sense, that is, what observation and intellect offer, in which case he
limits himself to his personality and withdraws from the cosmos; or he
becomes conscious of the universal cosmic force, and experiences the
eternal within his personality. "He who wishes to escape from God
falls into his own hands. For there are two things to be considered,
the universal Spirit which is God, and one's own spirit. The latter
flees to and takes refuge in the universal Spirit, for one who goes
beyond his own spirit says that it is nothing and connects everything
with God; but one who avoids God, abolishes the First Cause, and makes
himself the cause of everything which happens."
The Platonic view of the universe sets out to be knowledge which by
its very nature is also religion. It brings knowledge into relation
with the highest to which man can attain through his feelings. Plato
will only allow knowledge to hold good when feeling may be completely
satisfied in it. It is then more than science, it is the substance of
life. It is a higher man within man, that man of which the personality
is only an image. Within man is born a being who surpasses him, a
primordial, archetypal man, and this is another secret of the
Mysteries brought to expression in the Platonic philosophy.
Hippolytus, one of the Early Fathers, alludes to this secret. "This is
the great secret of the Samothracians (who were guardians of a certain
Mystery-cult), which cannot be expressed and which only the initiates
know. But these latter speak in detail of Adam, as the primordial,
archetypal man."
The Platonic _Dialogue on Love_, or the _Symposium_, also represents
an initiation. Here love appears as the herald of wisdom. If wisdom,
the eternal word, the Logos, is the Son of the Eternal Creator of the
cosmos, love is related to the Logos as a mother. Before even a spark
of the light of wisdom can flash up in the human soul, a dim impulse
or desire for the divine must be present in it. Unconsciously the
divine must draw man to what afterwards, when raised into his
consciousness, constitutes his supreme happiness. What Heraclitus
calls the "daimon" in man (see p. 49) is connected with the idea of
love. In the _Symposium_, people of the most various ranks and views
of life speak about love,--the ordinary man, the politician, the
scientific man, the satiric poet Aristophanes, and the tragic poet
Agathon. They each have their own view of love, in keeping with their
different experiences of life. The way in which they express
themselves shows the stage at which their "daimon" has arrived (_cf._
p. 49). By love one being is attracted to another. The multiplicity,
the diversity of the things into which divine unity was poured,
aspires towards unity and harmony through love. Thus love has
something divine in it, and owing to this, each individual can only
understand it as far as he participates in the divine.
After these men and others at different degrees of maturity have given
utterance to their ideas about love, Socrates takes up the word. He
considers love from the point of view of a man in search of knowledge.
For him, it is not a divinity, but it is something which leads man to
God. Eros, or love, is for him not divine, for a god is perfect, and
therefore possesses the beautiful and good; but Eros is only the
desire for the beautiful and good. He thus stands between man and God.
He is a "daimon," a mediator between the earthly and the divine.
It is significant that Socrates does not claim to be giving his own
thoughts when speaking of love. He says he is only relating what a
woman once imparted to him as a revelation. It was through mantic art
that he came to his conception of love. Diotima, the priestess,
awakened in Socrates the daimonic force which was to lead him to the
divine. She initiated him.
This passage in the _Symposium_ is highly suggestive. Who is the "wise
woman" who awakened the daimon in Socrates? She is more than a merely
poetic mode of expression. For no wise woman on the physical plane
could awaken the daimon in the soul, unless the daimonic force were
latent in the soul itself. It is surely in Socrates' own soul that we
must also look for this "wise woman." But there must be a reason why
that which brings the daimon to life within the soul should appear as
an outward being on the physical plane. The force cannot work in the
same way as the forces which may be observed in the soul, as belonging
to and native to it. We see that it is the soul-force which precedes
the coming of wisdom which Socrates represents as a "wise woman." It
is the mother-principle which gives birth to the Son of God, Wisdom,
the Logos. The unconscious soul-force which brings the divine into the
consciousness is here represented as the feminine element. The soul
which as yet is without wisdom is the mother of what leads to the
divine. This brings us to an important conception of mysticism. The
soul is recognised as the mother of the divine. Unconsciously it leads
man to the divine, with the inevitableness of a natural force.
