alone," says Aristophanes, "shineth the beneficent day-star. We alone
receive pleasure from the influence of his rays; we, who are initiated,
and who practise toward citizen and stranger every possible act of
justice and piety." And it is therefore not surprising that, in time,
initiation came to be considered as necessary as baptism afterward was
to the Christians; and that not to have been admitted to the Mysteries
was held a dishonor.
"It seems to me," says the great orator, philosopher, and moralist,
Cicero, "that Athens, among many excellent inventions, divine and very
useful to the human family, has produced none comparable to the
Mysteries, which for a wild and ferocious life have substituted humanity
and urbanity of manners. It is with good reason they use the term
_initiation_; for it is through them that we in reality have learned the
first principles of life; and they not only teach us to live in a manner
more consoling and agreeable, but they soften the pains of death by the
hope of a better life hereafter."
Where the Mysteries originated is not known. It is supposed they came
from India, by the way of Chaldæa, into Egypt, and thence were carried
into Greece. Wherever they arose, they were practised among all the
ancient nations; and, as was usual, the Thracians, Cretans, and
Athenians each claimed the honor of invention, and each insisted that
they had borrowed nothing from any other people.
In Egypt and the East, all religion, even in its most poetical forms,
was more or less a mystery; and the chief reason why, in Greece, a
distinct name and office were assigned to the Mysteries, was because the
superficial popular theology left a want unsatisfied, which religion in
a wider sense alone could supply. They were practical acknowledgments of
the insufficiency of the popular religion to satisfy the deeper thoughts
and aspirations of the mind. The vagueness of symbolism might perhaps
reach what a more palpable and conventional creed could not. The former,
by its indefiniteness, acknowledged the abstruseness of its subject; it
treated a mysterious subject mystically; it endeavored to illustrate
what it could not explain; to excite an appropriate feeling, if it could
not develop an adequate idea; and made the image a mere subordinate
conveyance for the conception, which itself never became too obvious or
familiar.
The instruction now conveyed by books and letters was of old conveyed by
symbols; and the priest had to invent or to perpetuate a display of
rites and exhibitions, which were not only more attractive to the eye
than words, but often to the mind more suggestive and pregnant with
meaning.
Afterward, the institution became rather moral and political, than
religious. The civil magistrates shaped the ceremonies to political ends
in Egypt; the sages who carried them from that country to Asia, Greece,
and the North of Europe, were all kings or legislators. The chief
magistrate presided at those of Eleusis, represented by an officer
styled _King_: and the Priest played but a subordinate part.
The Powers revered in the Mysteries were all in reality Nature-Gods;
none of whom could be consistently addressed as mere heroes, because
their nature was confessedly super-heroic. The Mysteries, only in fact a
more solemn expression of the religion of the ancient poetry, taught
that doctrine of the Theocracia or Divine Oneness, which even poetry
does not entirely conceal. They were not in any open hostility with the
popular religion, but only a more solemn exhibition of its symbols; or
rather a part of itself in a more impressive form. The essence of all
Mysteries, as of all polytheism, consists in this, that the conception
of an unapproachable Being, single, eternal, and unchanging, and that
of a God of Nature, whose manifold power is immediately revealed to the
senses in the incessant round of movement, life, and death, fell asunder
in the treatment, and were separately symbolized. They offered a
perpetual problem to excite curiosity, and contributed to satisfy the
all-pervading religious sentiment, which if it obtain no nourishment
among the simple and intelligible, finds compensating excitement in a
reverential contemplation of the obscure.
Nature is as free from dogmatism as from tyranny; and the earliest
instructors of mankind not only adopted her lessons, but as far as
possible adhered to her method of imparting them. They attempted to
reach the understanding through the eye; and the greater part of all
religious teaching was conveyed through this ancient and most impressive
mode of "exhibition" or demonstration. The Mysteries were a sacred
drama, exhibiting some legend significant of Nature's change, of the
visible Universe in which the divinity is revealed, and whose import was
in many respects as open to the Pagan, as to the Christian. Beyond the
current traditions or sacred recitals of the temple, few explanations
were given to the spectators, who were left, as in the school of nature,
to make inferences for themselves.
