MYSTERIA
HISTORY OF THE SECRET DOCTRINES _and_ MYSTIC RITES _of_ ANCIENT
RELIGIONS
AND
Medieval and Modern Secret Orders
By
DR. OTTO HENNE AM RHYN
_State Archivist of St. Gall_
SWITZERLAND
STOCKHAM PUBLISHING COMPANY, _Inc._
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
COPYRIGHT, 1895,
By J. FITZGERALD
_TRANSLATOR’S NOTE._
The Mysteries of the Ancient Grecian religions; the cryptic teachings
and occult interpretations of the popular religious beliefs communicated
to disciples by the priests in the temples of ancient Egypt, Assyria,
and India: the interesting, half fabulous, half historical episode of
Pythagoras and the Pythagorean League in Magna Graecia; the mystic,
ascetic, and semi-monastic communities of the Therapeutae and the
Essenes in Palestine a century before the birth of Jesus Christ; the
later developments of Mysticism in the time of the Roman Empire, as seen
in the history of Apollonius of Tyana and in Isis worship, Mithras
worship, worship of the Great Mother, etc.; the secret creed and rites
of the Knights Templar and the usages of the lodges of the Stonemasons
in the Middle Age; the constitution and procedure of the Femgerichte of
Westphalia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the origin and
history and the aims of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Illuminism, and a
swarm of honest and fraudulent secret organizations in modern times: all
these topics have before been made subject matter of numerous learned
tractates or of popular compends; but hitherto these doctrines, rites,
associations, have not been studied in their unity, in their mutual
relation. One service which the author of this work renders to the
student of this particular phase of human psychology—the longing for
mystery and secret associations—is that he develops this relationship,
thus enabling the reader to get a clear understanding of the whole
subject.
But the author does very much more than to co-ordinate the facts of
mystic associations. He is both a scholar and an artist. Having amassed
whatever information regarding the Mysteries and allied phenomena is
accessible in universal literature, he handles his materials with the
skill of a consummate master of style and of the art of popular
exposition. The result is a history of the ancient Mysteries and of
their counterparts and imitations in later times, as authentic as the
most painstaking research could make it, yet possessing all the charm
and grace of a literary masterpiece.
JOSEPH FITZGERALD.
_CONTENTS._
PART FIRST.—MYSTERIES OF THE EAST AND OF BARBAROUS NATIONS.
PAGE
1. Introduction 1
2. The Gods 5
3. Egypt 9
4. The Higher Development of Egyptian Religion 12
5. A Reformation in the Land of Nile 16
6. The Egyptian Realm of the Dead 18
7. The Secret Teaching of the Priests of Nileland 20
8. Babylon and Ninive 26
9. Zoroaster and the Persians 32
10. Brahmans and Buddhists 33
11. Secret Leagues of Barbarous Peoples 36
PART SECOND.—THE GRECIAN MYSTERIES AND THE ROMAN BACCHANALIA.
1. Hellas 38
2. Hellenic Divine Worship 41
3. The Hellenic Mysteries 45
4. The Eleusinian Mysteries 49
5. The Mysteries of Samothrace 57
6. The Mysteries of Crete 59
7. The Dionysia 60
8. The Roman Bacchanalia 62
9. Debased Mysteries from the East 65
PART THIRD.—THE PYTHAGOREAN LEAGUE AND OTHER SECRET ASSOCIATIONS.
1. Pythagoras 72
2. The Pythagoreans 79
3. The Orphici 84
4. Mysterious Personages of Ancient Times 86
PART FOURTH.—SON OF MAN. SON OF GOD.
1. Hellenism and Judaism 91
2. The Essenes 94
3. Christianism 96
4. Jesus 102
5. The Early Christians 107
6. The New Testament 110
7. The Elements of the Church 114
PART FIFTH.—A PSEUDO-MESSIAH. A LYING PROPHET.
1. Apollonius of Tyana 117
2. Alexander, the False Prophet 124
PART SIXTH.—THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR.
1. The Middle Age 129
2. The Templars 132
3. The Secrets of the Templars 136
4. The Downfall of the Knights Templar 140
PART SEVENTH.—THE FEMGERICHTE.
1. Courts of Justice in the Middle Age 147
2. The Secret Tribunal 152
3. The End of the Feme 160
PART EIGHTH.—STONEMASONS’ LODGES OF THE MIDDLE AGE.
1. Medieval Architecture 162
2. The Stonemasons’ Lodges of Germany 164
3. French Craftsmen 169
4. The English Stonemasons 172
ASTROLOGERS AND ALCHEMISTS 174
PART NINTH.—RISE AND CONSTITUTION OF FREEMASONRY.
1. Rise of Freemasonry 178
2. Constitution of the Order 184
3. The Lodge 188
PART TENTH.—SECRET SOCIETIES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
1. Miscellaneous Secret Societies 193
2. Obscurantist Influences 196
3. The “High Degrees” Swindle 199
4. Apostles of Nonsense 203
5. The Swedish Rite 210
6. The New Rosicrucians 211
PART ELEVENTH.—THE ILLUMINATI.
