Chapter II: Part 2

Many of the mythological poems, indeed, most of them, and great part of the less sacred literature of the tablets, are so obscure and unintelligible that for their understanding a “key” was necessary, and the priests held the key. Of special interest are the fragments containing portions of the Babylonian cosmogony; and as our Bible (Gen. xi., 31) tells that Abraham was of Ur in Chaldaea, his descendants would inherit from him (supposing him to have been an historical personage) some portions of the ancient traditions and folklore of the Chaldaeans. Here is a fragment of the Babylonian story of the Creation:

When the sky above was not yet named,
Earth beneath had yet no name,
and the watery deep, the never-beginning,
was their producer,
the chaos of the sea, genderess of them all,
for her waters united together in one.
The darkness was not yet done away,
not a plant had yet budded.
As of the gods none had yet gone forth,
and they yet had no name,
then the great gods, too, were created, etc.

The Chaldee Noah, called Samas-Napishtim (sun of life), tells the story of the deluge in this form: The god Ea having made known to him the punishment decreed for mankind on account of their sins, he built a great ship at the god’s command, and into it brought all his possessions, his kinsmen, his servants, also domestic and wild animals. Then the gods let a great tempest loose, and with the spirits entered the combat to destroy all living things. But the flood rose up to the sky and threatened even the lower gods, who had to take refuge with the higher gods. The gods, therefore, repented of what they had done. But after seven days the storm was quieted, and the waters were abated; Samas-Napishtim opened the window of his ship, now resting on the mountain Nizir, and after other seven days freed a dove, but the dove found no resting place. Then a swallow, which did in like manner; then a raven, which preyed on the bodies of the drowned. It was now possible for Samas-Napishtim to let the animals out; he erected an altar and offered sacrifice, whereto the gods gathered “like masses of flies.” Then the god Bel, who had ordered the flood, became reconciled with the other gods, who were angry with him on that account; he led Samas-Napishtim forth with his wife, and made a covenant with them and the people. But the pair were taken afar to live for evermore.

This Chaldaic history of the deluge is but one section of a great poem, an epos contained in twelve earthen tablets, wherein are recounted the fortunes and exploits of a hero, apparently the Nimrod of the Hebrew Bible. This poem is reputed to date from the twenty-third century, B. C. The deeds of this hero, Gishdubarra, or Namrassit, as he is called, forcibly recall the story of the Hellenic Herakles, and the Heraclean myth, perhaps, had its origin in the Chaldaean epos. Gishdubarra is a descendant of Samas-Napishtim, whom he seeks out in his retreat to obtain a cure of his disease, and who takes that occasion to narrate to him the history of the flood. Now, his disease was a visitation of the goddess Anatu, because that he had spurned the love of the goddess Istar. A short poem graphically and effectively tells of how Istar in her distress over this repulse sought help in the netherworld. “Istar’s Descent into Hell” impresses one like Dante’s “Inferno”; indeed, in the opening verses it employs nearly the same words as the great Florentine. Istar goes, says the poet,

To that house whence none comes forth that enters, On that path that allows advance, but regress never; To that house whose inmates light shall see nevermore, To that place where dust is their victual and ordure their meat, etc.

In the netherworld the goddess Allatu reigns as queen. She is Istar’s counterpart: as Istar (daughter of the moon-god) is the rising moon, or the morning-star, so is Allatu the setting moon, or the evening star. The two are the mutually conflicting opposite sides of one being; and here, perhaps, we have an intimation of a deeper ethical interpretation, according to the secret doctrine of the Chaldaeans. The hell of the Chaldaean theology is divided into seven compartments separated by gates. At each gate Istar must surrender to its keeper some portion of her paraphernalia; at the first the crown, at the second the earrings, at the third the necklace, at the fourth the mantle, at the fifth the girdle, crusted with precious stones, at the sixth the armlets and anklets, and at the seventh the last vesture. Possibly, we have here a symbolic allusion to the Chaldaean mystic teaching, which may have had seven degrees of initiation into as many orders of mysteries, till all were disclosed. The queen of the nether world not only renders to Istar no assistance, but, contrariwise, treats her as an enemy, and heaps bodily injuries upon her. Meanwhile on earth, Istar being the goddess of love, all union of the sexes, whether among men or animals, ceases, and at last the gods request of Allatu the liberation of Istar. Reluctantly she consents. Istar is made whole and set free, and at each gate gets back again what had been taken from her. The poem was intended to be recited by the priest at the obsequies of the dead, to give assurance to the mourning survivors that the gates of the netherworld are not unconquerable, but that there is still a possibility for the shades to reach the land of the blest, the abode of Istar.

