Mysteria

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.

Of so little obligation was the Grecian belief regarding the gods, that 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.

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.

Now the festivals at Eleusis have reference to this myth. Of these festivals there were two, the Lesser Eleusinia in Spring (the month Anthesterion, March), when the ravished one came up out of the netherworld into the sunlight; these festivals were observed at Agrae; and the Greater Eleusinia in Autumn (the month Boedromion, October), when she must follow her sullen spouse again to Hades; they were observed at Athens and Eleusis. There was a preliminary celebration at Athens, and at Eleusis the high celebration. The preliminary solemnity lasted six days, Boedromion 15th to 20th. On the first day Initiates from every region wherever the Greek language was heard and Grecian hearts beat for the gods, assembled in the Poecile at Athens and there heard the order of the exercises proclaimed by the Hierophant, after his aides had first in a loud voice bidden the bloodguilty to depart. On the second day the mystae were summoned to go down to the seashore and to perform in the sacred brine the act of purification, requisite for a worthy observance of the solemnity. The remaining days were spent in performing the prescribed sacrifices, sharing in the sacrificial banquets, and making the customary solemn processions. On the sixth day came the grand Iacchus Procession, numbering thousands of mystae, of both sexes; these, issuing from the Sacred Gate, wended along the Sacred Road to Eleusis. They wore crowns of parsley and myrtle, and in their hands carried ears of corn, implements of husbandry and torches; for though the procession set out betimes it moved slowly, and reached the destination late, to celebrate the festival in the hallowed night. Iacchus himself was believed to be the leader of the procession, which was headed by his image in the form of a babe with costly toys and cradle. The line of march lay along the brink of the sea over the same flowery fields and grassy meadows of the Thriasian plains, which had been the scene of the rape of Persephone. The route was fourteen miles long, but to the participants in their festive mood it was short, and besides they made frequent halts at the various sanctuaries on the way, practicing mystic rites and offering sacrifices. The rude wild chorus of the Hymn to Iacchus resounded, with intervals of animated dances and flute-playing, and frequent shouts of Io, Iacchus, hail! But as we learn from the “Frogs” of Aristophanes, the processionists meanwhile indulged freely in merriment, chaffing their fellows, and making love to the women and girls. It was customary for women to make the journey in wains till a demagogue in the time of Demosthenes procured the abolition of this “privilege of the rich.”

In the evening of the first day at Eleusis the mystae in common drank of the sacred potion Kykeon, by which Demeter was comforted at Eleusis during her wandering. It was a decoction of barley, wine, and grated cheese; to these afterward were added, one by one, honey, milk, certain herbs, salt, and onions. During the three succeeding nights the performing of the mystic rites and the initiations took place, the principal feature being the torch-processions representing Demeter’s search for Persephone: during the day the Initiates seem to have fasted. After the initiations the festival was transformed into a scene of merriment and gymnastic competition. Probably the mystae returned to Athens processionally, and there the report on the festival was made to the Boule, whose non-initiated members had first to retire.

It was at these festivals that the rites of initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries were performed. Initiation was in two degrees, viz., that of the Lesser, and that of the Greater mysteries. Initiation into the Lesser mysteries took place during the preliminary festival, and that into the Greater mysteries either at the greater festival next ensuing or at the greater festival of a subsequent year. The Initiates of the Lesser mysteries were called Mystae, those of the Greater mysteries, Epoptae (those who have seen). It is probable that at both of the annual festivals the mystae took part only in the external ceremonies, and that only the Epoptae (or adepts) were admitted into the Sacred House at Eleusis, or inducted into the occult meaning of the festivals and ceremonies: this we infer from the exceedingly large number of the mystae.

The one who wished to be admitted to the mysteries had to apply to an initiated citizen of Athens, who by appointment of the authorities served as mediator between him and the priests: hence he was called Mystagogos, guide or sponsor of the postulant. As a rule the postulant was required to be a Hellene. Foreigners were admitted only when they were men of distinction, such, for example, as the Scythian philosopher Anacharsis. After the conquest of Greece by the Romans, Roman citizens stood on equality with Hellenes. There was no discrimination on the ground of sex. But no one stained with bloodguiltiness could be admitted.

