the mild beauties of Elysium dawning on their ravished vision, amid strains of celestial music, through fading clouds of glory, while nymphs, heroes, and G.o.ds walked apparent. Clement of Alexandria tells us that one feature of the initiation was a display of the grisly secrets of Hades.49 Apuleius, in his account of his own initiation, says, "At midnight I saw the sun shining with a resplendent light; and I manifestly drew near to the lower and to the upper G.o.ds and adored them in immediate presence." 50 Lobeck says that, on the lifting of the veil exposing the adytum to the gaze of the initiates, apparitions of the G.o.ds appeared to them.51 Christie, in his little work on the Greek Mysteries, says that the doctrines of the Eleusinian shows were explained by means of transparent scenes, many of which were faithfully copied upon the painted Greek vases; and these vase accordingly, were deposited in tombs to evidence the faith of the deceased in a future life. The foregoing conceptions may be ill.u.s.trated by the dramatic representations, scenic shadows behind transparent curtains, in Java, alluded to by Sir Stamford Raffles.52
It is remarkable how far the Mysteries spread over the earth, and what popularity they attained. They penetrated into almost every nation under the sun. They admitted, in some degree, nearly the whole people. Herodotus informs us that there were collected in Egypt, at one celebration, seven hundred thousand men and women, besides children.53 The greatest warriors and kings Philip, Alexander, Sulla, Antony esteemed it an honor to be welcomed within the mystic pale. "Men," says Cicero, "came from the most distant sh.o.r.es to be initiated at Eleusis." Sophocles declares, as quoted by Warburton, "True life is to be found only among the initiates: all other places are full of evil." At the rise of the Christian religion, all the life and power left in the national religion of Greece and Rome were in the Mysteries. Accordingly, here was the most formidable foe of the new faith. Standing in its old entrenchments, with all its popular prestige around it, it fought with desperate determination for every inch it was successively forced to yield. The brilliant effort of Julian to roll back the tide of Christianity and restore the pagan religion to more than its pristine splendor an effort beneath which the scales of the world"s fortunes poised, tremulous, for a while was chiefly an endeavor to revive and enlarge the Mysteries. Such was the attachment of the people to these old rites even in the middle of the fourth century of the Christian era, that a murderous riot broke out at Alexandria, in which Bishop George and others were slain, on occasion of the profanation by Christians of a secret adytum in which the Mysteries of Mithra were celebrated.54 And when, a little later, the Emperor Valentinian had determined to suppress all nocturnal rites, he was induced to withdraw his resolution by Pretextatus, proconsul in Greece, "a man endowed with every virtue, who represented to him that the
49 Stromata, lib. iii., cited by a writer on the Mysteries in Blackwood, Feb. 1853, pp. 201-203.
50 Taylor"s trans. of Golden a.s.s, p. 283. In a note to p. 275 of this work, the translator describes (with a citation of his authorities) "the breathing resemblances of the G.o.ds used in the Mysteries, statues fabricated by the telesta, so as to be illuminated and to appear animated."
51 Aglaophamus, lib. i. sect. 7.
52 Discourse to the Lit. and Sci. Soc. of Java, 1815, pub. in Valpy"s Pamphleteer, No. 15.
53 Lib. ii. cap. ix.
54 Socrates, Ecc. Inst., lib. iii. cap. 2.
Greeks would consider life insupportable if they were forbidden to celebrate those most sacred Mysteries which bind together the human race."55 Upon the whole, we cannot fail to see that the Mysteries must have exerted a most extensive and profound influence alike in fostering the good hopes of human nature touching a life to come, and in giving credit and diffusion to the popular fables of the poets concerning the details of the future state. Much of that belief which seems to us so absurd we can easily suppose they sincerely embraced, when we recollect what they thought they had seen under supernatural auspices in their initiations.
