What are the 'Mysteries'? - Part 4

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Dear All,

 

We concluded with the following:

 

(P.26) " The Mysteries were divided into various levels of initiation, which led

an initiate step by step through ever deepening levels of understanding. The

number of levels of initiation varied in different Mystery traditions, but

essentially the initiate was led from the Outer Mysteries, in which the myths

were understood superficially as religious stories, to the Inner Mysteries, in

which the myths were revealed as spiritual allegories. First the initiate was

ritually purified. Then they were taught the secret teachings on a one-to-one

basis.[42] The highest stage was when the initiate understood the true meaning

of the teachings and finally experienced what Theon of Smyrna calls 'friendship

and interior communion with God'. "

 

The Jesus Mysteries

Was the Original Jesus A Pagan God?

Chapter 2 - p.26

 

Notes:

 

[42] Kingsley, P. (1995), 367. A beginner was called a 'mystae', which means

'eyes closed' and is the root of our words 'mystery' and 'mysticism'. The

'mystae' were those who had not yet understood the secret Inner Mysteries. The

higher level of initiates were called 'epoptae', meaning 'to have seen'. The

'epoptae' were those who had understood the Inner Mysteries.

 

Here is Part 4.

 

violet

 

 

 

What are the 'Mysteries'? - Part 4

 

(P.26) The International Mysteries

 

The Mysteries dominated the Pagan world. No other deity is represented on the

monuments of ancient Greece and Italy as much as Dionysus, godman of the

Eleusinian Mysteries.[43] (P.27) He is a deity with many names: Iacchos,

Bassareus, Bromios, Euios, Sabazius, Zagreus, Yhyoneus, Lenaios, Eleuthereus,

and so the list goes on.[44] But these are just some of his Greek names! The

godman is an omnipresent mythic figure throughout the ancient Mediterranean,

known in different ways by many cultures.

 

Five centuries before the birth of Christ, the Greek historian Herodotus, known

as 'the father of history', discovered this when he travelled to Egypt. On the

shores of a sacred lake in the Nile delta he witnessed an enormous festival,

held every year, in which the Egyptians performed a dramatic spectacle before

'tens of thousands of men and women', representing the death and resurrection of

Osiris. Herodotus was an initiate into the Greek Mysteries and recognized that

what he calls 'the Passion of Osiris' was the very same drama that initiates saw

enacted before them at Eleusis as the Passion of Dionysus.[45] The Egyptian myth

of Osiris is the primal myth of the Mystery godman and reaches back to

prehistory. His story is so ancient that it can be found in pyramid texts

written over 4,500 years ago![46]

 

In travelling to Egypt Herodotus was following in the footsteps of another great

Greek. Before 670 BCE Egypt had been a closed country, in the manner of Tibet or

Japan more recently, but in this year she opened her borders and one of the

first Greeks who travelled there in search of ancient wisdom was Pythagoras.[47]

History remembers Pythagoras as the first 'scientist' of the Western world, but

although it is true that he brought back many mathematical theories to Greece

from Egypt, to his contemporaries he would have seemed anything but 'scientific'

in the modern sense.

 

A wandering charismatic sage dressed in white robes and crowned with a gold

coronet, Pythagoras was part scientist, part priest and part magician.[48] He

spent 22 years in the temples of Egypt, becoming an initiate of the ancient

Egyptian Mysteries.[49] (P.28) On returning to Greece he began to preach the

wisdom he had learned, performing miracles, raising the dead and giving oracles.

[break Quote]

 

[Note: In 'The Jesus Mysteries' authors Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy state that

from the few fragments that remain of 'The Secret Gospel of Mark' it is clear

that for the Gnostics being raised from the dead was clearly an allegory for

spiritual rebirth through initiation. This sounds very much like what Shri

Mataji has taught, that those who live by their lower self are 'dead' and those

who live by their Higher Self/Spirit have been raised from 'being dead' to

'being resurrected']:

 

(P.121) " The fragments that remain of 'The Secret Gospel of Mark' illuminate the

meaning of some otherwise bizarre passages in the New Testament. They include an

account of Jesus raising a young man from the dead. Scholars have speculated

that this is an early version of the story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the

dead in the Gospel of John.[69] In the 'Secret Gospel' this story is immediately

followed by the initiation of the risen young man. For the Gnostics being raised

from the dead is clearly an allegory for spiritual rebirth through initiation.

This suggests that the tale of Lazarus being raised from the dead in the Gospel

of John was also originally an allegory for initiation.[70] This would explain

the curious passage in the Gospel of John in which Thomas, rather than offering

to go and help Jesus raise Lazarus from the dead as one might expect, instead

suggests to the disciples, 'Let us also go and die with him'![71] If the Lazarus

story were originally an initiation allegory, like the story in 'The Secret

Gospel of Mark', Thomas' otherwise inexplicable words would become meaningful.

Thomas is in fact exhorting the other disciples to go and be initiated - to 'die

and resurrect' like Lazarus.