This conception throws light on the view of Greek mythology taken in
the Mysteries. The world of the gods is born in the soul. Man looks
upon what he creates in images as his gods (_cf._ p. 33). But he must
force his way through to another conception. He must transmute into
divine images the divine force which is active within him before the
creation of those images. Behind the divine appears the mother of the
divine, which is nothing else than the original force of the human
soul. Thus side by side with the gods, man represents goddesses.
Let us look at the myth of Dionysos in this light. Dionysos is the son
of Zeus and a mortal mother, Semele. Zeus wrests the still immature
child from its mother when she is slain by lightning, and shelters it
in his own side till it is ready to be born. Hera, the mother of the
gods, incites the Titans against Dionysos, and they tear him in
pieces. But Pallas Athene rescues his heart, which is still beating,
and brings it to Zeus. Out of it he engenders his son for the second
time.
In this myth we can accurately trace a process which is enacted in the
depths of the human soul. Interpreting it in the manner of the
Egyptian priest who instructed Solon about the nature of myths (_cf._
p. 78 _et seq._), we might say, it is related that Dionysos was the
son of a god and of a mortal mother, that he was torn in pieces and
afterwards born again. This sounds like a fable, but it contains the
truth of the birth of the divine and its destiny in the human soul.
The divine unites itself with the earthly, temporal human soul. As
soon as the divine, Dionysiac element stirs within the soul, it feels
a violent desire for its own true spiritual form. Ordinary
consciousness, which once again appears in the form of a female
goddess, Hera, becomes jealous at the birth of the divine out of the
higher consciousness. It arouses the lower nature of man (the Titans).
The still immature divine child is torn in pieces. Thus the divine
child is present in man as intellectual science broken up. But if
there be enough of the higher wisdom (Zeus) in man to be active, it
nurses and cherishes the immature child, which is then born again as a
second son of God (Dionysos). Thus from science, which is the
fragmentary divine force in man, is born undivided wisdom, which is
the Logos, the son of God and of a mortal mother, of the perishable
human soul, which unconsciously aspires after the divine. As long as
we see in all this merely a process in the soul and look upon it as a
picture of this process, we are a long way from the spiritual reality
which is enacted in it. In this spiritual reality the soul is not
merely experiencing something in itself, but it has been released from
itself and is taking part in a cosmic event, which is not enacted
within the soul, in reality, but outside it.
Platonic wisdom and Greek myths are closely linked together, so too
are the myths and the wisdom of the Mysteries. The created gods were
the object of popular religion, the history of their origin was the
secret of the Mysteries. No wonder that it was held to be dangerous to
"betray" the Mysteries, for thereby the origin of the gods of the
people was "betrayed." And a right understanding of that origin is
salutary, a misunderstanding is injurious.
V
THE WISDOM OF THE MYSTERIES AND THE MYTH
The Mystic sought forces and beings within himself which are unknown
to man as long as he remains in the ordinary attitude towards life.
The Mystic puts the great question about his own spiritual forces and
the laws which transcend the lower nature. A man of ordinary views of
life, bounded by the senses and logic, creates gods for himself, or
when he gets to the point of seeing that he has made them, he
disclaims them. The Mystic knows that he creates gods, he knows why he
creates them, he sees, so to say, behind the natural law which makes
man create them. It is as though a plant suddenly became conscious,
and learned the laws of its growth and development. As it is, it
develops in lovely unconsciousness. If it knew about the laws of its
own being, its relation to itself would be completely changed. What
the lyric poet feels when he sings about a plant, what the botanist
thinks when he investigates its laws, this would hover before a
conscious plant as an ideal of itself.
