influence by means of the Mysteries, and spared no means to impress the
people with a full sense of their importance. They represented them as
the beginning of a new life of reason and virtue: the initiated, or
esoteric companions were said to entertain the most agreeable
anticipations respecting death and eternity, to comprehend all the
hidden mysteries of Nature, to have their souls restored to the original
perfection from which man had fallen; and at their death to be borne to
the celestial mansions of the Gods. The doctrines of a future state of
rewards and punishments formed a prominent feature in the Mysteries; and
they were also believed to assure much temporal happiness and
good-fortune, and afford absolute security against the most imminent
dangers by land and sea. Public odium was cast on those who refused to
be initiated. They were considered profane, unworthy of public
employment or private confidence; and held to be doomed to eternal
punishment as impious. To betray the secrets of the Mysteries, to wear
on the stage the dress of an Initiate, or to hold the Mysteries up to
derision, was to incur death at the hands of public vengeance.
It is certain that up to the time of Cicero, the Mysteries still
retained much of their original character of sanctity and purity. And at
a later day, as we know, Nero, after committing a horrible crime, did
not dare, even in Greece, to aid in the celebration of the Mysteries;
nor at a still later day was Constantine, the Christian Emperor, allowed
to do so, after his murder of his relatives.
Everywhere, and in all their forms, the Mysteries were funereal; and
celebrated the mystical death and restoration to life of some divine or
heroic personage: and the details of the legend and the mode of the
death varied in the different Countries where the Mysteries were
practised.
Their explanation belongs both to astronomy and mythology; and the
Legend of the Master's Degree is but another form of that of the
Mysteries, reaching back, in one shape or other, to the remotest
antiquity.
Whether Egypt originated the legend, or borrowed it from India or
Chaldæa, it is now impossible to know. But the Hebrews received the
Mysteries from the Egyptians; and of course were familiar with _their
legend_,--known as it was to those Egyptian Initiates, Joseph and Moses.
It was the fable (or rather the _truth_ clothed in allegory and figures)
of OSIRIS, the Sun, Source of Light and Principle of Good, and TYPHON,
the Principle of Darkness and Evil. In all the histories of the Gods and
Heroes lay couched and hidden astronomical details and the history of
the operations of visible Nature; and those in their turn were also
symbols of higher and profounder truths. None but rude uncultivated
intellects could long consider the Sun and Stars and the Powers of
Nature as Divine, or as fit objects of Human Worship; and _they_ will
consider them so while the world lasts; and ever remain ignorant of the
great Spiritual Truths of which these are the hieroglyphics and
expressions.
A brief summary of the Egyptian legend will serve to show the leading
idea on which the Mysteries among the Hebrews were based.
Osiris, said to have been an ancient King of Egypt, was the Sun; and
Isis, his wife, the Moon: and his history recounts, in poetical and
figurative style, the annual journey of the Great Luminary of Heaven
through the different Signs of the Zodiac.
In the absence of Osiris, Typhon, his brother, filled with envy and
malice, sought to usurp his throne; but his plans were frustrated by
Isis. Then he resolved to kill Osiris. This he did, by persuading him to
enter a coffin or sarcophagus, which he then flung into the Nile. After
a long search, Isis found the body, and concealed it in the depths of a
forest; but Typhon, finding it there, cut it into fourteen pieces, and
scattered them hither and thither. After tedious search, Isis found
thirteen pieces, the fishes having eaten the other (the privates), which
she replaced of wood, and buried the body at Philæ; where a temple of
surpassing magnificence was erected in honor of Osiris.
Isis, aided by her son Orus, Horus or Har-oeri, warred against Typhon,
slew him, reigned gloriously, and at her death was reunited to her
husband, in the same tomb.
Typhon was represented as born of the earth; the upper part of his body
covered with feathers, in stature reaching the clouds, his arms and legs
covered with scales, serpents darting from him on every side, and fire
flashing from his mouth. Horus, who aided in slaying him, became the God
of the Sun, answering to the Grecian Apollo; and Typhon is but the
anagram of Python, the great serpent slain by Apollo.
