which they desire to know: and nothing so much increases curiosity as
obstacles that interpose to prevent them from indulging in the
gratification of their desires. Of this the Legislators and Hierophants
took advantage, to attract the people to their sanctuaries, and to
induce them to seek to obtain lessons from which they would perhaps have
turned away with indifference, if they had been pressed upon them. In
this spirit of mystery they professed to imitate the Deity, who hides
Himself from our senses, and conceals from us the springs by which He
moves the Universe. They admitted that they concealed the highest truths
under the veil of allegory, the more to excite the curiosity of men, and
to urge them to investigation. The secrecy in which they buried their
Mysteries, had that end. Those to whom they were confided, bound
themselves, by the most fearful oaths, never to reveal them. They were
not allowed even to speak of these important secrets with any others
than the initiated; and the penalty of death was pronounced against any
one indiscreet enough to reveal them, or found in the Temple without
being an Initiate; and any one who had betrayed those secrets, was
avoided by all, as excommunicated.
Aristotle was accused of impiety, by the Hierophant Eurymedon, for
having sacrificed to the manés of his wife, according to the rite used
in the worship of Ceres. He was compelled to flee to Chalcis; and to
purge his memory from this stain, he directed, by his will, the erection
of a Statue to that Goddess. Socrates, dying, sacrificed to Esculapius,
to exculpate himself from the suspicion of Atheism. A price was set on
the head of Diagoras, because he had divulged the Secret of the
Mysteries. Andocides was accused of the same crime, as was Alcibiades,
and both were cited to answer the charge before the inquisition at
Athens, where the People were the Judges. Æschylus the Tragedian was
accused of having represented the Mysteries on the stage; and was
acquitted only on proving that he had never been initiated.
Seneca, comparing Philosophy to initiation, says that the most sacred
ceremonies could be known to the adepts alone: but that many of their
precepts were known even to the Profane. Such was the case with the
doctrine of a future life, and a state of rewards and punishments beyond
the grave. The ancient legislators clothed this doctrine in the pomp of
a mysterious ceremony, in mystic words and magical representations, to
impress upon the mind the truths they taught, by the strong influence of
such scenic displays upon the senses and imagination.
In the same way they taught the origin of the soul, its fall to the
earth past the spheres and through the elements, and its final return to
the place of its origin, when, during the continuance of its union with
earthly matter, the sacred fire, which formed its essence, had
contracted no stains, and its brightness had not been marred by foreign
particles, which, denaturalizing it, weighed it down and delayed its
return. These metaphysical ideas, with difficulty comprehended by the
mass of the Initiates, were represented by figures, by symbols, and by
allegorical analogies; no idea being so abstract that men do not seek to
give it expression by, and translate it into, sensible images.
The attraction of Secrecy was enhanced by the difficulty of obtaining
admission. Obstacles and suspense redoubled curiosity. Those who aspired
to the initiation of the Sun and in the Mysteries of Mithras in Persia,
underwent many trials. They commenced by easy tests and arrived by
degrees at those that were most cruel, in which the life of the
candidate was often endangered. Gregory Nazianzen terms them _tortures_
and mystic _punishments_. No one can be initiated, says Suidas, until
after he has proven, by the most terrible trials, that he possesses a
virtuous soul, exempt from the sway of every passion, and at it were
impassible. There were twelve principal tests; and some make the number
larger.
The trials of the Eleusinian initiations were not so terrible; but they
were severe; and the suspense, above all, in which the aspirant was kept
for several years [the memory of which is retained in Masonry by the
_ages_ of those of the different Degrees], or the interval between
admission to the _inferior_ and initiation in the _great_ Mysteries, was
a species of torture to the curiosity which it was desired to excite.
Thus the Egyptian Priests tried Pythagoras before admitting him to know
the secrets of the sacred science. He succeeded, by his incredible
patience and the courage with which he surmounted all obstacles, in
obtaining admission to their society and receiving their lessons. Among
the Jews, the Essenes admitted none among them, until they had passed
the tests or several Degrees.
By initiation, those who before were _fellow-citizens_ only, became
_brothers_, connected by a closer bond than before, by mean of a
religious fraternity, which, bringing men nearer together united them
more strongly: and the weak and the poor could more readily appeal for
assistance to the powerful and the wealthy, with whom religious
association gave them a closer fellowship.
