The Eleusinian Mysteries and Rites Part 4

V

THEIR MYSTICAL SIGNIFICANCE

Life, as we know it, was looked upon by the ancient philosophers as death. Plato considered the body as the sepulchre of the soul, and in the _Cratylus_ acquiesces in the doctrine of Orpheus that the soul is punished through its union with the body. Empedocles, lamenting his connection with this corporeal world, pathetically exclaimed:--

For this I weep, for this indulge my woe, That e'er my soul such novel realms should know.

He also calls this material abode, or the realms of generation,

a joyless region, Where slaughter, rage, and countless ills reside.

Philolaus, the celebrated Pythagorean, wrote: "The ancient theologists and priests testify that the soul is united with the body for the sake of suffering punishment, and that it is buried in the body as in a sepulchre"; while Pythagoras himself said: "Whatever we see when awake is death, and when asleep a dream."

This is the truth intended to be expressed in the Mysteries. Sall.u.s.tius, the neo-Platonic philosopher, in his treatise _Peri Theon kai Kosmou_, "Concerning the G.o.ds and the existing state of things," explains the rape of Persephone as signifying the descent of the soul. Other writers have explained the real element of the Mysteries as consisting in the relations of the universe to the soul, more especially after death, or as intimating obscurely by splendid visions the felicity of the soul here and hereafter when purified from the defilements of a material nature. The intention of all mystic ceremonies, according to Sall.u.s.tius, was to conjoin the world and the G.o.ds. Plotinus says that to be plunged into matter is to descend and then fall asleep. The initiate had to withstand the daemons and spectres, which, in later times, ill.u.s.trated the difficulties besetting the soul in its approach to the G.o.ds, so also the Uasarian had to repel or satisfy the mystic crocodiles, vipers, avenging a.s.sessors, daemons of the gate, and other dread beings whom he encountered in his trying pa.s.sage through the valley of the shadow of death. Pindar, speaking of the Eleusinian Mysteries, says: "Blessed is he who, on seeing those common concerns under the earth, knows both the end of life and the given end of Jupiter."

Psyche is said to have fallen asleep in Hades through rashly attempting to behold corporeal beauty, and the truth intended to be taught in the Eleusinian Mysteries was that prudent men who earnestly employed themselves in divine concerns were, above all others, in a vigilant state, and that imprudent men who pursued objects of an inferior nature were asleep, and engaged only in the delusion of dreams; and that if they happened to die in this sleep before they were aroused they would be afflicted with similar, but still sharper, visions in a future state.

Matter was regarded by the Egyptians as a certain mire or mud. They called matter the dregs or sediment of the first life. Before the first purification the candidate for initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries was besmeared with clay or mud which it was the object of the purification to wash away. It also intimated that while the soul is in a state of servitude to the body it lives confined, as it were, in bonds through the dominion of this t.i.tanic life. Thus the Greeks laid great stress upon the advantages to be derived from initiation. Not only were the initiates placed under the protection of the State, but the very act of initiation was said to a.s.sist in the spreading of goodwill among men, keep the soul from sin and crime, place the initiates under the special protection of the G.o.ds, and provide them with the means of attaining perfect virtue, the power of living a spotless life, and a.s.sure them of a peaceful death and of everlasting bliss hereafter. The hierophants a.s.sured all who partic.i.p.ated in the Mysteries that they would have a high place in Elysium, a clearer understanding, and a more intimate intercourse with the G.o.ds, whereas the uninitiated would for ever remain in outer darkness. Indeed, in the third degree the epoptae were said to be admitted to the presence of and converse with the G.o.ddesses Demeter and Persephone, under whose immediate care and protection they were said to be placed. Initiation was referred to frequently as a guarantee of salvation conferred by outward and visible signs and by sacred formulae.

The Lesser Mysteries were intended to symbolize the condition of the soul while subservient to the body, and the liberation from this servitude, through purgative virtues, was what the wisdom of the Ancients intended to signify by the descent into Hades and the speedy return from those dark abodes. They were held to contain perfective rites and appearances and the tradition of the sacred doctrines necessary to the perfection or accomplishment of the most splendid visions. The perfective part, said Proclus, precedes initiation, as initiation precedes inspection.