The word Typhon, like Eve, signifies _a serpent_, and _life_.[2] By its
form the serpent symbolizes life, which circulates through all nature.
When, toward the end of autumn, the Woman (Virgo), in the constellations
seems (upon the Chaldæan sphere) to crush with her heel the head of the
serpent, this figure foretells the coming of winter, during which life
seems to retire from all beings, and no longer to circulate through
nature. This is why Typhon signifies also a serpent, the symbol of
winter, which, in the Catholic Temples, is represented surrounding the
Terrestrial Globe, which surmounts the heavenly cross, emblem of
redemption. If the word Typhon is derived from _Tupoul_, it signifies a
tree which produces apples (_mala_, evils), the Jewish origin of the
fall of man. Typhon means also one who supplants, and signifies the
human passions, which expel from our hearts the lessons of wisdom. In
the Egyptian Fable, Isis wrote the sacred word for the instruction of
men, and Typhon effaced it as fast as she wrote it. In morals, his name
signifies _Pride_, _Ignorance_, and _Falsehood_.
[Footnote 2: [Hebrew:] Tsapanai, in Hebrew, means a serpent.]
When Isis first found the body, where it had floated ashore near Byblos,
a shrub of _erica_ or tamarisk near it had, by the virtue of the body,
shot up into a tree around it, and protected it; and hence our sprig of
acacia. Isis was also aided in her search by Anubis, in the shape of a
dog. He was Sirius or the Dog-Star, the friend and counsellor of Osiris,
and the inventor of language, grammar, astronomy, surveying, arithmetic,
music, and medical science; the first maker of laws; and who taught the
worship of the Gods, and the building of Temples.
In the Mysteries, the nailing up of the body of Osiris in the chest or
ark was termed the _aphanism_, or disappearance [of the Sun at the
Winter Solstice, below the Tropic of Capricorn], and the recovery of the
different parts of his body by Isis, the _Euresis_, finding. The
candidate went through a ceremony representing this, in all the
Mysteries everywhere. The main facts in the fable were the same in all
countries; and the prominent Deities were everywhere a male and a
female.
In Egypt they were Osiris and Isis: in India, Mahadeva and Bhavani: in
Phœnicia, Thammuz (or Adonis) and Astarte: in Phrygia, Atys and Cybele:
in Persia, Mithras and Asis: in Samothrace and Greece, Dionusos or
Sabazeus and Rhea: in Britain, Hu and Ceridwen: and in Scandinavia,
Woden and Frea: and in every instance these Divinities represented the
Sun and the Moon.
The mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, seem to have been the model of
all other ceremonies of initiation subsequently established among the
different peoples of the world. Those of Atys and Cybele, celebrated in
Phrygia; those of Ceres and Proserpine, at Eleusis and many other places
in Greece, were but copies of them. This we learn from Plutarch,
Diodorus Siculus, Lactantius, and other writers; and in the absence of
direct testimony should necessarily infer it from the similarity of the
adventures of these Deities; for the ancients held that the Ceres of the
Greeks was the same as the Isis of the Egyptians; and Dionusos or
Bacchus as Osiris.
In the legend of Osiris and Isis, as given by Plutarch, are many details
and circumstances other than those that we have briefly mentioned; and
all of which we need not repeat here. Osiris married his sister Isis;
and labored publicly with her to ameliorate the lot of men. He taught
them agriculture, while Isis invented laws. He built temples to the
Gods, and established their worship. Both were the patrons of artists
and their useful inventions; and introduced the use of iron for
defensive weapons and implements of agriculture, and of gold to adorn
the temples of the Gods. He went forth with an army to conquer men to
civilization, teaching the people whom he overcame to plant the vine and
sow grain for food.
Typhon, his brother, slew him when the sun was in the sign of the
Scorpion, that is to say, at the Autumnal Equinox. They had been rival
claimants, says Synesius, for the throne of Egypt, as Light and Darkness
contend ever for the empire of the world. Plutarch adds, that at the
time when Osiris was slain, the moon was at its full; and therefore it
was in the sign opposite the Scorpion, that is, the Bull, the sign of
the Vernal Equinox.
