This is the latest in my series of re-publications of the esoteric writings of Colonel Charles "Griff" Seymour, a leading collaborator of Dion Fortune and member of what was then the Fraternity of the Inner Light.
Part 1. The Grey Dawn of Religion
The facts upon which these articles have been based are taken almost entirely from 'orthodox' sources, but the inferences drawn from these facts will seldom be orthodox. Also, the subject under consideration will be ‘Religion' in contradistinction to individual religions, heretical or otherwise.
Professor W. Morgan, in The Grey Dawn of Religion (p. 1), tells us that, as a scientific historical study, the 'science of religion' is little more than half a century old, and that we know very little as to how, or why, or out of what, religion evolved in prehistoric times. And what lies behind that little that we do know, can be no more than a matter of uncertain speculation. He also warns us to be very careful how the facts about primitive religion which we may know are interpreted; and he tells us quite clearly that while the facts for example, of totemism are fairly clear, the numerous explanations given of them are in the highest degree hypothetical (p. 5). He adds that, with the information which is at present at our disposal, it is fairly clear that religion has developed from lower to higher forms.
This dictum as regards exoteric religion, or rather religions, may be accepted as being very generally true. The modern Roman Catholic Mass as a sacrament, is a far more civilized ceremony than either the ancient Taurobolium of Mithras or the sacrifice of his son and heir by Mesha, King of Moab, a sacrifice which was made when the King saw his capital in danger of being stormed by the troops of the King of Israel. But it is not all certain, when we turn from the outer forms of religion to consider its inner spiritual power, that the modern priest is in as close touch with the 'unseen world' as the priests of, say, 4,000 years ago, or even of the first century of the Christian era. Intellectually, the average priest of today may be superior to the average priest of long ago, but whether he is spiritually as well is open to question.
Professor Morgan seems to think that the religious ancestors of the priest and prelate of today were the magic-working priesthoods of the ancient religions, that is, the mediumistic sorcerers of the remote past. He is also of the opinion that often they were witch doctors of a type similar to the shaman of the Ural-Altai tribes of today. In this respect, he is in agreement with the famous Professor Otto of Marburg, who thinks that religion must have started from the sense of the eerie and uncanny. And there is little doubt that both Otto and Morgan are right, and that ceremonial religion, as we know it, has grown out of magic. The Roman Catholic Mass, for example, is a potent magical ceremony.
Now having gone so far, the learned Professor Morgan ceases to probe any deeper into the remote beginning of religion. 'Nothing' he says, 'is more futile than to go with Durkheim to primitive phenomena for an understanding of what 'religion' essentially is' (p. 29). Nowhere, however, does he explain what 'religion' in its inner essence is. And very charmingly he covers this omission and ends his book with the verse:
A fire-mist and a planet, a crystal and a cell,
A jelly fish and a saurian and the caves where the cave men dwell
Then a sense of law and beauty and a face turned from the sod;
Some call it evolution, and others call it God.
Let us now turn to Dr Geden, also a well-known authority on the comparative method of studying religion. He tells us that the object of this new science is 'to gather and assimilate truth from all sides, to winnow the chaff from the wheat, and to follow the truth thus found wherever it may lead'. Also its object is to rid religion of any connection with magic, for, by the way, magic is Dr Geden's bugbear.
Now, as Professor Morgan has failed in his book to give any idea of what religion, as opposed to religions, is, it is necessary to see if a definition can be found of what this very common word means in the science of comparative religion. Again, unfortunately, Dr Geden, great authority though he is, can give little help. He points out that to give a definition of religion is difficult (p. 17), and he adds: 'The simplest terms therefore in which to define Religion and to distinguish it from Magic, with which in reality it has little to do, are probably those of worship.' There he, perhaps wisely, leaves the matter. But as this definition is not very helpful, Dr Geden must be left for yet another modern authority.
Dr Carpenter, principal of Manchester College, Oxford, is much more thorough in his comparative study of 'religion'. In his little book, Comparative Religion (p. 42), he tells us that Varro, Cicero and Lucretius - in about 50 BC - discussed the derivation of the word religio. Cicero connected it with the verb legere, to string together, to arrange, to read. Lucretius, however, found its origin in ligare, to bind, to tie fast.
Marcus Terentius Varro is interesting, for he treated 'religion' under three heads and declared that 'in the form presented by the poets' tales of the gods, it was mythical. Founded by the philosophers upon Nature (physis) it was physical. As administered by the priests and practised in cities, it was civil.' (Varro's Antiquities, section entitled 'Divine Things'.)
Here is 'the old notion that Religion was a legal convention imposed by authority for purposes of popular control; and Varro does not disdain to declare it expedient that States should be deceived in such matters'.
From the point of view of the individual man struggling through life, and often not very happy, this kind of treatment of religion, while informative and interesting, does not help much. For when a man begins to think seriously about 'religion' as opposed to religions, he comes up against the problem of what religion in itself really is. 'How can I find out for myself?' is today a very common question.
Even the various Christian Churches can help one but little. For example, a pamphlet entitled 'What are Monks for?' - which has received the imprimatur of the Church of Rome, defines (p. 6) religion as follows: 'The word "Religion" is one of the most venerable in the vocabulary of men. It may be taken to signify a collection of doctrines or dogmas, that God has revealed, which the Church teaches, and which we are bound to believe.' This is certainly not a definition of 'religion'; it is no explanation whatever of what 'religion' in itself really is; but it is an interesting statement of the views of the Church of Rome about religions. The Church teaches, and therefore you must believe! And, to use a colloquialism, that's that.
As regards the Protestant sections of Christ's Catholic or Universal Church, Jacobus, in The New Standard Bible Dictionary, defines 'religion' thus: 'Regard for what is believed to be Deity.'
As a somewhat half-hearted attempt to define religion while saying nothing that might be considered too definite, or be attacked as too unorthodox, or even too orthodox, this Protestant definition is the antithesis of the one given by the Church of Rome. The latter at least knows what it wants to say, and it has the courage, as well as the knowledge, to say exactly what it means.
The agnostics cannot help us much in our search for the essential meaning of 'religion'; for a great deal of modern sceptical - that is, rationalistic - literature is prepared to define 'religion' as a pathology; and after all, there may be something in that, for religious mania is just as well-known a disease as, say, alcoholic mania.
So having got very little help from the professional religious teachers, and having discovered that their opponents, the rationalists, look on religion as an aberration which indicates intellectual deficiency, it is interesting to see what an unprofessional writer on religion, a philosopher, has to say about the subject. Professor Whitehead is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Although he is not a professional theologian, his books which touch on religion are influential, and are probably read more widely by the educated laity than are those of any modern clerical writer. He has no axe to grind. He is not a paid servant of the Church, and it would seem that he does not care a 'tinker's damn' for either orthodoxy or rationalism. In his book Religion in the Making, and just before he gives his definition of religion, he makes the following statement:
...we have the gravest doubt as to what religion means so far as doctrine is concerned. There is no agreement as to the definition of religion in its most general sense, including true and false religion; nor is there any agreement as to the valid religious beliefs, nor even as to what we mean by the truth of religion.
And a little further on (p. 7) he points out that 'in considering religion, we should not be obsessed by the idea of its necessary goodness. This is a dangerous delusion.' No wonder Professor Whitehead is regarded with such a wary eye by the professional priest. He defines (p. 6) religion as follows: 'Religion is the art and theory of the internal life of man, so far as it depends on the man himself and what is permanent in the nature of things. This doctrine is primarily a social fact.' Again, Professor Whitehead says: 'Religion is what an individual does with his own solitariness.' This is rather unorthodox. Some 2,000 years ago, Christ said that the sabbath was made for man and not man for the sabbath - a phrase that was blasphemy to the priests and the Pharisees of the time. Whitehead, in the lines quoted above, has really said that the various religions are made for man, and not man for the religions. From the institutional point of view, this is an extremely dangerous type of teaching. Many a priest would treat it as rank blasphemy. It is a threat to a vested interest.
Professor Whitehead, in explanation (p. 7) of his definition continues:
Thus religion is solitariness; and if you are never solitary, you are never religious. Collective enthusiasm, revivals, institutions, churches, rituals, bibles, codes of behaviour, are the trappings of religion, its passing forms. They may be useful or harmful; they may be authoritatively ordained, or merely temporary expedients. But the end of religion is beyond all this.
