Zeus, whom she took to Crete, as we have already seen, to save him from
his father’s violence. She is the Earth deified, like her mother Gaea,
and is therefore often confounded with other goddesses answering to the
same element, specially with the earth-goddess Kybele (Cybele), named
after Mt. Kybelos or Kybela in Phrygia, who, according to Phrygian myth,
when exposed by her father, King Maeon, was suckled by panthers and
brought up by herdsmen, and afterward fell in love with the youth Attis
(afterward Papas, both meaning “father”), of whom she exacted a vow of
chastity as her priest. Attis having broken his vow for the sake of a
lovely nymph, the goddess in her wrath deprived him of reason, and in
his frenzy he castrated himself. The goddess thereupon ordained that in
future all her priests should be eunuchs. There are countless other
stories told of Attis and Cybele, but they nearly all agree in telling
that Attis with manhood lost life also, and that Cybele, frenzied by
grief, thereafter roamed about disconsolate and despairing. Like
Dionysos, she was always followed by a long human and animal retinue
(the moon with the starry host!), and rode in a wain drawn by lions, a
mural crown circling her veiled head; while Attis was always represented
as an ecstatically sentimental youth beneath a tree, with the Phrygian
cap on his head and wearing white bag trousers. In Phrygia Cybele was
worshiped under the form of a simple stone. The scene of her feats and
sufferances was laid in gorgeous wildernesses, in fragrant groves, among
the hillsides and glades known to the shepherd and the hunter. As in
Dionysos we see the wild abandon of a jovial spirit, so in Cybele we
have the recklessness of a soul weary of life; hence at her festivals
all centred in the loss of Attis, and a pine tree was felled, because
his catastrophe took place under a tree of that species. All this was
accompanied by a hubbub of wild music, and the winding of horns on the
second day announced the resurrection of Attis. In the ecstasy of joy
the participants were seized by a wild frenzy. With shouts and cries,
their long locks disheveled, and in their hands bearing torches, the
priests danced and capered like madmen, roaming over hill and dale,
mutilating themselves, even emasculating themselves (as the myth
required), and bearing about, instead of the figure of the Phallus, the
proofs of their compliance with the precept of the goddess. The cult of
Cybele was for the first time formally organized as a mystic society in
Rome, but the orgiast frenzy clung to it at all times. The processions
did not move with measured steps and in orderly ranks, as those of other
cults, but the Initiates ran in confused troops, shouting their
religious songs, through hamlets and towns, armed with curved blades,
tokens of castration. At Rome the priests of Cybele were called Galli,
that is, cocks. In the time of the emperors purifications in the blood
of bulls and rams were introduced, apparently in honor of the
Springtide, when the sun enters the constellations Taurus and Aries, and
the vegetable powers of nature reappear. That is the theme of all the
ancient mysteries, and indeed of all mysticism from the earliest times
to this day. In all of them the vicissitudes of the vegetal world, its
sickening, decline, and death in the Fall, its new-birth and
resurrection in the Spring, are allegorized into the sufferances, the
death and the resurrection of a god. Out of this nature-cult are little
by little developed the feeling of alienation of man from God, the quest
for the god, the finding of him, and the consequent reunion, with the
result of strengthening the assurance of the soul’s immortality. The
excess of sensual delight found in the Bacchanalia, and the extreme
renunciation of delights by the castrate ministers of Cybele, are only
variations of one same theory of human life.
Now, as this suffering godhead—which was the prime inspiration of all
these sensualists and adventurers—was an importation from Thrace in the
form of Zagreus-Dionysos, and from Phrygia as Attis, so was Mithras an
importation from Persia. Among the ancient Persians Mithras was the
light, conceived as a personality, and hence was the highest
manifestation of the good god Ormuzd, while the darkness represented
Ahriman, the evil god. Hence the worship of Mithras is worship of the
light, and, therefore is the purest cult that heathendom could imagine;
in the later times of the Persian empire Mithras worship was combined
with sun-worship, and Mithras, as sun-god, found a place in the religion
of European peoples. In those later times also came belief in a female
deity called Mithra: but Mithra was unknown to the primitive Persians,
and the name was a transformation of the Babylonian Mylitta, the
moon-goddess. Of the existence of secret cults among the Persians we
know nothing whatever, hence nothing about any mysteries sacred to
Mithras. To the Greeks Mithras was unknown, but in the latter days of
the Roman empire, among many mysteries those of Mithras made their
appearance and even gained great pre-eminence, as is proved by numerous
monuments still extant. These monuments all consist of representations
in stone of a young man in a cave, wearing the Phrygian cap, in the act
of slaying with a dagger a bull; all around are figures of men and
animals, all symbolical of constellations, as the scorpion, dog,
serpent, etc. The groups have been variously interpreted, but the most
probable view is that the youth stands for the sun-god, who, on subduing
Taurus (in May), begins to develop his highest power.