1. The Illuminati 216
2. Imitations of Illuminism 226
PART TWELFTH.—SECRET SOCIETIES OF VARIOUS KINDS.
1. Societies of Wits 230
2. Imitations of Ancient Mystic Leagues 232
3. Imitations of Freemasonry 234
MYSTERIA.
_PART FIRST._
_Mysteries of the East and of Barbarous Nations._
1. INTRODUCTION.
In all ages mystery has had a special attraction for mankind. Curiosity
is innate in us. The child asks about everything, What is this, what is
it for, why is it made so, or so? The child fairly harries its parents
with questions, never wearies of raising new ones, often so unexpected
and so difficult, that it would puzzle the wisest philosopher to answer
them. And this instinct of inquiry is dominant in the adult, too. The
grown man wants to know what is to be found behind every curtain, every
locked door, in every sealed letter. And when sated with such trifles he
must push inquiry further, into the infinite; must lift the veil that
hides the wondrous image at Sais; must pluck from the forbidden tree of
knowledge the tempting golden fruit. He would with the Titans storm
heaven, and ascend to heights “where stirs no breath of air, where
stands the boundary-stone of creation.” At last when Faust, after
manifold crosses and disappointments, sees that “we can know nothing,”
the thought “consumes the heart within him.”
And so we must ever be worried by the reflection that the great riddle
of existence will not be solved; nay, never can be solved. Why, we ask,
why does anything exist at all? and what does exist, whence comes it,
and whither does it go? And though oceans of ink were written on worlds
of paper to define the relation between the Here and Beyond, we should
not know, after it all, the lot of the thought-endowed tenant of the
narrowest human brain-case after its term of living is reached. Never
shall we be able to comprehend Being as having a beginning and an end,
but neither shall we ever understand how, without beginning or end, it
may endure for ever, and extend limitless ever farther and farther into
the shoreless ocean of the All. The thinker must by force refrain
himself from such inference, lest his brain should be seized by
delirium; and the progressive man of action turns to what is sure and
clear and understandable, while the listless disciple of Buddha,
despairing of ever comprehending existence, longs for nirvana, the
soul’s state of everlasting rest and freedom from cares.
Mankind, then, is encompassed by a vast mystery which never has been
discovered, though it presses upon us with force all around, and though
we know it exists and are conscious that it attends us at every step we
take. But man is too proud to endure the thought that anything is beyond
his powers: man must in all things do what the primordial creative power
does. The Eternal Incomprehensible created worlds that no mortal eye can
see: man with the help of glasses sees them. The Eternal set worlds
circling around worlds in such wise that for long we mortals were led
into error, and took the earth to be the centre of the universe: but men
made calculations and measurements, and discovered that their giant
sphere was but a grain of sand among colossal worlds. The Eternal caused
mountains to rise and rivers to flow, man, too, piled up mountains and
scooped out river-beds and seas. Immense oceans separated the
continents: man navigated the oceans and discovered shores never seen
before. The lightning, issuing from the clouds, rends asunder great
trees that have stood for centuries: man imitates the lightning, and
employs the electric current for sending messages across continents and
oceans, and for illumination. Steam, vapor of water, he harnesses to his
car, or employs it to propel ships across the seas. He takes the sun’s
rays and makes of them a limner’s pencil. Even the Eternal himself man
fashions after his own thoughts, and gives to him a name and attributes,
a throne and a court, a form, and even a son. And lest he should in any
point fail of acting like the Unsearchable, man sets over against the
grand everlasting mystery of creation and eternity, which he cannot
comprehend, other mysteries of his own invention—the mystery of the
Incarnation, the Resurrection, Redemption, the Trinity, and the rest;
and requires his fellow men to acknowledge and reverence these things as
mysteries, and to worship as truth what man’s own self-conceit has
devised in rivalry with the Eternal.
Thus are mysteries of man’s invention propagated from generation to
generation. The love of mystery is contagious; the one who hears of
mysteries will himself invent more, and with them impose upon others.
And the Initiates shut themselves up in secret chambers, swear fearful
oaths never to betray to anyone what others know already, employ emblems
which they interpret in one sense or another, speak in language peculiar
to themselves, exchange special signs with one another, whisper to each
other mysterious words, admit persons to their secret associations with
direful or with harmless tests and rites, and form aristocracies of
intellect, of creed, or of benevolence, of art or of science, even of
humor and of folly. Such is the origin of mystic teachings and secret
societies, the teachings designed to hold the societies together, and
the societies to propagate the teachings: one hand washes the other. In
all ages, among all races we find these mysteries existing under the
most various forms, and for ends the most diverse, but they all have
this in common that they shut out the profane (outsiders), and that
their end is to win and hold power and influence. But they have also had
secondary aims such as could be attained without secret doctrines or
secret association; and these aims have been of all kinds. Now the
purpose may be to promote social freedom and religious or scientific
enlightenment, anon to repress these; again, it may be to enrich the
members, or, on the other hand, to stimulate them to self-sacrificing
charity; or a society will have for its object the Beautiful, and will
create works of art to glorify the Eternal, but another society will
despise whatever is ideal, professing contempt for the world and
themselves; or the aim may be nothing short of the destruction of all
human society and a return to Chaos.