It is not until belief and rationalisation are well established that solitariness is discernible as constituting the heart of religious importance. The great religious conceptions which haunt the imagination of civilised mankind are scenes of solitariness; Prometheus chained to his rock, Mohammed brooding in the desert, the meditations of Buddha, the solitary Man on the Cross. It belongs to the depth of the religious spirit to have felt forsaken, even by God.
Today, thanks to the exploration in North Africa and in Western Asia, we know that the idea that religion is solitariness was very common in paganism, as well as in the early forms of Christianity. And, taking the word 'ritual', in its common, 'lay' meaning of 'any ceremonial form or custom of procedure', it can be seen that there is such a thing as the 'ritual of solitariness'. Thanks to the discoveries of papyri, and to the decipherment of inscriptions in temples and in tombs, it is known that 2,000 years ago men went out into the deserts of North Africa, into the wilderness of Syria, to the mountains and forests of Asia Minor, hoping to find, after patient searching and prolonged training, the essence of 'religion' in this 'ritual of solitariness'. The great Mystery centres were in the 'hidden places'.
There are Christian Orders today whose members seek, in the ritual of long-continued meditation, to get at the heart of religion; and these practices are also common to almost all the religions of the East. Solitariness in some form or other is considered to be a vital aspect of the religious life by practically all sects and religions, except those of extreme Protestantism; that is, by sects who have forgotten how to meditate.
That any individual who sets apart a few minutes every day for silent meditation in the 'inner chamber', can carry out the 'ritual of solitariness', is a statement which cannot honestly be denied, and should not be objected to. Yet when Religion in the Making was first published, the suggestion that 'religion is solitariness' seemed to strike quite a new note in the ordinary popular thinking of Protestantism. And the reason is not far to seek. Training in the science of meditation has almost vanished from the practical religion of the Protestant laity. And Professor Whitehead's definition has come as a welcome reminder to the twentieth century that there are two sides to any religion: the form and the force side, the spirit and the letter.
The organization of Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, Parish teas, etc., are but passing forms of a semi-religious hobby. They are not 'religion', though they are often mistaken for it. They are extremely useful and interesting social side-shows, and they are no more part of real 'religion' than was the selling of doves, or the changing of money in the Temple.
Only too often it may with truth be said that when the Protestant minister finds that he has failed as a prophet, he begins to rely on filling his church by means of parish teas and whist drives. This is not to say that there should be no parish activities, but these things should never take first place, as they often do in the life of the parish priests of the Protestant sects. Always on the go - no time to prepare; is a complaint that is often heard on the lips of the clergy. The man who says this condemns himself. He may be an organizer, but he is no true priest. He may be an ordained priest, but he is not a functioning one.
There is only one way to keep the force tide of religion running strongly in a parish priest or in a layman, and that is to insist on the daily performance of the ritual of solitariness, for a fixed time, at a fixed time, and, above all, in a fixed place. One must, if possible, have the fixed place, for meditation is the link between the outer world of matter and the inner world of spirit. One cannot, unless one is an exceptional person, link up with the unseen anyhow and anywhere.
Anyone who has been in touch with the rising generation and with modern religious thought and its methods of expression will know that the 'key' to most of the 'free' religious thinking of today can be summed up in the phrase, 'From authority to experience'.
Can personal religious experience be obtained today in the way it was in the ancient Mystery religions? The answer to this question is that anyone of average intelligence and common sense who is prepared to pay the price demanded can arrive at a direct experience of religious truth. Such persons can unveil for themselves the mystery of death; and they can 'know' - not merely believe, but 'know' - the truth of the conception of a 'reality' behind this world of experience and utterly different from it.
In the exoteric religions of individual churches the laity find the form side of religion fully developed and open for all to use, and to use with great benefit to themselves. But the force which will turn this outer form into a living inner reality must be created by each individual for himself. No man can light the spark, or tend the flame that burns in the soul of another. You may, as a teacher, pass the match and the box, or shelter for another a feebly flickering flame, but you can neither kindle the sacred fire in the heart of another, nor keep it burning when once it is lit.
'Religion', as Whitehead puts it, 'is Solitariness.' And the way to 'experience' lies through the 'ritual of silence' - a ritual which every individual must carry out for himself. 'If you are never solitary, then you are never religious.' (Religion in the Making, p. 7.) And when reading the religious history of those forgotten centuries, it must never be forgotten that the key to any clear understanding of that which the pagan religions on their esoteric side strove to do and to teach lies in a sympathetic study of their use of meditation, i.e. of the 'ritual of silence', to attain to 'reality'.
Again, it must be understood that it is only when a certain facility in meditation has been acquired that the great adventure of 'religion' really begins. For the pagans, as well as for those early Christians whom we call the 'Gnostics', the gnosis was a practical religious experience rather than an intellectual process. They taught that the gnosis can only be got through the 'ritual of silence', an esoteric teaching which stretches back to the grey dawn of religion.
Part 2. The Living Past
Let us go back in thought to the living past that lies hidden in the Graeco-Roman religions, and see what it can teach us today. To begin with, it may be said that, so far as the outer world of English Protestantism is concerned, one of the great discoveries of the last fifty years has been that 'intuition' (i.e. 'knowing by instinctive apprehension', or 'knowledge reached without an unconscious process of thought') is a mode of awareness which forms the basis of the great religions. Intuition used to be considered a 'desire', such as a desire for good, or for God, etc. It was thought to be an extension of consciousness which came to a favoured few by chance, or by a sort of good luck. Also, that the person thus favoured had to wait passively for this intuition to descend, and that it could not be commanded.
Within the last few years, thanks to modern psychological research, and a more careful study of the ancient Mystery religions, it is now known that such an extension of consciousness can be a matter of voluntary experience. It can be taught to all and sundry by means of a technique, just as music can be taught to all and sundry. The results, will, of course, vary in individuals, just as they vary in teaching individuals music. But there is a process of attaining to 'intuitional' religious knowledge, and it can be taught.
Now in studying those ancient pagan religions, from the esoteric point of view, the fact that the process of getting 'contact' with the unseen - the numen - could then be taught as a technique to suitable students, must not be forgotten. The Mystery religions cannot be understood unless it be remembered that the ancients had this regular and definite system for obtaining personal religious experience, which was taught to, and which could be efficiently learned by, most men.
Contacting the 'numen' was for them not merely a momentary flash of inspiration; it was a definite process, and it led to a very real result. It is a waste of time to study the Mystery religions if it is not kept constantly in mind that the background of pagan religious thinking was based upon this idea of the 'numen' as a hierarchy of spiritual powers which stretched between the human and the divine.
In an interesting book on the history of European thought, entitled The Living Past, by F. S. Marvin, there is (p. 3) the following sentence: 'Metaphysics apart, we know in fact that "thinking backward" has accomplished and inspired a new and passionate effort for "living forward"'. Following up this idea - which, by the way, is pregnant with possibilities from the point of view of the comparative study of 'religion' - Professor Marvin points out that capacity for the organization of knowledge is the main difference between mankind in a state of civilization, and man as a savage. Professor Marvin, then taking these ideas for his thesis, develops his study of European history. Here it is proposed to apply this idea of 'thinking backward' in order to 'live forward' to this study of the esoteric aspect of religion. Further, it is proposed to add yet another idea, this time from the orthodox Christian aspect, a somewhat more revolutionary one. Nevertheless, it is an idea which is vital to any unbiased study of 'religion' as opposed to sectarian comparison of religious organizations. This additional idea is that 'all religious systems deserve to be valued by the practical test of their functional significance for human society'.
The Christian priests, as a class, would certainly not agree with this statement; for, put in other words, this phrase means that all religious systems, be they so-called divinely established churches, or merely humanly established societies, without any exception, must be regarded as socially conditioned products. Their value must lie in the extent to which they meet the actual needs of individuals and groups at any given period.
Many of the more broad-minded Church writers, such as Angus - the author of The Mystery Religions and Christianity - freely admit that the Mystery religions of 2,000 years ago did meet the actual religious needs of their age, and so they flourished, for they were fulfilling a very definite want.
From this point of view, which could be that of any disinterested student of comparative 'religion', it necessarily follows that in religions there can be no absolute standard of truth - whether delivered once and for all to Apostles, or to anyone else. For since religions are now generally recognized to be, on the whole, evolving towards higher levels with each passing age, it follows that religions are always changing, and usually, though not necessarily always, developing. Thus there can only be a relative standard of truth, one which varies with the standard of the age, and with the mentality of the nation or nations which use any particular religion, or set of religions.