The method of indirect suggestion, by allegory or symbol, is a more
efficacious instrument of instruction than plain didactic language;
since we are habitually indifferent to that which is acquired without
effort: "The initiated are few, though many bear the thyrsus." And it
would have been impossible to provide a lesson suited to every degree of
cultivation and capacity, unless it were one framed after Nature's
example, or rather a representation of Nature herself, employing her
universal symbolism instead of technicalities of language, inviting
endless research, yet rewarding the humblest inquirer, and disclosing
its secrets to every one in Proportion to his preparatory training and
power to comprehend them.
Even if destitute of any formal or official enunciation of those
important truths, which even in a cultivated age it was often found
inexpedient to assert except under a veil of allegory, and which
moreover lose their dignity and value in proportion as they are learned
mechanically as dogmas, the shows of the Mysteries certainly contained
suggestions if not lessons, which in the opinion not of one competent
witness only, but of many, were adapted to elevate the character of the
spectators, enabling them to augur something of the purposes of
existence, as well as of the means of improving it, to live better and
to die happier.
Unlike the religion of books or creeds, these mystic shows and
performances were not the reading of a lecture, but the opening of a
problem, implying neither exemption from research, nor hostility to
philosophy: for, on the contrary, philosophy is the great Mystagogue or
Arch-Expounder of symbolism: though the interpretations by the Grecian
Philosophy of the old myths and symbols were in many instances as
ill-founded, as in others they are correct.
No better means could be devised to rouse a dormant intellect, than
those impressive exhibitions, which addressed it through the
imagination: which, instead of condemning it to a prescribed routine of
creed, invited it to seek, compare, and judge. The alteration from
symbol to dogma is as fatal to beauty of expression, as that from faith
to dogma is to truth and wholesomeness of thought.
The first philosophy often reverted to the natural mode of teaching; and
Socrates, in particular, is said to have eschewed dogmas, endeavoring,
like the Mysteries, rather to awaken and develop in the minds of his
hearers the ideas with which they were already endowed or pregnant, than
to fill them with ready-made adventitious opinions.
So Masonry still follows the ancient manner of teaching. Her symbols are
the instruction she gives; and the lectures are but often partial and
insufficient one-sided endeavors to interpret those symbols. He who
would become an accomplished Mason, must not be content merely to hear
or even to understand the lectures, but must, aided by them, and they
having as it were marked out the way for him, study, interpret, and
develop the symbols for himself.
The earliest speculation endeavored to express far more than it could
distinctly comprehend; and the vague impressions of the mind found in
the mysterious analogies of phenomena their most apt and energetic
representations. The Mysteries, like the symbols of Masonry, were but an
image of the eloquent analogies of Nature; both those and these
revealing no new secret to such as were or are unprepared, or incapable
of interpreting their significance.
Everywhere in the old Mysteries, and in all the symbolisms and
ceremonial of the Hierophant was found the same mythical personage, who,
like Hermes, or Zoroaster, unites Human Attributes with Divine, and is
himself the God whose worship he introduced, teaching rude men the
commencements of civilization through the influence of song, and
connecting with the symbol of his death, emblematic of that of Nature,
the most essential consolations of religion.
The Mysteries embraced the three great doctrines of Ancient Theosophy.
They treated of God, Man, and Nature. Dionusos, whose Mysteries Orpheus
is said to have founded, was the God of Nature, or of the moisture which
is the life of Nature, who prepares in darkness the return of life and
vegetation, or who is himself the Light and Change evolving their
varieties. He was theologically one with Hermes, Prometheus, and
Poseidon. In the Egean Islands he is Butes, Dardanus, Himeros, or
Imbros. In Crete he appears as Iasius or Zeus, whose worship remaining
unveiled by the usual forms of mystery, betrayed to profane curiosity
the symbols, which, if irreverently contemplated, were sure to be
misunderstood. In Asia he is the long-stoled Bassareus coalescing with
the Sabazius of the Phrygian Corybantes: the same with the mystic
Iacchus, nursling or son of Ceres, and with the dismembered Zagreus, son
of Persephoné.