9. ZOROASTER AND THE PERSIANS.

If in Chaldaea the traces of actual secret teaching seem faint and indistinct, they quite disappear the further we go from the centres of ancient culture in Northern Africa and Western Asia, though analogies are found everywhere. In Persia, whose culture for the rest was an offshoot of that of Chaldaea, the priests (athravan) of Zarathustra’s, or Zoroaster’s, religion were the highest of the three classes of the population, and the priestly class was considered further removed from the other two (warriors and farmers) than they from each other. Sprung originally from a Median stock, the priests married only women of their own race, and alone of the population possessed high culture. As in Egypt, the King was adopted into the priestly class. The priests went about the country as teachers, but gave religious instruction only to those of their class. The chief priest was styled Zarathustrotema, i. e., the one nearest to Zarathustra, and had his see in the holy city Ragha (now Rai), whose inhabitants, like those of modern Rome, had the name of being unbelievers. The priests alone held rule in Ragha, and no secular power had right to give orders. Even elsewhere throughout the kingdom the priests regarded themselves as subject only to the commands of the Zarathustrotema.

Further, they were physicians, astrologers, interpreters of dreams, scribes, judges, officers of state, etc. The duties they sought to impress upon the minds of the people were these exclusively: That they should reverence the holy fire, listen to the reading of passages from the sacred books, and perform no end of ceremonies of purification on account of their sins against the precepts of their religion. All this points to the existence of a mystic gild of the priests, which withheld the real teachings of their religion from the uninitiated, and the members of which alone understood what was the original of the strife between the good world of Ormuzd and the evil of Ahriman, namely, in all probability, the alternation of night and day, Summer and Winter.

10. BRAHMANS AND BUDDHISTS.

The case was much the same in India. There the priests, then as now, the highest caste (Brahmans), were separated from the people by even a deeper gulf than in Persia. They can have no communication with people of any other caste, and can take nothing from any one not belonging to their own caste. They stand outside of the state and its laws, and have laws of their own. By the people they are regarded as gods: they and their pupils, the Bramatsharin, as is said in the “Atharva-Beda” (book of ceremonial laws), give life to both worlds; nay, they it is that made sky and earth fast on their foundations, that introduced religion, the gods, and immortality, that produced the world, that brought the daemons into subjection. Thus they indoctrinated the people; but as they themselves of course knew that things were not so, a secret doctrine naturally sprung up among them, and so they instituted a mystic society, whose members alone knew how the matter really stood, and that the people were hoodwinked. Accordingly, the basis of religion was totally different for the Brahmans from what it was for the rest of the people. The latter were idolaters, the former pantheists. This pantheism is taught in all their sacred books; but these books the second and third castes (warriors and farmers) did not understand, and the fourth caste, the servile (which was also the most numerous), durst not read them at all.

According to this doctrine, all gods and the whole creation are sprung from Eternity (Aditi). Penitents and solitaries were esteemed by the Brahmans above kings and heroes, even above gods. But the life of a hermit was not perfect enough for them, for that was attained by the next two castes. Therefore, as their own peculiar specialty, they concocted the idea of a sort of a soul of the universe, the Atman-Brahman (the All-Me, or Me-All). This dogma was originated by the Brahman Yadshnavalkya: but Brahmans themselves say that no man can comprehend it, and that no man can instruct another in it. Thus, despairing of a solution of life’s enigma, the Brahmans hit upon the idea that the universe is only a phantasm, a Dream of the Soul of the Universe, and as a consequence that the earth, with all that it contains, is nothing: this is pessimism. They imagined enormous aeons of time, in the lapse of which the world grew ever worse and creatures were born only to suffer, to die, and either to awaken to suffering in the soul’s migration, or to do penance in the unspeakable torments of hell. Now, as of all this the people could understand only what was said about the hell torments, the Brahmans contrived for them also a supreme deity under the same name as their own Soul of the Universe, Brahma, and for Brahma they provided a wife, Sarasvati. Brahma they made the creator, but the part played by him was only passive and the people, not content with such a do-nothing, paid more attention to other gods, specially to resplendent Vishnu and dread Siva. Long afterward the three gods were united in a sort of trinity, or, rather, were represented by a three-headed figure, which had neither temple nor sacrificial worship. Thus the Brahmans went on refining and refining in their theological speculations, while the people became divided into parties, Vishnuites and Sivaites, and the religion of the Hindus reached at last the state of debasement in which we find it to-day.