A variegated picture and full of life! At the head of the moving
procession stalk priests in long robes, begarlanded, carrying the sacred
image of Isis or chanting hymns to the Eleusinian Demeter. Then come the
wild-eyed troops of the Bacchantes, and in sharp contrast to these,
philosophers of the Pythagorean League, in white cloaks, looking down on
the populace with a smile of mild scorn; after these the unpretending
Essenes, who shoulder the cross of suffering, the Roman brotherhoods
(collegia), and then the English and German gilds of stonemasons, with
hammer, compass, and square; the Knights Templar, in white cloaks
blazoned with the red cross, their haughty mien betraying contempt of
all authority; the Fathers of the Company of Jesus, in black cassock and
four-cornered hat, eyes sanctimoniously downcast, every man of them a
corpse in the hands of his superiors; then come seigneurs and scholars
and men of every condition, in white aprons and blue ribbons, and last
of all an indistinguishable multitude of variously-clad figures. Let us
contemplate the several groups of this picture. First, the priests of
the so-called heathen religions of antiquity. Here we have men using a
twofold manner of speech. To the people they gave out a teaching
different from that communicated to the Initiates of their secret
associations, their mysteries. How came that about, how is it accounted
for, and how can it be justified?
2. THE GODS.
To answer these questions we must study the origin of religious ideas
and the forms they assumed in different periods. Here we meet a phase of
thought which stands related to the vain attempts to fathom the Eternal,
to scrutinize the Unsearchable, and which, therefore, is necessarily
connected with the earliest expression of man’s love of the mysterious.
In the dim ages before the dawn of civilization, when the cave-dweller,
or the lake-dweller, had completed his day’s work, and his children were
in safety for the night, and their hunger stilled, then, in the glad
consciousness of duty discharged, he would rise above mere sense, and
would contemplate his surroundings with greater attention than would be
possible amid his hard labors as breadwinner. Then, surely, what most
profoundly impressed his imagination was the blue vault of the sky
across which by day the sun, source of light and warmth, or of blazing
and scorching heat, and at night the mild-faced moon, diffusing her
witching beams, and the innumerable twinkling stars glided in strange
unalterable series. Beneath the arch lay extended the surrounding
country, and the man gazed on the diversified panorama of snow-decked
alp, roaring cataract, mirror-like lake, and verdant daisy-gemmed
prairie. Or he contemplated the tossing billows of the sea, the dread
phenomena of the thunder clap and the lightning flash, the ravages of
the hurricane, the crash of mountains rent by internal forces, the
pitiless, headlong sweep of the river that has overflowed the plain.
These manifestations of the forces of nature, whether winsome or
fearsome, impressed the man; and acknowledging his nothingness and
impotence he prostrated himself before them and worshiped them. But in
worshiping the forces of nature, he must needs think of them as a
personality; and the process of personification necessarily began with
the phenomena which possess the most pronounced individuality, viz., on
the earth, rocks, mountains, trees, animals, rivers, lakes; in the sky,
the sun, moon, and stars; between earth and sky, the clouds, winds,
thunder, and lightning; finally, fire, the production of which was the
first step in human culture.
The further observation of nature led man from particular to general
concepts: those were formed more easily, these were hard to compass, and
to understand their import required a greater power of reflection.
Mythology had its origin in the simple worship of nature, and in this
wise.
In the mind of the man who knows nothing of the true relations of the
heavenly bodies, all existence must be divided into two principal
categories, heaven overhead, earth underfoot. Heaven and Earth—that is
the beginning of all mythologies and cosmogonies. Heaven and Earth are
for the Israelite the first works of the Eternal; for the Chinese they
are “father and mother of all things”; for the Hellenes and the Teutons
the first divine beings (Uranos and Gaea, Wodan and Ertha). As men
further considered the question how this whole scene of nature, both in
its grateful and in its terrible aspects, came to be, Heaven and Earth
were regarded as sexed beings, Heaven as fructifying, noble, lofty,
male, controlling the lightning and thunder; Earth as prolific,
conceptive, passive, female. Heaven and Earth formed a union, and Sun,
Moon, and Stars were reputed their children. Among the heavenly bodies
the first place is held by the Sun, god of day, who, at his rising in
the East by magic power compels his brother and sister deities to obey
him: he reigns alone in a sea of light and splendor. Sister and consort
of the Sun is the Moon, and the course of these two across the heavens,
their rising and their setting, their shining and their obscuration are
the source of endless fanciful myths: in these myths, however, there are
frequent transformations, the same hero being now the Sun, again Heaven,
and the same heroine being now the Moon, anon the Earth. And phantasy
discovered in Sun and Moon so many diverse properties that it separated
these from one another, and by degrees formed out of them distinct
personalities. The Sun, rising out of the ocean and again sinking into
it, became Poseidon (Neptune), and the invisible Sun that through the
night tarries in the underworld became god of the world of shades,
Pluto; and so with other phenomena of the sun. The Moon, too, in her
different forms of waxing, full, and waning moon, rising and setting
moon, gives rise to groups of three or four sisters (Graces, Fates,
Furies), and to many other forms of goddesses, and these are sad,
austere, chaste, or alluring, winsome, complaisant; or the Moon assumes
the form of some fair daughter of man, who, being loved by some god,
becomes mother of gods and heroes. Hence god-descended races and
dynasties, whose fortunes and wars are the subject of epics, tragedies,
and romances, and the innumerable host of the stars, in the fanciful
shapes in which imagination grouped them, afforded inexhaustible
material for story and myth. Here was seen a herd faithfully guarded by
the herdsman, there a chase conducted by bold hunters, or a company of
daring mariners going to win the golden fleece, or the golden apples of
the Hesperides, or the thousand eyes of the watchful Argus. On the
mantle of the goddess of night phantasy saw pictured Aries, Taurus,
Capricornus, Capella, Ursus Major, Orion, Bootes, Draco, Hercules, and
all the other figures of the endless web of poesy in which are told the
wondrous deeds of gods and heroes.
