CHAPTER 12: THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES.

Egyptian and Greek initiations — Current authorities on the subject — The evident reality of their purpose — The explanation of secrecy — Further motives for reserve in the Middle Ages.

I have already endeavoured to show what is the distinction between Theosophic and Religions teaching, and why, though widely different in some respects, they are not in any real sense antagonistic. A further step along the same line of thought, leads us to the conclusion that till a recent period of the world's history, Theosophic and Religious teaching went hand in hand — that one was the complement and crown of the other. That the teachings of what used to be called Initiation in the era of the Egyptian and Grecian Mysteries were closely identified with what we now call Theosophy, is a conclusion that reveals itself with something approaching certainty when the records that we possess, such as they are, concerning the ancient Mysteries, are examined in the light of now current expositions of Theosophic doctrine. Nor must we be misled in estimating the importance of this fact by the easily suggested idea that the Mystery teaching may have been superseded by the Christian revelation — though all very well in its way, while the world at large had to be content with heathen polytheism. The Mystery teaching was not superseded by the Christian revelation, for the author of that revelation constantly alludes to it as embodying a higher instruction than that offered to the multitude even by Him.

The supersession of esoteric teaching by that of modern Christian doctrine was effected not by the original Teacher or his disciples, but by the Church when that became a State organisation with worldly interests to serve, and arrogated to itself a spiritual despotism, by pretending to a monopoly of spiritual knowledge.

This pretence has been emphasised more and more in modern centuries in inverse proportion to the spiritual knowledge really possessed by the priesthood. And, indeed, in looking back on the claims to superior spiritual knowledge evidently advanced by the priesthood in early ages of the world, we are apt to measure those claims by reference to the painfully familiar fact that priests in modern centuries have not been at all remarkable for the possession of knowledge in advance of their lay contemporaries. On the contrary, the early European Church has been in the rear of intelligence in almost all respects, and the claims of its hierarchy on the reverence of the multitude have depended on appeals to a very crude superstition or on mundane tyranny. As our survey, however, is pushed back further and further into the past, we get well behind the records of an ignorant and worldly church to periods at which the priesthood was evidently regarded as actually invested with an insight into the mysteries of Nature far transcending that generally diffused throughout secular society. The priests of ancient Egypt were . real spiritual teachers, and the inferences of those who study Egyptian antiquities by the light of modern inquiries into occult science will surely tend in the direction of recognising them as endowed with the spiritual enlightenment that carries with it an abnormal control over natural forces.

We do not know, or at all events we are not helped by literary and archaeological research to know, very much about the "Mysteries" and initiations of Ancient Egypt, and Sir Gardner Wilkinson frankly concedes that our only clue to their character and significance is to be sought for in the somewhat fuller information we possess concerning the Greek Mysteries of Eleusis, which were evidently copied from Egyptian practices. But it is quite plain that Egyptian initiations were so serious in their character — hedged round from profane intrusion with such jealous care, and approachable only through probations and ordeals of so formidable a description that the outer world must have been entirely sure of the broad principle that the Hierophants of the temples were on a truly superior level of knowledge and power, as compared with the multitude. If they had been merely the exponents of a pompous ecclesiastical ceremonial, candidates for their teaching would not have besieged their strongholds with the eagerness actually shown, and would not have been prepared to go through the trials they certainly underwent in their efforts to secure admission to the charmed circle of enlightenment. Even the Mysteries of Eleusis, which were according to all reasonable conjecture a very degenerate reproduction of the more ancient organisation of Egypt, were open, as far as we know anything of their details, to a highly philosophical interpretation. Thomas Taylor, the indefatigable translator of so much Platonic and Neo-Platonic literature, says in his own dissertation on the Mysteries, that those of the "lesser" order "occultly signified this sublime truth, that the soul being merged in matter, resides among the dead both here and hereafter." And quoting Plotinus, he adds: "The soul therefore dies through vice as much as it is possible for the soul to die; and the death of the soul is, while merged or baptised as it were in the present body, to descend into matter and be filled with its impurity, and after departing from this body, to be absorbed in its filth till it returns to a superior condition, and elevates its eye from the overwhelming mire."