The mysteries of Mithras, like their symbolic representation in the
monuments, were celebrated in grottoes, and had for their original end
worship of light and of the sun, and the glorifying of the sun’s victory
over the darkness; but this lofty idea gave way, in these as in other
mysteries, to vain reveries and subtilities; and in the corrupt age of
the Roman emperors it had, in all probability, some very ugly
developments, such as were seen in the Bacchanalia. The rites of
initiation were more elaborate than in the Grecian mysteries. The
postulants were subjected to a long series of probationary tests—eighty
in all, it is supposed—which grew more and more severe till they became
actually dangerous to life. Among the initiatory rites the principal
ones were a baptism and the drinking of a potion of meal and water.
Admission to the highest secrets was reached through several degrees,
probably seven, each having its special ritual and its special
doctrines. At times the Initiates were required to fast, and those of
the highest degree were vowed to celibacy. Such abstinences were all
unknown to the ancient Persians; on the other hand human sacrifices came
in with Mithraism from the East, and, despite the decrees of the Emperor
Hadrian, such sacrifices were offered in the Mithras cult. Commodus with
his own hand immolated a man to Mithras, and his successors, in
particular the monster Heliogabalus, carried the abomination farther,
and made of the pure god of light a bloodthirsty Moloch. Nay, after the
empire had been christianized, Julian the apostate consecrated in
Constantinople a sanctuary to Mithras. But after the death of Julian the
cult was forbidden in the empire (A. D. 378) and the grotto of Mithras
at Rome destroyed. Coins were struck in honor of Mithras, and he was
honored with public inscriptions in the words, Soli Invicto (to the
unconquered sun); a festival also was instituted in his honor, called
the Natal Day of the Unconquered Sun: it fell on December 25th and was
publicly observed: the same day was in Persia New Year’s. In the
monuments already mentioned, which commemorate the worship of Mithras,
are seen inscribed alongside the neck of the bull the words “Nama
Sebesio,” supposed by some to be a mixture of Sanskrit and Persian, and
to signify Worship to the Pure; but in these words we have an allusion
to a new god and his cult. In the latter Graeco-Roman time, when the
mystery craze possessed all minds, a combination of Zagreus, Attis, and
Mithras was made, and the result was dubbed Sabazius. The name Sabazius
is given by sundry writers to various gods and sons of gods, and the
word comes probably from the Greek verb Sabazein (to smash, break to
pieces), indicating the wild disorder of this cult. Diodorus gives this
name to the inventor of the use of oxen in ploughing, other authors
confound Sabazius, as discoverer of the vine, with Bacchus. There
existed in Greece a public and a secret cult of Sabazius, both
resembling the Bacchic cult, with ludicrous dances, uproarious singing,
and loud thumping of cymbals and drums. The orator Aeschines, rival of
Demosthenes, was an enthusiastic Sabazist. At initiation into the
Sabazian mysteries the postulant had snakes dropped into his bosom, was
robed in fawnskin, his face daubed with clay, then washed in token of a
mystic purification; he was now to exclaim: From evil I am escaped and
have found the better. There was much hocuspocus and absurd jugglery
withal, but the real object was to give opportunity to Initiates of both
sexes to indulge in the most shameless gluttony and lewdness. The
priests of this cult were the most impudent of mendicants. Aristophanes
exhausted on Sabazius, the “trumpery god,” all the resources of his
caustic sarcasm.
And thus in time, as Grecian philosophy began to undermine the thrones
of the Olympian gods, and to banish the phantoms of the netherworld, and
the educated people to look on the fair forms of the world of gods as
fictions of imagination; simultaneously the mysteries began to be stript
of the glory of a heavenly origin, and it was seen that their rites were
not only of the earth earthy, but as time went on, that they were become
mischievous: yet the Initiates, lost to all shame and all moral sense,
persisted nevertheless in their sacred hypocrisy, till heathendom as a
whole had passed out of the bloody, hideous night of the gods.