 

In 'The Secret Gospel of Mark', the youth about to be initiated comes to Jesus

wearing only a linen cloth over his naked body. That night, we are told, 'Jesus

taught him the Mystery of the Kingdom of God.' This illuminates another bizarre

incident in the Gospel of Mark. (P.122) After the betrayal and arrest of Jesus

at night in the garden of Gethsemane Mark records:

 

'Among those who followed Jesus was a young man with nothing on but a linen

cloth. They tried to seize him, but he slipped out of the linen cloth and ran

away naked.'[72]

 

This strange character appears nowhere else in the New Testament. Many readers

down the centuries must have wondered about the identity of this naked young man

and what he was doing with Jesus and the disciples. The 'Secret Gospel' suggests

that he was a candidate for initiation. "

 

The Jesus Mysteries

Was the Original Jesus A Pagan God?

Chapter 5 - p.121-122

 

Notes:

 

[69] Stanton, G. (1995), 95

 

[70] Barnstone, op.cit., 340

 

[71] John 11:16

 

[72] Mark 14:51

 

 

[Resuming Quote]:

 

(P.28) On returning to Greece he [Pythagoras] began to preach the wisdom he had

learned, performing miracles, raising the dead and giving oracles.

 

Inspired by Pythagoras, his disciples created a Greek Mystery religion modelled

on the Egyptian Mysteries. They took the indigenous wine god Dionysus, who was a

minor deity all but ignored by Hesiod and Homer, and transformed him into a

Greek version of the mighty Egyptian Osiris, godman of the Mysteries. This

initiated a religious and cultural revolution that was to transform Athens into

the centre of the civilized world.[50]

 

The followers of Pythagoras were models of virtue and learning, regarded as

puritans by their neighbours. Strict vegetarians, they preached non-violence

towards all living things and shunned the temple cults that practised the

sacrifice of animals. This made it impossible for them to participate in the

traditional Olympian religion of Athens. Forced to live on the fringes of

acceptability, they often organized themselves into communities that shared all

possessions in common, leaving them free to devote themselves to their mystical

studies of mathematics, music, astronomy and philosophy.[51] Nevertheless, the

Mystery religion spread quickly amongst the ordinary people and within a few

generations the Egyptian Mysteries of Osiris, now the Mysteries of Dionysus,

inspired the glory of Classical Athens.

 

In the same way that Osiris was synthesized by the Greeks with their indigenous

god Dionysus to create the Greek Mysteries, other Mediterranean cultures which

adopted the Mystery religion also transformed one of their indigenous deities

into the dying and resurrecting Mystery godman. So, the deity who was known as

Osiris in Egypt and became Dionysus in Greece was called Attis in Asia Minor,

Adonis in Syria, Bacchus in Italy, Mithras in Persia, and so on. His forms were

many, but essentially he was the same perennial figure, whose collective

identity was referred to as Osiris-Dionysus.[52]

 

(P.29) Because the ancients recognized that all the various Mystery godmen were

essentially the same mythic being, elements from different myths and rites were

continually combined and recombined to create new forms of the Mysteries. In

Alexandria, for example, a charismatic sage called Timotheus consciously fused

Osiris and Dionysus to produce a new deity for the city called Serapis.[53] He

also gave an elaborate account of the myth of the Mystery godman Attis. Lucius

Apuleius received his initiation into the Egyptian Mysteries from a high priest

named after the Persian godman Mithras. Coins were minted with Dionysus

represented on one side and Mithras on the other.[54] One modern authority tells

us that 'possessed by the knowledge of his own secret rites', the initiate of

the Mysteries 'found no difficulty in conforming to any religion in vogue'.[55]

 

Like the Christian religion which superseded it, the Mysteries reached across

national boundaries, offering a spirituality which was relevant to all human

beings, regardless of their racial origins or social status. Even as early as

the fifth century BCE philosophers such as Diogenes and Socrates called

themselves 'cosmopolitans' - 'citizens of the cosmos' - rather than of any

particular country or culture, which is testimony to the international nature of

the Mysteries.[56]

 

One modern scholar, commenting on the merging and combining of different mystery

traditions, writes:

 

'This went a long way towards weaning the minds of men from the idea of separate

gods from the different nations, and towards teaching them that all national and

local deities were but different forms of one great Power. But for the rise of

Christianity and other religions, there can be little doubt but that the whole

of the Graeco-Roman deities would continually have merged into Dionysus.'[57]

 

The Jesus Mysteries

Was the Original Jesus A Pagan God?

Chapter 2 - p.26-29

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:

 

[43] Kerenyi, C. (1976), Preface, xxiv. Despite this abundance of physical

evidence for the popularity of the Dionysus cult, Kerenyi reiterates Nietzsche's

lament that 'Even today virtually everything in the field of the Dionysian still

remains to be discovered.' 'The Jesus Mysteries' is a part of this ongoing

discovery.

 

[44] Harrison, J. (1922), 413. Dionysus is often simply referred to as Dionysus

Polynomous, 'Many-named Dionysus'.