In the Greek and Roman faith there was gradually developed in connection chiefly with the Mysteries, as we believe an aristocratic doctrine which allotted to a select cla.s.s of souls an abode in the sky as their distinguished destination after death, while the common mult.i.tude were still sentenced to the shadow region below the grave. As Virgil writes, "The descent to Avernus is easy. The gate of dark Dis is open day and night. But to rise into the upper world is most arduous. Only the few heroes whom favoring Jove loves or shining virtue exalts thither can effect it." 56 Numerous scattered, significant traces of a belief in this change of the destination of some souls from the pit of Hades to the hall of heaven are to be found in the cla.s.sic authors. Virgil, celebrating the death of some person under the fict.i.tious name of Daphnis, exclaims, "Robed in white, he admires the strange court of heaven, and sees the clouds and the stars beneath his feet. He is a G.o.d now." 57 Porphyry ascribes to Pythagoras the declaration that the souls of departed men are gathered in the zodiac.58 Plato earnestly describes a region of brightness and unfading realities above this lower world, among the stars, where the G.o.ds live, and whither, he says, the virtuous and wise may ascend, while the corrupt and ignorant must sink into the Tartarean realm.59 A similar conception of the attainableness of heaven seems to be suggested in the old popular myths, first, of Hercules coming back in triumph from his visit to Pluto"s seat, and, on dying, rising to the a.s.sembly of immortals and taking his equal place among them; secondly, of Dionysus going into the under world, rescuing his mother, the hapless Semele, and soaring with her to heaven, where she henceforth resides, a peeress of the eldest G.o.ddesses.
Cicero expresses the same thought when he affirms that "a life of justice and piety is the path to heaven, where patriots, exemplary souls, released from their bodies, enjoy endless happiness amidst the brilliant orbs of the galaxy." 60 The same author also speaks of certain philosophers who flourished before his time, "whose opinions encouraged the belief that souls departing from bodies would arrive at heaven as their proper dwelling place." 61 He afterwards stigmatizes the notion that the life succeeding death is subterranean as an error,62 and in his own name addresses his auditor thus: "I see you gazing upward and wishing to migrate into heaven." 63 It was the common belief of the Romans for ages that Romulus was taken up into heaven, where he would remain forever, claiming Divine honors.64 The Emperor Julian says, in his Letter on the
55 Essay on Mysteries, by M. Ouvaroff, Eng. trans. by J. D. Price, p. 55.
56 Aneid, lib. vi. 11. 125-130.
57 Ecl. v. 11. 57, 58, 64.
58 De Antro Nympharum.
59 Phado sects. 136-138.
60 Soma. Scipionis.
61 Tusc. Quast., lib. i. cap. xi.
62 Ibid. cap. xvi.
63 Ibid. cap. x.x.xiv.
64 Ennius, e. g., sings, "Romulus in coelo c.u.m diis agit avum"
Duties of a Priest, "G.o.d will raise from darkness and Tartarus the souls of all of us who worship him sincerely: to the pious, instead of Tartarus he promises Olympus." "It is lawful," writes Plato, "only for the true lover of wisdom to pa.s.s into the rank of G.o.ds." 65 The privilege here confined to philosophers we believe was promised to the initiates in the Mysteries, as the special prerogative secured to them by their initiation. "To pa.s.s into the rank of the G.o.ds" is a phrase which, as here employed, means to ascend into heaven and have a seat with the immortals, instead of being banished, with the souls of common mortals, to the under world.
In early times the Greek worship was most earnestly directed to that set of deities who resided at the gloomy centre of the earth, and who were called the chthonian G.o.ds.66 The hope of immortality first sprung up and was nourished in connection with this worship.
But in the progress of time and culture the supernal circle of divinities who kept state on bright Olympus acquired a greater share of attention, and at last received a degree of worship far surpa.s.sing that paid to their swarthy compeers below. The adoration of these bright beings, with a growing trust in their benignity, the fables of the poets telling how they had sometimes elevated human favorites to their presence, for instance, receiving a Ganymede to the joys of their sublime society, the encouraging thoughts of the more religious and cheerful of the philosophers, these facts, together with a natural shrinking from the dismal gloom of the life of shades around the Styx, and a native longing for admission to the serene pleasures of the unfading life led by the radiant lords of heaven, in conjunction, perhaps, with still other causes, effected an improvement of the old faith, altering and brightening it, little by little, until the hope came in many quarters to be entertained that the faithful soul would after death rise into the a.s.semblage and splendor of the celestial G.o.ds. The Emperor Julian, at the close of his seventh Oration, represents the G.o.ds of Olympus addressing him in this strain: "Remember that your soul is immortal, and that if you follow us you will be a G.o.d and with us will behold our Father." Several learned writers have strenuously labored to prove that the ground secret of the Mysteries, the grand thing revealed in them, was the doctrine of apotheosis, shaking the established theology by unmasking the historic fact that all the G.o.ds were merely deified men. We believe the real significance of the various collective testimony, hints, and inferences by which these writers have been brought to such a conclusion is this; the genuine point of the Mysteries lay not in teaching that the G.o.ds were once men, but in the idea that men may become G.o.ds. To teach that Zeus, the universal Father, causing the creation to tremble at the motion of his brow, was formerly an obscure king of Crete, whose tomb was yet visible in that island, would have been utterly absurd. But to a.s.sert that the soul of man, the free, intelligent image of the G.o.ds, on leaving the body, would ascend to live eternally in the kingdom of its Divine prototypes, would have been a brilliant step of progress in harmony both with reason and the heart. Such was probably the fact. Observe the following citation from Plutarch: "There is no occasion against nature to send the bodies of good men to heaven; but we are to conclude that virtuous souls, by nature and the Divine justice, rise from men to heroes, from heroes to genii; and if, as in the Mysteries, they are