Such is the light in which mythology appeared when, in the beginnings of
scientific inquiry, the forces of nature were personified. As centuries
passed the true sense of these myths, transmitted from father to son,
was lost, and the whole was taken to be actual fact. But the master
minds discerned the true state of the case, and soon regained the real
meanings. Such men as Aristotle, Plutarch, and others often told in
their writings what they thought regarding the traditions, but not so
the wily priests within the walls of the temples. Their secret doctrines
doubtless conveyed a more or less rationalistic interpretation of the
myths and a purer theology, though it must be admitted that, in order to
guard the mysteries of the secret associations, and to save the
priesthood from becoming superfluous, this teaching was tricked out in
mysticism, symbolism and allegory; and above all that it was accompanied
by certain dramatic representations and certain moralizing ceremonies.
The countries of antiquity whereof we know with certainty that they
possessed “mysteries,” i. e., secret associations under priestly
guidance, are Egypt, Chaldaea, and Greece.
3. EGYPT.
As the sources of the Nile were undiscovered till a very recent date, so
do the sources of Egyptian civilization remain hidden still. We know
fairly well how the population of Egypt was made up. It consisted of an
aboriginal stock, whose physical characters, as given in writings or in
sculptures, show that it was of negro origin, and of a conquering people
belonging to the same race as the inhabitants of Europe in high
antiquity: this race invaded the Nile land probably from Asia, made
themselves masters of it, and in time mingled with the aborigines. The
great moving cause of Egyptian civilization was always the Nile, called
in Egypt Hapi; for the Nile was the essential factor, by the annual
overflow of its fertilizing waters in Summer and Autumn, in determining
the conformation of the land, the climate, the seasons, and,
consequently, the manners and usages of the inhabitants. Hence in the
language of the natives, Egypt was called Kemt, the dark land, because
of the rich deposits of loam left after the floods of the Nile.
But this name attached only to the Nile valley, bounded on the East and
West by stony deserts, which the Egyptians did not reckon as belonging
to their country. The Semites called the land Misr, or Misraim; the
Greeks gave first to the river, then to the region, the name Egypt (on
what grounds we know not), and finally to the river the name Neilos. It
has ever been a land of enigmas, this Nileland. Whence comes its river?
Why does it overflow the country in Summer and Autumn? Why those mighty
pyramids? What were the doings in those temples, planted so close
together? What mean those strange characters, the hieroglyphs? Why do
the gods wear heads of animals, and why, on the other hand, have the
sphinxes a human head on a lion’s body?
In order to exercise undisputed mastery over the country the conquerors
divided among themselves all the land and all the authority. They formed
two hereditary classes or estates—Priests, who controlled the minds, and
Warriors, who controlled the bodies of the conquered people. Of the
subject race there were several classes, most probably six, though the
accounts we have are mutually contradictory. These classes are: Artists,
mechanics, traders, mariners, agriculturists, herdsmen; in the latter
class of the swineherds, most despised of all Egyptians, because of the
unclean animal which they tended.
Now, while the warrior class had the management of military affairs and
the executive government, and as a rule supplied the occupants of the
throne, the priests possessed the legal lore and the scientific
knowledge, and prescribed to the people what they must believe, while
among themselves and in the company of Initiates they thought very
differently.
The Egyptian religion has its foundation in astronomy. The regular
overflow of the Nile, which involved a precise division of the year into
seasons, must at an early period have led to a diligent observation of
the course of the stars, in order to make timely preparation for the
floods; and the splendor of the starry sky in that region, near the
tropics, where hardly a single constellation is out of sight through the
whole year, favored the study of astronomic science. The Egyptians
contemplated the glories of the heavens, not with the stolidity of the
Chinese, who therein see only objects to be counted and measured; nor
yet with the idealist imagination of Europeans. Hence their
personifications of the world of stars are uncouth, confused, without
grace or charm.
The heavenly body that for us is mightiest of all, the sun, must have
been for the Egyptians the most ancient and the mightiest of gods. Their
sun-god was named Re. But even as among the Hellenes, so in Egypt the
several attributes of the sun were assigned to different personalities.