Those who came up for admission to the degree of Epoptes, and who, as we suppose, had never entered the “Mystic House,” were left to wander through its mazes, in profound darkness, meeting toils and hindrances and dangers. Then followed rites in which the courage of the candidates was subjected to the severest tests, so as to fill them with “fear and trembling and dread amaze.” It is very probable that the terrors of the test were borrowed from the Grecian ideas of the netherworld. But after the darkness came brightness, after Tartarus Elysium, the Field of the Blest. The epoptes was suddenly gladdened by a miraculous light; smiling plains and meadows invited his footsteps, whence we must infer that the Mystic House was furnished forth with most ingenious scenic mechanisms, as trapdoors, magic lanterns, and other optical contrivances. Celestial voices and harmonies were heard, charming dances were executed, eye and ear were flattered by a display of the uttermost resources of Grecian art; and last came the most impressive scene of all, when the hierophant threw open the door of the inmost shrine of Demeter, bade the epoptae enter in, withdrew the veils from the images of the gods (whose true meaning was thus made known), and showed godhead in its most radiant splendor.

That the Initiates of the mysteries regarded their chances in the netherworld as better than those of the profane we learn not only from the sarcastic Aristophanes, who in the “Frogs” scores the mystae as in myrtle groves they revel amid fluting and dancing, while the profane wander in darkness and mire, lapping water like dogs; but the serious-minded Sophocles tells us the same thing in a fragment quoted by Plutarch: “O, thrice blest the mortals who have witnessed these solemn rites, when they go down to Hades: for them alone is there life in the netherworld; for all others bootless affliction and misery.”

5. THE MYSTERIES OF SAMOTHRACE.

Next after the Eleusinia, the most ancient and renowned of the Grecian mysteries were those of the Cabiri in the island of Samothrace. Who the Kabeiroi were—men, or intermediate beings half human, half divine, also how many they were, no satisfactory conclusion has yet been reached on these points. But they date from very high antiquity, before the evolution of the several Grecian deities. In Egypt, according to Herodotus (III., 37), they were “worshiped as sons of Hephaestus (he means Ptah, god of Memphis); and were, like their father, figured in the shrine as Pygmies.” That in the language of Phoenicia Kabirim means “the great, the mighty ones,” is of no consequence, for here “great” is not used in the sense of bodily largeness. Neither is it any objection that in Greece the Kabeiroi are regarded as beings subordinate to the gods: for the earlier gods ever do take second place when new gods get footing. In early Egyptian mythology and religion the Cabiri were personifications of the stars; and the mysteries of Samothrace were originally an astromythology, though in time their astral significations were forgotten. From a remark of Herodotus (II., 51) that the Athenians got from the Pelasgians inhabiting the island of Samothrace their custom of figuring Hermes with the Phallus (and everyone who has acquaintance with the secret cult of the Cabiri knows what that means), we are led to infer that in the Cabiric mysteries the reproductive forces of nature played an important part: the symbol of those forces, the Phallus, was employed by the nations of the East and from them passed to the Greeks, who originally had no leaning toward such obscene imaginings. The same inference is suggested by Juvenal’s remark that in love affairs it was the fashion to swear by the Cabiri. For initiation into the Samothracian mysteries the novice was required to submit to a purification by fire and to fumigation, and to make a sort of confession. Plutarch tells of a Spartan who at his initiation inquired of the priest whether he should confess his sins to him or to the gods; and on the priest replying, “To the gods.” “Then,” said the penitent, “give way, I will tell it to the godhead alone.” Men, women, even children were initiated, and the professed received a purple band, which they wore around the body, in the assurance that by this means they would be safe against perils by sea.

The Greeks used to tell of their fabled heroes, Orpheus, Agamemnon, Odysseus, etc., that they were Initiates of these mysteries; and Philip II. of Macedon and his queen Olympias, parents of Alexander the Great, underwent this initiation. There were Cabirian mysteries also in several other Grecian islands, and in several places on the continent, both in Greece and in Asia Minor.

6. THE MYSTERIES OF CRETE.

In the island of Crete were celebrated the mysteries of Zeus. According to the myth, the father of the gods and lord of all the world, to foil the designs of his father Cronos, who had devoured all his other children, was, while yet a child, taken by his mother Rhea to that island for refuge, and there guarded in a grotto of Mt. Ida and nourished with milk and honey by the people, who meanwhile, by dealing blows on each other’s shields, kept up such a din as drowned the wailing of the babe. In Crete was also shown a sepulchre of Zeus. Regarding the Cretan mysteries we know this only, that in the Springtime the birth of the god was commemorated at the grotto and his death at the sepulchre, and that the while the young people (who represented the Curetae), in armor, with dance and song and with loud beating of cymbals and drums, enacted the story of the childhood of Zeus.

