mythology was naturally declared erroneous, and its true signification
was expounded by the priests to the initiated. That this interpretation
of the myths as allegorical accounts of personified natural phenomena
was the essential part of the mysteries appears from the testimonies of
learned Greeks, some of them Initiates, e. g., Plutarch (“Isis and
Osiris,” c. 3) writes: “Not the white vesture and the shaven beard make
the servant of Isis: he alone is truly that, who receives due
instruction upon the rites and ceremonies used in that divine service,
who investigates judiciously, and meditates upon the truth therein
contained.” Again (c. 8): “There is in the rites of the Egyptian priests
nothing irrational, nothing fabulous or superstitious. Instead of
irrationality we find principles and precepts of morality; instead of
fable and superstition, authentic history and facts of nature.” And c.
9: “The image of the goddess Neit at Sais, regarded also as the image of
Isis, bears this inscription: ‘I am the All that was, that is, that is
to be; my veil no mortal has ever raised.’” Finally, c. 11: “When we
hear the Egyptian myths of the gods, their wandering about, their
dismemberment and sundry other like incidents, we must recall the
remarks already made, so as to understand that the stories told are not
to be taken literally as recounting actual occurrences.” The more
cautious Herodotus (II., 61) agrees with Plutarch, though he expresses
himself more enigmatically: “On the festival of Isis in the city of
Bubastis, after the sacrifice all, both men and women, thousands of
them, beat themselves. But for me to name the one for whose sake they
beat themselves were impiety.”
All the traditions and rites of the Egyptian popular religion then were
explained in a rationalist sense to the initiated. Many particulars of
this explanation have been lost, but what has been lost can hardly have
been of any real value for us, and is little to be regretted.
8. BABYLON AND NINIVE.
In the traditions of classic antiquity the secret wisdom of the Egyptian
priests was not held in greater esteem than that of their fellow-priests
in Chaldaea or Babylonia, the enlightened empire on the lower Tigris and
Euphrates, of which Assyria, land of the upper Tigris, was only a
colony. Recent research has brought up the question which civilization
was the earlier, that of the Nileland or that of Western Asia, in the
region of the twin rivers. But as we possess with regard to the
Babylonian religion even less information than with regard to the
Egyptian, we must be content with a brief account of it.
The Chaldaean religion beyond a doubt had its origin in the country
around the lower Tigris and Euphrates among a people of Turanian or
Ural-Altaic stock (akin to the Turks), called Sumerians, or Akkadians:
its root was Shamanism, a form of religion peculiar to the Turkic races.
The most ancient religious writings of this people (among whom cuneiform
writing originated) consist in formulas for exorcising evil spirits;
these spirits are usually represented as coming from the desert in
groups of seven. Over these daemons presided the spirit of the heavens
(In-lilla, afterward called Anu, i. e., sky); after Anu greatest
reverence was paid to the spirit of the earth (In-kia or Ea), who was
afterward spirit of the waters also. From the higher spirits were
evolved gods and goddesses innumerable. The most ancient goddess was
Ba-u, a name signifying “primordial water,” or chaos. After Ba-u came
the “daughter of the heavens,” named at first Anun, later Ninni or
Ninna, and afterward Istar.
The Sumerian groundwork of Chaldaean civilization and religion was built
upon by a Semitic people, the Babylonians and Assyrians proper, traces
of whom are found nearly 4000 years B. C., and whose domination seems
established B. C. 2500. The highest god of this race was called simply
“God” (in their language Ilu), or “Lord” (Baal). Sun and moon were
worshiped as his images. The scene of the life after death was laid in
the realm of shades (shualu, in Hebrew Sheol). This religion was blended
with that of the Sumerians. The gods Anu and Ilu became one god of the
sky, Bel; and Istar became Bel’s wife. Other Sumerian gods were
associated with the planets worshiped by the Semites: Marduk with
Jupiter, Nindar with Saturn, Nirgal with Mars, Nabu with Mercury, while
Istar was specially related to Venus. There was a sort of trinity made
up of Samas (sun), Sin (moon), Ramman (god of storms). Similarly, Anu,
spirit of the sky, and Ea, spirit of the earth, were placed side by side
with Bel. This system was completed about 1,900 B. C., and it remained
unchanged in Assyria, save that there the autochthonous god Assur held
the first place among the gods.