_PART THIRD._
_The Pythagorean League and Other Secret Associations_.
1. PYTHAGORAS.
The mysteries so far considered had for their foundation the worship of
the gods. They were accessible only to the initiated; but candidates for
admission were not carefully selected; and in Athens anyone of fair
repute was eligible for initiation into the Eleusinia. Nor do we discern
in the mysteries any “end” aimed at—any idea to be realized, any thought
to be embodied in action. From all that we can learn with certainty
regarding the mysteries, their object was either simply to illustrate or
interpret certain ideas (such as we have already characterized) by means
of elaborate ceremonies; or—in their state of decay and degeneration—to
minister to unbridled sensuality. For this reason we cannot regard the
mysteries we have been studying as true “secret societies,” for the
distinctive note of such societies is that they make a special selection
of their members, and have a specific aim. The earliest historic
instance of such a secret society is afforded by the Pythagorean League.
The great philosopher Pythagoras was a sort of Grecian Moses or Jesus, a
Messiah to whom were ascribed supreme wisdom, far-reaching plans, ideas
of worldwide reform; who proclaimed new ideas, quite unknown in the
previous history of his nation, and preached a new system of nature and
of life; who gathered around him disciples that swore in his words and
pursued peculiar ends disconnected from the interests of this world; who
on that account was, with his disciples, persecuted, prisoned, and
martyred for his principles, by a world which deemed itself outraged;
and whose history, because of its extraordinary character, became deeply
incrusted with fable and fiction, till at last there was left only a
figure in which, if not quite impossible, it is certainly difficult, to
decide how far it conforms to the truth.
Pythagoras was born in the island of Samos B. C. 580, or, according to
some authorities, 569. He is represented as of distinguished presence
and imposing stature. That he possessed uncommon intellectual power is
shown by his scientific discoveries and by his wonderfully organized
discipleship. Even in his youthful years, it is related, he busied
himself with his favorite sciences, mathematics and music, the mutual
relations of which and their mutual influence he is, in fact, believed
to have discovered. His years of study ended—of them we have no definite
knowledge—his years of travel followed. And whither should a man in his
day, athirst for wisdom, direct his steps if not to the land of wonders
on the Nile, where the veiled image at Sais sat enthroned, and where the
mystic silence of the priests suggested to the visitant treasures of
knowledge hidden in their temples? Whether the counsel to visit Egypt
came from Thales, first of Grecian philosophers to seek the land of
Nile—tradition, which gives the glamour to everything, likes to bring
renowned men together; whether Polycrates, tyrannos of Samos, commended
him to his friend the Pharao Amasis—of this we have no certainty, though
the thing is not improbable, for the chronology is consistent,
especially when we bear in mind the discrepancies between authors as to
the year of Pythagoras’s birth: at all events, Pythagoras voyaged to
Egypt. The serious difficulties he met with on the part of the priests
of Osiris, then not so complaisant as they afterward became, we have
described already when giving account of the Egyptian mysteries. By hook
or by crook he obtained, whether at Thebes, Heliopolis, or elsewhere, we
know not, indoctrination in the theology of the One God. But of what
avail could that be to him? His countrymen had already fashioned their
own ideas of the divine nature. They based their theology on nature and
spiritualized nature: the Greeks knew nothing of an impassable gulf
yawning between god and world; for them these two were bound together
and pervaded each other: to such a people one could not preach an
“architect of the universe.” Pythagoras, therefore, fain would
communicate to the Greeks of the Egyptian wisdom whatever seemed adapted
to their use; and he the more willingly complied with the Initiate’s
oath to observe lifelong silence regarding what he had seen and heard in
the temples, as his countrymen would not have understood even a
monotheism specially designed for them. For the Greeks the intimate
association between god and universe was not only an idea, it was flesh
of their flesh, bone of their bones: it was gloriously immortalized in
the imperishable masterworks of their architecture and sculpture, and
surely Grecian sculptors must not go to school in Egypt to learn how to
carve cows’ horns and hawks’ heads. Nevertheless, the doctrine of the
one god must necessarily have impressed the mind of Pythagoras deeply:
he must have recognized therein a profound philosophy, though it may not
have satisfied him completely; and hence it was his task, as it was the
task of Plato and of all other Greeks initiated in the Egyptian
mysteries, to expound the doctrine of the one god according to Grecian
ideas—to couple Oriental wisdom with Grecian fancy.
