the several divisions of the Hellenic race were by no means agreed as to
the number of the gods and their respective ranks. Of the twelve gods of
Olympus, one would be disowned here, another there. In one place greater
honor would be paid to this god, in another place to that; the case is
exactly that of the saints in Catholic countries to-day. Nay, local
deities, e. g., Athene in Athens, often received more homage than Zeus,
father of the gods and lord of the thunderclouds. The worship of the
beautiful went even so far as to multiply gods, and to divide them among
the different localities that possessed renowned statues of them: these
statues then came to be regarded as distinct individuals, so that even a
Socrates could be in doubt whether the Aphrodite Urania (Aphrodite in
the sky) and Aphrodite Pandemos (the popular Aphrodite) were or were not
one person. Nay, when the known gods did not suffice, they made gods
that had no name: thus we find a “greatest” god, also “pure”, and
“reconciling”, and “ruling”, and, as we learn from the “Acts of the
Apostles”, “unknown” gods. And now as regards the character of all these
deities: for the Greeks, who in all things studied the beautiful, they
were neither monsters like the gods of Egypt, India, and Phoenicia, nor
incorporeal spirits like the gods of the Persians and the Israelites,
but human existences that never could die, mighty beings with human
feelings, inclinations, and passions. The Greeks knew no Yahve: but then
neither did they know any Devil. Their gods were neither faultless nor
virtueless, just like the Greeks themselves. Of course there are to be
found in Hellenic religion survivals from that period of mythology in
which human and beast forms were mingled. This we see in the Centaurs,
the Chimaera, the Minotaur, the Satyrs, etc.; but such beings were
become merely figures in folk-tales, and there they enacted parts
ranging from terror to farce: they no more received divine honors. And
the same is to be said of daemons and malign spirits, relegated to the
domain of superstition and the realm of poesy.
2. HELLENIC DIVINE WORSHIP.
Grecian religion was a function of state. Its adogmatism, it is true,
abated the apprehension this fact might inspire for freedom of thought:
but, on the other hand, religion came to be a cloak for the designs of
political parties. Thus, for example, Socrates was put out of the way by
the party opposed to him on the pretext that he had apostatized from the
religion of the state. Heresy trials, except as stirred up by
politicians, had no place among the Greeks. Philosophers and Initiates
of the mysteries fearlessly expressed their convictions, however much
opposed the same might be on one side or the other to the official
theology: nay, comedy, and even the comedies of the tory Aristophanes
introduced the gods in the most ridiculous and most disgraceful
situations on the stage. It was enough for the state if the public
worship of the gods, whose festivals were commanded, and whose
sacrifices were prescribed by public authority, went on: for the state
what individuals thought was of no consequence: the state cared neither
for the upholding of positive nor for the putting down of negative
beliefs. The public worship was regarded as a sort of legal transaction
between the gods and the people: the gods were entitled to sacrifices,
and the people to divine aid, and the two parties were held to make
faithful exchange. Violation of temples and profanation of sacred things
were, therefore, grievous crimes. One need not believe in miracles
wrought by images of gods: but one must leave the images alone. And,
inasmuch as the gods were officially recognized as vested with rights
before the law, therefore, upon complaint made—and then only—denial of
their existence, scoffing, and blasphemy were punished with banishment
as the worst sort of crimes. Nor was there in this any fanaticism or any
intolerance, simply an idea of right and wrong. That this is so is
proved by the fact that there was no prohibition of the bringing in of
alien gods or of the worship of such, provided only the customs of the
land were not infringed; nay, alien gods, if their religion gained
vogue, might be adopted into the religion of the state.
Such freedom of religion could, of course, exist only where no priestly
caste existed, nor, in fact, any special priestly class. It was
competent for persons in various walks of life to perform religious
ceremonies. In the name of the state, the king (or other head of the
government) “transacted business” with the gods, for example, conducted
the sacrifices. Only in temples and other localities consecrated to
divine worship were priests as such employed: but outside the walls of
these they had nothing to do; for instance, they had nothing to do with
men’s consciences. In Hellas the priest had no privileges, no influence
such as he had in Egypt, and priestly societies and priestly secret
doctrine were out of the question. The service of some of the gods was
conducted by women, and in the worship of certain deities only unmarried
priests could engage; there were also certain other restrictions put on
the priest’s mode of life.
