The Ancient Mysteries.
I now propose, for the purpose of illustrating these views, and of
familiarizing the reader with the coincidences between Freemasonry and the
ancient Mysteries, so that he may be better enabled to appreciate the
mutual influences of each on the other as they are hereafter to be
developed, to present a more detailed relation of one or more of these
ancient systems of initiation.
As the first illustration, let us select the Mysteries of Osiris, as they
were practised in Egypt, the birthplace of all that is wonderful in the
arts or sciences, or mysterious in the religion, of the ancient world.
It was on the Lake of Sais that the solemn ceremonies of the Osirian
initiation were performed. "On this lake," says Herodotus, "it is that the
Egyptians represent by night his sufferings whose name I refrain from
mentioning; and this representation they call their Mysteries." [17]
Osiris, the husband of Isis, was an ancient king of the Egyptians. Having
been slain by Typhon, his body was cut into pieces[18] by his murderer,
and the mangled remains cast upon the waters of the Nile, to be dispersed
to the four winds of heaven. His wife, Isis, mourning for the death and
the mutilation of her husband, for many days searched diligently with her
companions for the portions of the body, and having at length found them,
united them together, and bestowed upon them decent interment,--while
Osiris, thus restored, became the chief deity of his subjects, and his
worship was united with that of Isis, as the fecundating and fertilizing
powers of nature. The candidate in these initiations was made to pass
through a mimic repetition of the conflict and destruction of Osiris, and
his eventual recovery; and the explanations made to him, after he had
received the full share of light to which the painful and solemn
ceremonies through which he had passed had entitled him, constituted the
secret doctrine of which I have already spoken, as the object of all the
Mysteries. Osiris,--a real and personal god to the people,--to be
worshipped with fear and with trembling, and to be propitiated with
sacrifices and burnt offerings, became to the initiate but a symbol of the
"Great first cause, least understood,"
while his death, and the wailing of Isis, with the recovery of the body,
his translation to the rank of a celestial being, and the consequent
rejoicing of his spouse, were but a tropical mode of teaching that after
death comes life eternal, and that though the body be destroyed, the soul
shall still live.
"Can we doubt," says the Baron Sainte Croix, "that such ceremonies as
those practised in the Mysteries of Osiris had been originally instituted
to impress more profoundly on the mind the dogma of future rewards and
punishments?" [19]
"The sufferings and death of Osiris," says Mr. Wilkinson,[20] "were the
great Mystery of the Egyptian religion; and some traces of it are
perceptible among other people of antiquity. His being the divine goodness
and the abstract idea of 'good,' his manifestation upon earth (like an
Indian god), his death and resurrection, and his office as judge of the
dead in a future state, look like the early revelation of a future
manifestation of the deity converted into a mythological fable."
A similar legend and similar ceremonies, varied only as to time, and
place, and unimportant details, were to be found in all the initiations of
the ancient Mysteries. The dogma was the same,--future life,--and the
method of inculcating it was the same. The coincidences between the design
of these rites and that of Freemasonry, which must already begin to
appear, will enable us to give its full value to the expression of
Hutchinson, when he says that "the Master Mason represents a man under the
Christian doctrine saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the
faith of salvation." [21]
In Phoenicia similar Mysteries were celebrated in honor of Adonis, the
favorite lover of Venus, who, having, while hunting, been slain by a wild
boar on Mount Lebanon, was restored to life by Proserpine. The
mythological story is familiar to every classical scholar. In the popular
theology, Adonis was the son of Cinyras, king of Cyrus, whose untimely
death was wept by Venus and her attendant nymphs: in the physical theology
of the philosophers,[22] he was a symbol of the sun, alternately present
to and absent from the earth; but in the initiation into the Mysteries of
his worship, his resurrection and return from Hades were adopted as a type
of the immortality of the soul. The ceremonies of initiation in the Adonia
began with lamentation for his loss,--or, as the prophet Ezekiel expresses
it, "Behold, there sat women weeping for Thammuz,"--for such was the name
under which his worship was introduced among the Jews; and they ended with
the most extravagant demonstrations of joy at the representation of his
return to life,[23] while the hierophant exclaimed, in a congratulatory
strain,--
"Trust, ye initiates; the god is safe,
And from our grief salvation shall arise."
Before proceeding to an examination of those Mysteries which are the most
closely connected with the masonic institution, it will be as well to take
a brief view of their general organization.
The secret worship, or Mysteries, of the ancients were always divided into
the lesser and the greater; the former being intended only to awaken
curiosity, to test the capacity and disposition of the candidate, and by
symbolical purifications to prepare him for his introduction into the
greater Mysteries.
The candidate was at first called an aspirant, or seeker of the truth,
and the initial ceremony which he underwent was a lustration or
purification by water. In this condition he may be compared to the Entered
Apprentice of the masonic rites, and it is here worth adverting to the
fact (which will be hereafter more fully developed) that all the
ceremonies in the first degree of masonry are symbolic of an internal
purification.
In the lesser Mysteries[24] the candidate took an oath of secrecy, which
was administered to him by the mystagogue, and then received a preparatory
instruction,[25] which enabled him afterwards to understand the
developments of the higher and subsequent division. He was now called a
_Mystes_, or initiate, and may be compared to the Fellow Craft of
Freemasonry.
In the greater Mysteries the whole knowledge of the divine truths, which
was the object of initiation, was communicated. Here we find, among the
various ceremonies which assimilated these rites to Freemasonry, the
_aphanism_, which was the disappearance or death; the _pastos_, the couch,
coffin, or grave; the _euresis_, or the discovery of the body; and the
_autopsy_, or full sight of everything, that is, the complete
communication of the secrets. The candidate was here called an _epopt_, or
eye-witness, because nothing was now hidden from him; and hence he may be
compared to the Master Mason, of whom Hutchinson says that "he has
discovered the knowledge of God and his salvation, and been redeemed from
the death of sin and the sepulchre of pollution and unrighteousness."