No religion, as taught by man, or by any collection of men, such as a church, is absolutely true. All have erred in the past, and there is every reason to think that all will continue to err in the future. And the history of the past shows quite clearly that all religions, so far as is known, have contained some truth and some error. So by 'thinking backward' we can learn the useful lesson that much which appeared to our ancestors (both near and remote) to be divine truth, was in reality but human error. Also, by 'living forward' we can comprehend how much that appears to us today to be vital Christian truth may well appear to our grandchildren, in the light of their fuller knowledge, to be childish and biased.
To study thus the history of religious thinking should have the excellent result of making us humble, as regards our capacity for absorbing religious truth. It ought to make us today more sweetly reasonable as judges of the past; especially when we remember that it is difficult to arrive at any even approximately accurate knowledge of what the ancient Mystery religions taught. For Christian iconoclasm has destroyed the shrine, and Christian ignorance has burnt, as far as was possible, all the literatures and the liturgies of the Mysteries. The Christians of the fourth and fifth centuries were even more wantonly destructive than the savage and ignorant Mohammedan soldiery of the seventh and eighth centuries. The researcher into the Ancient Mysteries has to overcome yet another difficulty which is additional to that of the destruction of their literatures. The early Christian Apologists (Angus, Mystery Religions, p. 41) misrepresented the Mystery cults in such a way that one is sometimes compelled to question how they ever exercised such a potent spell over ancient religious minds.
For the researcher of today there is no fact which stands out more clearly and strongly in the history of the Mystery religions than this: 'They were something which was a great deal more potent than a system of ethics divinely sanctioned.' Can this be said of that religion which today passes for modern, cultured and rational Christianity?
Few of those who have attained middle age realize, unless they have kept up an interest in ancient history by reading good modern historical works, how misleading was much of what they were taught at school or at college on the subject of the Graeco-Roman world of some 2,000 years ago.
The spade of the archaeologist, the zeal of the seekers for ancient manuscripts and papyri, have now brought to light information which has revolutionized our ideas on the civilizations of the Mediterranean Basin in the millennium which lies between 500 BC and AD 500.
Thirty-five years ago, much of our information with regard to these great pagan civilizations was drawn from the writings of the Church Fathers. Their views on these matters were considered to be authoritative; being called saints, they must speak only the truth; and the fact that they might be biased was not given consideration. Their unfavourable view of the pagan civilizations was further supported by the extant writings of the great Roman satirists, who, as we know, dealt only with the cruelties of the idle rich, then, as now, a small and foolish class. Today we know that an early Church Father was usually as prejudiced against the Roman state as a modern Russian Bolshevik is against an English Conservative government. We also know that the average educated Roman of that age looked on the Christians as a set of fanatics who were not only pacifists, but also unpatriotic; whilst the educated Roman world in general looked on the Christians as an atheistical sect who in their hate of mankind were seeking to overthrow the religions as well as the social order of their time and to wreck the Roman state.
As each side hated and completely misunderstood the other, so each sought to vilify the other. Now that we are in a position to check much that the early Christian Fathers have quoted in their writings about the Mysteries, it has been discovered that, though they may have been very good Christians, and even excellent bishops and brave martyrs, most of the Fathers had a very undeveloped sense of historical accuracy, and they had no idea of fair play for an opponent. Modern historical research has shown us that the pagan world was not as bad as it was supposed to have been, and the pagan religions were not the evil cults that the Christian Fathers, in their zealous propaganda for their own 'ism', tried to make out.
There were great social and religious movements for alleviating the suffering of humanity, movements which had achieved a considerable measure of success long before Christianity began to be a power. There were religions of redemption with an effective method of salvation and a very high standard of morals and ethics long before Christ was born. It can fairly be said that there is no important dogma, rite or ritual in the exoteric Christian Church which was not in existence, in a similar form and with a similar function, long before Jesus was born. Francis Legge, in Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity (I.XLIX), and Angus, in The Mystery Religions and Christianity (p. 4), both endorse the view that, speaking of the six centuries from Alexander the Great to Constantine the Great, it can fairly be said that 'there has probably been no time in the history of mankind when all classes were more given up to thoughts of religion, or when they strained more fervently after high ethical ideals'.
It is true that there was much superstition, folly and ignorance, but do these not exist in the Christian countries today? Are there no quacks to be found in London today? The state and many of the national religions of Rome, Greece and Egypt were over-prosperous materially, and in a state of decline spiritually but is not the same thing often said of the Christian churches of today?
The great state-supported temples were the safest banking institutions of the ancient world; commercially, as we now know, they were functioning with power and had a very high prestige for commercial honesty. And as regards this point, it is not always remembered today that it was a characteristic Roman belief that the chief interest of religion was to serve the interests of the state. And to a great extent the official Roman religions acted as the state machinery, and an efficient part. Many of the priests were regular members of the civil service, and had little or nothing to do with the care of individual souls; for the state religions were devices for keeping the group mind of the nation in a healthy condition and contented with their government.
Now the gradual development of the state religions into business concerns led to the growth of private religious cults, whose ministrations soon filled the vacuum thus left in the religious life of the individual. But of course the individual had to be sufficiently developed to feel that there was a vacuum which needed filling; and the Mystery religions only appealed to those who felt this need. And so, speaking generally, these private religious cults, which later on grew into the great Mystery traditions, catered only for the fairly well-educated. Unfortunately for the students of today, they have kept their teachings and methods of working very secret. But this we do know: they gave a definite teaching, by means of a symbol system, and they insisted on prolonged meditation on that teaching. Also, to develop intuition and to encourage its use the priesthood of the Mysteries used certain special symbols, which varied according to the cult, and they insisted on regular and prolonged meditation on these symbols, as a method of spiritual training.
Theurgy, or working with the aid of, or in the power of, the divine, i.e. the 'numen', was the chief result of this method of training. And so a new type of priesthood, with functions which were very different from those of the former state priesthoods, grew up gradually in the countries around the Mediterranean Basin.
As has already been said, the priests of the old state cults were, as a rule, men of the world, absorbed to a great extent in their civil duties, or in the routine commercial business of the great temples. The performance of religious rites was only a subsidiary function attached to their civil status, and they made no pretence of being in charge of the religious training of individual souls, at least so far as we can tell. On the other hand, the Mystery school type of priest was first and foremost a religious teacher, and it is suspected that he was a sound practical psychologist as well.
In the Mystery religions the priesthood was trained in the care of souls - sick or otherwise - just as carefully as are the Roman Catholic clergy of today, and some of the Anglican clergy. The priestly initiates of the Mysteries knew how to co-ordinate certain of the religious powers of the soul, powers which are still but little known to the clergy of today. These priests knew how to enter upon certain valid and potent states of consciousness by means of a combination of ritual and meditation. As priests of a particular cultus they had for their own use a definite meditation technique, and they were able to build up for others a definite life of religious experience by means of study, meditation and sacramental rituals.
We know now that the Mysteries taught a very definite and very effective religion of salvation, where the word salvation meant spiritual and mental health here and now while in the flesh. Salvation did not mean for them a problematic escape from burning lakes and hungry spiritual worms in the life after death. These Mystery religions strove to make man a free and joyous citizen, not only of this world but of the next, the world of the life after death. And their guarantee was that of personal experience, not that of a supposed divine authority which was incapable of being verified by firsthand experience.
Within the secret brotherhood of a Mystery religion, the great adventure of religion became for the initiate a matter of personal experience – an experience which could be enjoyed by means of the cult's meditation technique and through their religious rituals. 'Religion' for the best of these pagan Mystery schools was something which went far beyond the teaching of a system of ethics. Their religion was a practical life process, which involved continuous mental, spiritual and emotional development.
Meditation developed the faculty of intuition, and intuition in its turn developed the faculty of spiritual realization, and the latter led to 'regeneration', or being born from above. Thus will the comparative study of religion show that 'thinking backward' into the 'living past' can inspire new and passionate effort for 'living forward'.
There is much in the history and in the teachings of paganism which is inspiring and helpful to men today, for these Mystery religions were essentially religions of vitality, joy and freedom of thought. It may be said, too, that if the organization of knowledge is the measure of a civilization, then the civilization of the Graeco-Roman world was a high one, at any rate from the religious point of view.
Finally, the fate of the Greek and Roman state religions is a plain warning to modern Christians that the value of any religion depends on its functional significance for the society of its age. Some 200 years ago Wesley called the Church of England of his day 'A dead Church worshipping a dead Christ'. Roman history shows only too clearly what a drag upon the evolution of humanity a dead church can be; and the history of the Christian Reformation, some 500 years later, confirms this.