"Hercules," said Proclus also in _Plat. Polit_., "being purified by sacred initiations and enjoying undefiled fruits, obtained at length a perfect establishment among the G.o.ds"; that is, freed from the bondage of matter ascending beyond the reach of its hands.

Plutarch wrote:--

"To die is to be initiated into the great mysteries,... Our whole life is but a succession of errors, of painful wanderings, and of long-journeys by tortuous ways, without outlet. At the moment of quitting it, fears, terrors, quiverings, mortal sweats, and a lethargic stupor come and overwhelm us; but, as soon as we are out of it, we pa.s.s into delightful meadows, where the purest air is breathed, where sacred concerts and discourses are heard; where, in short, one is impressed with celestial visions. It is there that man, having become perfect through his new initiation, restored to liberty, really master of himself, celebrates, crowned with myrtle, the most august mysteries, holds converse with just and pure souls, and sees with contempt the impure mult.i.tude of the profane or uninitiated, ever plunged and sinking itself into the mire and in profound darkness."

Dogmatic instruction was not included in the Mysteries; the doctrine of the immortality of the soul traces its origin to sources anterior to the rise of the Mysteries. At Eleusis the way was shown how to secure for the soul after death the best possible fate. The miracle of regeneration, rather than the eternity of being, was taught.

Plato introduces Socrates as saying: "In my opinion those who established the Mysteries, whoever they were, were well skilled in human nature. For in these rites it was of old signified to the aspirants that those who died without being initiated stuck fast in mire and filth; but that he who was purified and initiated should, at his death, have his habitation with the G.o.ds."

Plato, again, in the seventh book of the _Republic_ says: "He who is not able by the exercise of his reason to define the idea of the good, separating it from all other objects and piercing as in a battle through every kind of argument; endeavouring to confute, not according to opinion but according to evidence, and proceeding with all these dialectical exercises with an unshaken reason--he who cannot accomplish this, would you not say that he neither knows the good itself, nor anything which is properly demonstrated good? And would you not a.s.sert that such a one when he apprehended it rather through the medium of opinion than of science, that in the present life he is sunk in sleep and conversant with delusions and dreams; and that before he is roused to a vigilant state he will descend to Hades, and be overwhelmed with sleep perfectly profound?"

Olympiodorus, in his MS. Commentary on the Georgias of Plato, says of the Elysian fields: "It is necessary to know that the fortunate islands are said to be raised above the sea.... Hercules is reported to have accomplished his last labour in the Hesperian regions, signifying by this that, having vanquished an obscure and terrestrial life, he afterwards lived in open day--that is, in truth and resplendent light.

So that he who in the present state vanquishes as much as possible a corporeal life, through the exercise of the cathartic virtues, pa.s.ses in reality into the fortunate islands of the soul, and lives surrounded with the bright splendours of truth and wisdom proceeding from the sun of good."

The esoteric teaching was not, of course, grasped by all the initiates; the majority merely recognized or grasped the exoteric doctrine of a future state of rewards and punishments. Virgil, in his description, in the _aeneid_, of the Mysteries, confines himself to the exoteric teaching. aeneas, having pa.s.sed over the Stygian lake, meets with the three-headed Cerberus. By Cerberus must be understood the discriminative part of the soul, of which a dog, by reason of its sagacity, is an emblem. The three heads signify the intellective, dianoetic, and doxatic powers. "He dragg'd the three-mouth'd dog to upper day"--i.e. by temperance, continence, and other virtues he drew upwards the various powers of the soul. The teaching of the Mysteries was not in opposition to the ordinary creed: it deepened it rather, revived it in a spiritual manner and gave to religion a force and a power it had not hitherto possessed.

The fable of Persephone, as belonging to the Mysteries, was properly of a mixed nature, composed of all four species of fable--theological, physical, animistic, and material. According to the arcana of ancient theology, the Coric order--i.e. that belonging to Persephone--is twofold, one part supermundane and the other mundane.

Proclus says: "According to the rumour of theologists, who delivered to us the most holy Eleusinian Mysteries, Persephone abides on high, in those dwellings of her mother which she prepared for her in inaccessible places, exempt from the sensible world. But she likewise dwells with Pluto, administering terrestrial concerns, governing the recesses of the earth and imparting soul to beings which are of themselves inanimate and dead."

