The earliest Mysteries recorded in history are those of Samothrace. After
the distribution of pure Fire, a new life began. This was the new birth of
the Initiate, after which, like the Brâhmans of old in India, he became a
dwija—a “twice born,”
Initiated into that which may be rightly called the most blessed
of all Mysteries ... being ourselves pure,(521)
says Plato. Diodorus Siculus, Herodotus, and Sanchoniathon the
Phœnician—the oldest of Historians—say that these Mysteries originated in
the night of time, thousands of years probably before the historical
period. Iamblichus informs us that Pythagoras
Was initiated in all the Mysteries of Byblus and Tyre, in the
sacred operations of the Syrians, and in the Mysteries of the
Phœnicians.(522)
As was said in _Isis Unveiled_:
When men like Pythagoras, Plato and Iamblichus, renowned for their
severe morality, took part in the Mysteries and spoke of them with
veneration, it ill behoves our modern critics to judge them [and
their Initiates] upon their merely external aspect.
Yet this is what has been done until now, especially by the Christian
Fathers. Clement Alexandrinus stigmatises the Mysteries as “indecent and
diabolical” though his words, showing that the Eleusinian Mysteries were
identical with, and even, as he would allege, borrowed from, those of the
Jews, are quoted elsewhere in this work. The Mysteries were composed of
two parts, of which the Lesser were performed at Agræ, and the Greater at
Eleusis, and Clement had been himself initiated. But the Katharsis, or
trials of purification, have ever been misunderstood. Iamblichus explains
the worst; and his explanation ought to be perfectly satisfactory, at any
rate for every unprejudiced mind.
He says:—
Exhibitions of this kind in the Mysteries were designed to free us
from licentious passions, by gratifying the sight, and at the same
time vanquishing all evil thought, through the awful sanctity with
which these rites were accompanied.
Dr. Warburton remarks:
The wisest and best men in the Pagan world are unanimous in this,
that the Mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest
ends by the worthiest means.
Although persons of both sexes and all classes were allowed to take part
in the Mysteries, and a participation in them was even obligatory, very
few indeed attained the higher and final Initiation in these celebrated
rites. The gradation of the Mysteries is given us by Proclus in the fourth
book of his _Theology of Plato_.
The perfective rite, precedes in order the initiation Telete,
_Muesis_, and the initiation, _Epopteia_, or the final apocalypse
[revelation].
Theon of Smyrna, in _Mathematica_, also divides the mystic rites into five
parts:
The first of which is the previous purification; for neither are
the Mysteries communicated to all who are willing to receive them;
but there are certain persons who are prevented by the voice of
the crier ... since it is necessary that such as are not expelled
from the Mysteries should first be refined by certain
purifications: but after purification the reception of the sacred
rites succeeds. The third part is denominated _epopteia_ or
reception. And the fourth, which is the end and design of the
revelation, is (the investiture) the binding of the head and
fixing of the crowns(523) ... whether after this he [the initiated
person] becomes a torchbearer, or an hierophant of the Mysteries,
or sustains some other part of the sacerdotal office. But the
fifth, which is produced from all these, _is friendship and
interior communion with God_. And this was the last and most awful
of all the Mysteries.(524)
The chief objects of the Mysteries, represented as diabolical by the
Christian Fathers and ridiculed by modern writers, were instituted with
the highest and the most moral purpose in view. There is no need to repeat
here that which has been already described in _Isis Unveiled_(525) that
whether through temple Initiation or the private study of Theurgy, every
student obtained the proof of the immortality of his Spirit, and the
survival of his Soul. What the last _epopteia_ was is alluded to by Plato
in _Phædrus_:
Being _initiated_ in those _Mysteries_, which it is lawful to call
the most blessed of all mysteries ... we were freed from the
molestations of evils, which otherwise await us in a future period
of time. Likewise in consequence of this divine _initiation_, we
became spectators of entire, simple, immoveable, and blessed
visions, resident in a pure light.(526)
This veiled confession shows that the Initiates enjoyed Theophany—saw
visions of Gods and of real immortal Spirits. As Taylor correctly infers:
The most sublime part of the _epopteia_ or final revealing,
consisted in beholding the Gods [the high Planetary Spirits]
themselves, invested with a resplendent light.(527)
The statement of Proclus upon the subject is unequivocal:
In all the Initiations and Mysteries, the Gods exhibit many forms
of themselves, and appear in a variety of shapes; and sometimes
indeed a formless light of themselves is held forth to the view;
sometimes this light is according _to a human form_ and sometimes
it proceeds into a different shape.(528)
Again we have
Whatever is on earth is the resemblance and shadow of something
that is in the sphere, while that resplendent thing [the prototype
of the Soul‐Spirit] remaineth in _unchangeable_ condition, it is
well also with its shadow. When that resplendent one removeth far
from its shadow life removeth [from the latter] to a distance.
Again that light is the shadow of something more resplendent than
itself.(529)
Thus speaks the _Desatir_, in the _Book of Shet_ (the prophet Zirtusht),
thereby showing the identity of its Esoteric doctrines with those of the
Greek Philosophers.