Later on, dealing with the subject of the greater Mysteries, he says: "As the shows of the lesser mysteries occultly signified the miseries of the soul while in subjection to the body, so those of the greater obscurity intimated by mystic and splendid visions the felicity of the soul, both here and hereafter, when purified from the defilements of a material nature and constantly elevated to the realities of intellectual vision."

Dr. Warburton, who was Bishop of Gloucester in the middle of the last century, is sometimes referred to as a writer of authority on the ancient Mysteries; but his views are too much entangled with conventional orthodoxy to have any real value. He labours, indeed, to show that the Mysteries were designed to teach the Unity of God, as contrasted with the polytheism of popular theology in pre-Christian ages. But Thomas Taylor loftily rebukes the narrowness of this conception. After expanding the ideas above indicated, he goes on: "From hence the reader will easily perceive the extreme ridiculousness of Dr, Warburton's system — that the grand secret of the Mysteries consisted in exposing the errors of polytheism, and in teaching the doctrine of the Unity, or the existence of one Deity alone. . . . But it is by no means wonderful that men who have not the smallest conception of the true nature of the gods, who have persuaded themselves that they were only dead men deified, and who measure the understandings of the ancients by their own, should be led to fabricate a system so improbable and absurd.' ' As showing how very far the initiations went beyond being a mere theoretical repudiation of popular error, Taylor quotes two passages as follows. The first is from Apuleius, who says, describing his own experiences in the mysteries: "I approached the confines of death, and treading on the threshold of Proserpine, and being carried through all the elements, I came back to my pristine situation. In the depths of midnight I saw the sun glittering with a splendid light, together with the infernal and supernal gods, and to these divinities approaching nearer I paid the tribute of profound adoration." The second passage is from Plato, who in the "Phaedrus" describes the felicity of the virtuous soul, prior to its descent, in a beautiful allusion to the arcane visions of the mysteries. He writes: "But it was then lawful to survey the most splendid beauty when we obtained, together with that blessed choir, this happy vision and contemplation. . . . And these Divine orgies were celebrated by us while we possessed the proper integrity of our nature, and were freed from the molestations of evil, which availed us in a succeeding period of time. Likewise in consequence of this Divine initiation we became spectators of entire simple, immovable, and blessed visions, resident in a pure light, and were ourselves pure and immaculate and liberated from this surrounding vestment which we denominate body, and to which we are now bound like an oyster to its shell."

The Mysteries of Bacchus were held by Taylor to be of somewhat limited significance compared with those of Eleusis.

"And thus much for the Mysteries of Bacchus, which as well as those of Ceres relate in one part to the descent of a partial intellect into matter, and its condition while united with the dark tenement of body; but there appears to be this difference between the two — that in the fable of Ceres and Proserpine the descent of the whole rational soul is considered, and in that of Bacchus the distribution and procession of that supreme part alone of our nature, which we properly characterise by the appellation of intellect. In the composition of each we may discern the same traces of exalted wisdom and recondite theology — of a theology the most venerable of all others for its' antiquity, and the most admirable for its excellence and reality."

What we may also perceive from the evidence afforded by such passages as those quoted from Apuleius and Plato, is that the Mysteries were associated with the exercise of what we should now call psychic powers and faculties. And with this clue, aided by the growing knowledge in modern times of the extent and range that may be assigned to such faculties, we may begin to appreciate the whole situation more intelligently than has been possible till now.

