MYSTE´RIA
MYSTE´RIA (
μυστήρια).
Though the term
μυστήρια is that which has
survived, still it was only one and that a late one, and perhaps the least
common of the terms used by the Greeks to express their mystic rites. The
word
ὄργια is found in the Homeric Hymn to
Demeter, ll. 274, 476, derived from
ἔοργα
(cf. Lat.
operari), which signifies “to
perform” ritual, and it was only in later times that it came to
connote ecstatic worship. The term
μυστήρια
is derived from
μύειν, used of closing the
lips or eyes;
μύστης,, according to
Petersen (in Ersch and Gruber, 82.228, note), means “with eyes
shut,” as opposed to
ἐπόπτης.
Μυστήρια is applied both to the objects of secret worship
(Themist.
Or. 4.55) and also the secret ritual;
ἀπόρρητα is similarly used. According to Lobeck
(
Aglaophamus, 85 ff.)
μυστικὸν is anything recondite, enigmatical, indirect,
allegorical; in fact, what is purposely not simple, plain, and
straightforward. Again there is the term
τελετή.. It is used of an ordinary festival (
Pind. N. 10.34); as applied to sacred worship,
it signifies the consummation of the votary's progress in his religion. (Cf.
such phrases as
τέλος γάμοιο, τέλη used
for the magistrates of the state, and
τελετὴ taken by the philosophers to express complete knowledge
of the subject.) “Diutius initiant quam consignant,” says
Tertullian (
contra Valentin. 1), translating
πλείονα χρόνον μυοῦσιν ἢ τελοῦσιν: compare
σφραγὶς and
τελείωσις, used for baptism (Lobeck, 33). The Latins used
initia, which signified an ideal beginning
( “initia ut appellantur ita re vera principia vitae cognovimus,”
Cic. de Leg. 2.1. 4, 36),--a
sort of new birth, as Preller says. Thus then we have terms signifying both
the objective secret nature of the ritual and the subjective condition of
the votary.
1.
The Kinds of Mysteries.--We can hardly consider under the
head of mysteries those mystic usages which occur here and there in certain
festivals, such as the marriage of the
βασιλεὺς and
βασίλισσα at the
DIONYSIA; nor the multitude of purifications
and sin-offerings found in most religions, all with more or less of a mystic
meaning. Again the mystic worships performed by private families are hardly
to be reckoned either, and do not come under our notice except in some few
cases, such as the Orphic rites of the Lycomidae [
ELEUSINIA]. But the mysteries properly so called,
viz. those which were recognised by the state and required a regular
initiation, may be divided into (1) those performed by a special sex, e. g.
the
THESMOPHORIA
celebrated by women only, as was also the worship of Dionysus in Laconia
(
Paus. 2.20,
3),
of Cora in Megalopolis (ib. 8.31, 8), Rhea in Thaumasion (ib. 36, 3),
Dionysus on Parnassus (ib. 10.4, 3). Special mystic ceremonies for men only
are rarely found, such as that to Demeter, Cora, and Dionysus at Sicyon (ib.
2.11, 3). (2) Those open to all Greeks, such as the Eleusinian and
Samothracian mysteries. It is often stated that the only gods who had a
mystic worship were the Chthonian ones; but this statement is not quite
true, though the Chthonian gods are the gods principally worshipped in
mysteries, as might be inferred even
à
priori from their very nature. But there are some Olympian gods to whom
mystic worship was performed, e. g. Zeus Idaeus (Eur.
Cretes, Frag. 2), a mixture of Phrygian Cybele-worship and
Cretan or Thracian Zagreusworship, in honour of Zeus, celebrated (
φανερῶς, according to
Diod.
5.77, i. e. during the day, not at night; the Argive Hera (
Paus. 2.38,
2), even
the Graces (ib. 9.35, 3). For further discussion, see Hermann,
Die
Gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer, § 32, 6.
Foreign mystic worships are those of Cybele, which were wild and
enthusiastic, with flutes, drums, and cymbals (
Hdt.
4.76); the trieteric worship of Dionysus [
DIONYSIA]; of Hecate at Aegina (
Paus. 2.30,
2) and in the Zerynthian
cave in Samothrace (Schol, on Lycophr. 77). This goddess was especially
worshipped in the Roman Empire just before it became Christian; during which
period too, and indeed earlier also, the mysteries of Isis, Sabazius, and
Mithras were much in vogue. For these the reader must be referred to the
articles RHEA, HECATE, ISIS, SABAZIUS in
Dict. of Mythology, There is a good article on MITIRAS in the
Dict. of Christian
Biography. A remarkable Roman mystery confined to women was that
of the celebrated Bona Dea, which Cicero (
Cic. Att.
6.1,
26) calls
Romana mysteria. See
Dict. of Myth. s. v. BONA DEA.