Before degeneration had gone so far Buddha, in the sixth century, B. C, endeavored to save the Hindu religion. Buddhism was not a new religion, only a reform of Brahmanism. Though it failed to strike root deep in its native soil, the more westerly countries of India, on the other hand it won a great following in farther India, Tibet, China, and Japan: it has since assumed a peculiar composite character by fusion with the ancient religions of those countries. It grew out of a monastic society founded by Siddhartha, afterward Buddha, surnamed the Perfect One. His doctrine was wholly ethical, and its profoundest principle was that only in complete renunciation of all things can man find safety and peace. Buddha himself was rather strict with postulants for admission to the society, so that in his time the teaching was in many respects a secret doctrine. But after the death of Buddha, when first himself, then several other Buddhas believed to have lived before him, and expected to come after him, had been raised to the rank of gods; and when to these had been added the Hindu gods and the gods of other peoples; the religion of the founder having thus degenerated into a polytheism, the learned began to interpret the original doctrine now in one sense, again in another, opinions differing on the question whether the Nirvana (literally, extinguishment) preached by Buddha meant Death and Nothingness, or a Blest State. Thus the Buddhism of the priests assumed a strong likeness to a secret doctrine, though we know not of any formal organization to that end.

11. SECRET LEAGUES OF BARBAROUS PEOPLES.

Even among Savages so-called are found secret doctrines and secret societies of priests analogous to those of more cultured peoples. The priests of Hawaii, who in this respect perhaps rank highest among savage races, had a theory of their own regarding creation which shows great elevation of thought. The sorcerers, or priests, of savage races wherever they still remain, are banded in secret societies, which withhold from the people all knowledge of their tricks. The Angekoks of the Eskimos, the Medicine Men of the North American aboriginals, the Shamans of Siberia, as well as the sorcerers, however named, of African and other races, nearly all form close castes, hand down their pretended arts of weather-making, of healing disease, discovering thieves, counteracting spells, etc., to their successors, and prepare themselves for their office by undergoing strange tests and performing outlandish rites; they also wear fantastic togs. Among the Zulu Kaffirs the one who desires to become a sorcerer (usually a descendant of a sorcerer) gives up the customary mode of life, has strange dreams, seeks solitude, hops and jumps about, utters cries, handles serpents that other Kaffirs will not touch, at last receives instruction from some aged sorcerer, and is formally admitted by the assembly of those charlatans. There are also witches, or sorceresses, who go through a like form of consecration.

There exist also among savages other species of secret societies. In the Society Islands the chiefs, called Areoi or Erih, form an association, the origin of which they trace to Oros, god of war. They are divided into twelve classes under as many grandmasters, each class distinguished by a peculiar tattoo, the members are united by the firmest ties, show unbounded hospitality to one another, live without marriage, kill their own children, and refrain from all work. There are similar societies in Micronesia, called Klobbergoll, which assemble in special houses, and serve their chiefs in war as bodyguard. On the isle of New Britain (now a German possession, and named New Pomerania) there exists a secret society called the Duk-Duk, whose members, wearing frightful masks, care for the execution of the laws, collect fines, and inflict punishment on incendiaries and homicides. They are known to each other by secret signs, and outsiders are denied admission to their festivals under pain of death. In West Africa there are many secret societies whose members are distinguished by a chalk line, with which they are marked at their initiation. Their office is to pursue and punish criminals, and to collect the tribute. In each locality these associations possess houses for their special use, and their members are bound to the strictest secrecy. Thus even savages have their secret police and their privy tribunals.

_PART SECOND._
_The Grecian Mysteries and the Roman Bacchanalia._

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.

Footnote 1:

The original has Goetterglaube, belief in gods, and Wunderglaube,
belief in miracles, in allusion to the preceding section 2.
Goetterglaube is of course equivalent to “theology,” and if so, then
Wunderglaube is equivalent to “thaumatology” from Greek thaumata,
miracles, and logos, discourse.

Thus, the Grecian mysteries were the exact opposite of genuine Hellenism. Cheerfulness, joyousness, clearness of perception and of thought, absence of all mists and vapors, were the notes of your true Hellene: his statues of gods with their grand, bold, full, rounded contours to this day demonstrate this; and his superstition even took things just as they looked to him. On the other hand, gloom, ruefulness, a morbid, overweening, owlish phantastry, symbolry, mysticism, with every shallow trick of strained interpretation, and all the smugnesses of pharisaic piety are the earmarks of your mystic. On the one side day on the other night, there action here quest and longing, there fact here makebelieve, there alertness here moping, there a hearty meal off what is at hand here a hungering and thirsting after truth that never can be attained. The mysteries were therefore in every way ungrecian, outlandish, and abnormal. They had no fit place on Hellenic soil, nor in that age; they were the propaedeutic of a future age when one should come upon the scene who was to hurl Olympos, Okeanos, and Hades into the everlasting night of oblivion.