From the Egyptian period downward, and in a greater degree in the Egyptian as compared with the Greek period, the Mysteries and initiations connected with them were systems of teaching and graduation in that occult science which has been built up through the ages by the prolonged exercise of psychic faculties that are still available for those who know how to employ them as a means of verifying the knowledge thus accumulated in the world. To a very large extent during the development of modern civilisation those faculties have been stifled and forgotten in the activity imparted to others of a purely physical character; but now in all directions even Western civilised nations are fermenting with a revival of psychic activity. Much of this energy is blindly and ignorantly misdirected, but it is working in all its manifestations to break down the dogged materialistic incredulity that has been in a supreme degree the discreditable characteristic of the last half century. That incredulity has pervaded secular science, giving its avowed agnosticism an almost Atheistic bias, and has dried up the life-blood of religion, leaving the churches a structure of dry bones for all but enthusiasts, whose instincts of piety have adorned them with poetic rather than spiritual attributes. Rituals may be preserved, but the creeds on which they profess to rest are no longer in touch with methods of spiritual research which might invest their priestly guardians with authority to utter them. They are handed down now from generation to generation with a bigoted tenacity that is all the more querulous because it is conscious of its own inability to trace them back to their supposed sources in the invisible realms of Nature. A clergy rich in professions but poor in faith joins hands with scientific materialism to discountenance the theory that embodied human consciousness can have any touch with the spiritual world. A withered theology preserved like the petals of dried flowers may, it no doubt feels, do better service to a church with a complicated sociological structure to take care of, than a progressive and vitalised scheme of spiritual investigation.

Neither clerical interests nor materialism, however, can hold their own against the growing conviction that the human race is in possession of faculties capable of piercing the veil of matter. Once recognising this as a permanent fact in Nature, we are relieved from the necessity of trying to escape, by fantastic conjectures, from the plain evidence of contemporary writers that the Mysteries of Greece, and, a fortiori, those of Egypt, were associated with a psychic revelation for those who were initiated.

This point is well sustained by a Russian writer, Ouvaroff, whose treatise on the Eleusinian Mysteries has been translated into English by J. D. Price (1817).

The first edition of the original was published in 1812. In his preface the author says: —

"My object in this work is to show that not only were the ancient Mysteries the very life of polytheism, but still more that they proceeded from the sole and true source of all the light diffused over the globe."

He traces the Mysteries to an Indian origin, relying on the identity of the words = Conx, Om, Pax, used at the conclusion of the Mysteries of Eleusis, with the Sanscrit Cansha, Om, Pacsha, the first word signifying "object of desire," the second being the familiar sacred syllable of the East, and the third, Pacsha, identical with the Latin vix = change, course, or turn of duty.

After describing the division of the Mysteries into lesser and greater, he goes on: —

"We must again acknowledge the impossibility of determining with precision the notions which the Epopts (the initiates of the greater Mysteries) received; but that connexion which we have ascertained between the initiations and the true source of all our knowledge suffices to prove that they not only acquired from them just notions respecting the Divinity — the relations between man and the Divinity — the primitive dignity of human nature — its fall — the immortality of the soul — the means of its return towards God, and finally another order of things after death, but that traditions were imparted to them, oral and even written, precious remains of the great shipwreck of humanity."

He also contends with great force: —

"It is not in fact probable that the superior initiation was limited to the demonstration of the Unity of God and the immortality of the soul by philosophical arguments. Clement, of Alexandria, expressly says, when speaking of the great Mysteries, 'Here ends all instruction; we behold Nature and things.' Besides, moral notions were so widely diffused that the Mysteries could not, merely on account of them, lay claim to the magnificent eulogiums bestowed by the most enlightened personages of antiquity. For if we suppose that the revelation of those truths had been the only object of the Mysteries, would they not have ceased to exist from the moment when those truths were publicly taught? Would Pindar, Plato, Cicero, Epictetus have spoken of them with such admiration if the Hierophant had satisfied himself with loudly proclaiming his own opinions, or those of his order, on truths with which they were themselves acquainted?"