There are many today who say quite openly that the great Christian churches are drifting into the same position as the state religions of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Christian era. If so, one wonders what till take their place.
Part 3. The Background of the Pagan Mysteries
One can have no grasp whatever of the inner or esoteric aspect of the pagan Mystery teaching unless one constantly reminds oneself of the following point of view. For the pagan initiate, that which strikes upon our senses from the outer world, 'the form', is not the whole of the phenomenon. Behind, or within, or without, or somewhere in another dimension, there is a reality of which the form in question is but a manifestation. Concealed behind all form there is a 'deeper being', to use a phrase from Keyserling. Unseen behind that which strikes upon the senses, there is, as it were, a living soul, which is imprisoned - as man is in his body - in the form which we see or touch.
Further, the Mystery schools veiled their teachings behind a mystical imagery to which we have very often not got the right key. Without that key, the symbolism of the Mystery religions often seems to be incomprehensible to us. Nevertheless, their teachings, so far as we can understand them, as we are now beginning to find out, are based upon practical knowledge and sound psychology.
Mystical experience - which we might call vaguely direct contact with the numen - was the central meaning of the Mystery initiation. Unless this point is clearly understood, it is useless to study the Mystery religions.
Let us now look at the general conditions of social life while the Mystery religions flourished. The period from 400 BC to just before the birth of Christ was one of social destruction, and it saw the breaking up of many states and most empires. Alexander the Great, in about 330 BC, destroyed the Persian Empire. His generals and their successors carved out kingdoms for themselves, and then fought incessantly with each other. Finally the Romans came and conquered the whole of the Mediterranean Basin. During 350 years of military destruction, all the little independent states had vanished; many cities were destroyed altogether; others were sacked time after time by the various conquering armies. Whole classes of once prosperous citizens had disappeared or were reduced to slavery.
It is calculated by reliable historians that during the first century AD three out of every four persons inhabiting the great towns of the Roman Empire were slaves, or had been in slavery. In many countries the once great and politically powerful middle classes had vanished. There were left only the very wealthy, and the very poor. The lawyers, doctors and school teachers, as a class, were usually slaves. The agricultural classes of Italy and some of the European provinces, had been ruined by foreign-grown wheat brought from Egypt, and issued as a dole to the urban unemployed of Italy and Greece. It has been truly said that in the Mediterranean Basin these three centuries had been centuries of prolonged suffering and destruction which cannot be compared with any other period in the history of the Western World. The Emperor took, in 13 BC, the title of Pontifex Maximus, and the peace which Augustus and Tiberius gave to a war-weary world led to the Emperor Augustus being ranked as a god - the God of Peace.
Now this long period of suffering, both mental and physical, had wrought great changes in the attitude of the European nations as a whole towards religion. In the first place, it had altered men's ideas about the local religions and gods of the small states. Before this period (say 600 to 700 BC) each little state had its own god and its own form of religion. That god, who functioned through a priesthood maintained by the state, looked after the general interests and safety of the state. Religion was then a matter for the group rather than for the individual. For example, in the whole of the Old Testament - as written in the Hebrew - there is no reference to individual immortality. It was the immortality of the Jewish nation that was considered to be important. Religion was a system of ritual for the 'salvation' - that is, for the safety - of the State. It hardly concerned itself with the fate of the individual, and it made little attempt to provide him with a reasonable hope of salvation in the next world or happiness in this one. Gradually the destruction of the petty local states led to a considerable loss of confidence in the local gods and in the local group systems of religious observance.
As modern historians such as Angus point out, man began to demand from religion, not a strong god who was able to save his city from pillage and rapine, but a benevolent god who would be kind enough to 'save' an individual, be he poor or rich, sick or well. And to meet this demand the great Mystery religions grew up slowly in an age of insecurity, of suffering, and of misery due to incessant warfare. The national religions, although they were in a state of spiritual weakness and decay, continued to function, often with great magnificence. The popular feasts were held, and popular rejoicing took place on the various festal days in much the same way as we keep Christmas Day - which, incidentally, was the birthday of Mithra, that of Jesus being unknown. (Our Lady Day, 25 March, was formerly the Annunciation of Mithra.) But the educated classes, as the writings of Marcus Terentius Varro and other authors show, had as a rule abandoned official religion for philosophy. While the educated priesthood of the official pagan religions seem to have been just as sceptical with regard to their religion as were the Sadducean priests of the time of Jesus. For example, we know that Scaevola Pontifex Maximus in the first century BC enumerated three kinds of gods: those of the poets, who are futile; those of the philosophers, who do not suit the state owing partly to their being superfluous and partly to their being injurious to the people; and those of the statesmen. (Angus, Mystery Religion, p. 33.)
In the time of Augustus, many of the state religious foundations had lapsed because the educated, the well-born, and the middle classes would no longer enter the temple schools; and the state priesthood was being filled from the ranks of the uneducated plebeians.
We must then distinguish between the three types of religion which existed at this period. There was the religion of the uneducated, which was popular superstition. It was a mixture of spiritualism, astrology of a very low type, and the official religion of the state in its lowest and most debased form. Then there was the official state religion, a religion for the group mind which was almost entirely formal. And thirdly, the religion of the educated classes - when they had any - which was a special type of personal religious experience. This was probably only to be found at that time in one or other of the numerous Mystery cults or secret brotherhoods, which specialized in a definite type of religious experience, under the patronage of a definite cult deity.
Now these secret brotherhoods had, as a rule, come from the East. Multitudes of slaves captured in the Roman conquest of the world were brought to Rome and Italy. They formed a world of their own within the Roman world. They formed their own private cult association - and they initiated their conquerors into their Mystery religions.
So once again we see that a careful study of the social conditions of any period is necessary before we can begin to understand the religious conditions of that age. And 'thinking backward' brings out into strong relief this maxim of the comparative method of studying religion - 'Religions are socially conditioned products and their value must lie in the extent to which they meet the actual needs of the individuals and groups of any given period.'
The old state religions had once met a very definite want, and while they met that want they flourished. Later, human religious needs changed. The state religions were unable to change with the times. And as they could not meet the demands made upon them, they fell into disrepute.
Now, speaking very generally, and for the sake of convenience, we may classify the Mystery cults as follows. First there were those that came from Asia Minor, the chief of which were the Magna Mater, and the great religion of Mithra, the soldier's religion. Broadly speaking, these cults appealed to the emotions. Next there were the numerous types of the Graeco-Egyptian Mystery religions, out of which emerged orthodox Christianity, which as we know it now is but a shadow of what it once was spiritually. Again speaking very generally, we can say that the appeal of the Graeco-Egyptian religion was to both the emotions and the intellect, but chiefly to the latter.
Now let us study the actual religious needs of that time and then consider how the Mystery religions as a whole satisfied those needs.
First, as has been pointed out, the state religions catered almost entirely for the group. They failed because they could not satisfy the restless questing individualism of the New Age that set in with the conquest of Alexandria. The chief religious characteristic of the Graeco-Roman age is the rebellion of the individual against the corporate body. The Sophists had created this spirit of individualism in Greece by teaching 'Man is the measure of all things', while Socrates, who died in prison for the rights of conscience in religion, and for the privilege of private judgement, probably quite unwittingly undermined all religious authority by teaching the eternal value of the individual. For Socrates and his pupils the ultimate basis of moral action was not in the laws, or in the religion of the state, or in tradition, but in man's own reason and conscience. This doctrine revolutionized the religious conceptions of the Ancient World; and Socrates was thus the Greek forerunner of Jesus.
The Mysteries catered to the fullest possible extent for this new spirit of individualism, for their basic idea was the unfolding of the personality, and they strove to make, by means of a specified spiritual training, life freer and fuller for all. In the religious fraternities of the Mystery cults, rich and poor, noble and slave, artisan and merchant prince - all met on a footing of absolute equality. Women were on a footing of equality with men. The Mysteries held out to all their members, be they high or low, man or woman, virtuous wife or mistress, the possibility of contacting the divine powers.
Secondly, there was another reason for the sudden development of the Mystery cults. At the time when this movement towards individualism was in its first flood, Alexander the Great broke up the long established and exclusive priestly colleges of the Euphrates valley. This drove hosts of priests out to earn their living by teaching their esoteric knowledge. Thus his conquests had religious consequences as far-reaching as the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in AD 1453, when the Greek scholars were driven westward to bring the Renaissance to Europe. It is curious how often in history we see the breaking up of a religion in one country leading to a religious advance in another land - usually a far distant one.