In symbolical forms the Mysteries exhibited THE ONE, of which THE
MANIFOLD is an infinite illustration, containing a moral lesson,
calculated to guide the soul through life, and to cheer it in death. The
story of Dionusos was profoundly significant. He was not only creator of
the world, but guardian, liberator, and Savior of the soul. God of the
many-colored mantle, he was the resulting manifestation personified, the
all in the many, the varied year, life passing into innumerable forms.
The spiritual regeneration of man was typified in the Mysteries by the
second birth of Dionusos as offspring of the Highest; and the agents and
symbols of that regeneration were the elements that affected Nature's
periodical purification--the air, indicated by the mystic fan or winnow;
the fire, signified by the torch; and the baptismal water, for water is
not only cleanser of all things, but the genesis or source of all.
These notions, clothed in ritual, suggested the soul's reformation and
training, the moral purity formally proclaimed at Eleusis. He only was
invited to approach, who was "of clean hands and ingenuous speech, free
from all pollution, and with a clear conscience." "Happy the man," say
the initiated in Euripides and Aristophanes, "who purifies his life,
and who reverently consecrates his soul in the thiăsos of the God. Let
him take heed to his lips that he utter no profane word; let him be just
and kind to the stranger, and to his neighbor; let him give way to no
vicious excess, lest he make dull and heavy the organs of the spirit.
Far from the mystic dance of the thiăsos be the impure the evil speaker,
the seditious citizen, the selfish hunter after gain, the traitor; all
those, in short, whose practices are more akin to the riot of Titans
than to the regulated life of the Orphici, or the Curetan order of the
Priests of Idæan Zeus."
The votary, elevated beyond the sphere of his ordinary faculties, and
unable to account for the agitation which overpowered him, seemed to
become divine in proportion as he ceased to be human; to be a dæmon or
god. Already, in imagination, the initiated were numbered among the
beatified. They alone enjoyed the true life, the Sun's true lustre,
while they hymned their God beneath the mystic groves of a mimic
Elysium, and were really renovated or regenerated under the genial
influence of their dances.
"They whom Proserpina guides in her mysteries," it was said, "who
imbibed her instruction and spiritual nourishment, rest from their
labors and know strife no more. Happy they who witness and comprehend
these sacred ceremonies! They are made to know the meaning of the riddle
of existence by observing its aim and termination as appointed by Zeus;
they partake a benefit more valuable and enduring than the grain
bestowed by Ceres; for they are exalted in the scale of intellectual
existence, and obtain sweet hopes to console them at their death."
No doubt the ceremonies of initiation were originally few and simple. As
the great truths of the primitive revelation faded out of the memories
of the masses of the People, and wickedness became rife upon the earth,
it became necessary to discriminate, to require longer probation and
satisfactory tests of the candidates, and by spreading around what at
first were rather schools of instruction than mysteries, the veil of
secrecy, and the pomp of ceremony, to heighten the opinion of their
value and importance.
Whatever pictures later and especially Christian writers may draw of the
Mysteries, they must, not only originally, but for many ages, have
continued pure; and the doctrines of natural religion and morals there
taught, have been of the highest importance; because both the most
virtuous as well as the most learned and philosophic of the ancients
speak of them in the loftiest terms. That they ultimately became
degraded from their high estate, and corrupted, we know.
The rites of initiation became progressively more complicated. Signs and
tokens were invented by which the Children of Light could with facility
make themselves known to each other. Different Degrees were invented, as
the number of Initiates enlarged, in order that there might be in the
inner apartment of the Temple a favored few, to whom alone the more
valuable secrets were entrusted, and who could wield effectually the
influence and power of the Order.
Originally the Mysteries were meant to be the beginning of a new life of
reason and virtue. The initiated or esoteric companions were taught the
doctrine of the One Supreme God, the theory of death and eternity, the
hidden mysteries of Nature, the prospect of the ultimate restoration of
the soul to that state of perfection from which it had fallen, its
immortality, and the states of reward and punishment after death. The
uninitiated were deemed Profane, unworthy of public employment or
private confidence, sometimes proscribed as Atheists, and certain of
ever-lasting punishment beyond the grave.
