What are the 'Mysteries'? - Part 2

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Dear All,

 

In Part 1, we concluded with:

 

(P.21) " At the heart of Pagan philosophy is an understanding that all things are

One. The Mysteries aimed at awakening within the initiate a sublime experience

of this Oneness. Sallustius declares: 'Every initiation aims at uniting us with

the World and with the Deity.'[21] Plotinus describes the initiate transcending

his limited sense of himself as a separate ego and experiencing mystical union

with God:

 

(P.22) 'As if borne away, or possessed by a god, he attains to solitude in

untroubled stillness, nowhere deflected in his being and unbusied with self,

utterly at rest and become very rest. He does not converse with a statue or

image but with Godhead itself. And this is no object of vision, but another mode

of seeing, a detachment from self, a simplification and surrender of self, a

yearning for contact, and a stillness and meditation directed towards

transformation. Whoever sees himself in this way has attained likeness to God;

let him abandon himself and find the end of his journeying.'[22]

 

No wonder the initiate Sopatros poetically mused, 'I came out of the Mystery

Hall feeling like a stranger to myself.' " [23]

 

 

The Jesus Mysteries

Was the Original Jesus A Pagan God?

Chapter 2 - p.21-22

Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

Element (imprint of HarperCollins'Publishers')

77-85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

ISBN-13 978-0-7225-3677-3

ISBN-10 0-7225-3677-1

 

Notes:

 

[21] Angus, S. (1925), 70, quoting from 'Concerning the Gods and the Universe',4

 

[22] Quoted in Gregory, J. (1987), 188; slightly adapted

 

[23] Burkert, W. (1992), 90, quoting Sopatros, 'The Rhetorician', 8.114

 

Here now is Part 2.

 

Enjoy,

 

violet

 

 

 

What are the 'Mysteries'? - Part 2

 

(P.22) The Sacred Spectacle at Eleusis

 

What were these ancient Mysteries that could inspire such reverent awe and

heartfelt appreciation? The Mystery religion was practised for thousands of

years, during which time it spread throughout the ancient world, taking on many

different forms. Some were frenzied and others meditative. Some involved bloody

animal sacrifice, while others were presided over by strict vegetarians. At

certain moments in history the Mysteries were openly practised by whole

populations and were endorsed, or at least tolerated, by the state. At other

times they were a small-scale and secretive affair, for fear of persecution by

unsympathetic authorities. Central to all of these forms of the Mysteries,

however, was the myth of a dying and resurrecting godman.

 

The Greek Mysteries celebrated at Eleusis in honour of the Great Mother goddess

and the godman Dionysus were the most famous of all the Mystery cults. The

sanctuary of Eleusis was finally destroyed by bands of fanatical Christian monks

in 396 CE, but up until this tragic act of vandalism the Mysteries had been

celebrated there for over 11 centuries.[24] At the height of their popularity

people were coming from all over the then known world to be initiated: men and

women, rich and poor, slaves and emperors [25] - even a Brahmin priest from

India.[26]

 

(P.23) Each year some 30,000 Athenian citizens embarked on a 30-kilometre

barefoot pilgrimage to the sacred site of Eleusis on the coast to celebrate the

autumn Mysteries of Dionysus.[27] For days they would have been preparing for

this important religious event by fasting, offering sacrifices and under-going

ritual purification. As those about to be initiated danced along the 'Sacred

Way' to Eleusis, accompanied by the frenzied beat of cymbals and tambourines,

they were accosted by masked men who abused and insulted them, while others beat

them with sticks.[28] At the head of the procession was carried the statue of

Dionysus himself, leading them ever onwards. After ritual naked bathing in the

sea and other purification ceremonies the crowd reached the great doors of the

Telesterion, a huge purpose-built initiation hall. Only the chosen few who were

already initiated or about to be initiated into the secret Mysteries could enter

here.

 

What awesome ceremony was held behind these closed doors that touched the great

philosophers, artists, statesmen and scientists of the ancient world so deeply?

All initiates were sworn to secrecy and held the Mysteries so sacred that they

kept this oath.[29] From large numbers of hints and clues, however, we know that

they witnessed a sublime theatrical spectacle. They were awed by sounds and

dazzled by lights. They were bathed in the blaze of a huge fire and trembled to

the nerve-shattering reverberations of a mighty gong. The Hierophant, the high

priest of the Mysteries, was quite literally a 'showman' who orchestrated a

terrifyingly transformative dramatic reenactment of sacred myth. He himself was

dressed as the central character - the godman Dionysus.[30]

 

A modern scholar writes:

 

(P.24) 'A Mystery Religion was thus a divine drama which portrayed before the

wondering eyes of the privileged observers the story of the struggles,

sufferings, and victory of a patron deity, the travail of nature in which life

ultimately triumphs over death, and joy is born of pain. The whole ritual of the

Mysteries aimed especially at quickening the emotional life. No means of

exciting the emotions was neglected in the passion-play, either by way of

inducing careful predispositions or of supplying external stimulus. Tense mental

anticipations heightened by a period of abstinence, hushed silences, imposing

processions and elaborate pageantry, music loud and violent or soft and

enthralling, delirious dances, the drinking of spirituous liquors, physical

macerations, alternations of dense darkness and dazzling light, the sight of

gorgeous ceremonial vestments, the handling of holy emblems, autosuggestion and

the promptings of the Hierophant - these and many secrets of emotional

exaltation were in vogue.'[31]

 

The dramatization of the myth of Dionysus is the origin of theatre.[32] But the

initiates were not a passive audience. They were participants who shared in the

passion of the godman whose death and rebirth symbolically represented the death

and spiritual rebirth of each one of them. As a modern authority explains:

 

'Dionysus was the god of the most blessed ecstasy and the most enraptured love.