There is one point we must never forget, and that is that the ancient Greek was a fine missionary. He was intellectually curious and fond of innovations, and he was fortunate in living under a system in which all thought was free and unhampered by clerical conservatism. He was also intensely conscious of the unity of the divine. And for the educated Greek the various gods were an abstract conception of the One God. Take the speech of 'Isis of a Thousand Names' as given by the initiate Apuleius in his
Metamorphoses, or The Golden Ass.
Parent of nature, mistress of all the elements, the First-born of the Ages … whom the Phrygians adore as the Pessinuntian Mother of the Gods, the Athenians as Minerva, the Cyprians as Venus, the Cretans as Dictynian Diana, the Sicilians as Prosperina, the Eleusinians as Demeter, others as Juno, or Bellona, others as Hecate or Rhamnusia; while the Egyptians and others honour me with my proper name of Queen Isis.
To the initiates of the Graeco-Egyptian Mysteries it was a matter of experience to know that behind all objects manifesting in matter, there exists, although it is unseen, an ideal object - that is, an ideal pattern which is seeking to become manifest upon the physical plane.
The third factor in the development of the Mystery religions was the passion which existed in the ancient world for the formation of trade unions. When life was so insecure, the individual, helpless against oppression, combined with fellow workers and formed a collegium or sodality. These collegia met, like the modern freemasons, with due 'rites'. Very often they were linked to a temple which was dedicated to an orthodox deity. Religion, and a sort of club life, as well as trade unionism, worked peacefully side by side. In some cases the religious aspect became more and more pronounced; in others the secular aspects prevailed. The former developed slowly into religious brotherhoods, worshipping a particular deity; and eventually many of them grew into Mystery schools. You can trace much the same idea in the development of the monastic orders in the Church.
But the most important of all the factors which contributed to the growth of the Mystery religions was the popularity of the practice of meditation which grew up out of the failure of the state religions to retain their hold over the more educated members of the community.
With the coming of individualism came 'conscience', which is a Stoic term. Reliance on an outside religious authority gave place to subjectivity. The local type of decalogue was seen to be out of place. And the disciples of Socrates, together with the Pythagoreans and the Stoics, substituted for this authority the habit of self-examination.
Seneca writes, for example:
Every day I plead my case before myself. When the light is extinguished, and my wife, who knows my habit, keeps silence, I examine the past day, go over and weigh all my deeds and words. I hide nothing. I omit nothing; why should I hesitate to face my shortcomings when I can say 'Take care not to repeat them, and so I forgive you today'.
Thus we see that the pagan Mystery religions, by their doctrine of the numen, and by their training in self-analysis and meditation, gave new religious hope to a world that was spent and war-worn, as Angus points out: 'The Mysteries brought a fresh spiritual impulse to a social system that had long lost that optimism which was such a conspicuous feature of the classic days of Greek freedom and greatness.'
Part 4. The Ritual Theurgy of the Mystery Religions
As the ritual theurgy of the Mystery religions is a thorny subject it is advisable to start by defining the terms employed rather carefully.
Ritual as used here means: 'Any ceremonial form or custom of procedure' (Century Dictionary, Vol. XVIII, p. 5195). For example, a poet writes:
False are our words, and fickle is our Mind;
Nor in love's ritual can we find
Vows made to last, or promises to bind.
Ritual is easy enough to define, but to give a clear definition of 'theurgy' is not so easy. Here 'theurgy' means the combination of ritual and meditation, in a specially prepared sanctuary, for the attainment of certain particular religious ends. This is not a good definition, for it involves a number of obscure expressions. But the difficulty is this: theologians who write on the subject are quite ready to define 'theurgy', but, usually, they are not ready to admit of its existence. Now to define, that is, to declare the essence of, to make clear an outline of, a thing which one believes not to exist, seems to involve a contradiction in terms. To define that which does not exist, seems rather like painting an Academy masterpiece with a paintbrush dipped in distilled water only.
Here, however, is an attempt taken from the Century Dictionary, Vol XXII, p. 6286: 'Theurgy is the pretended production of effects by supernatural agency.' But the Greek word theourgos, that which is the effective of theurgy, also means a priest; and so this definition is not very illuminating. Also, it seems to cast aspersions on the ancestry of the priesthood. Are they the spiritual descendants of fraudulent miracle mongers?
Now that orthodox writer Vaughan, in his Hours with the Mystics (i.36), gives the following 'good' definition of theurgy. He says: 'I would use the term theurgic to characterise the mysticism which claims supernatural powers generally, works marvels, by the virtue of talisman or cross, demi-god, angel, or saint....' The Hastings' Encylopaedia of Religion and Ethics (Vol. XII, p. 319) has this to say on the subject:
The Celestial Hierarchy of Dionysius and the benign daemons of Proclus, the powers invoked by Pagan or by Christian theurgy, by Platonist, by Cabbalist, or by saint, alike reward the successful aspirant with supernatural endowments; and so Apollonius of Tyana and Peter of Alcantara, Asclepigenia and St Theresa, must occupy as religious magicians the same province. The error is in either case the same - a divine efficacy is attributed to rites and formulas, sprinklings and fumigations, relics or incantations, of mortal manufacture.
There is good sound British common sense; there is sound Protestant opinion backed by sound Protestant scholarship. But as a definition, it completely misses its objective, just as a man who shies at a coconut misses it if it does not exist. Hastings (Vol. XI), in a fine article on Neo-Platonism, deals pityingly with the theurgic tendencies of Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus, the famous successors of Plotinus. The author likewise puts up a coconut which, according to him, does not exist even in his own imagination, and then proceeds with great skill and impartiality to knock it down.
But there is this drawback to the otherwise sound scholarship and the concrete knowledge of Vaughan, and others of that ilk. They believe theurgy to be a pretended art and, as such, to have no actual existence. If they deny its actual existence, then of course they can give, no matter how much they may write on the subject, no positive information about theurgy. Because, for them, theurgy does not exist and so, by their own showing, they know nothing about it.
Perhaps it is better to go to those writers who had a definite and positive experience of theurgy, and see what the theurgic art meant for them.
Much of the information with regard to the theurgy of the ancients comes from the writings of the Gnostics, both pagan and Christian, and from the Neo-Platonists Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus and Proclus. Now the basis of theurgy is contained in the following extracts taken from the teachings of Plotinus. He taught (op. cit., Vol. IX, p. 316) 'that the Universe contains many daemons of a more superior order'. Also, 'that the great sin is selfishness or self will, which makes us forget our father'. Again, according to Plotinus, and indeed almost all the teachers of the Mystery religions, 'Death only means that the actor changes his mask', for death, in the Mystery teaching, is something very different from the 'holy dying' of the Christian religion of this age.
The system of Plotinus was a dynamic pantheism - the doctrine 'that the living forces of the Deity permeate all nature' (op. cit., p. 309). This is often taught today in Eastern religions and philosophies, and it is a very ancient Mystery teaching, which the Stoics taught openly well over 2,000 years ago.
Matter, for Plotinus, was not the matter known to the human senses. 'It was impalpable, intangible, all but nothing.' (Op. cit., p. 310). In other words it is the substance of physical matter, which becomes 'divine matter' when enriched by the spirit poured into it. We might call it the etheric background of matter.
For the Neo-Platonists, 'sensible reality' is but a shadow of the true reality. The sensible world is a reflection of the eternal world in the mirror of matter. And 'divine matter' is real, on its own plane, just as much as sensible matter is real on this physical plane. (Op. cit., p. 311).
Further, Plotinus laid down that 'a feeble contemplation makes a feeble object of contemplation'. With regard to this very significant admission, it is known now that a special type 'dynamic' or active meditation was the method used by this school, as well as by the other schools of the Mysteries, to obtain the 'beatific vision' - the highest crown which is reserved for only the very highest type of mystic.
But in addition to these very rare 'great ones', these ancient contemplative schools, by means of a special technique, turned out hundreds of highly trained initiates, who were able to teach and work with power because they were able to enrich 'divine matter' by pouring spirit into it.
So we are now a little closer to understanding what theurgy really is. First, it is a psychological process, and it goes on in the mind. Then, theurgy makes use of 'divine matter' or, as we should call it in terms of the twentieth-century theology of Professor Otto, the numen. This theurgy 'informs' for it vivifies this 'divine matter' by ensouling it with spirit. In modern terms, the theurgy of the Mystery schools was the dynamic use of meditation to obtain personal religious experience.
What we rather vaguely, and in popular language, call religious 'ritual' is, in its essence, nothing more than meditation expressed in action. One can understand what this means by watching a Mass worked by Roman Catholic priests. In this case meditation is dual-natured, active and passive, and it deals not only with definite symbol systems, but also with symbols and symbolic actions.