Among the Babylonians and Assyrians the priests were held in great
reverence. In Assyria they stood next after the king, and the king was
high priest; in the Babylonian kingdom they occupied a more independent
and more influential station. Like the priests of Egypt, they probably
had a secret doctrine withheld from the vulgar. From the meanings of the
Babylonian deities’ names, as given above, it is easy to infer the
nature of this secret doctrine. The Chaldees were throughout all
antiquity known as observers of the heavenly bodies. And though probably
they were astrologers rather than astronomers, at least they knew enough
about the stars, the heavens, and the facts of meteorology to regard
them for what they were instead of holding them to be gods. We therefore
believe that the Chaldaean priests among themselves looked on the
objects which before the people they held to be gods as simply sky, sun,
moon, planets, lightning, thunder.
Besides the early cuneiform writings already mentioned (forms of
exorcism), there have been found amid the ruins of Babylon great
“libraries” of writings on tiles, in the cuneiform characters. Among
these are “penitential psalms” and hymns to gods. In the following
psalm, deciphered from the tile tablets, a priest, in the name of a
penitent sinner, entreats the goddess:
O Lady, for thy servant the cup is full.
Speak the word to him, “Let thy heart be tranquil.”
Thy servant—evil have I done—
Give him assurance of mercy.
Turn thy countenance himward.
Consider his entreaty.
Thy servant, thou art angry with him,
Be to him gracious.
O Lady, my hands are tied.
I cling to thee.
Many of the mythological poems, indeed, most of them, and great part of
the less sacred literature of the tablets, are so obscure and
unintelligible that for their understanding a “key” was necessary, and
the priests held the key. Of special interest are the fragments
containing portions of the Babylonian cosmogony; and as our Bible (Gen.
xi., 31) tells that Abraham was of Ur in Chaldaea, his descendants would
inherit from him (supposing him to have been an historical personage)
some portions of the ancient traditions and folklore of the Chaldaeans.
Here is a fragment of the Babylonian story of the Creation:
When the sky above was not yet named,
Earth beneath had yet no name,
and the watery deep, the never-beginning,
was their producer,
the chaos of the sea, genderess of them all,
for her waters united together in one.
The darkness was not yet done away,
not a plant had yet budded.
As of the gods none had yet gone forth,
and they yet had no name,
then the great gods, too, were created, etc.
The Chaldee Noah, called Samas-Napishtim (sun of life), tells the story
of the deluge in this form: The god Ea having made known to him the
punishment decreed for mankind on account of their sins, he built a
great ship at the god’s command, and into it brought all his
possessions, his kinsmen, his servants, also domestic and wild animals.
Then the gods let a great tempest loose, and with the spirits entered
the combat to destroy all living things. But the flood rose up to the
sky and threatened even the lower gods, who had to take refuge with the
higher gods. The gods, therefore, repented of what they had done. But
after seven days the storm was quieted, and the waters were abated;
Samas-Napishtim opened the window of his ship, now resting on the
mountain Nizir, and after other seven days freed a dove, but the dove
found no resting place. Then a swallow, which did in like manner; then a
raven, which preyed on the bodies of the drowned. It was now possible
for Samas-Napishtim to let the animals out; he erected an altar and
offered sacrifice, whereto the gods gathered “like masses of flies.”
Then the god Bel, who had ordered the flood, became reconciled with the
other gods, who were angry with him on that account; he led
Samas-Napishtim forth with his wife, and made a covenant with them and
the people. But the pair were taken afar to live for evermore.
This Chaldaic history of the deluge is but one section of a great poem,
an epos contained in twelve earthen tablets, wherein are recounted the
fortunes and exploits of a hero, apparently the Nimrod of the Hebrew
Bible. This poem is reputed to date from the twenty-third century, B. C.
The deeds of this hero, Gishdubarra, or Namrassit, as he is called,
forcibly recall the story of the Hellenic Herakles, and the Heraclean
myth, perhaps, had its origin in the Chaldaean epos. Gishdubarra is a
descendant of Samas-Napishtim, whom he seeks out in his retreat to
obtain a cure of his disease, and who takes that occasion to narrate to
him the history of the flood. Now, his disease was a visitation of the
goddess Anatu, because that he had spurned the love of the goddess
Istar. A short poem graphically and effectively tells of how Istar in
her distress over this repulse sought help in the netherworld. “Istar’s
Descent into Hell” impresses one like Dante’s “Inferno”; indeed, in the
opening verses it employs nearly the same words as the great Florentine.