The Initiate was regarded as the favorite of the Gods. For him alone
Heaven opened its treasures. Fortunate during life, he could, by virtue
and the favor of Heaven, promise himself after death an eternal
felicity.
The Priests of the Island of Samothrace promised favorable winds and
prosperous voyages to those who were initiated. It was promised them
that the CABIRI, and Castor and Pollux, the DIOSCURI, should appear to
them when the storm raged, and give them calms and smooth seas: and the
Scholiast of Aristophanes says that those initiated in the Mysteries
there were just men, who were privileged to escape from great evils and
tempests.
The Initiate in the Mysteries of Orpheus, after he was purified, was
considered as released from the empire of evil, and transferred to a
condition of life which gave him the happiest hopes. "I have emerged
from evil," he was made to say, "and have attained good." Those
initiated in the Mysteries of Eleusis believed that the Sun blazed with
a pure splendor for them alone. And, as we see in the case of Pericles,
they flattered themselves that Ceres and Proserpine inspired them and
gave them wisdom and counsel.
Initiation dissipated errors and banished misfortune: and after having
filled the heart of man with joy during life, it gave him the most
blissful hopes at the moment of death. We owe it to the Goddesses of
Eleusis, says Socrates, that we do not lead the wild life of the
earliest men: and to them are due the flattering hopes which initiation
gives us for the moment of death and for all eternity. The benefit which
we reap from these august ceremonies, says Aristides, is not only
present joy, a deliverance and enfranchisement from the old ills; but
also the sweet hope which we have in death of passing to a more
fortunate state. And Theon says that participation of the Mysteries is
the finest of all things, and the source of the greatest blessings. The
happiness promised there was not limited to this mortal life; but it
extended beyond the grave. There a new life was to commence, during
which the Initiate was to enjoy a bliss without alloy and without limit.
The Corybantes promised eternal life to the Initiates of the Mysteries
of Cybele and Atys.
Apuleius represents Lucius, while still in the form of an ass, as
addressing his prayers to Isis, whom he speaks of as the same as Ceres,
Venus, Diana, and Proserpine, and as illuminating the walls of many
cities simultaneously with her feminine lustre, and substituting her
quivering light for the bright rays of the Sun. She appears to him in
his vision as a beautiful female, "over whose divine neck her long thick
hair hung in graceful ringlets." Addressing him, she says, "The parent
of Universal nature attends thy call. The mistress of the Elements,
initiative germ of generations, Supreme of Deities, Queen of departed
spirits, first inhabitant of Heaven, and uniform type of all the Gods
and Goddesses, propitiated by thy prayers, is with thee. She governs
with her nod the luminous heights of the firmament, the salubrious
breezes of the ocean; the silent deplorable depths of the shades below;
one Sole Divinity under many forms, worshipped by the different nations
of the Earth under many titles, and with various religious rites."
Directing him how to proceed, at her festival, to re-obtain his human
shape, she says: "Throughout the entire course of the remainder of thy
life, until the very last breath has vanished from thy lips, thou art
devoted to my service.... Under my protection will thy life be happy and
glorious: and when, thy days being spent, thou shalt descend to the
shades below, and inhabit the Elysian fields, there also, even in the
subterranean hemisphere, shalt thou pay frequent worship to me, thy
propitious patron: and yet further: if through sedulous obedience,
religious devotion to my ministry, and inviolable chastity, thou shalt
prove thyself a worthy object of divine favor, then shalt thou feel the
influence of the power that I alone possess. The number of thy days
shall be prolonged beyond the Ordinary decrees of fate."
In the procession of the festival, Lucius saw the image of the Goddess,
on either side of which were female attendants, that, "with ivory combs
in their hands, made believe, by the motion of their arms and the
twisting of their fingers, to comb and ornament the Goddess' royal
hair." Afterward, clad in linen robes, came the initiated. "The hair of
the women was moistened by perfume, and enveloped in a transparent
covering; but the men, terrestrial stars, as it were, of the great
religion, were thoroughly shaven, and their bald heads shone
exceedingly."