So a more detailed explanation of what is meant by theurgy might run as follows. Theurgy is the continued use of meditation and ritual, in a specially prepared sanctuary, for the purpose of obtaining certain direct religious experiences. Its central teachings - at any rate in the earlier stages - deal with the 'birth from above'. It is a natural process, partly mental and partly emotional, which has nothing whatever to do with the supernatural, though undoubtedly it is, for the majority of Westerners, supernormal.
For the ancient 'knower' - the Gnostic of the Mystery schools - theurgy meant a technique of meditation and ritual by means of which a man in the flesh strove to unite himself consciously with his higher self, by finding the Kingdom of God within.
In one of the descriptions of initiation handed on in the Trismegistic sermons [Mead, Echoes from the Gnosis, Vol. I, p. 19, The Gnosis of the Mind] in which the candidate is reborn, or born in mind, he [the candidate] is amazed that his 'father' and initiator here below should remain there before him just as he was in his familiar form, while the efficacious rite is perfected by his means. The 'father' of this 'son' is the link, the channel of the gnosis; the true initiation is performed by the Great Initiator, the Mind. In other words, the 'initiated' is also the 'initiator'. Once again, it is evident that theurgy, at least in its simpler stages, is a process for making the higher and lower self combine, consciously, and for a definite purpose.
So Vaughan, though worthy and orthodox as a teacher, has in this particular instance misunderstood the issue completely. And his remarks about the efficacy of sprinklings and fumigations, which are of mortal manufacture, are beside the point.
There is nothing supernatural in theurgy. For the whole process is, and was, purely psychological. It is only those who are ignorant and without practical experience who talk about this 'pretended art' not realizing that the Christian Last Supper, Holy Communion, Mass, Eucharist - call it what you like - from first to last, is a theurgical operation. And so far as Protestantism is concerned, it is only too often badly worked and ineffective.
Now recalling the statement that theurgy is the combined use of meditation and ritual, in a specially prepared sanctuary, for the purpose of obtaining religious experience, consider the workings of the Roman Catholic Mass. Here is a modern example of ancient theurgical ritual, one that is still a very potent rite if you understand it, or if you are a welcome member of the group soul of the Church of Rome. For the purposes of this article the 'Order and Canon of the Mass', as explained by Dom Fernand Cabrol OSB is used. He tells us (p. 2) that attendance at the whole Mass was originally reserved for the initiated and baptized alone, there being two parts to a Mass. The first part is styled 'The Mass of the Catechumens', and the uninitiated were dismissed before the Offertory. The second part was 'The Mass of the Faithful' and the 'rites of this second part all relate directly to the Sacrifice of the Eucharistic Banquet' (p. 4).
The prayers called the Preface and the Canon, of the second part of the Mass were for a long time kept strictly secret (p. 6). The priest had to recite them from memory, for they were not allowed to be written down, and they were not translated into the vernacular until about 1850. The consecration of the Elements is called by the Church of Rome 'the Mystery of the transubstantiation of the Elements of Bread and Wine [into the body and blood of Christ]' (p. 7). An idea is here expressed that is familiar to any student of the sacred meals partaken of in the Ancient Mysteries.
Now the word Eucharist comes from a Greek word meaning a giving of thanks; and it is, even in Protestantism, essentially a sacrament, while the Roman Church defines the Eucharist as 'both the Sacrament and sacrifice of Christ truly present under the appearances of bread and wine' (Addis and Arnold, Catholic Dictionary, p. 323). In other words, the Christian Mass is a theurgy, worked by the initiated celebrant and his assistants. That modern authority on mysticism, Evelyn Underhill, somewhere describes the Mass as a ceremony of a magical nature, and she is perfectly right, because the Mass is a magical ceremony pure and simple, when worked by a properly initiated priest. It is not one when worked by an untrained ministrant for then it lacks intention.
As has been said, the initiates of the Ancient Mysteries held that there were subtle and potent invisible worlds which stand behind this visible and material one. Amplifying this doctrine, they also held that behind the material form which we call the man's body there are other and more subtle bodies - bodies which enable the man, when he can control them, to function in those other worlds which are invisible to us while in the flesh. These subtle bodies are constituted from the subtle matter of these inner worlds.
This teaching came apparently into the Greek Western Mystery Tradition from the two great Wisdom traditions of Babylonia and of Egypt. (Mead, The Subtle Body, p. 29.) The Pythagoreans and the Mystery teachers of that time were not unfamiliar with the use of the Augeoeides or Astroeides, or subtle vehicles of the 'soul in its purity' (p. 46). And these vehicles seem to be the same as the 'soma pneumatikon' - 'Spirit Body' - of St Paul (p. 48). These terms do not have the same meaning as the 'astral' body of the modern Spiritualists and Theosophists. The modern term 'astral body' really refers to that body which was termed by the ancients the 'image', i.e. eidolon, imago, simulacrum. While their 'shade', i.e. skia or umbra, is what we now would call the etheric body.
Plato, in the Phaedrus (op. cit., p. 49) uses the very evocative words, 'We are imprisoned in the body like an oyster in its shell.' And these ideas of the inner constitution of man and of his intimate relationships to the inner constitution of the world are essentially theurgical, and they have a very definite bearing upon the aims of the Mystery religions. The historian Plutarch (AD 50-120) says on this subject: 'When a man dies, he goes through the same experiences as those who have had their consciousness increased in the Mysteries.' (Mead, The Vision of Aridaeus, p. 13.)
It is a very curious coincidence, if it be a coincidence, that in Greek the verbs 'to die' and 'to be initiated' are almost identical. Teleutan is to die; it is a form of teleutao, to complete. Telesthai is to be initiated, and it comes from the active verb teleo, which also means to complete, to accomplish, to perfect. And it is so used in the New Testament, for example, in 1 Cor. 2:6. 'But we speak wisdom among the perfect' - i.e. among the initiated.
Now Plutarch held high office in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (op cit., p. 10). He was also connected with the Dionysiac Rites, and had a profound knowledge of the minor grades of the Osiric Mysteries. His teaching, as given above, is corroborated by that of the Neo-Platonists whose school came into existence after his death, and by the Orphic Traditions which were being taught centuries before his birth.
So far as our limited knowledge of these ancient Mysteries goes, this 'living death' of the 'perfected' or the high grade initiate, was common to all the Greater Mystery teachings, and this living death was the aim of their ritual. It was also the ultimate objective of the long years of training in the technique of solitary meditation which was given in most of the reputable Mystery schools.
Closely connected with meditation, as a theurgical system of getting in contact with the divine, is the system of incubation. Incubation, or, in popular language, 'the Temple Sleep', denotes in comparative religion the practice of sleeping (or at least passing the night) in a shrine or other sacred place with the object of receiving a divine revelation or divine aid. (Hastings' Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Vol. VII, p. 206.)
The basal theory is given us in the book of Job (33:15-16): 'In a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed; then he [God] openeth the ears of men and sealeth their instruction.' Jacob's ladder, Joseph's and Pharoah's dreams, Solomon's dream in Gibeon, in which he asked for wisdom, are all instances of a similar idea.
This practice was extremely common in Ireland when the Druids were in power. It is common today in Mohammedan countries, and prevails widely in countries ministered to by the Greek Orthodox Church, where it is now used for the cure of disease, and for divination.
Jayne, in Healing Gods of Ancient Civilisations, p. 50, gives a mass of interesting information on this subject which is up-to-date and, above all, accurate. He suggests, as the result of his study of the healing cult of the Graeco-Egyptian god Serapis, that the methods used were those 'that are now known as hypnosis and suggestive therapeutics'. He also tells us that 'the priest physicians of ancient Egypt were persons of education and social standing, famed throughout the orient from earliest historic times … men who stood forth as noble and beneficent figures of Egyptian civilisation'.
In Greece there were medical schools attached to many healing temples. 'Many cities had physicians under salary who were heads of public hospitals with a full equipment of consulting rooms, pharmacies, and operating rooms with instruments.' (Op. cit., p. 239.)
'Asklepios was the deified head of the Greek cult, and his shrines and healing temples were judiciously selected with a view to general salubrity, pure air and water, and general attractiveness.' (Op. cit., p. 252.) They were put outside the cities so Plutarch tells us (op. cit., p. 256) in order to get a more healthy site, and there were large and beautiful sanitoriums attached to the shrines of the more wealthy type.