Thus, the rising sun, as the youthful warrior-god Horos, was early
distinguished from Re; over against Horos stood his opposite and his
twin-brother, Set, spirit of darkness. For mothers the sun-god had Isis,
Hathor, and Neit, goddesses of heaven. To these deities were added Aah,
the moon-god, and the gods of the several stars and constellations.
Besides these gods of the whole land, particular places and regions had
their own gods; thus Ptah was lord and god of Memphis, Amon of Thebes,
and so on.
Very often certain worshipful objects, as trees and animals inhabited by
spirits, were developed into local deities. In this way the fetichism of
the black aboriginal people got entry into the more cultured religion of
the light-complexioned conquerors, and had a very powerful influence on
it. Few were the indigenous animals that were not worshiped in one place
or in many as the wrappages of deities. That worship was paid to animals
not for their own sake, is best seen from the way in which the gods are
portrayed, namely, for the most part with a human body and the head of
the animal sacred to them, though in some cases entirely in human form.
Thus Amon, god of Thebes, has the head of a ram, Hathor of Anut the head
of a cow, Anubis that of a jackal, Bast that of a cat, Sechet of a
lioness, Sebak of a crocodile, and so on. And inasmuch as it was
believed that gods dwelt in them, such animals were themselves made
objects of worship; for example, the ox Hapi (Gr. Apis) at Memphis, the
goat at Mendes, and so forth. This honor belonged to the entire species,
and as representing the species, certain individual animals were
maintained in the temples by the contributions of the faithful, and had
servitors to wait upon them. Any harm done to these fetiches was sternly
punished: to kill one of them was death. Not so when a god did not grant
the prayers of the faithful, e.g., for rain: in that case the priests
made the fetich pay the penalty. First, they threatened the animal, but
when menaces were vain, they killed the sacred beast, though in secret;
the people must not know of it.
4. THE HIGHER DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTIAN RELIGION.
As Egypt advanced in civilization and the government became more
concentrated, the local deities and zoolatry were less regarded, while
the light-gods, the sun-gods, Re and Horos, with their associate
deities, became more prominent. The lives and fortunes of these
light-gods, and in particular their wars with the powers of darkness,
became the subject of myths. The inhabitants of the Nile valley imagined
to themselves the sun’s course not as the progress of a chariot like
that in which the Mithra of the Persians and the Helios of the Greeks
were borne, but as the voyage of a Nile bark on which Re navigates the
ocean of the heavens. In the battle with dark Set he falls and drops
into the netherworld in the West, but the youthful Horos, sun-god of the
coming day, takes his place and begins his career across the sky. This
ever-rejuvenescent sun-god, who through all transformations remained
still the same deity, so that the self-same goddess was now his mother,
anon his consort, was so truly the supreme god, nay, the sole god of
Egypt, that his hieroglyph, the sparrowhawk, came to be the sign of the
idea “god,” and in writing that sign was attached to the names of gods
to indicate that they were such. On the other hand, the names of the
mothers and consorts of the sun-gods had appended to them the sign for a
cow.
From this it is seen that the religion of Nileland—that is to say, the
religion of the priests—was slowly progressing toward monotheism. Unlike
the beliefs of the commonalty, the secret teachings or mysteries of the
priests, as gradually developed, regarded not simply the existence of
the gods, but, above all, what the gods stood for. For a while this
development halted at the sun-god, and reached its first stage in the
city Anu (in lower Egypt), called by the Greeks Heliopolis (city of the
sun), where they incorporated the god of the place, Tum, in the sun-god
Re. This took place under the fourth dynasty, whose monarchs built the
great pyramids of Ghizeh at Memphis. But one of the greatest of these
transformations was in giving the name of Osiris, god of the city Abdu
(Gr. Abydos) in upper Egypt, to the god of the sunset, ruler of the
netherworld and of the kingdom of death. Isis became his sister and
consort, Set at once his brother and his slayer, Horos his son, who, as
a new sun, takes his place after sunset, and also his avenger on Set.
Horos gives Set battle, but as he cannot destroy him utterly, leaves to
him the desert as a kingdom, while Horos himself holds the Nile valley.
This story of gods was represented scenically on public holidays, but
only the Initiated, i. e., the priests and their followers who had been
let into the secret, knew the meaning of the representation. Even the
name of Osiris and his abode in the realm of the dead were kept secret,
and outsiders heard only of the “great god” dwelling in “the West.”
Besides the mysteries of Osiris, the most famous of all, there were
other mysteries of local Egyptian gods transformed into sun-gods; and so
the sun mythos was further developed. Thus Thot, god of Hermopolis,
whose sacred animal was the bird Ibis, became Horos’s auxiliary in the
war with Set, and also became the moon-god, the god of chronometry and
of order, inventor of writing, revealer of the sacred books. Memphis
alone, capital of the ancient kingdom, held her god Ptah too exalted a
being to share in the transformation of the rest; for Ptah was regarded
by his worshipers as father of all gods, creator of the world and of
men, and more ancient than Re; besides, he was the god of the royal
court. Nevertheless, he did not escape the fate of becoming a sun-god.
