English
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 under- went 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 356 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. anything of their details, to a highly philosophical interpretation. Thomas Taylor, the indefatigable trans- lator 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 THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES. 357 popular theology in pre-Christian ages. But Thomas Taylor loftily rebukes the narrowness of this concep- tion. 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 experi- ences 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 mid- night 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 “ Phedrus’”’ 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 358 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. 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 spec- tators of entire simple, immovable, and blessed visions, resident in a pure light, and were ourselves pure and immaculate and liberated from this surrounding vest- ment 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 condi- tion 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 THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES. 359 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 1s 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 360 THE GROWTH OF THE SOUL. they profess to rest are no longer in touch with methods of spiritual research which might invest their priestly guardians wth 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 THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES. 361 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 Kové, *Ou, Maé = 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 wx = change, course, or turn of duty.