An ancient national cult among the Hellenes, into which a mystic element was imported from without, was the worship of Dionysos or Bacchus, i. e., of the sun as promoting the growth of the vine: its end was plainly to glorify the physical world, the material world, in all its manifestations of life and force. Hence the Bacchus cult is one predominantly materialistic, addressed to the sense of bodily pleasure, the appetite for food and the sexual desire; and yet, inasmuch as viticulture, like agriculture, is one of the factors of civilization, and as the Drama had its origin in these Dionysiac festivals, it cannot be denied that for many elements of our intellectual and spiritual culture we are indebted to this cult. Of the festivals of Dionysos some belonged exclusively to the popular religion, but others were connected with mysteries. Those of the former class had their chief seat in Attica, the others elsewhere. Of these non-mystic festivals of Dionysos in Attica there were seven, occurring in different months of the year, from the season of the vintage in Autumn till toward Spring, or while the new wine was in fermentation; and some of these festivals were held in the country, others in the city. On such occasions gymnastic sports of a ludicrous sort were carried on, as dancing on one leg, leaping on a leathern bag blown up with air and greased with oil outside, and trying to maintain equilibrium, etc. At the head of a procession composed of men and women of all ranks and degrees were borne the sacrificial implements, then followed the victim, a he-goat, and soon came the image of the Phallus, borne aloft with great pomp. So little did the Greeks possess of our peculiar sense of shame that they looked on this symbol as something entirely proper, not scrupling even to sing satirical verses about it. After the sacrifice came jesting, banter, travesty, and with travesty pantomime, in which was enacted the history of the god, including of course his fabled adventures. The stage had its rise in such festivals as these. The Spring festival, held in the month Anthesterion (month of flowers) was kept with special solemnity. It marked the time when the wine was racked off into the earthen pots. It was at this festival that the Basilissa (wife of the Basileus), accompanied by fourteen other women, entered the holy of holies of the ancient temple of Dionysos (at all other times women were forbidden to enter it), and there made a secret offering with mystic rites and vows.

But we have the genuine “mysterium” in the Dionysia Trietera, or triennial festival of Dionysos. Festivals of this class seem to have originated in Thrace, and hence among a people of Pelasgian stock. The spirit of the Thracians, which was naturally of a gloomy cast, but when their slumbering passions were awakened became wildly enthusiastic, seemed in these festivals, or rather these transports of moral frenzy, to pass into the persons of the lighthearted and selfcontrolled Hellenes. The mad extravaganza of this phenomenon in the history of man and his ways is seen in the Grecian hero-myth, which tells of the great singer Orpheus and Pentheus, king of Thebes, being torn limb from limb by the furious Maenads at festivals of Bacchus, the former because after the death of his beloved Eurydice he never more would hear of woman’s love, and the latter because he had spied on the festivals. For these festivals were observed by women exclusively, who, drunken with wine, knew no restraints of reason or humanity: they were called maenades (madwomen) or Bacchae, and their festivals Orgia (orgies). The orgies were conducted on mountain sides or in mountain gorges at night under the light of torches, the fair participants, clothed in fawnskins, armed with the thyrsus wreathed with ivy and vine leaves, with hair disheveled, and, as the story goes, snakes tangled with its locks, or held in the bacchantes’ hands. This festival, which occurred in the mild midwinter of Hellas, the time of shortest days and longest nights, continued over several days, during which the maenads, shunning all association with the male sex, sacrificed, drank, danced, jubilated, made noise with the double-pipe and the brazen tymbal, nay, as the (manifestly improbable) story runs, with their own hands tore asunder the bull, symbol of the god, and destined to the sacrifice, and gloated over the victim’s bellowing for pain. This feat was to show forth the death of Zagreus, one of the forms under which Dionysos appeared, and in which he was torn asunder by the Titans because he had been chosen by Zeus for his successor as ruler of the universe. The flesh of the bull was torn in shreds with the teeth by the maenads and devoured raw. Then the raving Bacchae invented a fable about the death of their god, and how he was lost and how he must be found again. But all the anxious searching was vain, and hope was centered in the finding again of the all-quickening Springtide. The observance of the Dionysia was not marked with these extravagances everywhere: in Attica such excesses were never seen. But Athenian women would attend the secret festival on Parnassus near Delphi, heedless of the mantle of snow on the summit.