The traditional story represents Pythagoras as tarrying in Egypt when
the Persian king Cambyses conquered the country, and tells how that
tyrant had the Grecian philosopher deported, with other captives, to
Babylon, where Pythagoras became acquainted with Zoroaster, and to his
knowledge of the Egyptian wisdom now added a mastery of the wisdom of
the Persians. Pythagoras was undoubtedly contemporary with Cambyses; but
the time of Zoroaster is so undecided that the story must be regarded as
fiction.
When he returned to his native Samos, purposing to set up as a master,
he found to his chagrin that independent science is a plant that does
not thrive under tyranny, and, compelled by force of circumstances to
change his abode, he settled in Magna Graecia—Southern Italy. On the
eastern coast, in what became afterward Calabria, were two Achaean
cities, Sybaris and Crotona. Pythagoras intended at first to make his
home in Sybaris, but Sybaris could be no congenial home for such a
philosopher. Crotona afforded a more promising field for his work, and
there the labors of Pythagoras before long were abundantly rewarded. The
Greeks ever were eager for novelties (novarum rerum cupidi), and whoever
brought anything new was welcome. As yet, philosophy was a thing unknown
among the Crotoniats; therefore they received its apostle with gladness
and enthusiasm. Pythagoras commenced by giving public lectures in the
council hall; as these awakened more and more interest every day, the
philosopher was employed by the authorities to give counsel to the
citizens; he then established a school, thus adding to his public
functions the duties of a private instructor. Pythagoras used three
agencies in his work, viz., his Doctrine, his School, and the League
instituted by him.
The Doctrine of Pythagoras holds a distinct place among the philosophic
systems of the Greeks. With regard to the opposition existing between
the spiritual and the physical, and the uncertainty and obscurity that
reigns as to the relations between them and the true constitution of
each, the doctrine solves all difficulties by the theory that Number is
at once the form and the substance of all things. All things consist of
Numbers, corporeal elements as well as spiritual (mental, or
intellectual) forces, and henceforth Pythagoras’s philosophy became
mathematics. But the silly tricks with numbers that occupied the
ingenuity of later Pythagoreans possess no interest for us. It is
probable that the master contented himself with the undeniable fact that
the matter and essence of things rest on mathematical relations—a view
of great profundity, considering the age in which the philosopher lived.
To Pythagoras and his school are credited the distinction of numbers
into even and odd, the decimal numeration, square and cubic numbers, as
also the famous Pythagorean theorem, the triumph of geometry.
Pythagoras brought music into closest relation with mathematics. As in
numbers he recognized the most perfect “harmony,” so he must needs
regard harmony of sounds as a necessary part of the harmony of numbers.
By this association he became the discoverer of our present scale of
seven musical notes—the octave. But his idea of harmony found most
perfect embodiment in the universal creation, and in astronomy he was
the first to surmise that the earth does not stand still, but has a
revolution around a centre; hence, that it is not the principal
existence in the universal frame of things, that all things do not exist
for its sake, that Earth is not twin sister of the Heavens. True,
Pythagoras had no idea, nor could have in the then existing lack of
astronomical instruments, how the heavenly bodies were related: that was
the discovery of Copernicus and Kepler. He took for the mid-point of the
universe a “central fire” out of which were formed all the heavenly
bodies—this the seat of the power that sustains the world, the centre of
gravity of all things. Around this central fire revolve the “ten”
heavenly bodies—farthest off the heaven of the fixed stars, then the
five planets known to antiquity, then the sun, moon, earth, and lastly
the “counter-earth”, which revolves between the earth and the central
fire. Revolving along with the earth, the counter-earth is always
interposed between the earth and the central fire: light comes to the
earth only indirectly, by reflection from the sun. When the earth is on
the same side of the central fire as the sun we have day; when it is on
the other side, night. Thus, Pythagoras may be said to have surmised a
central sun, though his theory did not contemplate the actual sun as
that centre. He was also the first to explain the vicissitudes of the
seasons by the obliquity of the earth’s axis to the ecliptic. Further,
he discovered the identity of the morning and evening star. His school
held the moon to be the home of fairer and larger plants, animals, and
human creatures, than those of earth. In accordance with his doctrine of
harmony he ventured to express the bold idea that the heavenly bodies by
their movement produce tones which together constitute a perfectly
harmonious music—the music of the spheres. We do not hear this harmony,
being so wonted to it.