The Orphic poet describes Persephone as "the life and the death of mortals," and as being the mother of Eubuleus or Bacchus by an ineffable intercourse with Jupiter. Porphyry a.s.serts that the wood pigeon was sacred to her and that she was the same as Maia, or the great mother, who is usually claimed as the parent of the Arkite G.o.d Mercury.

According to Nosselt the following may be taken as the meaning of the myth of Demeter and her lost daughter: "Persephone, the daughter of the all-productive earth (Demeter), is the seed. The earth rejoices at the sight of the plants and flowers, but they fade and wither, and the seed disappears quickly from the face of the earth when it is strewn on the ground. The dreaded monarch of the underworld has taken possession of it. In vain the mother searches for her child, the whole face of nature mourns her loss, and everything sorrows and grieves with her. But, secretly and unseen, the seed develops itself in the lap of the earth, and at length it starts forth: what was dead is now alive; the earth, all decked with fresh green, rejoices at the recovery of her long-lost daughter, and everything shares in the joy."

Demeter was wors.h.i.+pped in a twofold sense by the Greeks, as the foundress of agriculture and as G.o.ddess of law and order. They used to celebrate yearly in her honour the Thesmorphoria, or Festival of Laws.

According to some ancient writers the Greeks, prior to the time of Demeter and Triptolemus, fed upon the acorns of the ilex, or the evergreen oak. Acorns, according to Virgil, were the food in Epiros, and in Spain, according to Strabo. The Scythians made bread with acorns.

According to another tradition, before Demeter's time, men neither cultivated corn nor tilled the ground, but roamed the mountains and woods in search for the wild fruits which the earth produced. Isocrates wrote: "Ceres hath made the Athenians two presents of the greatest consequence: corn, which brought us out of a state of brutality; and the Mysteries, which teach the initiated to entertain the most agreeable expectations touching death and eternity." The coins of Eleusis represented Demeter in a car drawn by dragons or serpents which were sometimes winged. The G.o.ddess had two ears of corn in her right hand or, as some imagined, torches, indicating that she was searching for her daughter. George Wheler, in his _Journey into Greece_, published in 1682, says: "We observed many large stones covered with wheat-ears and bundles of poppy bound together; these being the characters of Ceres."

At Copenhagen there is a statue representing Demeter holding poppies and ears of corn in her left hand. On a coin of Lampsacus of the fourth century B.C., Persephone is described in the act of rising from the earth.

According to Taylor, the Platonist, Demeter in the legend represents the evolution of that self-inspective part of our nature which we properly determine intellect, and Persephone that vital, self-moving, and animate part which we call soul. Pluto signifies the whole of our material nature, and, according to Pythagoras, the empire of this G.o.d commences downwards from the Galaxy or Milky Way.

Sall.u.s.t says that among the mundane divinities Ceres is the deity of the planet Saturn. The cavern signifies the entrance into mundane life accomplished by the union of the soul with the terrestrial body.

Demeter, who was afraid lest some violence be offered to Persephone on account of her inimitable beauty, conveyed her privately to Sicily and concealed her in a house built on purpose by the Cyclops, while she herself directed her course to the temple of Cybele, the mother of the G.o.ds. Here we see the first cause of the soul's descent, viz. her desertion of a life wholly according to intellect, occultly signified by the separation of Demeter and Persephone. Afterwards Jupiter instructed Venus to go and betray Persephone from her retirement, that Pluto might be enabled to carry her away, and, to prevent any suspicion in the virgin's mind, he commanded Diana and Pallas to bear her company. The three G.o.ddesses on arrival found Persephone at work on a scarf for her mother, on which she had embroidered the primitive chaos and the formation of the world. Venus, says Taylor, is significant of desire, which, even in the celestial regions (for such is the residence of Persephone until she is ravished by Pluto), begins silently and fraudulently in the recesses of the soul. Minerva is symbolical of the rational power of the soul; and Diana represents nature, or the merely natural and vegetable part of our composition, both ensnared through the allurements of desire.