But he was also the persecuted god, the suffering and dying god, and all whom he

loved, all who attended him, had to share his tragic fate.'[33]

 

By witnessing the awesome tragedy of Dionysus, the initiates at Eleusis shared

in his suffering, death and resurrection, and so experienced a spiritual

purification known as 'catharsis'.[34]

 

(P.25) The Mysteries did not offer religious dogmas to simply be believed, but a

myth to be entered into. Initiation was not about learning something, but about

experiencing an altered state of awareness. Plutarch, a Pagan high priest,

confesses that those who had been initiated could produce no proof of the

beliefs that they acquired. Aristotle maintains, 'It is not necessary for the

initiated to learn anything, but to receive impressions and to be put in a

certain frame of mind.'[35] The philosopher Proclus talks of the Mysteries as

evoking a 'sympathy of the soul with the ritual in a way that is unintelligible

to us and divine, so that some of the initiates are stricken with panic, being

filled with divine awe; others assimilate themselves to the holy symbols, leave

their own identity, become at home with the gods, and experience divine

possession.'[36]

 

 

Notes:

 

[24] Angus, op.cit., vii. Eleusis was destroyed by Alaric the Goth aided by

Christian monks.

 

[25] Burkert, W. (1985), 286, and see Willoughby, H.R. (1929), 38, which also

presents evidence that women and slaves were admitted to the rites. Numerous

Roman nobles and Emperors were initiated at Eleusis, including Sulla, Mark

Antony, Cicero, Augustus, Claudius, Domitian, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, see

Magnien, V. (1938), 25ff.

 

[26] Kerenyi, C. (1967), 100ff. The Brahmin priest Zarmaros went as an

ambassador to Emperor Augustus from King Poros of India. Augustus, initiated

himself in 31 BCE, decreed that the Eleusinian Mysteries should be celebrated

out of season to initiate his guest. At the climax of the Mysteries, when the

sanctuary opened and the great fire blazed forth, Zarmaros astonished onlookers

by walking directly into the flames.

 

[27] Herodotus, 'The Histories', 544, Book 8, 63-8. Thirty thousand, the number

of Dionysus revellers seen in the miraculous vision of 479 BCE, is the figure

that Herodotus elsewhere gives for the entire population of Athens.

 

[28] Burkert, op. cit., 287

 

[29] The oath of secrecy taken by initiates was extracted from them before their

admittance into the Telesterion, which seated 3,000 at a time. The Mysteries

were performed at Eleusis for over 1,100 years during which time hundreds of

thousands of people must have been initiated. Despite this, not one direct

account of what took place inside survives to gratify the historian. What has

been assembled so far is the indirect evidence from pottery, sculpture, poetry,

plays, philosophers and other literary sources.

 

[30] Kerenyi, op.cit., 55:'The Hierophant at Eleusis appears as a second

Dionysus.' The Hierophant's costume was taken over from the actor in the

tragedies of Aeschylus, a testimony to the close link between the origins of the

Mysteries and the birth of the theatre.

 

[31] Angus, S. (1925), 61

 

[32] The development of theatre from the cult of Dionysus is a well known fact,

but how this happened is little understood and insecurely researched. Gasset

writes:'Tragedy was a religious ceremony ... Greek scholars are baffled by the

faith of the Athenians, they are unable to reconstruct it. Until they have done

so, Greek tragedy will be a page written in a language to which we possess no

dictionary.' See Kerenyi, C. (1976), 315. We do know that the circular orchestra

of the theatre was taken over from the circular threshing places used at

harvest-time and that theatre arose from widespread popular rituals performed in

honour of Dionysus. Guthrie, W.K.C. (1952), 32, presents evidence that the first

tragedy performed in the service of Dionysus was a mimetic performance - a

passion play accompanied by song. The first tragedy was therefore probably

concerned with the death and dismemberment of the god. Guthrie also notes that

in Greek theatre, 'The number of plays which dealt with the tearing in pieces of

heroes, some of them closely akin to Dionysus, is surprising.'' Understanding

that the Mysteries and theatre arose in the same culture, at the same period,

under the aegis of the same patron deity, offers a valuable insight into what

might have taken place in the dramatic spectacle enacted at Eleusis.

 

[33] Otto, W.F. (1965), 49. See also Macchioro, V.D. (1930), 75, where the two

traditions as to who introduced the death of Dionysus into the Mysteries are

noted. One says Orpheus himself, another that the Orphic poet Onomacritus made

the innovation in the sixth century BCE. Clement of Alexandria confirms that the

symbols revealed in the Mysteries refer to the death of Dionysus.

 

[34] A term meaning purification. Aristotle, in 'Poetics', states that tragedy

should result in a purging (catharsis) of the emotions by pity and terror. The

Mysteries too were meant to be a catharsis. Empedocles' poem 'Catharmoi', of

which a few intriguing fragments remain, is believed to have been a liturgy of

initiation.

 

[35] Angus, op.cit., 93, quoting Synesius on Aristotle. Aristotle writes that

initiates of the Mysteries were not expected to learn something ('mathein'), but

to suffer something ('pathein').

 

[36] Quoted in Burkert, W. (1992), 11