Istar goes, says the poet,
To that house whence none comes forth that enters,
On that path that allows advance, but regress never;
To that house whose inmates light shall see nevermore,
To that place where dust is their victual and ordure their meat, etc.
In the netherworld the goddess Allatu reigns as queen. She is Istar’s
counterpart: as Istar (daughter of the moon-god) is the rising moon, or
the morning-star, so is Allatu the setting moon, or the evening star.
The two are the mutually conflicting opposite sides of one being; and
here, perhaps, we have an intimation of a deeper ethical interpretation,
according to the secret doctrine of the Chaldaeans. The hell of the
Chaldaean theology is divided into seven compartments separated by
gates. At each gate Istar must surrender to its keeper some portion of
her paraphernalia; at the first the crown, at the second the earrings,
at the third the necklace, at the fourth the mantle, at the fifth the
girdle, crusted with precious stones, at the sixth the armlets and
anklets, and at the seventh the last vesture. Possibly, we have here a
symbolic allusion to the Chaldaean mystic teaching, which may have had
seven degrees of initiation into as many orders of mysteries, till all
were disclosed. The queen of the nether world not only renders to Istar
no assistance, but, contrariwise, treats her as an enemy, and heaps
bodily injuries upon her. Meanwhile on earth, Istar being the goddess of
love, all union of the sexes, whether among men or animals, ceases, and
at last the gods request of Allatu the liberation of Istar. Reluctantly
she consents. Istar is made whole and set free, and at each gate gets
back again what had been taken from her. The poem was intended to be
recited by the priest at the obsequies of the dead, to give assurance to
the mourning survivors that the gates of the netherworld are not
unconquerable, but that there is still a possibility for the shades to
reach the land of the blest, the abode of Istar.
9. ZOROASTER AND THE PERSIANS.
If in Chaldaea the traces of actual secret teaching seem faint and
indistinct, they quite disappear the further we go from the centres of
ancient culture in Northern Africa and Western Asia, though analogies
are found everywhere. In Persia, whose culture for the rest was an
offshoot of that of Chaldaea, the priests (athravan) of Zarathustra’s,
or Zoroaster’s, religion were the highest of the three classes of the
population, and the priestly class was considered further removed from
the other two (warriors and farmers) than they from each other. Sprung
originally from a Median stock, the priests married only women of their
own race, and alone of the population possessed high culture. As in
Egypt, the King was adopted into the priestly class. The priests went
about the country as teachers, but gave religious instruction only to
those of their class. The chief priest was styled Zarathustrotema, i.
e., the one nearest to Zarathustra, and had his see in the holy city
Ragha (now Rai), whose inhabitants, like those of modern Rome, had the
name of being unbelievers. The priests alone held rule in Ragha, and no
secular power had right to give orders. Even elsewhere throughout the
kingdom the priests regarded themselves as subject only to the commands
of the Zarathustrotema.
Further, they were physicians, astrologers, interpreters of dreams,
scribes, judges, officers of state, etc. The duties they sought to
impress upon the minds of the people were these exclusively: That they
should reverence the holy fire, listen to the reading of passages from
the sacred books, and perform no end of ceremonies of purification on
account of their sins against the precepts of their religion. All this
points to the existence of a mystic gild of the priests, which withheld
the real teachings of their religion from the uninitiated, and the
members of which alone understood what was the original of the strife
between the good world of Ormuzd and the evil of Ahriman, namely, in all
probability, the alternation of night and day, Summer and Winter.
10. BRAHMANS AND BUDDHISTS.
The case was much the same in India. There the priests, then as now, the
highest caste (Brahmans), were separated from the people by even a
deeper gulf than in Persia. They can have no communication with people
of any other caste, and can take nothing from any one not belonging to
their own caste. They stand outside of the state and its laws, and have
laws of their own. By the people they are regarded as gods: they and
their pupils, the Bramatsharin, as is said in the “Atharva-Beda” (book
of ceremonial laws), give life to both worlds; nay, they it is that made
sky and earth fast on their foundations, that introduced religion, the
gods, and immortality, that produced the world, that brought the daemons
into subjection. Thus they indoctrinated the people; but as they
themselves of course knew that things were not so, a secret doctrine
naturally sprung up among them, and so they instituted a mystic society,
whose members alone knew how the matter really stood, and that the
people were hoodwinked. Accordingly, the basis of religion was totally
different for the Brahmans from what it was for the rest of the people.