Nor did he fail to apply to the soul of man this doctrine of harmony. By
harmony the opposition between reason and passion was to be reconciled.
But as this consummation is never to be achieved as long as soul and
body are tied together, the sage of Samos regarded this union as a
measure of probation, destined to endure till man shall have made
himself worthy of liberation from the same; and when he fails of this
during his span of life, then his soul must migrate through the bodies
of other men and animals till it shall become worthy of leading, in a
higher region of light, an incorporeal life of purity and perfection.
His disciples, furthermore, cherished the fantastic idea that the master
was able to recognize in another body the man whose soul had
transmigrated into it. That Pythagoras himself ever pretended or
believed that he himself was in his fifth metempsychosis, or that he was
son of Apollo, or that he had a golden hip, or a golden thigh, are
either ridiculous extravaganzas of imaginative disciples or the
sarcastic stories of his enemies. But noble and beautiful are the
conclusions which he draws from his doctrine regarding purity of life,
namely, the moral precepts which he laid down for the attainment of the
supreme end. They required an absolutely stainless life. Pythagoras
enforced the duty of reverence toward parents and the aged, fidelity in
friendship, strict self-examination, circumspection in all our acts,
patriotism, etc. Further, his disciples were required to be cleanly of
body and cleanly in attire; they were to abstain from all “unclean”
food, especially fleshmeat, and from intoxicating liquors, and hence to
live on bread and fruits only, but beans were an exception to this rule;
for some not fully explained reason beans were an abomination to the
Pythagoreans. And that which was unfit as food was unfit also as matter
for offerings to God: for the god our philosopher reverenced was a god
of light and purity. His clear intellect rejected polytheism, though
what his view of the unity of godhead was we know nothing save that his
faith was an eminently pure and exalted one.
2. THE PYTHAGOREANS.
The life of Pythagoras was devoted entirely to his School and his
League. The School was the seedfield or seminary of the League, and the
League was the practical application of the School’s teaching. Thus the
School was preparatory to the League, whose members were educated in the
School.
Pythagoras enjoyed the boundless reverence of his disciples: when they
wished to assert any proposition as indisputably true, they would say,
He himself said it (Gr., autos ephe, Lat., ipse dixit). And this
reverence for the Master increased as in time the School was changed
from an open institution to a secret one. For at first everybody, even
the most learned and most eminent of the citizens, attended the lectures
of the Philosopher. Those who were simply hearers of the lectures were
called Acusmatics (akusmatikoi). But those who were of proper age for
receiving a further education, and who had leisure to devote themselves
to learning, were afforded opportunity for pursuing higher studies under
the personal direction of Pythagoras, and were known, not as simple
Hearers, but as Students, or Mathematici. These were the nucleus of the
Pythagorean sect. This class of disciples having grown considerably in
numbers and influence, it became possible for Pythagoras, helped by the
contributions that flowed in, to erect for his academy a special
building, or, rather, group of buildings, in which he and his disciples
might live secluded from the influences of the outerworld. This
institution, called the Koinobion (coenobium, place where people live in
community) was a world in itself, and embraced all the conveniences of
plain living—gardens, groves, promenades, halls, baths, etc., so that
the student did not regret the hurlyburly of the world without.
Henceforth the Acusmatici, or Acustici, were no longer persons of all
classes and degrees, admitted to attend the lectures, but the newly
admitted pupils, who received instruction in the elements of the
sciences, and were preparing themselves for the higher studies. They had
to observe strict silence and to yield blind obedience, and were not
permitted to see the Master’s face: at the lectures a curtain screened
him from view. The advanced students were admitted behind the screen,
and hence were called esoterikoi (esoterici, insiders): those before the
curtain, exoterikoi (exoterici, outsiders). To gain admission to the
esoteric class a pupil was required to spend from two to five years in
study, and then had to undergo severe tests. If a student failed to
answer the tests he was rejected: but if he passed successfully, he was
no longer required to observe silence and to be content with listening
only: he might now see the Master face to face, and under his direction
might pursue a study chosen by himself, as philosophy, mathematics,
astronomy, music, etc. Gymnastic exercise was practiced diligently, and
was made the cornerstone of the Pythagorean therapeutic, which for the
rest was a science of dietetic.