As to the
general character of the gods of the
mysteries, we cannot do better than quote Lenormant (
Contemp.
Review, 37.414): “Like all the worships of antiquity, the
Eleusinian mysteries were founded on the adoration of Nature, its forces
and its phenomena, conceived
[p. 2.203]rather than
observed, interpreted by the imagination rather than by the reason,
transferred into divine figures and histories by a kind of theological
poetry, which went off into pantheism on the one side and into
anthropomorphism on the other. The nature and concatenation of their
rites and plays were connected with precise beliefs; which tended to
efface the distinction between the divine personages of the poetical and
popular mythology, in such a manner as to lead to what has been called
μυστικὴ θεοκρασία, and to reduce
these gods who were exoterically individuals to mere general
abstractions. But the form under which these beliefs were presented was
such that, among the ancients themselves, some have been able to find in
it a kind of philosophy of nature or
physiologia, and others bring out of it euhemerism and with
it atheism.” So far we will go, emphasising the fact, that this
physiologia was of late growth in the mysteries;
but no further. However, to such students as do not easily get dizzy and who
may wish to pursue the subject into its details, we recommend Lenormant's
articles on
Bacchus, Ceres, and the
Cabiri, in Daremberg and Saglio; also chapter vi. of
his
Voie Sacrée, where his views issue in the
purest pantheism, which he supposes to be the doctrine taught by the
Hierophant at Eleusis and to be the primitive Aryan dogma that lay at the
base of the mysteries.
2.
The Origin of the Mysteries.--That they were mostly old
Pelasgian worships, which were driven into the background by the conquering
races, and accordingly carried on as mysteries, is a very reasonable view,
and is supported by what Herodotus says of the Thesmophoria (2.171) and the
Cabiri (2.51). By the Pelasgians we mean what Curtius means (
Hist. of
Greece, 1.35 ff.), viz. the first great body of emigrants
westward from among the Phrygians, that tribe which forms the link by which
the Aryans of the West were connected with the Asiatics proper. They are the
primitive indigenous race of Hellas, “the dark background of history,
children of the black earth (as the poets called Pelasgus), who amidst
all the changes of the ruling generations calmly clave to the soil,
leading their life unobserved under unchanging conditions, as husbandmen
and herdsmen.” They brought with them their Phrygian forms of
worship, as they passed through Thrace into Hellas. Curtius (ib. p. 52)
represents their religion to have been of the purest and noblest type--the
worship of the Pelasgian Zeus upon the--mountain-tops, a god without images
or temples, a god unnamed except as the pure, the great, the merciful,
&c.--and that Greek polytheism was a development in decadence as far
as spirituality went. When the fascination of Curtius's eloquence is passed,
we are unable to feel: that the religion which the Pelasgians brought from
Phrygia was much better than that of ordinary savages. Mr. Andrew Lang
(
Myth, Ritual and Religion, 1.282 ff.) mentions several
points in which the Greek mysteries are in harmony with Australian,
American, and African practice: the mystic dances (cf.
τοὺς ἐξαγορεύοντας τὰ μυστήρια ἐξορχεῖσθαι λέγουσιν οἱ
πολλοί, Lucian,
de Salt. 15), the fastings,
the elaborate and anxious purifications; the use of the
κῶνος described by Lobeck (p. 700) as
ξυλάριον οὗ ἐξῆπται τὸ σπαρτίον καὶ ἐν ταῖς
τελεταῖς ἐδονεῖτο ἵνα ῥοιζῇ, similar to the
turndun of the Australians, to call the votaries
together; the plastering of initiates with clay or dirt of some kind and
washing it off to symbolise purification (cf. Dem.
de
Cor. 313.259, and Soph.
Frag. 32,
στρατοῦ καθαρτὴς κἀπομαγμάτων ἴδρις), and
the purifications by blood of swine mentioned in
Aesch. Eum. 273--an undoubted savage custom, though not
immediately connected with the mysteries--the use of serpents in the
mysteries (Dem.
l.c.), and so forth. Mr. Lang goes
on to repeat again and again in his gentle vein of satire how easy it is. to
think anything as a symbol of anything, and wonders why the allegory should
choose the practices of early savage tribes. Nor is it any disgrace to the
Greek race to allow this; rather that the list of savage survivals is not
many times as large and very much more apparent. Most of the savage elements
disappeared soon, and what remained became blended with purer and later
speculations.