Among the Greeks religious ministration was no more restricted to
certain places than to certain persons. The gods were everywhere, the
highest inhabiting Olympus, others the sea, the netherworld, certain
groves, trees, streams, mountains, grottoes, etc. Not in temples alone,
but everywhere stood altars: in houses, in the streets, in forests. All
consecrated places, whether temples or sacred groves, etc., were Asyla,
places of refuge for offenders against law. The honor done to the gods
consisted in:
1. Invocation, comprising Prayers addressed, whether to the images of
the gods or to their supposed abode, and pronounced low or loud or in
song; Oaths, summoning the gods as witnesses of truth—this at times
degenerated into a species of Ordeal; Imprecations, calling on the gods
to punish evildoers.
2. Votive Offerings (anathemata), objects of all kinds laid at the feet
of the gods’ images: the offering might be an animal, fattened specially
for the god, or it might be a person dedicated for life to the service
of the god by himself, his father, or his master.
3. Sacrifices, mostly meat and drink offerings, but sometimes living
animals immolated to the gods, in atonement for sin, or to ratify
treaties, or to obtain an intimation of the divine will or
foreknowledge. In the earliest times human victims were immolated.
If religion consists in a belief in superterrestrial powers and in
worship of them, so, on the other hand, the belief in miracle has its
root in the conviction that this worship is answered by action of the
heavenly powers on the physical world. One instance of this action of
the supersensual world is called Revelation. Here the Grecian religion
was distinguished from other forms of belief in that it accepted no
official standing revelation which every one was required to believe,
while it maintained the possibility of a revelation from the gods for
emergencies. This belief was firmly held even by the most eminent
Grecian philosophers, in particular by Socrates and the Stoics. And if
the granting of prayers and the decision of questions by ordeals was a
first feeble step toward revelation, the same mistaken belief led to
still further degeneration of the religious idea in the forms of
Seership, Oracles, and Conjuration.
Seership (in Greek, mantike, seer’s art) was unintentional or
intentional. Unintentional seership we see in dreams, and in trance.
Intentional seership was practiced by interpretation of signs or omens
(sign-reading). A seer (mantis) was one who practiced sign-reading,
whether self-deluded or simply pretending to be under divine
inspiration. Folklore and history tell of famous seers who foretold the
future from observation of the flight of birds, atmospheric phenomena,
the position of constellations, and the entrails of animals; or who
interpreted dreams and on occasion had ecstasies and visions. Then there
were unprofessional practicers of the art who divined the future by
other means; thus one would write the letters of the alphabet in a
circle on the ground, lay on each letter a grain of corn, then let a
cock pick up the grains, the operator meanwhile carefully noting the
order in which the grains were picked up: this was known as alectromancy
(Gr., alektor, cock; manteia, seership, divination).
Oracles are properly divinations obtainable only in particular places
(as temples and other sanctuaries), and practiced only by duly qualified
persons. There were several kinds of oracles, viz.:
1. Oracles from Signs. The most ancient oracle of this class was that of
Zeus at Dodona, in Epirus, mentioned by Homer. The priests of the
sanctuary at Dodona divined by observation of the rustling of the leaves
of the sacred oak; they also cast lots on the altar, or questioned a
sacred bronze basin.
2. Sententious Oracles. These were all sanctuaries sacred to Apollo, and
were numerous in Hellas and Asia Minor. The most notable of them was one
at Delphi. The minister of the oracle of Delphi, a virgin priestess
called the Pythia, while questioning the oracle sat on a tripod which
stood over a crevice in the ground; thence issued a gas, and,
intoxicated by inhaling this, the Pythia uttered words which the priests
dressed up in verse or in sententious form.
3. Dream Oracles. Of these there were many, in sanctuaries dedicated to
Asklepios (Aesculapius, god of leechcraft) to which the sick were taken
in order that through interpretation of the dreams they had on the spot
they might obtain from the priests of Asklepios counsel upon the healing
of their complaints. The most renowned of this class of oracles was at
Epidaurus, in Argolis.