8. THE ROMAN BACCHANALIA.

The worst disorders of Bacchus worship, as practiced in Greece, would seem to have been equaled, or even surpassed, in the Roman Commonwealth. The historian Livy (xxxix., 8–20) compares the introduction of the cult into the city and its rapid spread to a visitation of plague. According to Livy the cult was brought to Rome from Etruria. In its Etruscan and Roman form the worship of Bacchus was simply debauchery, under the thinnest possible cloak of religion. The festivals or orgies were at first observed by women; but a certain priestess of Bacchus, by command of the god, introduced the innovation of admitting men, and instead of three Bacchic festivals a year, instituted five festivals for each month; and whereas in Etruria the rites had been practiced in the day time, they now began to be held at night. From considerations of prudence the abominations of the Bacchanalia were guarded from public view by a hedge of ceremonial, and postulants for admission were required to practice for several days the strictest continence. But the term of probation being over, and the postulant admitted to the company of the Bacchanals, he or she found themselves surrounded by all conceivable incitements to the gratification of lust, in every way that the depraved instincts of man or woman had ever before, or perhaps has ever since contrived. According to Livy the Initiates of these mysteries numbered several thousand persons in the city, many of them belonging to the most distinguished families. In addition to the abominations of their secret meetings the Initiates were charged with conspiring against the commonwealth, with forgery of last testaments, with poisonings and assassinations, with the most revolting rapes. In the year 186 B. C. the Consul Spurius Postumius Albinus, having privately made inquiries into the doings of the sect, resolved to employ all the resources of the state for its suppression. The circumstances which led to this resolution were as follows: A youth of noble birth, Publius Aebutius, whose father was dead, was the ward of his stepfather, Titus Sempronius Rutilus. Now Sempronius had mismanaged the estate of Aebutius, and was unable to give an account of his guardianship, and therefore wished either to have the youth put out of the way, or to get him under his power. The easiest way was by debauching him in the Bacchanalia. Aebutius’s mother, devoted to her husband, pretended to the son that during his illness she had made vow to the gods to consecrate him to Bacchus in the event of recovery. Aebutius, nothing suspecting, told of this to one Hispala, a damsel of questionable reputation, with whom he had for some time been very intimate; but she entreated him for all the gods’ sake not to have anything to do with the Bacchanalia: that she herself, as maid, had been initiated with her mistress, and knew what shocking deeds were done in those assemblies. Having promised her that he would not seek initiation, he made his resolution known to his parents, and was by them turned out of their house. Aebutius made complaint to his aunt Aebutia, and by her advice to the Consul Postumius. The Consul summoned Hispala to his presence, and from her, not without difficulty, for she feared the vengeance of the sect, learned what she knew of the proceedings at the secret assemblies. Then he brought the matter before the Senate, who gave to him and his colleague, Quintus Marcius Philippus, full powers for the suppression of the evil. Rewards were offered for trustworthy testimony, measures were taken to prevent the escape of guilty ones, and there were numerous arrests. Seven thousand persons in all were implicated, and all Italy awaited the outcome of the prosecution intently and with alarm. The ringleaders and a multitude of their accomplices were put to death, others were condemned to imprisonment or were exiled. Aebutius and Hispala received a large money reward; and Hispala furthermore was admitted to all the rights and privileges of a Roman-born freewoman, without prejudice from her previous disreputable career. A decree of the Senate forbade forever the holding of the Bacchanalia in Rome or in Italy. The decree provided that if any one should consider such rites obligatory and necessary, or should think that he could not omit them without incurring the guilt of irreligion, he must lay the case before the Praetor Urbanus, and the Praetor must consult the Senate. If leave were granted in a senate having not less than one hundred members present, he (the person desiring to practice the worship of the god) might perform the rites, provided that not more than five persons were present at them, and that there was no common fund, nor any master of the ceremonies, or priest. All places sacred to Bacchus worship were ordered to be destroyed, “except there be here or there an ancient altar or consecrated image” of the god. But the prohibition of the Bacchanalia could not be kept in force perpetually. The abuses of the Bacchus cult went on unchecked outside of Italy, and by degrees sprung up again even on Italian ground, till they reached the pitch of absolute shamelessness in imperial times, as when the notorious Messalina, and other imperial strumpets, celebrated the most shocking orgies in the very palace.

9. DEBASED MYSTERIES FROM THE EAST.

Near akin to the Dionysos cult, in many points coinciding with it, as well as with one another, and also, like the depraved forms of that cult, surreptitiously introduced from the Orient into Greece and then into Rome, we have the mysteries of the mother of the gods Rhea or Cybele, those of Mithras, and those of Sabazios—cults and deities that were finally grouped together by the Orphic sect, of which anon.

Rhea was sister and spouse of Cronos and mother of the king of the gods, 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.