65 Phado, sect. lxxi.
66 Muller, Mist. Greek Lit., cap. ii. sect. 5; cap. xvi. sect. 2.
purified, shaking off the remains of mortality and the power of the pa.s.sions, they then attain the highest happiness, and ascend from genii to G.o.ds, not by the vote of the people, but by the just and established order of nature." 67
The reference in the last clause is to the decrees of the Senate whereby apotheosis was conferred on various persons, placing them among the G.o.ds. This ceremony has often been made to appear unnecessarily ridiculous, through a perversion of its actual meaning. When the ancients applied the term "G.o.d" to a human soul departed from the body, it was not used as the moderns prevailingly employ that word. It expressed a great deal less with them than with us. It merely meant to affirm similarity of essence, qualities, and residence, but by no means equal dignity and power of attributes between the one and the others. It meant that the soul had gone to the heavenly habitation of the G.o.ds and was thenceforth a partic.i.p.ant in the heavenly life.68 Herac.l.i.tus was accustomed to say, "Men are mortal G.o.ds; G.o.ds are immortal men." Macrobius says, "The soul is not only immortal, but a G.o.d."
69 And Cicero declares, "The soul of man is a Divine thing, as Euripides dares to say, a G.o.d." 70 Milton uses language precisely parallel, speaking of those who are "unmindful of the crown true Virtue gives her servants, after their mortal change, among the enthroned G.o.ds on sainted seats." Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch in the second century, says that "to become a G.o.d means to ascend into heaven." 71 The Roman Catholic ceremony of beatification and canonization of saints, offering them incense and prayers thereafter, means exactly what was meant by the ancient apotheosis, namely, that while the mult.i.tudes of the dead abide below, in the intermediate state, these favored souls have been advanced into heaven. The papal functionaries borrowed this rite, with most of its details, from their immediate pagan predecessors, who themselves probably adopted it from the East, whence the Mysteries came. It is well known that the Brahmans and Buddhists believed, centuries before the Christian era, in the contrasted fate of good men after death to enjoy the successive heavens above the clouds, and of bad men to suffer the successive h.e.l.ls beneath the earth. A knowledge of this attractive Oriental doctrine may have united with the advance of their own speculations to win the partial acceptance obtained among the Greeks and Romans for the faith which broke the universal doom to Hades and opened heaven to their hopeful aspirations. In a tragedy of Euripides the following pa.s.sage occurs, addressed to the bereaved Admetus: "Let not the tomb of thy wife be looked on as the mound of the ordinary dead.
Some wayfarer, as he treads the sloping road, shall say, "This woman once died for her husband; but now she is a saint in heaven."" 72
When the meaning of the cheerful promises given to the initiates of a more favored fate in the future life than awaited others namely, as we think, that their spirits on leaving the body should scale Olympus instead of plunging to Tartarus had been concealed within the
67 Lives, Romulus, sect. xxviii.
68 See a valuable discussion of the ancient use of the terms theos and deus in note D vol. iii. of Norton"s Genuineness of the Gospels.
69 Somn. Scip., lib. ii. cap. 12.
70 Tusc. Quest., lib. i. cap. 26.
71 We omit several other authorities, as the reader would probably deem any further evidence superfluous.
72 Alcestis, ll. 1015-1025, ed. Glasg.
Mysteries for a long time, it at length broke into public view in the national apotheosis of ancient heroes, kings, and renowned worthies, the instances of which became so numerous that Cicero cries, "Is not nearly all heaven peopled with the human race?" 73 Over the heads of the devout heathen, as they gazed up through the clear night air, twinkled the beams of innumerable stars, each chosen to designate the cerulean seat where some soul was rejoicing with the G.o.ds in heaven over the glorious issue of the toils and sufferings in which he once painfully trod this earthly scene.