Afterward came the Priests, in robes of white linen. The first bore a
lamp in the form of a boat, emitting flame from an orifice in the
middle: the second, a small altar: the third, a golden palm-tree: and
the fourth displayed the figure of a left hand, the palm open and
expanded, "representing thereby a symbol of equity and fair-dealing, of
which the left hand, as slower than the right hand, and more void of
skill and craft, is therefore an appropriate emblem."
After Lucius had, by the grace of Isis, recovered his human form, the
Priest said to him, "Calamity hath no hold on those whom our Goddess
hath chosen for her service, and whom her majesty hath vindicated." And
the people declared that he was fortunate to be "thus after a manner
born again, and at once betrothed to the service of the Holy Ministry."
When he urged the Chief Priest to initiate him, he was answered that
there was not a single one among the initiated, of a mind so depraved,
or so bent on his own destruction, as, without receiving a special
command from Isis, to dare to undertake her ministry rashly and
sacrilegiously, and thereby commit an act certain to bring upon himself
a dreadful injury. "For", continued the Chief Priest, "the gates of the
shades below, and the care of our life being in the hands of the
Goddess,--_the ceremony of initiation into the Mysteries is_, as it
were, _to suffer death_, with the precarious chance of resuscitation.
Wherefore the Goddess, in the wisdom of her Divinity, hath been
accustomed to select as persons to whom the secrets of her religion can
with propriety be entrusted, those who, standing as it were on the
utmost limit of the course of life they have completed, _may through her
Providence be in a manner born again_, and commence the career of a new
existence".
When he was finally to be initiated, he was conducted to the nearest
baths, and after having bathed, the Priest first solicited forgiveness
of the Gods, and then sprinkled him all over with the clearest and
purest water, and conducted him back to the Temple, "where," says
Apuleius, "after giving me some instruction, that mortal tongue is not
permitted to reveal, he bade me for the succeeding ten days restrain my
appetite, eat no animal food, and drink no wine."
These ten days elapsed, the Priest led him into the inmost recesses of
the Sanctuary. "And here, studious reader," he continues, "peradventure
thou wilt be sufficiently anxious to know all that was said and done,
which, were it lawful to divulge, I would tell thee; and, wert thou
permitted to hear, thou shouldst know. Nevertheless, although the
disclosure would affix the penalty of rash curiosity to my tongue as
well as thy ears, yet will I, for fear thou shouldst be too long
tormented with religious longing, and suffer the pain of protracted
suspense, tell the truth notwithstanding. Listen then to what I shall
relate. _I approached the abode of death; with my foot I pressed the
threshold of Proserpine's Palace. I was transported through the
elements, and conducted back again. At midnight I saw the bright light
of the sun shining. I stood in the presence of the Gods, the Gods of
Heaven and of the Shades below; ay, stood near and worshipped._ And now
have I told thee such things that, hearing, thou necessarily canst not
understand; and being beyond the comprehension of the Profane, I can
enunciate without committing a crime."
After night had passed, and the morning had dawned, the usual ceremonies
were at an end. Then he was consecrated by twelve stoles being put upon
him, clothed, crowned with palm-leaves, and exhibited to the people. The
remainder of that day was celebrated as his birthday and passed in
festivities; and on the third day afterward, the same religious
ceremonies were repeated, including a religious breakfast, _"followed by
a final consummation of ceremonies_."
A year afterward, he was warned to prepare for initiation into the
Mysteries of "the Great God, Supreme Parent of all the other Gods, the
invincible OSIRIS." "For," says Apuleius, "although there is a strict
connexion between the religions of both Deities, AND EVEN THE ESSENCE OF
BOTH DIVINITIES IS IDENTICAL, the ceremonies of the respective
initiations are considerably different."
Compare with this hint the following language of the prayer of Lucius,
addressed to Isis; and we may judge what doctrines were taught in the
Mysteries, in regard to the Deity: "O Holy and Perpetual Preserver of
the Human Race! ever ready to cherish Mortals by Thy munificence, and to
afford Thy sweet maternal affection to the wretched under misfortune;
Whose bounty is never at rest, neither by day nor by night, nor
throughout the very minutest particle of duration; Thou who stretchest
forth Thy health-bearing right hand over the land and over the sea for
the protection of mankind, to disperse the storms of life, to unravel
the inextricable entanglement of the web of fate, to mitigate the
tempests of fortune, and restrain the malignant influences of the
stars,--_the Gods in Heaven adore Thee, the Gods in the shades below do
Thee homage, the stars obey Thee, the Divinities rejoice in Thee, the
elements and the revolving seasons serve Thee!_ At Thy nod the winds
breathe, clouds gather, seeds grow, buds germinate; _in obedience to
Thee the Earth revolves_ AND THE SUN GIVES US LIGHT. IT IS THOU WHO
GOVERNEST THE UNIVERSE AND TREADEST TARTARUS UNDER THY FEET."