This old religion was thrust into the background by the conquering tribes,
the gods of the latter becoming predominant and the stategods of the nation,
while the old religion for the most part gradually disappeared. But by some
families and tribes its ritual was in a large measure retained, and they
probably formed themselves into brotherhoods, like those of the Roman
Church, and preserved their rites doubtless with great strictness. Surely
they were sodalities or confraternities that lived the “Orphic
life.” Now, the Greeks never persecuted doctrine, unless indeed any
doctrine was much blazed abroad and seemed likely to involve danger to the
state-worship; and no danger seemed to arise from the remnants of this
primitive worship. Indeed, they were sometimes adopted into the
state-religion on occasions. of religious terror, when a feeling of sin and
need for purification laid hold of the people. Thus it was that the
mysteries of Eleusis and Samothrace were adopted. The gradual development of
the Eleusinian worship (that mystic ritual with which we are best
acquainted), from its original Phrygian-Pelasgian beginnings to its adoption
into the Athenian religion, we, have attempted to sketch in outline in
ELEUSINIA § 1.
3.
Silence enjoined on the Votaries.--This is. an important
feature in the mysteries; the votaries could not divulge the mysteries to
noninitiates. Its original reason doubtless lies in the separatism of early
worships, a fear lest any outsider should learn how to get the favour of the
god; and the reason why it was retained in later and more enlightened
periods was to enhance the solemnity of the ritual. Strabo says 10.717, 77
ἡ κρύψις ἡ μυστικὴ τῶν ἱερῶν σεμνοποιεῖ
τὸ θεῖον μιμουμένη τὴν φύσιν αὐτοῦ ἐκφεύγουσαν τὴν αἴσθησιν.
“Every expression,” says Renan (
Études
d'Hfistoire religieuse, 70), “is a limit, and the only
language not unworthy of things divine is silence.” It prevented
familiarity breeding contempt, as in the ordinary religion. Chrysippus,
Etym. Mag. 751, thinks it was intended for an ethical
purpose, viz. to teach the government of the tongue,
τῆς ψυχῆς ἐχούσης ἕρμα καὶ πρὸς τοὺς ἀμυήτους σιωπᾶν
δυναμένης.
[p. 2.204]
4.
The Ceremony.--Whatever is to be said specially about the
initiated, the priests, and the ceremony, we have endeavoured to set forth
in the particular articles, especially
ELEUSINIA There will be found some description of
the “mystic drama,” such as it was in later times when it was
part of the state-religion and full of foreign accretions. It was of a
splendid, solemn, vague nature, such as fettered the imagination of the
votary; and, if it only put the worshipper in a certain state and did not
teach anything (
τοὺς τετελεσμένους οὐ μαθεῖν τι
δεῖν ἀλλὰ παθεῖν καὶ διατεθῆναι, as Aristotle
says, ap. Synes.
Orat.
p. 48), yet it made a man here and there think of things spiritual and
proceed on the task of working out his own salvation. To such a man further
progress was possible and a higher and deeper knowledge open, imparted by
gradual stages, after due time being given to allow the awakened thought and
imparted knowledge to germinate and fructify. All this is very Eastern, but
it is none the less very rational. “Among the peasants who attend a
midnight mass, how many are there who think of the mystery of the
Incarnation?” asks M. Renan (
op. cit., p.
56). Yet, if a man here and there does think about it, he can learn more
about it from his teachers. But to the majority of the worshippers (and
everyone who spoke the Greek language and was not stained with gross crime
was welcome, no previous
κατήχησις being
required) the impression of the whole, not the perception of each
particular, was the important part. We may allow that the whole drama of
Eleusis would appear a miserable travesty to us, even its
“fireworks” (Lobeck, p. 107); but we answer in the bold words
of Renan, “You are not to ask for
reason from
the religious
feeling. The spirit bloweth where
it listeth; and if it chooses to attach the ideal to this or to that,
what have you to say?”
But was there any reality at the back of it all, any doctrine like the
Incarnation, symbolised by the midnight ceremonies? There certainly was in
later times. The reality which the priests then appear to have taught was
some kind of system of cosmogony: cf. Cic.
de Nat.
Deorum, 1.42, 119 (of the Samothracian mysteries),
“quibus explicatis ad rationemque revocatis rerum magis natura
cognoscitur quam deorum;” Clem. Alex.
Stromat.
5.689,
τὰ δὲ μέγαλα [μυστήρια] περὶ τῶν
συμπάντων οὐ μανθάνειν ἔτι ὑπολείπεται, ἐποπτεύειν δὲ καὶ
περινοεῖν τήν τε φύσιν καὶ τὰ πράγματα. But the true
value of the mysteries did not lie here, in this kind of dogmatic teaching,
but in the moral improvement apparent in the votaries (
Diod. 5.48), in the comfort they gave in the present life and
the glad hopes for the world to come (Isocr.
Panegyr.
§ 28).
5.