The most celebrated object of Egyptian zoolatry was sacred to Ptah,
namely, Apis (Hapi), the sacred bull of Memphis, symbol of the sun and
also of the fructifying Nile. This bull must be black with a white spot
on the forehead, and with a growth under the tongue having the form of
the sacred beetle. The bull was kept in the temple at Memphis from
calfhood till death; the body was then mummified, laid out in state, and
honored with inscriptions as a god. The behavior of Apis in various
conjunctures and circumstances was reputed to be oracular.
Another form of the sun-god was the Sphinx, a half-human, half-brute
figure in stone, repeated a thousand times in the Nile valley. The most
famous sphinx of all is seen at the great pyramids of Ghizeh. Regular
avenues flanked by sphinxes formed the approaches of the great temples.
In Egypt the sphinx was thought of as male; the head was that of some
king, and the whole figure represented the sun-god Harmachis, a name
compounded of Re and Horos (Ra-Harmchuti). In later times the sphinx was
introduced in Asia and Greece; the Grecian sphinx is always female.
When the local deities of Egypt were reduced to system, Re was still
supreme, but now Re had a father, Nunu, god of Chaos, source of all
being—clearly a product of priestly meditation, quite alien to the
popular mind. Re was the first divine ruler of the earth. The stars were
his companions. He was succeeded by his son Shu (represented with a
lion’s head), god of air, who made the props that sustain the sky. Shu
was followed by the god Keb and the goddess Nut, parents of Osiris and
Isis, who then became the earth’s rulers. To them, after Set’s
usurpation, succeeded Horos the avenger and the goddess Hathor. A second
class comprises the inferior gods, as Thot, Anubis, etc.; and in a third
class are the local deities. The number of gods and of daemons
subordinate to them was enormous. But in their gods the Egyptians looked
not at all for the perfection of goodness, nor did they regard right
behavior as essential for gaining heavenly favor; they rather looked on
the practices of religion frankly as a means of advancing their
individual interests with the gods.
Now, the greater the number of gods the less was the difference between
them, and the easier became the transition to the belief in the sun-god
as supreme and only true deity—a belief entertained by the priesthood,
not by the people. Re became for the priests the one god, creator of the
universe; and this was due to the fact that the priests of the foremost
cities, following the example of those of Heliopolis, praised the local
god as supreme over all, and at the same time made him identical with
Re, whose name was appended to the original name, thus, Tum-Re, Amon-Re.
When Thebes became the capital of the kingdom its god Amon naturally
took the foremost place, and while Thebes flourished, in the beginning
of the so-called new empire, it was known to all Initiates that the
sun-god was the one true god, self-created, sole object of the worship
paid to the innumerable host of other gods. Nay, the evil deity Set came
to pass for a form of Re, and was allowed a place in the Sun’s bark.
Self-creation was also attributed to the moon-god. The king, as lord of
the whole country, prayed in identical words in every place to the local
deity as lord of heaven and earth.
5. A REFORMATION IN THE LAND OF NILE.
But now the secret doctrine of the priests was to be published to the
people. The pharao Amenhotep IV., of the 18th dynasty (about 1460 B.
C.), saw in the power of the priesthood a menace to the dignity of the
crown. He therefore proclaimed as the sole god the sun, not under any
human form, as had been the custom, but in its own proper shape of a
disk (in Egyptian, aten), as had been the usage at Heliopolis. Amenhotep
ordered all images of other gods associated with the sun to be
destroyed, assumed for himself the name Chuenaten, “Splendor of the
Sundisk,” quit Thebes, and built in middle Egypt, east of the Nile, a
new royal seat, Chutaten, “abode of the Sundisk.” The priests of the
deposed gods in Thebes and in certain other cities (not in all) lost
their places, and the great estates of the priestly corporations were
confiscated. Of course the court officers and civil functionaries
loyally followed the example of their master; but only a very small
fraction of the priesthood gave up their convictions for the sake of
livelihood.
Hardly was Chuenaten gathered to his fathers after a reign of twelve
years, when his reform was undone. His sons-in-law, who succeeded him,
returned step by step to the religion of Amon, and again fixed the royal
seat at Thebes; nevertheless, they were held to be heretics by the
priests, now reinstated in their ancient power. The temples erected to
the Sundisk were leveled with the ground, the half-completed city of the
sun was obliterated, the confiscation of the estates of priestly
corporations reversed, and the temples, images, and priesthood of Amon
reinstated. The intellectual life of Egypt was thenceforth paralyzed,
and the ancient mystic teachings of the priests were never again
disturbed by any wave of movement or progress. The people went back to
stupid formalism, and sank even deeper into daemonism and sorcery. To
draw them away from the true god the priests taught them to worship
deceased kings and queens, at the same time amusing them with gorgeous
sacrifices, processions, and festivals. The distance separating the
priesthood from the people—and the Pharaos were, though not of the
priestly class, reckoned as compeers of the priests—was signalized by
the temples with their various compartments in the inmost of which, the
holy of holies (adyton), were guarded the mysteries of the priests,
while the people were admitted only to the temple proper and its
forecourt. In all probability the famed Labyrinth near Lake Moeris, at
Crocodilopolis, was designed for priestly ends. The labyrinth was an
underground maze of chambers. Herodotus tells that there were 1,500
chambers above ground and as many under the surface, and that the
underground chambers were not shown to the profane, for they contained
the remains of Pharaos and of sacred crocodiles. Not Herodotus only, but
Diodorus, Strabo, and Pliny celebrate the glory of this vast palace, in
whose hidden compartments, no doubt, fit quarters were found for the
mysteries.