Plutarch assures us that it was to represent these events and details
that Isis established the Mysteries, in which they were reproduced by
images, symbols, and a religious ceremonial, whereby they were imitated:
and in which lessons of piety were given, and consolations under the
misfortunes that afflict us here below. Those who instituted these
Mysteries meant to strengthen religion and console men in their sorrows
by the lofty hopes found in a religious faith, whose principles were
represented to them covered by a pompous ceremonial, and under the
sacred veil of allegory.
Diodorus speaks of the famous columns erected near Nysa, in Arabia,
where, it was said, were two of the tombs of Osiris and Isis. On one was
this inscription: "I am Isis, Queen of this country. I was instructed by
Mercury. No one can destroy the laws which I have established. I am the
eldest daughter of Saturn, most ancient of the Gods. I am the wife and
sister of Osiris the King. I first made known to mortals the use of
wheat. I am the mother of Orus the King. In my honor was the city of
Bubaste built. Rejoice, O Egypt, rejoice, land that gave me birth!" ...
And on the other was this: "I am Osiris the King, who led my armies into
all parts of the world, to the most thickly inhabited countries of
India, the North, the Danube, and the Ocean. I am the eldest son of
Saturn: I was born of the brilliant and magnificent egg, and my
substance is of the same nature as that which composes light. There is
no place in the Universe where I have not appeared, to bestow my
benefits and make known my discoveries." The rest was illegible.
To aid her in the search for the body of Osiris, and to nurse her infant
child Horus, Isis sought out and took with her Anubis, son of Osiris,
and his sister Nephte. He, as we have said, was Sirius, the brightest
star in the Heavens. After finding him, she went to Byblos, and seated
herself near a fountain, where she had learned that the sacred chest had
stopped which contained the body of Osiris. There she sat, sad and
silent, shedding a torrent of tears. Thither came the women of the Court
of Queen Astarte, and she spoke to them, and dressed their hair, pouring
upon it deliciously perfumed ambrosia. This known to the Queen, Isis
was engaged as nurse for her child, in the palace, one of the columns of
which was made of the erica or tamarisk, that had grown up over the
chest containing Osiris, cut down by the King, and unknown to him, still
enclosing the chest: which column Isis afterward demanded, and from it
extracted the chest and the body, which, the latter wrapped in thin
drapery and perfumed, she carried away with her.
Blue Masonry, ignorant of its import, still retains among its emblems
one of a woman weeping over a broken column, holding in her hand a
branch of acacia, myrtle, or tamarisk, while Time, we are told, stands
behind her combing out the ringlets of her hair. We need not repeat the
vapid and trivial explanation there given, of this representation of
_Isis_, weeping at Byblos, over the column torn from the palace of the
King, that contained the body of Osiris, while Horus, the God of Time,
pours ambrosia on her hair.
Nothing of this recital was historical; but the whole was an allegory or
sacred fable, containing a meaning known only to those who were
initiated into the Mysteries. All the incidents were astronomical, with
a meaning still deeper lying behind _that_ explanation, and so hidden by
a double veil. The Mysteries, in which these incidents were represented
and explained, were like those of Eleusis in their object, of which
Pausanias, who was initiated, says that the Greeks, from the remotest
antiquity, regarded them as the best calculated of all things to lead
men to piety: and Aristotle says they were the most valuable of all
religious institutions, and thus were called mysteries par excellence;
and the Temple of Eleusis was regarded as, in some sort, the common
sanctuary of the whole earth, where religion had brought together all
that was most imposing and most august.
The object of all the Mysteries was to inspire men with piety, and to
console them in the miseries of life. That consolation, so afforded, was
the hope of a happier future, and of passing, after death, to a state of
eternal felicity.
Cicero says that the Initiates not only received lessons which made life
more agreeable, but drew from the ceremonies happy hopes for the moment
of death. Socrates says that those who were so fortunate as to be
admitted to the Mysteries, possessed, when dying, the most glorious
hopes for eternity. Aristides says that they not only procure the
Initiates consolations in the present life, and means of deliverance
from the great weight of their evils, but also the precious advantage of
passing after death to a happier state.