And yet from the difference between the Grecian mysteries and the ordinary life of the people it by no means follows that the Initiates did not find satisfaction, at least a partial satisfaction, in these mystic exercitations. The man who nurses the feeling of a want for something other than what his times and his surroundings afford, finds at the last in his very brooding the satisfaction of his need. Sentimental, romantic, fanciful, and mystical characters, therefore, must find uncommon delight in mysteries, while practical, clear-sighted, undistorted, and strictly logical minds are unmoved by them. Let us then listen to the testimony of two celebrated mystae, a Grecian and a Roman, both, it is true, living in a time when their respective nations had begun to decline. The tragic poet Euripides sings: “O blest is he whose fortune it is to have learned the divine initiations; he sanctifies his life.” And Cicero (De Legibus II., 14) makes Marcus say to Atticus: “Of all the grand, and as I fain would think, the divine elements imported by thy Athens into human life, there is nought better than those Mysteries whereby we have been developed out of rudeness and savagery and trained to the human manner of life. And we, too, even as the Mysteries are called Initia (beginnings) so in them have found the principles (a play on words, “initia” and “principia,” principles, being homonyms) of right living, and have learned not only to live joyously, but also to die with better hope.” Then, as shadow follows light, he adds: “The thing I do mislike in the nocturnal rites, is told in the comic poets. Were such liberties permitted in Rome, what had not that infamous wretch (Clodius) done, who brought lewdness into the presence of certain sacred rites upon which ’twere sin even to glance unwittingly.”

The Grecian mysteries were no monopoly of the priests or of any other class: no man was excluded except such as by their life proved themselves unworthy of initiation. The origin of these mysteries is found in the rites of Purification and Atonement. In the earliest times the purifications were nothing but bodily cleansings prescribed to those who took part in religious ceremonies: later they took on a moral significance, as the sense of alienation from God gained ground. With the consciousness of sin, with the need of obtaining forgiveness, and, to that end, of knowing a deity free from all sin, and hence totally unlike man, mysticism begins and develops. Expiations came into vogue little by little, especially for bloodguiltiness, and were used in the popular religion. These consisted of certain ceremonies in which the blood of animals and incense were employed; in the case of individuals such rites might lessen the punishment under mitigating circumstances; they might, in the case of cities and states, efface the stains of murderous crimes committed during revolts or civil strifes. In all the mysteries purifications and expiations played a great part. Whatever has been handed down with regard to these mysteries is found in the sections following.

4. THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES.

The most ancient, most celebrated, and most venerable among the Grecian mysteries were those instituted at Eleusis, in Attica, in honor of the goddess Demeter (called by the Latins Ceres) and her daughter Persephone (Proserpina), and later of a male deity also, known in the mysteries under the name of Iacchos; and though there is no affinity between the letters I and B, Iacchos came in time to stand for Bacchus. The original Iacchos would seem to have been a god in the people’s religion, and this name is probably related to Jao (found in Jovispater, Jupiter) and to the Hebrew Yahve. Diodorus (I., 94) gives the name Jao to the God of the Hebrews; and an oracular utterance of the Apollo of Claros says:

Know thou that the highest of all the gods is named Jao, and In Winter
Aides, and Zeus in opening Spring, then Helios in Summer, and once
more Jaos in Fall.

The fact that Jaos was the harvest-god tended strongly to identify him with Bacchus, personification of the sun which ripens the grape; and, besides, Bacchus was allied to Demeter (originally Gemeter—Earthmother) who was the patroness of husbandry. The name of the city, Eleusis, means in Greek “advent”, and it commemorates the stay of Demeter there in the course of her wandering in search of her daughter: a like story is told of Isis in Egypt. In gratitude for their hospitality, Demeter bestowed on the people of Eleusis the bread-grain and the mysteries. From Eleusis the cult of the two deities spread all over Greece and part of Asia Minor, and in a modified form passed into Italy: in several places arose affiliated institutions resembling that at Eleusis, having the same festivals and the same secret cult; but Eleusis always held the supremacy. The buildings at Eleusis, in the pure Doric style, consisted of the temple of Demeter and the Mystic House, in which the secret festivals were held. They were connected with Athens by the “Sacred Way”, a road flanked by temples and sanctuaries: in Athens itself was an Eleusinian building (Eleusinion) in which a portion of the mysteries was celebrated. In front of the city gate toward the Piraeus was also a sanctuary dedicated to this cult, and furthermore an Eleusinion at Agrae. The buildings at Eleusis stood till the fourth century of our era: they were then destroyed by the Goths under Alaric, at the instigation of monkish fanatics.

