that is he welcomed only those who had learnt the secret of immortality through initiation in the mysteries, but not the uninitiated who had not gained this privilege. Therefore, the Thracians believed immortality of the soul could be attained only by a select few initiates of the mystery cult of Orpheus/, who would rise in body and spirit to join Orpheus/ and remain with him eternally, thus each becoming an anthropodaemon and a new hero. This belief was described by Herodotus by the Greek term (), meaning "to make immortal". Therefore, the dead in the present were believed to rise in body and spirit and acquire immortality and thus become heroes. Since the Thracians did not perceive the world in terms of linear time, and therefore conceptualised their religion and myths not as histories of ancient pasts, but as occurring in the present, and there was no difference between the mythical and heroic past and the present in Thracian religion, the various divine, semi-divine, and human heroes