Conjuration, which developed into magic, was much used in ancient
Greece, especially after the Greeks had come in contact with the
Oriental world; but the gods and daemons concerned in this practice were
all taken from foreign mythologies. People believed in conjuration of
the weather, in transformation of men into animals, in love potions,
etc., and employed magic formulas expressed in words that no one
understood and that belonged to no earthly language.
3. THE HELLENIC MYSTERIES.
Such was the theology, and such the thaumatology[1]—image and
reflection—of Grecian religion. The two elements constitute the popular
religion, the religion of feeling, worship of the gods, as far as
sensibility is concerned. But in the most ancient times there stood over
against the popular religion (in Greece as in Egypt) a religion of
priests, their Initiates, and Elect; over against the religion of
feeling a religion of reflection; over against the naif, sensorial view,
the sentimental, romantic, mystical one, the one which aims to acquire
for belief an ethical side, and to subordinate that to faith. This phase
of religion results from the mystic consideration that the individual is
essentially different from the divine nature, subject thereto, and
dependent on it; in short, it results from the idea of “alienation from
God,” toward which the superstitions of seership, oracles and magic were
already showing the way. It was the impulse, given by reflection, to
“seek the lost god” that led to the institution of mysteries in Greece:
men were no longer satisfied with gods that were but man’s equals. The
mysteries contradict the origin of religion in feeling, they deny its
dependence on art and the beautiful; they ponder and brood over the lost
god, and are ever seeking him. They would subordinate life and all its
interests to his service; they would regulate all man’s acts, and hence
morality, according to faith; they hold in contempt either man’s power
or his knowledge. The Grecian mysteries, indeed, borrowed from the
popular religion its art, and turned it to account, but in them art was
not cultivated for itself, and science was completely ignored. As
science was free in Hellas and not tied to any priestly order, the
mysteries could there render no service: there was nothing for them to
do. Of all the many philosophers of Greece, not one employed the
doctrines of the mysteries in his system: not one showed any regard for
them. The mysteries were then what they had ever been, and still are, to
wit, self-introspection, interpretation of divine things, a mourning
over the lost god, and search after the same, an endeavor for union with
God, for grace and salvation, a sensible delight in the thought of a god
suffering and dying, in meditation on the soul’s state after death, on
revelation, incarnation, and resurrection; and a representation of all
these ideas in dramatic forms and ceremonies the main effect of which is
to make an illusive and blinding impression on the senses.
Footnote 1:
The original has Goetterglaube, belief in gods, and Wunderglaube,
belief in miracles, in allusion to the preceding section 2.
Goetterglaube is of course equivalent to “theology,” and if so, then
Wunderglaube is equivalent to “thaumatology” from Greek thaumata,
miracles, and logos, discourse.
Thus, the Grecian mysteries were the exact opposite of genuine
Hellenism. Cheerfulness, joyousness, clearness of perception and of
thought, absence of all mists and vapors, were the notes of your true
Hellene: his statues of gods with their grand, bold, full, rounded
contours to this day demonstrate this; and his superstition even took
things just as they looked to him. On the other hand, gloom, ruefulness,
a morbid, overweening, owlish phantastry, symbolry, mysticism, with
every shallow trick of strained interpretation, and all the smugnesses
of pharisaic piety are the earmarks of your mystic. On the one side day
on the other night, there action here quest and longing, there fact here
makebelieve, there alertness here moping, there a hearty meal off what
is at hand here a hungering and thirsting after truth that never can be
attained. The mysteries were therefore in every way ungrecian,
outlandish, and abnormal. They had no fit place on Hellenic soil, nor in
that age; they were the propaedeutic of a future age when one should
come upon the scene who was to hurl Olympos, Okeanos, and Hades into the
everlasting night of oblivion.
And yet from the difference between the Grecian mysteries and the
ordinary life of the people it by no means follows that the Initiates
did not find satisfaction, at least a partial satisfaction, in these
mystic exercitations. The man who nurses the feeling of a want for
something other than what his times and his surroundings afford, finds
at the last in his very brooding the satisfaction of his need.