It is thus with the Mystic with regard to the laws, the forces working
within him. As one who knew, he was forced to create something divine
beyond himself. And the initiates took up the same attitude to that
which the people had created beyond nature; that is to the world of
popular gods and myths. They wanted to penetrate the laws of this
world of gods and myths. Where the people saw the form of a god, or a
myth, they looked for a higher truth.
Let us take an example. The Athenians had been forced by the Cretan
king Minos to deliver up to him every eight years seven boys and seven
girls. These were thrown as food to a terrible monster, the Minotaur.
When the mournful tribute was to be paid for the third time, the
king's son Theseus accompanied it to Crete. On his arrival there,
Ariadne, the daughter of Minos interested herself in him. The Minotaur
dwelt in the labyrinth, a maze from which no one could extricate
himself who had once got in. Theseus desired to deliver his native
city from the shameful tribute. For this purpose he had to enter the
labyrinth into which the monster's booty was usually thrown, and to
kill the Minotaur. He undertook the task, overcame the formidable foe,
and succeeded in regaining the open air with the aid of a ball of
thread which Ariadne had given him.
The Mystic had to discover how the creative human mind comes to weave
such a story. As the botanist watches the growth of plants in order to
discover its laws, so did the Mystic watch the creative spirit. He
sought for a truth, a nucleus of wisdom where the people had invented
a myth.
Sallust discloses to us the attitude of a mystical sage towards a myth
of this kind. "We might call the whole world a myth," says he, "which
contains bodies and things visibly, and souls and spirits in a hidden
manner. If the truth about the gods were taught to all, the
unintelligent would disdain it from not understanding it, and the
more capable would make light of it. But if the truth is given in a
mystical veil, it is assured against contempt and serves as a stimulus
to philosophic thinking."
When the truth contained in a myth was sought by an initiate, he was
conscious of adding something which did not exist in the consciousness
of the people. He was aware of being above that consciousness, as a
botanist is above a growing plant. Something was expressed which was
different from what was present in the mythical consciousness, but it
was looked upon as a deeper truth, symbolically expressed in the myth.
Man is confronted with his own sense-nature in the form of a hostile
monster. He sacrifices to it the fruits of his personality, and the
monster devours them, and continues to do so till the conqueror
(Theseus) awakes in man. His intuition spins the thread by means of
which he finds his way again when he repairs to the maze of the senses
in order to slay his enemy. The mystery of human knowledge itself is
expressed in this conquering of the senses. The initiate knows that
mystery. It points to a force in human personality unknown to ordinary
consciousness, but nevertheless active within it. It is the force
which creates the myth, which has the same structure as mystical
truth. This truth finds its symbol in the myth.
What then is to be found in the myths? In them is a creation of the
spirit, of the unconsciously creative soul. The soul has well-defined
laws. In order to create beyond itself, it must work in a certain
direction. At the mythological stage it does this in images, but these
are built up according to the laws of the soul. We might also say that
when the soul advances beyond the stage of mythological consciousness
to deeper truths, these bear the same stamp as did the myths, for one
and the same force was at work in their formation.
Plotinus, the philosopher of the Neo-Platonic school (A.D. 204-269),
speaks of this relation of mythical representation to higher knowledge
in reference to the priest-sages of Egypt. "Whether as the result of
rigorous investigations, or whether instinctively when imparting
their wisdom, the Egyptian sages do not use, for expressing their
teaching and precepts, written signs which are imitations of voice and
speech; but they draw pictures, and in the outlines of these they
record, in their temples, the thought contained in each thing, so that
every picture contains knowledge and wisdom, and is a definite truth
and a complete whole, although there is no explanation nor discussion.
Afterwards the contents of the picture are drawn out of it and
expressed in words, and the cause is found why it is as it is, and not
otherwise."