The second statement of Plato confirms the view that the Mysteries of the
Ancients were identical with the Initiations practised even now among the
Buddhist and the Hindu Adepts. The higher visions, the most truthful, were
produced through a regular discipline of gradual Initiations, and the
development of psychical powers. In Europe and Egypt the Mystæ were
brought into close union with those whom Proclus calls “mystical natures,”
“resplendent Gods,” because, as Plato says:
[We] were ourselves pure and immaculate, being liberated from this
surrounding vestment, which we denominate body, and to which we
are now bound like an oyster to its shell.(530)
As to the East,
The doctrine of planetary and terrestrial Pitris was revealed
_entirely_ in ancient India, as well as now, only at the last
moment of initiation, and to the adepts of superior degrees.(531)
The word _Pitris_ may now be explained and something else added. In India
the chela of the third degree of Initiation has two Gurus: One, the living
Adept; the other the disembodied and glorified Mahâtmâ, Who remains the
adviser or instructor of even the high Adepts. Few are the accepted chelas
who even see their living Master, their Guru, till the day and hour of
their final and for ever binding vow. It is this that was meant in _Isis
Unveiled_, when it was stated that few of the _fakirs_ (the word _chela_
being unknown to Europe and America in those days) however
Pure, and honest, and self‐devoted, have yet ever seen the astral
form of a purely _human pitar_ (an ancestor or father), otherwise
than at the solemn moment of their first and last initiation. It
is in the presence of his instructor, the Guru, and just before
the _vatou_‐fakir [the just initiated chela] is despatched into
the world of the living, with his seven‐knotted bamboo wand for
all protection, that he is suddenly placed face to face with the
unknown PRESENCE [of his Pitar or Father, the glorified invisible
Master, or disembodied Mahâtmâ]. He sees it, and falls prostrate
at the feet of the evanescent form, but is not entrusted with the
great secret of its evocation, for it is the supreme mystery of
the holy syllable.
The Initiate, says Éliphas Lévi, _knows_; therefore, “he dares all and
keeps silent.” Says the great French Kabalist:
You may see him often sad, never discouraged or desperate; often
poor, never humbled or wretched; often persecuted, never cowed
down or vanquished. For he remembers the widowhood and the murder
of Orpheus, the exile and solitary death of Moses, the martyrdom
of the prophets, the tortures of Apollonius, the Cross of the
Saviour. He knows in what forlorn state died Agrippa, whose memory
is slandered to this day; he knows the trials that broke down the
great Paracelsus, and all that Raymond Lully had to suffer before
he arrived at a bloody death. He remembers Swedenborg having to
feign insanity, and losing even his reason before his knowledge
was forgiven to him; St. Martin, who had to hide himself all his
life; Cagliostro, who died forsaken in the cells of the
Inquisition(532); Cazotte, who perished on the guillotine.
Successor of so many victims, he dares, nevertheless, but
understands the more the necessity to keep silent.(533)
Masonry—not the political institution known as the Scotch Lodge, but real
Masonry, some rites of which are still preserved in the Grand Orient of
France, and that Elias Ashmole, a celebrated English Occult Philosopher of
the XVIIth century, tried in vain to remodel, after the manner of the
Indian and Egyptian Mysteries—Masonry rests, according to Ragon, the great
authority upon the subject, upon three fundamental degrees: the triple
duty of a Mason is to study _whence he comes_, _what he is_, and _whither
he goes_; the study that is, of God, of himself, and of the future
transformation.(534) Masonic Initiation was modelled on that in the lesser
Mysteries. The third degree was one used in both Egypt and India from time
immemorial, and the remembrance of it lingers to this day in every Lodge,
under the name of the death and resurrection of Hiram Abiff, the “Widow’s
Son.” In Egypt the latter was called “Osiris;” in India “Loka‐chakshu”
(Eye of the World), ind “Dinakara” (day‐maker) or the Sun—and the rite
itself was everywhere named the “gate of death.” The coffin, or
sarcophagus, of Osiris, killed by Typhon, was brought in and placed in the
middle of the Hall of the Dead, with the Initiates all around it and the
candidate near by. The latter was asked whether he had participated in the
murder, and notwithstanding his denial, and after sundry and very hard
trials, the Initiator feigned to strike him on the head with a hatchet; he
was thrown down, swathed in bandages like a mummy, and wept over. Then
came lightning and thunder, the supposed corpse was surrounded with fire,
and was finally raised.
Ragon speaks of a rumour that charged the Emperor Commodus—when he was at
one time enacting the part of the Initiator—with having played this part
in the initiatory drama so seriously that he actually killed the postulant
when dealing him the blow with the hatchet. This shows that the _lesser_
Mysteries had not quite died out in the second century A.D.
The Mysteries were carried into South and Central America, Northern Mexico
and Peru by the Atlanteans in those days when
A pedestrian from the North [of what was once upon a time also
India] might have reached—hardly wetting his feet—the Alaskan
Peninsula, through Manchooria, across the _future_ Gulf of
Tartary, the Kurile and Aleutian Islands; while another traveller,
furnished with a canoe and starting from the South, could have
walked over from Siam, crossed the Polynesian Islands and trudged
into any part of the continent of South America.(535)
They continued to exist down to the day of the Spanish invaders. These
destroyed the Mexican and Peruvian records, but were prevented from laying
their desecrating hands upon the many Pyramids—the lodges of an ancient
Initiation—whose ruins are scattered over Puente Nacional, Cholula, and
Teotihuacan. The ruins of Palenque, of Ococimgo in Chiapas, and others in
Central America are known to all. If the pyramids and temples of Guiengola
and Mitla ever betray their secrets, the present Doctrine will then be
shown to have been a forerunner of the grandest truths in Nature.
Meanwhile they have all a claim to be called Mitla, “the place of sadness”
and “the abode of the (desecrated) dead.”