Monotheism and Immortality.--It is generally supposed that
the mysteries were the fountain from which Greek philosophy derived the two
great ideas of monotheism and immortality. The mystic school of theological
teaching is the Orphic; to it we must look for these ideas. Now, as regards
monotheism, we have attempted to show in
ORPHICA that the passages which
refer to monotheism in the Jewish or Christian sense date from Alexandrine
times, and in the pantheistic sense are hardly much earlier: even the
celebrated
Ζεὺς κεφαλή, Ζεὺς μέσσα, Διὸς δ᾽ἐκ
πάντα τέτυκται, supposed to be alluded to by Plato
(
Legg. 4.715 E), as Zeller (
Philosophie der
Griechen, 1.53 = 1.65 Eng. trans.) shows, does not imply more
than Homer's line that Zeus is the father of gods and men, or Terpander's
(650 B.C.) address,
Ζεῦ πάντων ἀρχα πάντων
ἀγήτωρ. The Greeks with their personifying of everything in
nature came to have a feeling of the Divine pervading all
nature,--“one and the same Nature-power,” as Petersen puts
it. “This unity of the Divine element which polytheism presupposes was
made concrete in Zeus as king of the gods; and so far all that exists
and all that happens is ultimately referred to Zeus, but it does not
imply that Zeus is the ideal complex (
Inbegriff) of all
things” (Zeller,
l.c.). Zeller goes on to
contrast the polemic of Xenophanes against polytheism, with the syncretism
of the Stoics and Alexandrines, showing how the Greeks arrived at the idea
of the Divine unity less by way of syncretism than of criticism. But if the
idea of monotheism was naturally developed into a distinct form by Greek
thought, and that only in comparatively late times, it was thereafter
adopted into the mysteries, and especially some of the Orphic ones, and
doubtless taught in them to those who had gone through the various stages
and shown themselves naturally fitted to receive and understand it.
As to
immortality, the case is different. Mr. Tylor
has shown that the doctrine of Transmigration migration was universal among
savage and barbarian races (
Primitive Culture,
ii.
init.). This doctrine the Aryans probably
brought with them into Europe. Herodotus thinks it came from Egypt (2.123);
but when we find similar notions among the Indians from the earliest times
even to the present day, and among the ancient Druids in Gaul (
Caes. Gal. 6.14;
Diod.
5.28;
Amm. Marc. 15.9 fin.), we may
infer that it was an original idea of the Aryan race, which gradually
developed into the purer doctrine of what we call a Future Life; we find a
strange example of this latter doctrine among the Thracians (
Hdt. 4.94,
95). For the
further discussion of immortality in the Orphic doctrine, see
ORPHICA
6.
The modern Critics of the Mysteries.--Passing over such
treatises as Warburton,
On the divine Legation of Moses
(2.133-234), and Sainte-Croix,
Recherches sur les Mysteres du
Paganisme (1784), the first really great work on the mysteries
was that by Creuzer,
Symbolik und Mythologie der alten
Völker, 1810-1812, written by a genuinely religious
Doctor in Theology of the Roman Church. The title is certainly not a
misnomer, for he finds symbolism everywhere. He is in fact too symbolical.
He does not distinguish the ideas of different epochs, does not weigh
evidence nor take sufficient thought of development in religious ideas.
After him followed J. H. Voss, a zealous Protestant, who attacked Creuzer
with unpardonable virulence and little success, especially in his
Anti-Symbolik (1824). Abuse of priests occupies a large
portion of the work. In 1829 Lobeck's great work,
Aglaophamus, was published with the view of crushing the
symbolical school. Its learning is portentous, its satire grim and savage.
But with all his great gifts Lobeck had one thing
[p. 2.205]wanting, the sense of things religious. Everything is judged from the
level of the intellect, but religion is of another order. The whole book
bears the character of a violent reaction, and so far is necessarily unfair;
and Lobeck sometimes quite forgets himself, as for example when he says (p.
119) that the spectacles at Eleusis were seen with the eyes of the mind, not
with those of the body. K. O. Müller (art.
Eleusinia in Ersch and Gruber), and after him Preller
(
Demeter und Persephone, 1837; art.
Mysteria in Pauly), make accurate distinctions of times,
places, and races. They allow a mystic character to the worship of the
Pelasgi, who adored Nature regarded as living and divine, especially in
their worship of the Chthonian divinities, the naturalism of the Pelasgi
being contrasted with the anthropomorphism of the Hellenes, as exemplified
in the Homeric Age; but hold that, when this warrior age passed away at the
time of Solon, there was a reaction in favour of the ancient cults.
François Lenormant, in his
Voie Sacré
Éleusinienne (1864) and in the articles in Daremberg
and Saglio mentioned above, is a strong symbolist; cf. also his articles in
the
Contemporary Review for May, July, September 1881. Other
works to be consulted with advantage are Hermann,
Die
Gottesdienstlichen Alterthümer, § §
32, 55; Maury,
Histoire des Religions de la Grèce
antique, ii. chap. xi.; Renan,
Les Religions de
l'Antiquité, No. 1 of his
Études
d'Histoire religieuse; Ramsay, s. v.
Mysteries,
in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica.
[
L.C.P]