It is often urged by writers who would disparage the Mysteries that they were sometimes associated with licentious excesses. This objection has especial reference to the Orphic Mysteries, and on this subject Ouvaroff writes:

"We have already mentioned that the Mysteries of Bacchus bear a character altogether different from that of the Eleusinian. This opposition strikes us at once, and what conformity could in fact subsist between the savage licentiousness of the Bacchus worship and the severe character and high destination of the worship of Ceres? Yet after a serious examination we find that this opposition consists rather in the exterior than in the spirit of the two worships; nay, it entirely disappears when we raise ourselves to the parent idea, the true type of the two institutions. If we do not obstinately persuade ourselves that Ceres and Bacchus were historical personages — if we consider them as originally two symbols of some power of the universe, we behold them so identified that no other difference exists but in the exterior form, that is in the part depending wholly on men, on local circumstances, and the political destinies of nations. The worship of Ceres and the worship of Bacchus must belong to one principle alone, and this principle is found in the active force of Nature, viewed in the immense variety of its functions and its attributes."

A dignified treatise on the Mysteries, by W. M. Ramsay, is to be found in the ninth edition of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." The author begins, it is true, by speaking with respect of Lobeck's great work, the "Aglaophamus" (1829), in which that author endeavours to destroy the theory that the Mysteries " enshrined a primitive revelation of divine truth," but he recognises the weakness of some of Lobeck's arguments, and especially points out that additional evidence has been accumulated since his time, "making it certain that statements which Lobeck set aside as not referring to the Eleusinian religion do really relate to it."

The article is to be regarded as representing the severely erudite view of the subject brought up to date, and it is in no way inspired with any appreciation of the psychic aspect of the Mysteries. But all the more on that account it may be useful as showing how much serious dignity and grandeur of thought is seen to be associated with them. Mr. Ramsay writes:

"The saving and healthy effect of the Eleusinian Mysteries was believed in not only by the mass of the people but by many of the most thoughtful and educated intellects — Pindar, Sophocles, Socrates, Plutarch, &c. Plato, who finds no language too strong to stigmatise the demoralising effect of the Orphic Mysteries, speaks of the Eleusinian with great respect. . . . He that has been initiated has learned what will ensure his happiness hereafter. . . . According to Sopater, initiation establishes a kinship of the soul with the divine Nature; and Theon Smyrnaeus says that the final stage of initiation is the state of bliss and Divine favour which results from it. . . There is overwhelming proof in ancient writers that the effect of the Mysteries was not dependent on any dogmatic instruction. Even the doctrine of a future life, which is always associated in the old writers with the Mysteries, was not expressly inculcated in them, but left to the spectators to gather for themselves from the spectacle presented to them."

The serious view of the Mysteries suggested by all these quotations brings them into line with what we now call Theosophic teaching, and with the help of that teaching we can fill up all gaps in the explanation. In the ancient world the priests were really qualified to impart religious teaching by reason of being themselves in true psychic relation with fountains of superior wisdom. But the state of evolution of the humanity around them made it impossible for them to proclaim their knowledge to the multitude. The spiritual civilisation of the people at large was not such as would have prepared them to accept and profit by the pure ethical severity of occult wisdom.

In saying that I brush the surface of a problem that might be dealt with more fully, but it is enough for the moment to indicate the motives for reserve which are easily intelligible as actuating the ancient custodians of spiritual science. By the operation of natural laws that are plainly referred to in many biblical passages not always apprehended correctly, knowledge concerning the possibilities of spiritual progress greatly augments responsibility. A human being who has never been enabled or compelled to realise that he has it in his own power, if he lives a sufficiently ennobled life, to rise in the scale of existence to conditions superior to that of the commonplace human life around him, does not incur great moral responsibility in leading a less noble life. If he does wrong, natural laws will entail suffering upon him, if not in the life in which he sins, then in another; if he does right, he will be rewarded sooner or later with happiness; and this will happen whether he understands the law or not. But if in any way he acquires spiritual knowledge and appreciates the scope of his opportunities as a human being and the law which renders certain lines of conduct favourable to, and certain other lines antagonistic to, his higher development, then if he follows the lower path while really seeing the higher, it is much worse for him than if he had never seen it. So the wise priests of old — in the days when priests were really wise and studied the mysteries of Nature instead of fantastic rituals — forebore from pouring out their knowledge too recklessly into vessels ill-qualified to contain it. Modern objectors often fail to understand the motive of their reticence, unfamiliar with the notion that religion can be a more powerful agency than we find it now. Our churches have forgotten all that religion once represented, except the glittering generalities that may lightly be scattered abroad because they tell so little. Those who believe may be the better, and those who do not, but may still assimilate some morsels of good precept, can hardly be the worse. The Masters of the Mysteries had a different kind of teaching to deal with. They had to put those who were qualified on the path of upward spiritual progress. It is the main purpose of this book to try and explain to what that progress may lead, but at all events if it is merely taken for granted that it may lead to something, then the otherwise unintelligible secrecy of the Mysteries will be seen to have had a comprehensible theory.