The latter were idolaters, the former pantheists. This pantheism is
taught in all their sacred books; but these books the second and third
castes (warriors and farmers) did not understand, and the fourth caste,
the servile (which was also the most numerous), durst not read them at
all.
According to this doctrine, all gods and the whole creation are sprung
from Eternity (Aditi). Penitents and solitaries were esteemed by the
Brahmans above kings and heroes, even above gods. But the life of a
hermit was not perfect enough for them, for that was attained by the
next two castes. Therefore, as their own peculiar specialty, they
concocted the idea of a sort of a soul of the universe, the
Atman-Brahman (the All-Me, or Me-All). This dogma was originated by the
Brahman Yadshnavalkya: but Brahmans themselves say that no man can
comprehend it, and that no man can instruct another in it. Thus,
despairing of a solution of life’s enigma, the Brahmans hit upon the
idea that the universe is only a phantasm, a Dream of the Soul of the
Universe, and as a consequence that the earth, with all that it
contains, is nothing: this is pessimism. They imagined enormous aeons of
time, in the lapse of which the world grew ever worse and creatures were
born only to suffer, to die, and either to awaken to suffering in the
soul’s migration, or to do penance in the unspeakable torments of hell.
Now, as of all this the people could understand only what was said about
the hell torments, the Brahmans contrived for them also a supreme deity
under the same name as their own Soul of the Universe, Brahma, and for
Brahma they provided a wife, Sarasvati. Brahma they made the creator,
but the part played by him was only passive and the people, not content
with such a do-nothing, paid more attention to other gods, specially to
resplendent Vishnu and dread Siva. Long afterward the three gods were
united in a sort of trinity, or, rather, were represented by a
three-headed figure, which had neither temple nor sacrificial worship.
Thus the Brahmans went on refining and refining in their theological
speculations, while the people became divided into parties, Vishnuites
and Sivaites, and the religion of the Hindus reached at last the state
of debasement in which we find it to-day.
Before degeneration had gone so far Buddha, in the sixth century, B. C,
endeavored to save the Hindu religion. Buddhism was not a new religion,
only a reform of Brahmanism. Though it failed to strike root deep in its
native soil, the more westerly countries of India, on the other hand it
won a great following in farther India, Tibet, China, and Japan: it has
since assumed a peculiar composite character by fusion with the ancient
religions of those countries. It grew out of a monastic society founded
by Siddhartha, afterward Buddha, surnamed the Perfect One. His doctrine
was wholly ethical, and its profoundest principle was that only in
complete renunciation of all things can man find safety and peace.
Buddha himself was rather strict with postulants for admission to the
society, so that in his time the teaching was in many respects a secret
doctrine. But after the death of Buddha, when first himself, then
several other Buddhas believed to have lived before him, and expected to
come after him, had been raised to the rank of gods; and when to these
had been added the Hindu gods and the gods of other peoples; the
religion of the founder having thus degenerated into a polytheism, the
learned began to interpret the original doctrine now in one sense, again
in another, opinions differing on the question whether the Nirvana
(literally, extinguishment) preached by Buddha meant Death and
Nothingness, or a Blest State. Thus the Buddhism of the priests assumed
a strong likeness to a secret doctrine, though we know not of any formal
organization to that end.