6. THE EGYPTIAN REALM OF THE DEAD
Finally, the secret teaching of the priests played a part in the
people’s ideas regarding death and the other life. According to the
Egyptian teaching, man is made up of three constituent parts, viz.,
besides the body, the soul (ba), conceived to be of purely material
essence, which at death quitted the body in the form of a bird; and the
immaterial spirit (ka), which held to the man the same relation a god
held to the animal in which he dwelt: at death the spirit departed from
the body like the image of a dream. The gods, too, had their ka and
their ba. The continued existence of both soul and spirit was contingent
on the care the corpse received; if the ka and the ba were to live on,
the body must be embalmed and laid in a chamber hollowed in a rock, or
in a sepulchral edifice (of such buildings the pyramids were the most
notable), and the relatives must supply to the dead meat and drink and
clothing. The spirit of the deceased went to Osiris, lord of the other
world—a luxuriant plain (Aaru) in the West, where the earth’s products
required no toil, but grew spontaneous. By means of the magic formula
with which Horos recalled to life the slain Osiris, the dead is not only
in like manner revivified, but is even made one with Osiris; and hence
in the formulas of funeral service which constitute the so-called “Book
of the Dead,” the deceased is addressed as Osiris with addition of his
own name. Therefore, he may now sail in the sun-bark, and lead a
glorious life in the other world, and walk amid the stars like other
gods. The pictures on the walls of the sepulchral chambers show that the
Egyptians conceived the other life to be much like the present, only
pleasanter and fuller. The deceased is portrayed surrounded by such
enjoyments as were attainable in Nileland—banquets, property, the chase,
voyaging, music, and the like. But from the texts of the “Book of the
Dead,” which used to be laid with the dead in the sepulchre, we see that
these representations had a more spiritual import in the “middle” than
in the “old” empire. In these texts the deceased himself speaks,
identifying himself with some god, or with one god after another; no
longer with Osiris only, for according to the developed teaching of that
time all the gods are one god. The route of the dead toward the other
world is the sun’s track from East to West; but on his journey he needs
the help of the sorcerer’s art against the host of daemons and monsters
that threaten him. Arrived there, he acquires the power of revisiting
the earth at will in the form of god, man, or animal, or even, should he
so choose, in his own former body. At this period puppets made of wood
or of clay, and sundry tools and utensils, were laid in the grave with
the dead for their service. Under the “new empire” the representations
of the other life and of the way thither are more detailed and more
fanciful. Here, too, we find representations of the famous “judgment of
the dead,” an event belonging to the life beyond, and not, as the Greeks
mistakenly supposed, to the present state and to the time immediately
before burial. Osiris presides over the tribunal with two-and-forty
assessors, in whose presence the newcomer has to prove himself guiltless
of any one of two-and-forty sins, thus, for example: “Never have I done
an injustice, never have I stolen, never have I craftily compassed the
death of any man, never have I killed any sacred animal,” etc. Yet all
this was rather a magic formula for attaining blessedness according to
Egyptian notions than a truthful protestation of guiltlessness in order
to establish the postulant’s moral purity. Nevertheless, in a picture of
the Judgment of the Dead in the “Book of the Dead” the deceased is
brought by the goddess of truth and righteousness (Ma) into the palace
of Osiris, and his sins and his good deeds are weighed in a balance. The
hippopotamus is present as accuser and the god Thot as defender.
7. THE SECRET TEACHING OF THE PRIESTS OF NILELAND.
Though from the foregoing we get a general notion of the relation
between the priests and the people, still we are not clear as to the
nature of the secret teaching and the mode of its organization. Here we
have to depend almost entirely on the accounts given by Greek writers,
not always trustworthy, and on conjecture or inference.
Unquestionably the secret doctrine necessitated a species of secret
society which presumably consisted of the higher orders of priests, and
which comprised subdivisions only loosely held together. It is stated
positively that the pharao for the time being was always admitted to
membership. Hence the king was the only Egyptian outside of the priestly
order that was acquainted with the secret doctrine, and thus was all
danger of betrayal at home most effectually averted. But as the priests
had less to fear in this regard from foreigners, because foreigners went
away again; and as in the indoctrination of foreigners the priests saw
an opportunity for cultivating their own reputation for erudition,
therefore they often willingly admitted to initiation men of distinction
from abroad, and especially Greeks. Among the fabulous personages who
were believed to have been impelled by thirst for knowledge to visit
Egypt, there to learn the secret wisdom of the priests, were the bards
Orpheus, Musaeus, and Homer; among the historic characters were the
lawgivers Lycurgus and Solon, the historian Herodotus, the philosophers
Thales, Pythagoras, Plato, Democritus, the mathematician Archimedes, and
very many more.