In Egypt — where most occult students will see reason to believe that the Mysteries meant more than in the Grecian reproduction — their secrets seem to have been even more closely kept. Sir Gardner, who has so patiently elaborated every scrap of evidence that could throw light on the manners and social and religious life of the early Egyptians, is very frank in avowing the great difficulty he experiences in working out any information bearing on the secrets of initiation. He bears his testimony, however, to the earnestness of the current feeling on the subject.

"The Chief cause of the ascendancy they (the priests) acquired over the minds of the people was the importance attached to the Mysteries, to a thorough understanding of which the priests alone could arrive, and so sacred did they hold those secrets that many members of the sacerdotal order were not admitted to a participation of them, and those alone were selected for initiation who had proved themselves virtuous and deserving of the honour — a fact satisfactorily proved by the evidence of Clement of Alexandria, who says: 'The Egyptians neither entrusted their secrets to everyone nor degraded the secrets of Divine matters by disclosing them to the profane, reserving them for the heir-apparent to the throne and for such of the priests as excelled in virtue and wisdom.'

"From all we can learn of the subject it appears that the Mysteries consisted of degrees denominated the Greater and the Less, and in order to become qualified for admission into the higher class it was necessary to have passed through those of the inferior degrees, and each of them was probably divided into ten different grades. It was necessary that the character of the candidate for initiation should be pure and unsullied; and the novitiates were commanded to study those lessons which tended to purify the mind and to encourage morality. The honour of ascending from the less to the greater Mysteries was as highly esteemed as it was difficult to obtain. No ordinary qualification recommended the aspirant to this important privilege; and independent of enjoying an acknowledged reputation for learning and morality, he was required to undergo the most severe ordeal and to show the greatest moral resignation; but the ceremony of passing under the knife of the Hierophant was merely emblematic of the regeneration of the neophyte.

That no one except the priests was privileged to instruction into the greater Mysteries is evident from the fact that a prince, even the heir-apparent and of the military order, not being made partaker of these important secrets nor instructed in them until his accession to the throne, when in virtue of his kingly office he became a member of the priesthood and the head of the religion. It is not, however, less certain that at a later period many besides the priests, and even some Greeks, were admitted into the lesser Mysteries; yet in these cases also their advancement through the different grades must have depended on a strict conformance to prescribed rules."

The law which prescribed reticence in respect to exalted spiritual science in ancient times was fortified in the Middle Ages by an entirely new consideration. As the exoteric Christian Church grew into a more and more powerful engine of secular tyranny, the teacher who might too rashly proclaim the higher wisdom embodied in the secrets of initiation ran the risk not only of unduly augmenting the moral responsibility of those who might listen to him, but of being burned himself at the stake. With this peril in their way, it is not surprising that the mediaeval occultists were careful in the extreme to veil any statements they ventured to make in the disguise of an almost inpenetrable symbolism. But again with the light of modern Theosophic teaching to show us the solution of their riddle, we may easily recognise the philosophy of the ancient Mysteries reappearing in that of the much-talked-of and much misunderstood fraternity of the Rosicrucians.  

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