If we wish to find out the connection of mysticism with mythical
narratives, we must see what relationship to them there is in the
views of the great thinkers, those who knew their wisdom to be in
harmony with the methods of the Mysteries. We find such harmony in
Plato in the fullest degree. His explanations of myths and his
application of them in his teaching may be taken as a model (_cf._ p.
78 _et seq._). In the _Phædrus_, a dialogue on the soul, the myth of
Boreas is introduced. This divine being, who was seen in the rushing
wind, one day saw the fair Orithyia, daughter of the Attic king
Erectheus, gathering flowers with her companions. Seized with love for
her, he carried her off to his grotto. Plato, by the mouth of
Socrates, rejects a rationalist interpretation of this myth. According
to this explanation, an outward, natural fact is poetically symbolised
by the narrative. A hurricane seized the king's daughter and hurled
her over the rocks. "Interpretations of this sort," says Socrates,
"are learned sophistries, however popular and usual they may be....
For one who has pulled to pieces one of these mythological forms must,
to be consistent, elucidate sceptically and explain naturally all the
rest in the same way.... But even if such a labour could be
accomplished, it would in any case be no proof of superior talents in
the one carrying it out, but only of superficial wit, boorish wisdom,
and ridiculous haste.... Therefore I leave on one side all such
enquiries, and believe what is generally thought about the myths. I do
not examine them, as I have just said, but I examine myself to see
whether I too may perhaps be a monster, more complicated and
therefore more disordered than the chimæra, more savage than Typhon,
or whether I represent a more docile and simple being, to whom some
particle of a virtuous and divine nature has been given."
We see from this that Plato does not approve of a rationalistic and
merely intellectual interpretation of myths. This attitude must be
compared with the way in which he himself uses myths in order to
express himself through them. When he speaks of the life of the soul,
when he leaves the paths of the transitory and seeks the eternal in
the soul, when, therefore, images borrowed from sense-perception and
reasoning thought can no longer be used, then Plato has recourse to
the myth. _Phædrus_ treats of the eternal in the soul, which is
portrayed as a car drawn by two horses winged all over, and driven by
a charioteer. One horse is patient and docile, the other wild and
headstrong. If an obstacle comes in the way of the car the troublesome
horse takes the opportunity of impeding the docile one and defying the
driver. When the car arrives where it has to follow the gods up the
celestial steep, the intractable horse throws the team into confusion.
If it is less strong than the good horse, it is overcome, and the car
is able to go on into the supersensible realm. It thus happens that
the soul can never ascend without difficulties into the kingdom of the
divine. Some souls rise more to the vision of eternity, some less. The
soul which has seen the world beyond remains safe until the next
journey. One who, on account of the intractable horse, has not seen
beyond, must try again on the next journey. These journeys signify the
various incarnations of the soul. One journey signifies the life of
the soul in one personality. The wild horse represents the lower
nature, the docile one the higher nature; the driver, the soul longing
for union with the divine.
Plato resorts to the myth in order to describe the course of the
eternal spirit through its various transformations. In the same way he
has recourse, in other writings, to symbolical narrative, in order to
portray the inner nature of man, which is not perceptible to the
senses.
Plato is here in complete harmony with the mythical and allegorical
manner of expression used by others. For instance there is in ancient
Hindu literature a parable attributed to Buddha.
A man very much attached to life, who seeks sensuous pleasures and
will die at no price is pursued by four serpents. He hears a voice
commanding him to feed and bathe the serpents from time to time. The
man runs away, fearing the serpents. Again he hears a voice, warning
him that he is pursued by five murderers. Once more he escapes. A
voice calls his attention to a sixth murderer, who is about to behead
him with a sword. Again he flees. He comes to a deserted village.
There he hears a voice telling him that robbers are shortly going to
plunder the village. Having again escaped, he comes to a great flood.
He feels unsafe where he is, and out of straw, wood, and leaves he
makes a basket in which he arrives at the other shore. Now he is safe,
he is a Brahmin.