Then he was initiated into the nocturnal Mysteries of Osiris and
Serapis: and afterward into those of Ceres at Rome: but of the
ceremonies in these initiations, Apuleius says nothing.
Under the Archonship of Euclid, bastards and slaves were excluded from
initiation; and the same exclusion obtained against the Materialists or
Epicureans who denied Providence and consequently the utility of
initiation. By a natural progress, it came at length to be considered
that the gates of Elysium would open only for the Initiates, whose souls
had been purified and regenerated in the sanctuaries. But it was never
held, on the other hand, that initiation alone sufficed. We learn from
Plato, that it was also necessary for the soul to be purified from every
stain: and that the purification necessary was such as gave virtue,
truth, wisdom, strength, justice, and temperance.
Entrance to the Temples was forbidden to all who had committed homicide,
even if it were involuntary. So it is stated by both Isocrates and
Theon. Magicians and Charlatans who made trickery a trade, and impostors
pretending to be possessed by evil spirits, were excluded from the
sanctuaries. Every impious person and criminal was rejected; and
Lampridius states that before the celebration of the Mysteries, public
notice was given, that none need apply to enter but those against whom
their consciences uttered no reproach, and who were certain of their own
innocence.
It was required of the Initiate that his heart and hands should be free
from any stain. Porphyry says that man's soul, at death, should be
enfranchised from all the passions, from hate, envy, and the others;
and, in a word, _be as pure as it is required to be in the Mysteries_.
Of course it is not surprising that parricides and perjurers, and
others who had committed crimes against God or man, could not be
admitted.
In the Mysteries of Mithras, a lecture was repeated to the Initiate on
the subject of Justice. And the great moral lesson of the Mysteries, to
which all their mystic ceremonial tended, expressed in a single line by
Virgil, was _to practise Justice and revere the Deity_;--thus recalling
men to justice, by connecting it with the justice of the Gods, who
require it and punish its infraction. The Initiate could aspire to the
favors of the Gods, only because and while he respected the rights of
society and those of humanity. "The sun," says the chorus of Initiates
in Aristophanes, "burns with a pure light for us alone, who, admitted to
the Mysteries, observe the laws of piety in our intercourse with
strangers and our fellow-citizens." The rewards of initiation were
attached to the practice of the social virtues. It was not enough to be
initiated merely. It was necessary to be faithful to the _laws_ of
initiation, which imposed on men duties in regard to their kind. Bacchus
allowed none to participate in his Mysteries, but men who conformed to
the rules of piety and justice. Sensibility, above all, and compassion
for the misfortunes of others, were precious virtues, which initiation
strove to encourage. "Nature," says Juvenal, "has created us
compassionate, since it has endowed us with tears. Sensibility is the
most admirable of our senses. What man is truly worthy of the torch of
the Mysteries; who such as the Priest of Ceres requires him to be, if he
regards the misfortunes of others as wholly foreign to himself?"
All who had not used their endeavors to defeat a conspiracy; and those
who had on the contrary fomented one; those citizens who had betrayed
their country, who had surrendered an advantageous post or place, or the
vessels of the State, to the enemy; all who had supplied the enemy with
money; and in general, all who had come short of their duties as honest
men and good citizens, were excluded from the Mysteries of Eleusis. To
be admitted there, one must have lived equitably, and with sufficient
good fortune not to be regarded as hated by the Gods.
Thus the Society of the Initiates was, in its principle, and according
to the true purpose of its institution, a society of virtuous men, who
labored to free their souls from the tyranny of the passions, and to
develop the germ of all the social virtues. And this was the meaning of
the idea, afterward misunderstood, that entry into Elysium was only
allowed to the Initiates: because entrance to the sanctuaries was
allowed to the virtuous only, and Elysium was created for virtuous souls
alone.