Sentimental, romantic, fanciful, and mystical characters, therefore,
must find uncommon delight in mysteries, while practical, clear-sighted,
undistorted, and strictly logical minds are unmoved by them. Let us then
listen to the testimony of two celebrated mystae, a Grecian and a Roman,
both, it is true, living in a time when their respective nations had
begun to decline. The tragic poet Euripides sings: “O blest is he whose
fortune it is to have learned the divine initiations; he sanctifies his
life.” And Cicero (De Legibus II., 14) makes Marcus say to Atticus: “Of
all the grand, and as I fain would think, the divine elements imported
by thy Athens into human life, there is nought better than those
Mysteries whereby we have been developed out of rudeness and savagery
and trained to the human manner of life. And we, too, even as the
Mysteries are called Initia (beginnings) so in them have found the
principles (a play on words, “initia” and “principia,” principles, being
homonyms) of right living, and have learned not only to live joyously,
but also to die with better hope.” Then, as shadow follows light, he
adds: “The thing I do mislike in the nocturnal rites, is told in the
comic poets. Were such liberties permitted in Rome, what had not that
infamous wretch (Clodius) done, who brought lewdness into the presence
of certain sacred rites upon which ’twere sin even to glance
unwittingly.”
The Grecian mysteries were no monopoly of the priests or of any other
class: no man was excluded except such as by their life proved
themselves unworthy of initiation. The origin of these mysteries is
found in the rites of Purification and Atonement. In the earliest times
the purifications were nothing but bodily cleansings prescribed to those
who took part in religious ceremonies: later they took on a moral
significance, as the sense of alienation from God gained ground. With
the consciousness of sin, with the need of obtaining forgiveness, and,
to that end, of knowing a deity free from all sin, and hence totally
unlike man, mysticism begins and develops. Expiations came into vogue
little by little, especially for bloodguiltiness, and were used in the
popular religion. These consisted of certain ceremonies in which the
blood of animals and incense were employed; in the case of individuals
such rites might lessen the punishment under mitigating circumstances;
they might, in the case of cities and states, efface the stains of
murderous crimes committed during revolts or civil strifes. In all the
mysteries purifications and expiations played a great part. Whatever has
been handed down with regard to these mysteries is found in the sections
following.
4. THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES.
The most ancient, most celebrated, and most venerable among the Grecian
mysteries were those instituted at Eleusis, in Attica, in honor of the
goddess Demeter (called by the Latins Ceres) and her daughter Persephone
(Proserpina), and later of a male deity also, known in the mysteries
under the name of Iacchos; and though there is no affinity between the
letters I and B, Iacchos came in time to stand for Bacchus. The original
Iacchos would seem to have been a god in the people’s religion, and this
name is probably related to Jao (found in Jovispater, Jupiter) and to
the Hebrew Yahve. Diodorus (I., 94) gives the name Jao to the God of the
Hebrews; and an oracular utterance of the Apollo of Claros says:
Know thou that the highest of all the gods is named Jao, and In Winter
Aides, and Zeus in opening Spring, then Helios in Summer, and once
more Jaos in Fall.
The fact that Jaos was the harvest-god tended strongly to identify him
with Bacchus, personification of the sun which ripens the grape; and,
besides, Bacchus was allied to Demeter (originally Gemeter—Earthmother)
who was the patroness of husbandry. The name of the city, Eleusis, means
in Greek “advent”, and it commemorates the stay of Demeter there in the
course of her wandering in search of her daughter: a like story is told
of Isis in Egypt. In gratitude for their hospitality, Demeter bestowed
on the people of Eleusis the bread-grain and the mysteries. From Eleusis
the cult of the two deities spread all over Greece and part of Asia
Minor, and in a modified form passed into Italy: in several places arose
affiliated institutions resembling that at Eleusis, having the same
festivals and the same secret cult; but Eleusis always held the
supremacy. The buildings at Eleusis, in the pure Doric style, consisted
of the temple of Demeter and the Mystic House, in which the secret
festivals were held. They were connected with Athens by the “Sacred
Way”, a road flanked by temples and sanctuaries: in Athens itself was an
Eleusinian building (Eleusinion) in which a portion of the mysteries was
celebrated. In front of the city gate toward the Piraeus was also a
sanctuary dedicated to this cult, and furthermore an Eleusinion at
Agrae. The buildings at Eleusis stood till the fourth century of our
era: they were then destroyed by the Goths under Alaric, at the
instigation of monkish fanatics.