Theurgy has, and had, a very real existence in its own state of being, which is psychological. It makes use of a combination of meditation and ritual to attain its ends, which should be religious. In the olden days, the Mystery priest was, by virtue of his office, a trained theurgist. In theurgy the immediate objective was the strengthening of the influence of the higher self over the lower self, and the giving to the initiate of more control over his subtler bodies, as well as purification and exaltation of his soul. The ultimate objective, to which only an initiate of the very highest could hope to rise, was the 'beatific vision'.
So it will be seen that theurgy in these Ancient Mysteries was a psychological method. It was not a matter of formulas or incantations or fumigations, as certain modern writers seem to think. Its object was the purification of the man, and the exaltation of his consciousness.
Part 5. The Egyptian Tradition
If the methods of training used by the various Mystery schools are correlated, it soon becomes evident that, in spite of a wide diversity in details, most of the schools are working to a common pattern. So far as archaeological research can take us it would appear that the common working basis of the pagan Mysteries of the Mediterranean Basin (between 500 BC and AD 500) is to be found in Egypt. There are other explanations of this common factor which are given by the initiates when teaching in their schools, but these will not be considered because it is impossible to corroborate these theories.
The Mysteries of Greece and Grecian Asia Minor as well as those of the Grecian Islands are according to Spence (Mysteries of Egypt, p. 17) the offspring of those of Egypt. Mr Spence has made this subject his special study for forty years and he may be right. Though it is open to question whether the Aryan (or Wiro) Mystery systems are based on the Egyptian system, there is no doubt that they have been strongly influenced by it.
Their similarity, however, can be explained in another way. Suppose the Mystery teachings with regard to the mind-side (including memory) of nature be true, and suppose that 'initiated persons' are able to commune with mind (used in the Plotinian sense) as the Mysteries declare, then the common pattern is not to be found in Egypt or elsewhere on this physical plane; it is to be found in mind. This is a simple explanation which moderns - without practical experience of the Mysteries - will find difficult to accept.
If the Orphic, the Pythagorean and the Neo-Platonic Mystery systems, as used in Alexandria, are examined and compared with the systems of Egypt it will be seen that they have, one and all, not only a common basis but also a common objective. It is their method of attainment that varies so much. Again, when the books written by modern authors on the subject of the Ancient Mysteries are studied, one is inclined to wonder how in the face of the evidence which they accumulate, their authors can consider (as so many do) the Ancient Mysteries to have been collective illusions. For example, Professor Macchioro in his book From Orpheus to Paul has collected an immense number of important facts about the Ancient Mysteries, also references to them from classical authors and from wall paintings, vases, etc. The net result seems to be that, in this professor's opinion, the entire Mystery system, as a method of gaining religious experience, was a delusion. It was the result of collective suggestion such as that which the Belgian hypnotist d'Hont used to demonstrate by way of experiment (op. cit., p. 100). Indeed (Chapter 3) this learned professor's object seems to have been to reduce the Ancient Mysteries to the status of a Ghost Dance religion, making them similar in their teaching and methods to those spiritualistic revivals which broke out among the American Indian Tribes during the nineteenth century (p. 53).
In spite of this bias the professor has done much good work in clearing away many sectarian prejudices, and in treating his subject with unusual sympathy. He has at least recognized that in the Orphic Mysteries mental phenomena played a very large part. He emphasizes the fact that the Greek Lesser Mysteries at Agrae and the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis were carried out without the aid of scenery (p. 63ff). As a result of modern exploration the construction of the Telesterion of Eleusis, the room where the neophytes were initiated, shows that no dramatic performance, however simple, could have been enacted in this room where nothing but pillars could be seen. Formerly it was supposed that the visions seen at initiatory rites such as those described in The Golden Ass were stage effects produced by means of elaborate machinery, such as that used in our theatres today. Excavations show that these telesterions rested on solid rock and that such machinery could never have existed. And the excavation of the Kabirean Telesterion of Samothrace supports this conclusion.
From the results of archaeological research, as well as from a study of the accounts given by the ancient authors themselves, it is practically certain that the Mystery rituals were dramas, acted without scenery or movement, and without a visible and material stage. It seems also clear that magical symbols were used to invoke certain mental pictures in the imagination of the neophytes as well as of the initiates (p. 65). As the professor points out, myths became living facts through symbols. 'Symbols invoke the myth, and bring people into touch with it. Such symbols become the starting point of a whole series of visions and emotions.' Here the professor has possibly said a great deal more than he knows.
Thanks to Clement of Alexandria, the symbols which were exposed in the Orphic Mysteries are known (p. 67). These were a whip top, dice, a ball, apples, a rhomb, a mirror and a fleece. All these symbols referred to the story of Zagreus; it is said that they recalled the games by means of which the Titans distracted the mind of the young god while they killed him. But is this all? Chapter 10 of Harrison's Prolegomena suggests quite another explanation.
Proclus refers more than once to the fact that the symbols themselves exerted an influence upon the initiates which rendered them sensitive to the ceremonies and led them to divine communion. And this is an important point if any clear understanding of the Mystery methods is to be hoped for. It is not easy to explain ancient symbolism unless one is prepared to admit that it had a suggestive influence on those who knew its sacred meanings. Macchioro also comments (p. 68) on the sacred images, which he seems to think were statues or Xoana, and he describes them as savage idols replete with tremendous power, perfectly capable of killing or making a person mad or sick. This is, in some respects at any rate, an error. The sacred images which were replete with power were not of necessity physical images.
These facts and theories which he puts forward are extremely valuable to any student of the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries, for he closes many blind alleys. Sadly, for the probable reason that he has had no actual experience of the inner workings of a Mystery drama, Professor Macchioro has missed the real meaning of much of what he so ably describes. Nevertheless, his book is worthy of close study by all students of the Mysteries. He has missed some of the inner meanings because he has attempted to understand the Mysteries solely through the workings of his rational mind. The Mysteries were, and are, to a large extent based on the workings of the irrational mind. They are as irrational as is a man's love for a particular woman, and his desire for complete and ecstatic union with her.
They are irrational because the primary urge which drives the initiate into action is love; irrational love for an aspect of the divine and for a complete and ecstatic union with this aspect of the divine. The Ancient Mysteries must remain as a sealed book to the reader unless he can realize that the divine loves, and can be loved by, the human, and that ecstatic union with divine forces is possible here and now.
Professor James in The Pluralistic Universe (p. 13) when discussing the various types of philosophical thinking, points out that the distinguishing mark of 'a philosopher's truth is that it must be reasoned. Argument, not supposition, must have put it in his possession.' Contrast with this Aristotle's statement that is was not necessary for the initates 'to learn anything, but to have their emotions stirred'. (See Angus, The Mystery Religions and Christianity, p. 62.) This does not mean that there was no reasoned teaching given in the Mysteries; such teaching was given and is still given. It does mean, however, that during the actual ceremony of initiation the burden of the appeal was (and still is) laid upon the unconscious mind, and not upon the conscious or reasoning mind.
This point is of importance when studying standard authors such as Angus, who returns again and again in his books to the practical efficacy of the Mystery cults as living systems for producing religious experience. He writes for example:
Another way of escape [from pessimism and the evils of dualism] was by the religion of ritualistic Henosis or union with God by rite and subsequently by the Magical mystical Christian sacraments. Such union was secured not so much ethically as ceremonially and emotionally. The correct ritualistic process released the divine element to make its ascent to the higher world. The Mystery furnished the initiated soul with the password to bliss. By sacramental efficacy akin to contemporary magic the material man was in rebirth transmuted or remade into immaterial and therefore immortal substance. A guarantee of the immortality so passionately longed for was given here to each member of the Mystery fraternities. Initiates were 'demortalised', and being thus rendered divine, were endowed with deathlessness. (Angus, The Religious Quests of the Graeco-Roman World, p. 42.)
Such convictions and guarantees can never have been the result of matter of fact reason. No philosopher's truth can give one conviction in the realms of religious experience. The reasoning mind can check facts and fancies, but it cannot make religious truth real and living. That is the province of a part of man's soul which is not the reasoning mind.
A great writer on ancient Egypt - M. Moret - has put this point admirably in his book Kings and Gods of Egypt (p. 198):
The Votary of Isis, wrapt in ecstasy at the feet of the goddess, interpreted the revelation not in the word, but in the spirit, according to the need of his heart, in the glow of his faith. From that day mysticism lived. The Isiac became his own priest; the god no longer a far distant entity, a remote state providence, deigns to converse with him, becomes his tutelary friend, and as it were 'a thing of beauty and a joy for ever'. Each man possesses the God who is the father of all.