But it was not always easy for these to lift the veil that hid the
mysteries. Pythagoras, for example, though recommended by King Aahmes
(Amasis), applied in vain to the priests of Heliopolis and Memphis, and
only after he had submitted to the circumcision prescribed for
postulants did he receive from the priests of Diospolis instruction in
their recondite sciences.
In the form of admission to this secret doctrine were long and tedious
but significant ceremonies, and the Initiates had at certain intervals
to ascend a number of degrees, or stages of knowledge, till they
mastered the sum of the wisdom taught by the priests. But with regard to
the mode of this progression and the difference between the degrees we
have unfortunately no reliable testimony.
Of the contents of the Egyptian secret teaching we know little more than
we do of its forms, for all Initiates were pledged to strictest silence
regarding the subject matter of instruction. Yet we are not without
scattered hints from competent authorities, and in the light of these we
cannot go seriously astray. According to the Greek historian Diodorus,
who lived in the time of Julius Caesar and Augustus, and who had himself
been initiated in Egypt, Orpheus, or rather the Orphic mystae named
after him, owed the Grecian mysteries to the priests of Egypt; and to
the same source were Lycurgus and Solon beholden for their legislation,
Pythagoras and Plato for their philosophical systems, and Pythagoras
furthermore for his mathematical knowledge, and Democritus for his
astronomical doctrine. Now, as for the exact sciences here mentioned,
the Egyptian secret teaching could not have comprised anything
thereanent which was not attainable by anybody with the scientific helps
of the time; nor anything in the way of astronomic knowledge not
relating to the calculation of time; and if with regard to this
knowledge nothing fundamental was taught to the people, then that was a
base huckstering of mysteries and not a secret teaching. As for
legislation, the systems of Lycurgus and Solon differ so much from each
other, and are so pronouncedly Spartan and Athenian, respectively, in
spirit, that from them we cannot infer what the teaching was in that
department. The probability is that the two Grecian lawgivers merely
used the Egyptian laws as a basis, and for the rest adapted their ideas
to the needs of their respective countries. Nor is it to be assumed that
because the Egyptian priests were also judges, therefore their ideas on
legislation, which assuredly they must have applied freely and above
board, belonged to their mysteries.
From the hieroglyphic remains, however, it appears that there existed in
Egypt high-grade schools conducted by the priests, and hence we may
infer that in these institutions the Greek searchers after knowledge
obtained instruction in lawgiving and in the exact sciences of the
Egyptians.
It is true that the hieroglyphs, a species of Egyptian writing which
consisted of figures of actual objects, were known only to the priests;
but in early times that was so only because the rest of the people could
not read and write. Afterward there was a special popular form of
writing (demotic) derived from the hieroglyphs and resembling an earlier
abbreviated form of hieroglyphic writing, the hieratic or writing of the
priests.
It is different with philosophical and religious speculation, in which
positive, unimpeachable conclusions such as may be had in the exact
sciences, are out of the question, and which has no practical
application as in jurisprudence and diplomatics; which, in fact, gives
play rather to hypothesis and arbitrary opinion, to mysticism and
symbolism. This, therefore, was the subject matter of the teaching
conveyed to Initiates in the Egyptian mysteries, but for good reasons
then withheld from the vulgar, because here the very existence of the
priestly class was at stake: the priesthood would lose all its
importance once the people were aware that the priests had no regard for
the received religion.
Hence there is no doubt that the secret doctrine of the Egyptian priests
was at once philosophic and religious; that is, that it tested the
traditional belief, analyzed it, and accepted what it found to be
reasonable and rejected what appeared irrational; and it was sharply
distinguished from the popular belief, which took tradition for absolute
and indubitable truth.
What, then, were the principles underlying the philosophic religion of
the Egyptian priests? Putting aside all arbitrary and fine-drawn
theories, we infer from various clear indications that it was of a
monotheistic character, i. e., that it postulated one personal god, and
that it rejected polytheism and zoolatry, as well as the materialistic
conceptions of the popular creed with regard to what takes place after
death. Indeed, we hold it not improbable that the secret doctrine was
often more radical than the views of the royal reformer Amenhotep IV.,
or Chuenaten, and that, unlike him, the priests believed the true god to
be, not a material thing, the sun’s disk, but the unseen creator
himself, called by them Nunu, father of Re, and source of all things.
Thus we find in the “Book of the Dead” and in later writings mention of
a “demiurge (or architect) of the universe,” to whom no special divine
name is given. Plutarch, too, in his ingenious work, “Of Isis and
Osiris” (cc. 67, 68), says: “The godhead is not any mindless or soulless
creature subject to man,” an allusion to zoolatry; and again: “There is
only one rational being that orders all things, but one ruling
providence, and subordinate powers which are set over the several things
and which in different nations receive through traditional usage,
distinctive worship and distinctive appellations. And hence Initiates
employ now symbols obscure, anon more obvious, whereby they guide the
understanding to the divine being, yet not without danger of falling
into the mire of superstition or the abyss of unbelief. Therefore must
one take philosophy for his mystagogue (guide to the mysteries), in
order to have a true understanding of all the teachings and all the
rites of the mysteries.”