The Eleusinia were always under the direction of the Athenian
Government. When Athens became a democracy the functions till then
performed by the King, as protector of the Eleusinia, devolved on the
head of the executive, the Archons, who, therefore, bore the title
Basileus (king) because the most important duties of the King had been
concerned with Eleusis and its Mysteries. The Basileus was assisted by
four councilors (epimeletae), of whom two were chosen from among the
Athenians, and other two from the two Eleusinian gentes, Eumolpidae, and
Kerytae. The report on the celebration of the Mysteries was always
rendered to the Grand Council (Boule) of Athens, assembled in the
Eleusinion. The function of priest in the institutions at Eleusis was
always the exclusive privilege of the Eumolpidae and Kerytae. The chief
of the priests was the hierophant, and with him was associated a
hierophantess. Next to these in dignity were the torchbearer (daduchus),
the sacred herald (hierokeryx), and the “altar-priest.” These officials
constituted the Sacred Council, which had the immediate direction of the
mysteries.
It would be a great mistake to regard the Eleusinian Mysteries as a
result of illuminism or rationalism. Rather were they an institution not
less religious, not less faithful to the ancient traditions than the
popular religion itself; with this difference only, that the latter
contented itself with honoring the gods contemplated in the human form,
while the mysteries emphasized the infinite pre-eminence of the divine
nature over the human. Hence the mystic religion was guarded by the
state authorities with the same zeal as the anthropomorphic religion of
the vulgar.
No one saw in the one any danger to the other. The two forms of religion
were branches of one tree, Pantheism, and herein only differed, that the
one saw the Divine in all earthly things, the other sought for it there
and strove for union with it. It is equally vain to look in the
Eleusinia for either Rationalism or Monotheism. Monotheism, i. e.,
absolute severance of the earthly from the divine without hope of union,
was a purely Oriental idea, quite incomprehensible to the Grecian mind:
no ancient Greek writer ever dreamed of a creative demiurgus, in the
Egyptian sense, nor of an angry and revengeful Yahve, like the Hebrews.
So great was the veneration for the Eleusinia among the Grecian states,
that during the mystic festivals hostilities were suspended between
opposing armies; and despisers of the mysteries, betrayers of the secret
doctrine, and unbidden witnesses of the rites, were punished capitally
or with lifelong banishment. In the year 411 B. C. the poet Diagoras of
Melos, who threw a figure of Herakles into fire, to put the hero to his
thirteenth labor, and who had betrayed the mysteries, was banished for
his irreligion. Even after the death of Hellenic liberty the Roman
emperors took an interest in maintaining the Eleusinian sanctuaries.
Hadrian sought and obtained the initiation, Antoninus erected edifices
at Eleusis, nay, some of the early Christian emperors, as Constantius
II. and Jovian, in their decrees forbidding nocturnal festivals made an
exception of the Eleusinia; and after the destruction of the sacred
buildings, the rites seem to have been still practiced.
The sum of all that is known of the doctrine taught at Eleusis is as
follows: The myth underlying these mysteries was the rape, by Pluto, of
Persephone, daughter of Demeter. Pluto, god of the netherworld in the
popular belief, lord of the abode of the damned, in other terms, the
personification of the sun that goes down in the west, hence of the sun
of the nighttime, or of the Wintertime, carries off Persephone
(personification of the world of plants), as she is plucking flowers
(for as the cold season comes on the flowers wither and die), and takes
her with him to the realm of shades, where she occupies the throne with
him. But her mother Demeter, being, as goddess of the earth, the mother
of the plant-world, and so too protectress of husbandry, wanders about
lamenting, for indeed the earth loses its adornments, its loveliest
features, in Winter. But at last the gods take pity on the hapless
wanderer and bring about an agreement between her and Pluto, whereby
Persephone is permitted to live in the upperworld in Summer, returning
to the netherworld for Winter: here is signified the fecundity of the
soil, and also the resurrection of man after his body has been dropped
like a grain of corn in the earth. The union of Persephone with Bacchus,
i. e., with the sun-god whose work is to promote fruitfulness, is an
idea special to the mysteries, and means the union of humanity with
godhead, the consummation aimed at in the mystic rites. Hence in all
probability the central teaching of the mysteries was Personal
Immortality, analogue of the return of the bloom to plants in Spring.