'The Isiac became his own priest.' This sentence elucidates the age-long hatred of the orthodox Christian priesthood for the initiates of the Mysteries. This priestly hatred explains why we know so very little about the Egyptian Mysteries, for the Christians destroyed everything belonging to the Mysteries upon which they could lay their hands. The Ancient Mysteries, like the seventeenth-century Quakers and certain other sects, threatened vested interests. The initiate scoffed at the idea of a paid and professional priesthood standing between God and man. They threatened a powerful and wealthy class and that class, in defence of its own pockets, destroyed its enemy thoroughly and systematically - a very natural thing, from their point of view, for any priesthood to do.
In these Ancient Mystery brotherhoods there was an accumulated knowledge of religious psychology which had been amassed through more than a thousand years of practical working. Thanks to the Christian habit of destroying, as heretical, anything that is not understood, or is considered dangerous, this knowledge was lost to the Western world for nearly 1,500 years. In the East, however, a higher type of civilization - and a less bigoted type of priesthood - has resulted in the preservation of much of this psychology in the form of yoga. This the West has now begun to study at a time when by patient scientific research, the medical and scholastic professions, freed from the haunting fear of the rack and the stake, or social and religious ostracism, are rediscovering in the domains of psychology and psychotherapy much that was once well-known to the ancients.
Today only the outer shell of the ancient cults remains. We have the stones of the broken temples, their mural decorations and those of the rifled rock tombs, and a few relevant papyri. There are a number of notices in the classical authors of Greece and Rome, and books written by such teachers as Iamblichus, Plotinus, Proclus and other philosophers, the scanty remnants of a once vast literature. We have also the furious denunciations of the early Church Fathers. Once these men were considered to be most reliable, but today modern historical research has shown, by checking their evidence with new sources of information, that they were generally biased witnesses, often ignorant, and in many cases deliberately untruthful. As Miss Harrison puts it (Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, p. 538), 'Their wilful misunderstanding is an ugly chapter in the history of human passion and prejudice.'
In spite of concealment by those who favoured the Mysteries, much can be learned from the outer forms of the exoteric Egyptian religions once the Mystery technique has been acquired. A study of Moret, Breasted, Budge, Petrie and Weigal, although they deal chiefly with the popular and exoteric forms, is absolutely necessary before one can make much of the many hints which are given in Herodotus, Plutarch, Iamblichus, Apuleius, Porphyry, Arnobius (a Christian Apologist), Diodorus and Lactantius. The Hermes Trismegistic literature, which has been so ably edited by Mead, is really outside the scope of this manual.
There is also the so-called 'Book of the Dead', the real title of which is said by certain authorities to be 'The Book of the Master of the Hidden Places', or as Budge translates it in the rubric to Chapter 163 'The Book of the Mistress of the Hidden Temple'. This is especially valuable because a prolonged and careful study of the pictures and the symbols which are used in it has a curious and far-reaching effect on the subconscious mind of the student.
The modern authorities mentioned above, with the exception perhaps of M. Moret and, with certain reservations, Professor Budge, seem to think that the Mysteries of Egypt, like the exoteric religions of that country, grew up from crude beginnings. The anthropologists of today, like their predecessors of two thousand years ago, cling to the popular idea that all these religions were the offspring of the imaginings of savage negroid races from central Africa.
M. Moret certainly does not hold this theory, and Professor Budge has qualified it by saying that the religion of the educated classes should be excepted. But if, as has been pointed out, the idea can be accepted that the ultimate source of the Mystery teachings is not to be found in the physical brains of humanity, then the question of savage origin of the Mystery religions does not arise.
That this non-physical theory of the origin of the Mysteries was held by the ancient initiates is clear from the following quotation which is taken from Iamblichus' essay on the Egyptian Mysteries (p. 256):
The Egyptians do not say that all things are physical. Indeed they separate the spiritual, the intellectual and the natural life from one another not only in the universe but also in man ... and they acknowledge the existence of a vital power, pre-existent to the heavens and subsisting therein. They also establish a Pure Intellect above the world; and another which pervades all the spheres.
Moreover, they do not survey these things by mere reason alone; but they announce that they are able, through the sacerdotal theurgy, to ascend to the more elevated and universal essences... For there are according to them, many principles and many essences; and also supermundane powers, which they worship through the sacerdotal rite. (See also Spence, The Mysteries of Egypt, p. 61.)
In so far as the Egyptian and Graeco-Roman Mysteries are concerned, this 'sacerdotal theurgy' has the same meaning as the modern term 'the Western Mystery technique', and this is sometimes referred to as the 'Wisdom of the West' or the 'Yoga of the West'. In its essence it is a body of knowledge dealing with religious psychology. It is not a dogma, nor is it a teaching with regard to scientific or religious phenomena. It is really a technique for controlling the mind; and it is analogous to the yoga systems of India in its fundamental principles. Its empirical methods, however, are, speaking generally, different from those used in India, or by the Buddhists of Tibet, China and Japan.
This Wisdom of the West is a method of mental and spiritual training which has its roots in those Mysteries of Ancient Egypt which have come down to us through the Alexandrian schools. It has also been influenced considerably by the Chaldean and Greek Mystery traditions as regards its methods of training its students.
The mental training of the Yoga of the West in its early stages aims at teaching the student how to get in touch with his own higher self and then how to secure and to maintain (a much more difficult matter) a conscious link with that which Fechner called the World Soul. The Egyptian Mysteries also in their elementary stages (commonly called the Lesser Mysteries of Isis), taught their students how to get into conscious touch with the soul of the great Earth Mother, i.e. with the Green Isis.
It is necessary to explain here exactly what is meant by this term 'getting into conscious touch with the soul of the Earth Mother'. The explanations which are given here are by means of analogy; for it is impossible to explain in terms of brain consciousness the exact meaning of getting into conscious touch with a something that transcends brain consciousness.
One can explain to a certain extent by means of analogy, but one cannot describe. Those who have had this experience will realize what the analogy strives to convey. Those who have not had this experience will find it difficult to accept any explanation whatever.
Man has four states of consciousness: physical or brain-related; emotional or astral; mental; and spiritual. A saint lost in adoration of the Majesty of the Godhead is, so we should say, functioning in a spiritual state of consciousness. He is oblivious of his physical body, and he is no longer functioning consciously in his physical state of consciousness.
Again, consider the apocryphal mathematician who, absorbed in some abstruse problem, was found to be boiling his watch for his evening meal and noting the time by means of an egg held in his hand. The physical world had become for him unreal, for he had failed to notice the functional difference between his watch and the egg. The man was functioning on the planes of the mind. He was no longer in conscious touch with the realities of this physical world, which as a plane of consciousness had become for him subconscious. In technical terms he had risen above the plane of sense consciousness.
The genuine musician functions in the same way. His physical actions are subconscious and his consciousness is far away in that world of beauty and rhythm, and of sound as harmony, which is sometimes called the astral state of consciousness.
The understanding of the technique of the Mystery training which was given to the ancient initiates depends entirely upon our comprehending the idea (which has just been set forth in the recent quotation from Iamblichus) that, just as man is a living entity with these four states of consciousness, so this planet earth is a living conscious entity with states of consciousness which are analogous to those of man.
It is not here stated that the earth as an entity is conscious in exactly the same way that a man is conscious. The conditions may be analogous; but it is not said that they are identical. Man's consciousness is part of the consciousness that pertains to the earth's in exactly the same way that a bubble of foam on the surface of a wave pertains to the ocean upon which it floats.
The ancient Egyptian in the early stages of his initiation was taught that just as a man's body in obedience to man's will consciously draws its physical nourishment from the Earth Mother's physical body, so man's soul can draw nourishment from the Earth Mother's great oversoul. Man's emotional, mental and spiritual states of consciousness are part and parcel of the states of consciousness of the earth soul. Man's soul is individualized out of the soul of the Earth Mother, but it is not, in any way whatever, separated from it.
Man's soul, so the 'sacerdotal theurgy' taught, can get, and keep, and thrive upon, conscious contact with the soul of this planet - that is, with Isis. And in the Lesser Egyptian Mysteries, the neophyte was taught a special technique for lifting the veil of Isis, a thing which no 'mortal' could do for the initiate was taught how to put on immortality before lifting the veil.
This term 'lifting the veil' in modern language means getting into conscious touch with the emotional, mental and spiritual states of consciousness which the ancient initiates personified as the goddess Isis - the Divine Mother of us all.
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