The Eleusinia were always under the direction of the Athenian Government. When Athens became a democracy the functions till then performed by the King, as protector of the Eleusinia, devolved on the head of the executive, the Archons, who, therefore, bore the title Basileus (king) because the most important duties of the King had been concerned with Eleusis and its Mysteries. The Basileus was assisted by four councilors (epimeletae), of whom two were chosen from among the Athenians, and other two from the two Eleusinian gentes, Eumolpidae, and Kerytae. The report on the celebration of the Mysteries was always rendered to the Grand Council (Boule) of Athens, assembled in the Eleusinion. The function of priest in the institutions at Eleusis was always the exclusive privilege of the Eumolpidae and Kerytae. The chief of the priests was the hierophant, and with him was associated a hierophantess. Next to these in dignity were the torchbearer (daduchus), the sacred herald (hierokeryx), and the “altar-priest.” These officials constituted the Sacred Council, which had the immediate direction of the mysteries.

It would be a great mistake to regard the Eleusinian Mysteries as a result of illuminism or rationalism. Rather were they an institution not less religious, not less faithful to the ancient traditions than the popular religion itself; with this difference only, that the latter contented itself with honoring the gods contemplated in the human form, while the mysteries emphasized the infinite pre-eminence of the divine nature over the human. Hence the mystic religion was guarded by the state authorities with the same zeal as the anthropomorphic religion of the vulgar.

No one saw in the one any danger to the other. The two forms of religion were branches of one tree, Pantheism, and herein only differed, that the one saw the Divine in all earthly things, the other sought for it there and strove for union with it. It is equally vain to look in the Eleusinia for either Rationalism or Monotheism. Monotheism, i. e., absolute severance of the earthly from the divine without hope of union, was a purely Oriental idea, quite incomprehensible to the Grecian mind: no ancient Greek writer ever dreamed of a creative demiurgus, in the Egyptian sense, nor of an angry and revengeful Yahve, like the Hebrews.

So great was the veneration for the Eleusinia among the Grecian states, that during the mystic festivals hostilities were suspended between opposing armies; and despisers of the mysteries, betrayers of the secret doctrine, and unbidden witnesses of the rites, were punished capitally or with lifelong banishment. In the year 411 B. C. the poet Diagoras of Melos, who threw a figure of Herakles into fire, to put the hero to his thirteenth labor, and who had betrayed the mysteries, was banished for his irreligion. Even after the death of Hellenic liberty the Roman emperors took an interest in maintaining the Eleusinian sanctuaries. Hadrian sought and obtained the initiation, Antoninus erected edifices at Eleusis, nay, some of the early Christian emperors, as Constantius II. and Jovian, in their decrees forbidding nocturnal festivals made an exception of the Eleusinia; and after the destruction of the sacred buildings, the rites seem to have been still practiced.

The sum of all that is known of the doctrine taught at Eleusis is as follows: The myth underlying these mysteries was the rape, by Pluto, of Persephone, daughter of Demeter. Pluto, god of the netherworld in the popular belief, lord of the abode of the damned, in other terms, the personification of the sun that goes down in the west, hence of the sun of the nighttime, or of the Wintertime, carries off Persephone (personification of the world of plants), as she is plucking flowers (for as the cold season comes on the flowers wither and die), and takes her with him to the realm of shades, where she occupies the throne with him. But her mother Demeter, being, as goddess of the earth, the mother of the plant-world, and so too protectress of husbandry, wanders about lamenting, for indeed the earth loses its adornments, its loveliest features, in Winter. But at last the gods take pity on the hapless wanderer and bring about an agreement between her and Pluto, whereby Persephone is permitted to live in the upperworld in Summer, returning to the netherworld for Winter: here is signified the fecundity of the soil, and also the resurrection of man after his body has been dropped like a grain of corn in the earth. The union of Persephone with Bacchus, i. e., with the sun-god whose work is to promote fruitfulness, is an idea special to the mysteries, and means the union of humanity with godhead, the consummation aimed at in the mystic rites. Hence in all probability the central teaching of the mysteries was Personal Immortality, analogue of the return of the bloom to plants in Spring.

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.