The precise nature and details of the doctrines as to a future life, and
rewards and punishments there, developed in the Mysteries, is in a
measure uncertain. Little direct information in regard to it has come
down to us. No doubt, in the ceremonies there was a scenic
representation of Tartarus and the judgment of the dead, resembling that
which we find in Virgil: but there is as little doubt that these
representations were explained to be allegorical. It is not our purpose
here to repeat the descriptions given of Elysium and Tartarus. That
would be aside from our object. We are only concerned with the great
fact that the Mysteries taught the doctrine of the soul's immortality,
and that, in some shape, suffering, pain, remorse, and agony, ever
follow sin as its consequences.
Human ceremonies are indeed but imperfect symbols; and the alternate
baptisms in fire and water intended to purify us into immortality, are
ever in this world interrupted at the moment of their anticipated
completion. Life is a mirror which reflects only to deceive, a tissue
perpetually interrupted and broken, an urn forever fed, yet never full.
All initiation is but introductory to the great change of death Baptism,
anointing, embalming, obsequies by burial or fire, are preparatory
symbols, like the initiation of Hercules before descending to the
Shades, pointing out the mental change which ought to precede the
renewal of existence. Death is the true initiation, to which sleep is
the introductory or minor mystery. It is the final rite which united the
Egyptian with his God, and which opens the same promise to all who are
duly prepared for it.
The body was deemed a prison for the soul; but the latter was not
condemned to eternal banishment and imprisonment. The Father of the
Worlds permits its chains to be broken, and has provided in the course
of Nature the means of its escape. It was a doctrine of immemorial
antiquity, shared alike by Egyptians, Pythagoreans, the Orphici, and by
that characteristic Bacchic Sage, "the Preceptor of the Soul," Silenus,
that death is far better than life; that the real death belongs to those
who on earth are immersed in the Lethe of its passions and fascinations,
and that the true life commences only when the soul is emancipated for
its return.
And in this sense, as presiding over life and death, Dionusos is in the
highest sense _the_ LIBERATOR: since, like Osiris, he frees the soul,
and guides it in its migrations beyond the grave, preserving it from the
risk of again falling under the slavery of matter or of some inferior
animal form, the purgatory of Metempsychosis; and exalting and
perfecting its nature through the purifying discipline of his Mysteries.
"The great consummation of all philosophy," said Socrates, professedly
quoting from traditional and mystic sources, "is _Death_: He who pursues
philosophy aright, _is studying how to die_."
All soul is part of the Universal Soul, whose totality is Dionusos; and
it is therefore he who, as Spirit of Spirits, leads back the vagrant
spirit to its home, and accompanies it through the purifying processes,
both real and symbolical, of its earthly transit. He is therefore
emphatically the _Mystes_ or Hierophant, the great Spiritual Mediator of
Greek religion.
The human soul is itself [Greek: δαιμονιος] a God _within_ the mind,
capable through its own power of rivalling the canonization of the Hero,
of making itself immortal by the practice of the good, and the
contemplation of the beautiful and true. The removal to the Happy
Islands could only be understood mythically; everything earthly must
die; Man, like Œdipus, is wounded from his birth, his real elysium can
exist only beyond the grave. Dionusos died and descended to the shades.
His passion was the great Secret of the Mysteries; as Death is the Grand
Mystery of existence. His death, typical of Nature's Death, or of her
periodical decay and restoration, was one of the many symbols of the
_palingenesia_ or second birth of man.
Man descended from the elemental Forces or Titans [Elohim], who fed on
the body of the Pantheistic Deity creating the Universe by
self-sacrifice, commemorates in sacramental observance this mysterious
passion; and while partaking of the raw flesh of the victim, seems to be
invigorated by a fresh draught from the fountain of universal life, to
receive a new pledge of regenerated existence. Death is the inseparable
antecedent of life; the seed dies in order to produce the plant, and
earth itself is rent asunder and dies at the birth of Dionusos. Hence
the significancy of the _phallus_, or of its inoffensive substitute, the
obelisk, rising as an emblem of resurrection by the tomb of buried Deity
at Lerna or at Sais.