In Ovid we have Narcissus, the metamorphosis of a youth who fell a victim to love of his own corporeal form. The rape of Persephone, according to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, was the immediate consequence of her gathering this wonderful flower. By Narcissus falling in love with his shadow in the limpid stream we behold the representation of a beautiful soul, which, by prolonged gaze upon the material form, becomes enamoured of a corporeal life and changed into a being consisting wholly of the mere energies of nature. Plato, forcing his pa.s.sage through the earth, seizes on Persephone and carries her away, despite the resistance of Minerva and Diana, who were forbidden by Jupiter to attempt her deliverance after her abduction. This signifies that the lapse of the soul into a material nature is contrary to the genuine wish and proper condition. Pluto having hurried Persephone into the infernal regions, marriage succeeds. That is to say, the soul having sunk into the profoundities of a material nature, unites with the dark tenement of the material body. Night is with great beauty and propriety introduced, standing by the nuptial couch and confirming the oblivious league. That is to say, the soul, by union with a material body, becomes familiar with darkness and subject to the empire of night, in consequence of which she dwells wholly with delusive phantoms and till she breaks her fetters is deprived of the perception of that which is real and true.

The nine days of the Festival are said to be significant of the descent of the soul. The soul, in falling from her original, divine abode in the heavens, pa.s.ses through eight spheres, viz. the inerratic sphere and the seven planets, a.s.suming a different body and employing different energies in each, finally becoming connected with the sublunary world and a terrene body on the ninth. Demeter and the foundation of the art of tillage are said to signify the descent of intellect into the realms of generation, the greatest benefit and ornament which a material nature is capable of receiving. Without the possibility of the partic.i.p.ation of intellect in the lower material sphere nothing but an irrational and a brutal life would subsist.

But, according to some writers, the initiates into the third degree were taught that the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses were only dead mortals, subject while alive to the same pa.s.sions and infirmities as themselves; and they were taught to look upon the Supreme Cause, the Creator of the Universe, as pervading all things by His virtue and governing all things by His power. Thus the meaning of _Mystes_ is given as "one who sees things in disguise," and that of _Epopt_ as "one who sees things as they are, without disguise." The Epopt, after pa.s.sing through the ceremonial of exaltation, was said to have received Autopsia, or complete vision.

Virgil declared that the secret of the Mysteries was the Unity of the G.o.dhead, and Plato owned it to be "difficult to find the Creator of the Universe, and, when found, impossible to discover Him to all the world."

Varro, in his work _Of Religions_, says that "there were many truths which it was inconvenient for the State to be generally known; and many things which, though false, it was expedient the people should believe, and that, therefore, the Greeks shut up their Mysteries in the silence of their sacred enclosures." The Mysteries declared that the future life was not the shadowy, weary existence which it had hitherto been supposed to be, but that through the rites of purification and sacrifices of a sacramental character man could secure a better hope for the future.

Thus the Eleusinian Mysteries became the chief agent in the conversion of the Greek world from the Homeric view of Hades to a more hopeful belief as to man's state after death. Tully promulgated a law forbidding nocturnal sacrifices in which women were permitted to take part, but made an express exception in favour of the Eleusinian Mysteries, giving as his reason: "Athens hath produced many excellent, even divine inventions and applied them to the use of life, but she has given nothing better than those Mysteries by which we are drawn from an irrational and savage life and tamed, as it were, and broken to humanity. They are truly called _Initia_, for they are indeed the beginnings of a life of reason and virtue."

Secrecy was enjoined because it was regarded as essential that the profane should not be permitted to share the knowledge of the true nature of Demeter and Persephone, as if it were known that these G.o.ddesses were only mortal women their wors.h.i.+p would become contemptible. Cicero says that it was the humanity of Demeter and Persephone, their places of interment, and several facts of a like nature that were concealed with so much care. Diagoras, the Melian, was accounted an atheist because he revealed the real secret of the Eleusinian. Mysteries. The charge of atheism was the lot of any who communicated a knowledge of the one, only G.o.d. Pindar says, referring to the Mysteries: "Happy is he who has seen these things before leaving this world: he realizes the beginning and the end of life, as ordained by Zeus"; and Sophocles wrote: "Oh, thrice blessed the mortals, who, having contemplated these Mysteries, have descended to Hades; for those only will there be a future life of happiness--the others there will find nothing but suffering."

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