All persons were initiated into the lesser Mysteries; but few attained
the greater, in which the true spirit of them, and most of their secret
doctrines were hidden. The veil of secrecy was impenetrable, sealed by
oaths and penalties the most tremendous and appalling. It was by
initiation only, that a knowledge of the Hieroglyphics could be
obtained, with which the walls, columns, and ceilings of the Temples
were decorated, and which, believed to have been communicated to the
Priests by revelation from the celestial deities, the youth of all ranks
were laudably ambitious of deciphering.
The ceremonies were performed at dead of night, generally in apartments
under-ground, but sometimes in the centre of a vast Pyramid, with every
appliance that could alarm and excite the candidate. Innumerable
ceremonies, wild and romantic, dreadful and appalling, had by degrees
been added to the few expressive symbols of primitive observances, under
which there were instances in which the terrified aspirant actually
expired with fear.
The pyramids were probably used for the purposes of initiation, as were
caverns, pagodas, and labyrinths; for the ceremonies required many
apartments and cells, long passages and wells. In Egypt a principal
place for the Mysteries was the island of Philæ on the Nile, where a
magnificent Temple of Osiris stood, and his relics were said to be
preserved.
With their natural proclivities, the Priesthood, that select and
exclusive class, in Egypt, India, Phœnicia, Judea and Greece as well as
in Britain and Rome, and wherever else the Mysteries were known, made
use of them to build wider and higher the fabric of their own power. The
purity of no religion continues long. Rank and dignities succeed to the
primitive simplicity. Unprincipled, vain, insolent, corrupt, and venal
men put on God's livery to serve the Devil withal; and luxury, vice,
intolerance, and pride depose frugality, virtue, gentleness, and
humility, and change the altar where they should be servants, to a
throne on which they reign.
But the Kings, Philosophers, and Statesmen, the wise and great and good
who were admitted to the Mysteries, long postponed their ultimate
self-destruction, and restrained the natural tendencies of the
Priesthood. And accordingly Zosimus thought that the neglect of the
Mysteries after Diocletian abdicated, was the chief cause of the decline
of the Roman Empire; and in the year 364, the Proconsul of Greece would
not close the Mysteries, notwithstanding a law of the Emperor
Valentinian, lest the people should be driven to desperation, if
prevented from performing them; upon which, as they believed, the
welfare of mankind wholly depended. They were practised in Athens until
the 8th century, in Greece and Rome for several centuries after Christ;
and in Wales and Scotland down to the 12th century.
The inhabitants of India originally practised the Patriarchal religion.
Even the later worship of Vishnu was cheerful and social; accompanied
with the festive song, the sprightly dance, and the resounding cymbal,
with libations of milk and honey, garlands, and perfumes from aromatic
woods and gums.
There perhaps the Mysteries commenced; and in them, under allegories,
were taught the primitive truths. We cannot, within the limits of this
lecture, detail the ceremonies of initiation; and shall use general
language, except where something from those old Mysteries still remains
in Masonry.
The Initiate was invested with a cord of three threads, so twined as to
make three times three, and called _zennar_. Hence comes our cable-tow.
It was an emblem of their triune Deity, the remembrance of whom we also
preserve in the three chief officers of our Lodges, presiding in the
three quarters of that Universe which our Lodges represent; in our three
greater and three lesser lights, our three movable and three immovable
jewels, and the three pillars that support our Lodges.
The Indian Mysteries were celebrated in subterranean caverns and grottos
hewn in the solid rock; and the Initiates adored the Deity, symbolized
by the solar fire. The candidate, long wandering in darkness, truly
wanted Light, and the worship taught him was the worship of God, the
Source of Light. The vast Temple of Elephanta, perhaps the oldest in the
world, hewn out of the rock, and 135 feet square, was used for
initiations; as were the still vaster caverns of Salsette, with their
300 apartments.
The periods of initiation were regulated by the increase and decrease of
the moon. The Mysteries were divided into four steps or Degrees. The
candidate might receive the first at eight years of age, when he was
invested with the zennar. Each Degree dispensed something of perfection.