Isis was the Goddess of Sais; and the famous Feast of Lights was
celebrated there in her honor. There were celebrated the Mysteries, in
which were represented the death and subsequent restoration to life of
the God Osiris, in a secret ceremony and scenic representation of his
sufferings, called the Mysteries of Night.
The Kings of Egypt often exercised the functions of the Priesthood; and
they were initiated into the sacred science as soon as they attained the
throne. So at Athens, the First Magistrate, or Archon-King,
superintended the Mysteries. This was an image of the union that existed
between the Priesthood and Royalty, in those early times when
legislators and kings sought in religion a potent political instrument.
Herodotus says, speaking of the reasons why animals were deified in
Egypt: "If I were to explain these reasons, I should be led to the
disclosure of those holy matters which I particularly wish to avoid, and
which, but from necessity, I should not have discussed at all." So he
says, "The Egyptians have at Sais the tomb of a certain personage, whom
I do not think myself permitted to specify. It is behind the Temple of
Minerva." [The latter, so called by the Greeks, was really Isis, whose
was the often-cited enigmatical inscription, "I am what was and is and
is to come. No mortal hath yet unveiled me."] So again he says: "Upon
this lake are represented by night the accidents which happened to him
whom I dare not name. The Egyptians call them their Mysteries.
Concerning these, at the same time that I confess myself sufficiently
informed, I feel myself compelled to be silent. Of the ceremonies also
in honor of Ceres, I may not venture to speak, further than the
obligations of religion will allow me."
It is easy to see what was the great object of initiation and the
Mysteries; whose first and greatest fruit was, as all the ancients
testify, to civilize savage hordes, to soften their ferocious manners,
to introduce among them social intercourse, and lead them into a way of
life more worthy of men. Cicero considers the establishment of the
Eleusinian Mysteries to be the greatest of all the benefits conferred by
Athens on other commonwealths; their effects having been, he says, to
civilize men, soften their savage and ferocious manners, and teach them
the true principles of morals, which _initiate_ man into the only kind
of life worthy of him. The same philosophic orator, in a passage where
he apostrophizes Ceres and Proserpine, says that mankind owes these
Goddesses the first elements of moral life, as well as the first means
of sustenance of physical life; knowledge of the laws, regulation of
morals, and those examples of civilization which have improved the
manners of men and cities.
Bacchus in Euripides says to Pentheus, that his new institution (the
Dionysiac Mysteries) deserved to be known, and that one of its great
advantages was, that it proscribed all impurity: that these were the
Mysteries of Wisdom, of which it would be imprudent to speak to persons
not initiated: that they were established among the Barbarians, who in
that showed greater wisdom than the Greeks, who had not yet received
them.
This double object, political and religious,--one teaching our duty to
men, and the other what we owe to the Gods; or rather, respect for the
Gods calculated to maintain that which we owe the laws, is found in that
well-known verse of Virgil, borrowed by him from the ceremonies of
initiation: "Teach me to respect Justice and the Gods." This great
lesson, which the Hierophant impressed on the Initiates, after they had
witnessed a representation of the Infernal regions, the Poet places
after his description of the different punishments suffered by the
wicked in Tartarus, and immediately after the description of that of
Sisyphus.
Pausanias, likewise, at the close of the representation of the
punishments of Sisyphus and the daughters of Danaus, in the Temple at
Delphi, makes this reflection; that the crime or impiety which in them
had chiefly merited this punishment, was the contempt which they had
shown for the Mysteries of Eleusis. From this reflection of Pausanias,
who was an Initiate, it is easy to see that the Priests of Eleusis, who
taught the dogma of punishment in Tartarus, included among the great
crimes deserving these punishments, contempt for and disregard of the
Holy Mysteries; whose object was to lead men to piety, and thereby to
respect for justice and the laws, chief object of their institution, if
not the only one, and to which the needs and interest of religion itself
were subordinate; since the latter was but a means to lead more surely
to the former; for the whole force of religious opinions being in the
hands of the legislators to be wielded, they were sure of being better
obeyed.