 

[45]Herodotus, 'The Histories', 197, Book 2, 172: 'It is on this lake that the

Egyptians act by night in what they call their Mysteries, the Passion of that

being whose name I will not speak.' Like all initiates of the Greek Mystery

religion Herodotus had taken a solemn vow to keep its secrets, but here in Egypt

he found the same rites being performed openly. Often, therefore, he is

deliberately cryptic or maintains an eloquent silence which would only be

understood by other initiates. Herodotus must have been astonished to see a

public enactment of the same drama that in Eleusis was performed for the chosen

few in strictest secrecy. He writes cryptically, 'All the details of these

performances are known to me, but I will say no more.'

 

[46] Murray, M.A. (1949), 39: 'The Sacred Drama of the dedication and sacrifice

of the Incarnate God can be followed in the Pyramid Texts.' These date to 2700

BCE.

 

[47] Psammetichus I allowed the Ionian Greeks to establish a trading post in the

delta in 670 BCE.

 

[48] Aelian tells us of Pythagoras' gold crown, white clothing and trousers.

This has been interpreted as the traditional clothing of an Ionian poet by some

scholars, but Burkert, W. (1972), 165, notes that 'in exactly the same attire,

the highest God, lord of death and rebirth appears in the " Mithras liturgy " '. It

is likely therefore that the account of Pythagoras' costume is meant to portray

him as an initiate. D'Alviella, G. (1981), 114, notes that this was the

traditional dress of initiates into the Mysteries and was later worn by

Christian catechumens undergoing baptism.

 

[49] Guthrie, K.S. (1987), 60

 

[50] Harrison, op.cit., 365: 'In Homer, Dionysus is not yet an Olympian. On the

Parthenon frieze he takes his place among the seated gods.' Harrison's work does

much to explain the revolution that took place in Athens in the sixth and fifth

centuries BCE. During this time Greece was swept by the cult of Dionysus in what

amounted to a religious revival. In the Homeric Olympian religion there was a

strict boundary between the gods who were immortal and men who were doomed to

die. Dionysus broke through this religious taboo - a god who became a man, he

died and crossed the Olympian boundary to become a god. Unlike the archaic gods

of Olympus, Dionysus is always portrayed surrounded by a band of human followers

and his triumph at Athens accompanied the creation of the first democracy.

Harrison calls Dionysus 'the people's god'.

 

[51] See Iamblichus, 'The Pythagoric Life' and Porphyry, 'The Life of

Pythagoras' in 'The History of Philosophy'. The followers of Pythagoras

established religious communities dedicated to the 'Orphic Life' in southern

Italy in the sixth century BCE. Men and women were admitted as equals, all

possessions were shared in common and neophytes took a five-year vow of silence.

The Pythagoreans rose at dawn to worship the rising sun, spent the day in

philosophical study and religious observances, and at a communal evening meal

there were readings from sacred scriptures. They were strict vegetarians, wore

white and practised celibacy. These practices are distinctly reminiscent of the

practices of the mediaeval monasteries, but this similarity is not accidental.

St. Anthony, the founder of the first Christian monastery, was himself a

Pythagorean and modelled his monastic community on the Pythagorean communities

of Croton in southern Italy. See Lietzmann, H. (1961), Book 4, 136ff.

 

[52] Osiris-Dionysus is the most useful title for understanding the nature of

the Mystery godman. Herodotus states that the rites of Dionysus derive from

those of Osiris and that 'Osirus is Dionysus'. In the first century BCE Diodorus

confirms this, saying, 'The rite of Osiris is the same as that of Dionysus and

that of Isis very similar to that of Demeter; the names alone having been

interchanged, and the punishments in Hades of the unrighteous, the Fields of the

Righteous and the fantastic conceptions, current among the many - all these were

introduced by Orpheus in imitation of the Egyptian funeral customs.' Plutarch,

in the second century CE, also states unequivocally that 'Osiris is the same as

Dionysus,' see Plutarch, 'De Iside et Osiride', 35. Walter Burkert, a leading

authority on Greek religion, wrote in 1977: 'To what extent the myth, and indeed

the very cult of chthonic Dionysus and the beliefs in blessedness and

punishments in the nether world are dependent on the Egyptian Osiris cult from

the start remains a question that must be seriously asked.' See Burkert, W.

(1985), 298.

 

[53] Burkert, W. (1992), 37. Timotheus, an Eleusinian priest, came to Alexandria

in 300 BCE to found the Mysteries there.

 

[54] Turcan, R. (1992), 201

 

[55] Angus, S. (1925), 202

 

[56] Ibid., 283. In Cicero, 'On the Good Life', 109, Cicero relates that 'When

Socrates was asked which country he belonged to, he replied, " The World. " '

Diogenes, the follower of Socrates' disciple Antisthenes, likewise called

himself a cosmopolitan. A fragment of Democritus records: 'To a wise man the

whole earth is open; for the native land of a good soul is the whole earth,' see

Lindsay, J. (1970), 93.

 

[57] Angus, op.cit., 195, slightly adapted

 

[58] Wallis Budge, E.A., 'Egyptian Religion' (1899)

 

[59] Ibid., 59