"Let the wretched man," says the Hitopadesa, "practise virtue, whenever
he enjoys one of the three or four religious Degrees; let him be
even-minded with all created things, and that disposition will be the
source of virtue."
After various ceremonies, chiefly relating to the unity and trinity of
the Godhead, the candidate was clothed in a linen garment without a
seam, and remained under the care of a Brahmin until he was twenty years
of age, constantly studying and practising the most rigid virtue. Then
he underwent the severest probation for the second Degree, in which he
was sanctified by the sign of the cross, which, pointing to the four
quarters of the compass, was honored as a striking symbol of the
Universe by many nations of antiquity, and was imitated by the Indians
in the shape of their temples.
Then he was admitted to the Holy Cavern, blazing with light, where, in
costly robes, sat, in the East, West, and South, the three chief
Hierophants, representing the Indian tri-une Deity. The ceremonies there
commenced with an anthem to the Great God of Nature; and then followed
this apostrophe: "O mighty Being! greater than Brahma! we bow down
before Thee as the primal Creator! Eternal God of Gods! The World's
Mansion! Thou art the Incorruptible Being, distinct from all things
transient! Thou art before all Gods, the Ancient Absolute Existence, and
the Supreme Supporter of the Universe! Thou art the Supreme Mansion; and
by Thee, O Infinite Form, the Universe was spread abroad."
The candidate, thus taught the first great primitive truth was called
upon to make a formal declaration, that he would be tractable and
obedient to his superiors; that he would keep his body pure; govern his
tongue, and observe a passive obedience in receiving the doctrines and
traditions of the Order; and the firmest secrecy in maintaining
inviolable its hidden and abstruse mysteries. Then he was sprinkled with
water (whence our _baptism_); certain words, now unknown, were whispered
in his ear; and he was divested of his shoes, and made to go three times
around the cavern. Hence our three circuits; hence we were neither
barefoot nor shod: and the words were the Pass-words of that Indian
Degree.
The Gymnosophist Priests came from the banks of the Euphrates into
Ethiopia, and brought with them their sciences and their doctrines.
Their principal College was at Meroe, and their Mysteries were
celebrated in the Temple of Amun, renowned for his oracle. Ethiopia was
then a powerful State, which preceded Egypt in civilization, and had a
theocratic government. Above the King was the Priest, who could put him
to death in the name of the Deity. Egypt was then composed of the
Thebaid only. Middle Egypt and the Delta were a gulf of the
Mediterranean. The Nile by degrees formed an immense marsh, which,
afterward drained by the labor of man, formed Lower Egypt; and was for
many centuries governed by the Ethiopian Sacerdotal Caste, of Arabic
origin; afterward displaced by a dynasty of warriors. The magnificent
ruins of Axoum, with its obelisks and hieroglyphics, temples, vast tombs
and pyramids, around ancient Meroe, are far older than the pyramids near
Memphis.
The Priests, taught by Hermes, embodied in books the occult and hermetic
sciences, with their own discoveries and the revelations of the Sibyls.
They studied particularly the most abstract sciences, discovered the
famous geometrical theorems which Pythagoras afterward learned from
them, calculated eclipses, and regulated, nineteen centuries before
Cæsar, the Julian year. They descended to practical investigations as
to the necessities of life, and made known their discoveries to the
people; they cultivated the fine arts, and inspired the people with that
enthusiasm which produced the avenues of Thebes, the Labyrinth, the
Temples of Karnac, Denderah, Edfou, and Philæ, the monolithic obelisks,
and the great Lake Moeris, the fertilizer of the country.
The wisdom of the Egyptian Initiates, the high sciences and lofty
morality which they taught, and their immense knowledge, excited the
emulation of the most eminent men, whatever their rank and fortune; and
led them, despite the complicated and terrible trials to be undergone,
to seek admission into the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis.
From Egypt, the Mysteries went to Phoenicia, and were celebrated at
Tyre. Osiris changed his name, and become Adoni or Dionusos, still the
representative of the Sun; and afterward these Mysteries were introduced
successively into Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Sicily, and Italy.
In Greece and Sicily, Osiris took the name of Bacchus, and Isis that of
Ceres, Cybele, Rhea and Venus.