The Mysteries were not merely simple lustrations and the observation of
some arbitrary formulas and ceremonies; nor a means of reminding men of
the ancient condition of the race prior to civilization: but they led
men to piety by instruction in morals and as to a future life; which at
a very early day, if not originally, formed the chief portion of the
ceremonial.
Symbols were used in the ceremonies, which referred to agriculture, as
Masonry has preserved the ear of wheat in a symbol and in one of her
words; but their principal reference was to astronomical phenomena. Much
was no doubt said as to the condition of brutality and degradation in
which man was sunk before the institution of the Mysteries; but the
allusion was rather metaphysical, to the ignorance of the uninitiated,
than to the wild life of the earliest men.
The great object of the Mysteries of Isis, and in general of all the
Mysteries, was a great and truly politic one. It was to ameliorate our
race, to perfect its manners and morals, and to restrain society by
stronger bonds than those that human laws impose. They were the
invention of that ancient science and wisdom which exhausted all its
resources to make legislation perfect; and of that philosophy which has
ever sought to secure the happiness of man, by purifying his soul from
the passions which can trouble it, and as a necessary consequence
introduce social disorder. And that they were the work of genius is
evident from their employment of all the sciences, a profound knowledge
of the human heart, and the means of subduing it.
It is a still greater mistake to imagine that they were the inventions
of charlatanism, and means of deception. They may in the lapse of time
have degenerated into imposture and schools of false ideas; but they
were not so at the beginning; or else the wisest and best men of
antiquity have uttered the most willful falsehoods. In process of time
the very allegories of the Mysteries themselves, Tartarus and its
punishments, Minos and the other judges of the dead, came to be
misunderstood, and to be false because they were so; while at first they
were true, because they were recognized as merely the arbitrary forms in
which truths were enveloped.
The object of the Mysteries was to procure for man a real felicity on
earth by the means of virtue; and to that end he was taught that his
soul was immortal; and that error, sin, and vice must needs, by an
inflexible law, produce their consequences. The rude representation of
physical torture in Tartarus was but an image of the certain,
unavoidable, eternal consequences that flow by the law of God's
enactment from the sin committed and the vice indulged in. The poets and
mystagogues labored to propagate these doctrines of the soul's
immortality and the certain punishment of sin and vice, and to accredit
them with the people, by teaching them the former in their poems, and
the latter in the sanctuaries; and they clothed them with the charms,
the one of poetry, and the other of spectacles and magic illusions.
They painted, aided by all the resources of art, the virtuous man's
happy life after death, and the horrors of the frightful prisons
destined to punish the vicious. In the shades of the sanctuaries, these
delights and horrors were exhibited as spectacles, and the Initiates
witnessed religious dramas, under the name of _initiation_ and
_mysteries_. Curiosity was excited by secrecy, by the difficulty
experienced in obtaining admission, and by the tests to be undergone.
The candidate was amused by the variety of the scenery, the pomp of the
decorations, the appliances of machinery. Respect was inspired by the
gravity and dignity of the actors and the majesty of the ceremonial; and
fear and hope, sadness and delight, were in turns excited.
The Hierophants, men of intellect, and well understanding the
disposition of the people and the art of controlling them, used every
appliance to attain that object, and give importance and impressiveness
to their ceremonies. As they covered those ceremonies with the veil of
Secrecy, so they preferred that Night should cover them with its wings.
Obscurity adds to impressiveness, and assists illusion; and they used it
to produce an effect upon the astonished Initiate. The ceremonies were
conducted in caverns dimly lighted: thick groves were planted around the
Temples, to produce that gloom that impresses the mind with a religious
awe.
The very word _mystery_, according to Demetrius Phalereus, was a
metaphorical expression that denoted the secret awe which darkness and
gloom inspired. The night was almost always the time fixed for their
celebration; and they were ordinarily termed _nocturnal_ ceremonies.
Initiations into the Mysteries of Samothrace took place at night; as did
those of Isis, of which Apuleius speaks. Euripides makes Bacchus say,
that _his_ Mysteries were celebrated at night, because there is in night
something august and imposing.