The meaning of this allegory is that man has to pass through the most
various states before attaining to the divine. The four serpents
represent the four elements, fire, water, earth, and air. The five
murderers are the five senses. The deserted village is the soul which
has escaped from sense-impressions, but is not yet safe if it is alone
with itself, for if its lower nature lays hold of it, it must perish.
Man must construct for himself the boat which is to carry him over the
flood of the transitory from the one shore, the sense-nature, to the
other, the eternal, divine world.
Let us look at the Egyptian mystery of Osiris in this light. Osiris
had gradually become one of the most important Egyptian divinities; he
supplanted other gods in certain parts of the country; and an
important cycle of myths was formed round him and his consort Isis.
Osiris was the son of the Sun-god, his brother was Typhon-Set, and his
sister was Isis. Osiris married his sister, and together they reigned
over Egypt. The wicked brother, Typhon, meditated killing Osiris. He
had a chest made which was exactly the length of Osiris' body. At a
banquet this chest was offered to the person whom it exactly fitted.
This was Osiris and none other! He entered the chest. Typhon and his
confederates rushed upon him, closed the chest, and threw it into the
river. When Isis heard the terrible news she wandered far and wide in
despair, seeking her husband's body. When she had found it, Typhon
again took possession of it, and tore it in fourteen pieces which were
dispersed in many different places. Various tombs of Osiris were shown
in Egypt. In many places, up and down the country, portions of the god
were said to be buried. Osiris himself, however, came forth from the
nether-world and vanquished Typhon. A beam shone from him upon Isis,
who in consequence bore a son, Harpocrates or Horus.
And now let us compare this myth with the view which the Greek
philosopher, Empedocles (B.C. 490-430) takes of the universe. He
assumes that the one original primeval being was once broken up into
the four elements, fire, water, earth, and air, or into the
multiplicity of being. He represents two opposing forces, which within
this world of existence bring about growth and decay, love and
strife. Empedocles says of the elements:
They remain ever the same, but yet by
combining their forces
Become transformed into men and the
numberless beings besides.
These are now joined into one, love binding the
many together,
Now once again they are scattered, dispersing
through hatred and strife.
What then are the things in the world from Empedocles' point of view?
They are the elements in different combinations. They could only come
into being because the Primeval Unity was broken up into the four
essences. Therefore this primordial unity was poured into the
elements. Anything confronting us is part of the divinity which was
poured out. But the divinity is hidden in the thing; it first had to
die that things might come into being. And what are these things?
Mixtures of divine constituents effectuated by love and hatred.
Empedocles says this distinctly:
See, for a clear demonstration, how the limbs of
a man are constructed,
All that the body possesses, in beauty and pride
of existence,
All put together by love, are the elements there
forming one.
Afterwards hatred and strife come, and fatally
tear them asunder,
Once more they wander alone, on the desolate
confines of life.
So it is with the bushes and trees, and the
water-inhabiting fishes,
Wild animals roaming the mountains, and ships
swiftly borne by their sails.
Empedocles therefore must come to the conclusion that the sage finds
again the Divine Primordial Unity, hidden in the world by a spell, and
entangled in the meshes of love and hatred. But if man finds the
divine, he must himself be divine, for Empedocles takes the point of
view that a being is only cognised by its equal. This conviction of
his is expressed in Goethe's lines: "If the eye were not of the nature
of the sun, how could we behold light? If divine force were not at
work in us, how could divine things delight us?"
These thoughts about the world and man, which transcend
sense-experience, were found by the Mystic in the myth of Osiris.
Divine creative force has been poured out into the universe; it
appears as the four elements; God (Osiris) is killed. Man is to raise
him from the dead with his cognition, which is of divine nature. He is
to find him again as Horus (the Son of God, the Logos, Wisdom), in the
opposition between Strife (Typhon) and Love (Isis). Empedocles
expresses his fundamental conviction in Greek form by means of images
which border on myth. Love is Aphrodite, and strife is Neikos. They
bind and unbind the elements.