11. SECRET LEAGUES OF BARBAROUS PEOPLES.
Even among Savages so-called are found secret doctrines and secret
societies of priests analogous to those of more cultured peoples. The
priests of Hawaii, who in this respect perhaps rank highest among savage
races, had a theory of their own regarding creation which shows great
elevation of thought. The sorcerers, or priests, of savage races
wherever they still remain, are banded in secret societies, which
withhold from the people all knowledge of their tricks. The Angekoks of
the Eskimos, the Medicine Men of the North American aboriginals, the
Shamans of Siberia, as well as the sorcerers, however named, of African
and other races, nearly all form close castes, hand down their pretended
arts of weather-making, of healing disease, discovering thieves,
counteracting spells, etc., to their successors, and prepare themselves
for their office by undergoing strange tests and performing outlandish
rites; they also wear fantastic togs. Among the Zulu Kaffirs the one who
desires to become a sorcerer (usually a descendant of a sorcerer) gives
up the customary mode of life, has strange dreams, seeks solitude, hops
and jumps about, utters cries, handles serpents that other Kaffirs will
not touch, at last receives instruction from some aged sorcerer, and is
formally admitted by the assembly of those charlatans. There are also
witches, or sorceresses, who go through a like form of consecration.
There exist also among savages other species of secret societies. In the
Society Islands the chiefs, called Areoi or Erih, form an association,
the origin of which they trace to Oros, god of war. They are divided
into twelve classes under as many grandmasters, each class distinguished
by a peculiar tattoo, the members are united by the firmest ties, show
unbounded hospitality to one another, live without marriage, kill their
own children, and refrain from all work. There are similar societies in
Micronesia, called Klobbergoll, which assemble in special houses, and
serve their chiefs in war as bodyguard. On the isle of New Britain (now
a German possession, and named New Pomerania) there exists a secret
society called the Duk-Duk, whose members, wearing frightful masks, care
for the execution of the laws, collect fines, and inflict punishment on
incendiaries and homicides. They are known to each other by secret
signs, and outsiders are denied admission to their festivals under pain
of death. In West Africa there are many secret societies whose members
are distinguished by a chalk line, with which they are marked at their
initiation. Their office is to pursue and punish criminals, and to
collect the tribute. In each locality these associations possess houses
for their special use, and their members are bound to the strictest
secrecy. Thus even savages have their secret police and their privy
tribunals.
_PART SECOND._
_The Grecian Mysteries and the Roman Bacchanalia._
1. HELLAS.
Grecian religion is worship of the beautiful. Its origin was as that of
the other polytheistic religions: its basis was a personification of
nature’s forces and of the heavenly bodies, but in its evolution it
differed essentially from the religions of the Oriental peoples, who had
no sense for the beautiful, and who ascribed to their gods forms quaint,
or unnatural, or hideous. In the dawn of their history the Hellenes did,
undoubtedly, worship the forces of nature under the form of animals,
especially of serpents. In time the human and animal forms were united,
and there were deities with heads of animals or the bodies of horses
(centaurs) or the hoofs of goats (satyrs). But the native genius of
Greece asserted itself at an early period, and the figures of gods came
by degrees to express the highest physical perfection with which they
were acquainted—the human form. True, the Hellenes, like the Easterns,
forgot the astronomic and cosmic signification of their myths; but,
whereas, for their neighbors oversea—at least for the mass of the
people—the natural powers transformed into gods were simply fetiches
existing only in the matter out of which they were made—objects of dumb
reverence or of mad terror; for the man of Hellas they became changed
into moral forces, into ideas which he represented to himself in
beautiful forms that were to him not objects of fear at all, but beings
with whom he might converse as with fellowmen, and of whom his poets
sang as though of mortal heroes. Here we have the distinguishing
characteristic of Grecian religious worship.
The Hellenes knew nothing of dogma, creeds, catechising, or revelation.
In their eyes, if a man did but honor the gods as representing the
groundwork of morality, he satisfied all the requirements of religion:
the how, the when, the where, the how often, were matters left to the
discretion of each one; and nobody else judged him concerning them. Of
course, we must not apply our modern ethical yardstick to the principles
of morality for which the gods stood sponsor, after the origin of the
gods had been forgotten. The Greeks were, with regard to matters that we
nowadays hold to be within the sphere of ethics, not at all
scruple-ridden; and in truth we need to bear in mind their great
services on behalf of the beautiful if we would look with some measure
of allowance on their shortcomings with regard to virtue. In two points,
specially straightforwardness (honesty, candor, truthfulness) and
chastity, they left much to be desired; but what else was to be
expected, seeing that in their gods, as in course of time they came to
conceive of them mistakenly, they had by no means edifying exemplars of
the moral principles to which those deities were supposed to give
sanction. Nevertheless, history will, even to the Hellenes, forgive
much, because they loved much.