Herodian, a Greek historian of some of the Roman emperors, has left a detailed account of the rite of apotheosis.74 An image of the person to be deified was made in wax, looking all sick and pale, laid in state on a lofty bed of ivory covered with cloth of gold, surrounded on one side by choirs of n.o.ble lords, on the other side by their ladies stripped of their jewels and clad in mourning, visited often for several days by a physician, who still reports his patient worse, and finally announces his decease. Then the Senators and haughtiest patricians bear the couch through the via sacra to the Forum. Bands of n.o.ble boys and of proud women ranged opposite each other chant hymns and lauds over the dead in solemn melody. The bier is next borne to the Campus Martius, where it is placed upon a high wooden altar, a large, thin structure with a tower like a lighthouse. Heaps of fragrant gums, herbs, fruits, and spices are poured out and piled upon it. Then the Roman knights, mounted on horseback, prance before it in beautiful bravery, wheeling to and fro in the dizzy measures of the Pyrrhic dance. Also, in a stately manner, purple clothed charioteers, wearing masks which picture forth the features of the most famous worthies of other days to the reverential recognition of the silent hosts a.s.sembled, ride around the form of their descendant.
Suddenly a torch is set to the pile, and it is wrapped in flames.
From the turret, amidst the aromatic fumes, an eagle is let loose.
Phoenix like symbol of the departed soul, he soars into the sky, and the seven hilled city throbs with pride, reverberating the shouts of her people. Thus into the residence of the G.o.ds "Sic itur ad astra" was borne the divinely favored mortal; "And thus we see how man"s prophetic creeds Made G.o.ds of men when G.o.dlike were their deeds."
For it was only in times of degradation and by a violent perversion that the honor was allowed to the unworthy; and even in such cases it was usually nullified as soon as the people recovered their senses and their freedom. There is extant among the works of Seneca a little treatise called Apocoloc.u.n.tosis, that is, pumpkinification, or the metamorphosis into a gourd, a sharp satire levelled against the apotheosis of the Emperor Claudius.
The deification of mortals among the ancients has long been laughed at. When the great Macedonian monarch applied for a decree for his apotheosis while he was yet alive, the Lacedemonian Senate, with bitter sarcasm, voted, "If Alexander desires to be a G.o.d, let him be a G.o.d." The doctrine is often referred to among us in terms of mockery. But this is princ.i.p.ally because it is not understood. It simply signifies the ascent of the soul after death into the Olympian halls instead of descending into the Acheronian gulfs. And whether we
73 Tusc. Quast., lib. i. cap. 12.
74 Lib. iv.
consider the symbolic justice and beauty of the conception as a poetic image applied to the deathless heroes of humanity ensphered above us forever in historic fame and natural worship, or regard its comparative probability as the literal location of the residence of departed spirits, it must recommend itself to us as a decided improvement on the ideas previously prevalent, and as a sort of antic.i.p.ation, in part, of that bright faith in a heavenly home for faithfuls souls, afterwards established in the world by Him of whom it was written, "No man hath ascended up to heaven but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man, who is now in heaven." Indeed, so forcible and close is the correspondence between the course of the aspirant in his initiation dramatically dying, descending into Hades, rising again to life, and ascending into heaven with the apostolic presentation of the redemptive career of Christ, our great Forerunner, that some writers Nork, for instance have suggested that the latter was but the exoteric publication to all the world of what in the former was esoterically taught to the initiates alone.
There was a striking naturalness, a profound propriety, in the obscurities of secrecy and awe with which the ancient Mysteries shrouded from a rash curiosity their instructions concerning the future life and only unfolded them by careful degrees to the prepared candidate. It is so with the reality itself in the nature of things. It is the great mystery of mysteries, darkly hinted in types, faintly gleaming in a.n.a.logies, softly whispered in hopes, pa.s.sionately asked in desires, patiently confirmed in arguments, suddenly blazed and thundered in revelation. Man from the very beginning of his race on earth has been thickly encompa.s.sed by mysteries, hung around by the m.u.f.fling curtains of ignorance and superst.i.tion. Through one after another of these he has forced his way and gazed on their successive secrets laid bare. Once the Ocean was an alluring and terrible mystery, weltering before him with its endless wash of waves, into which the weary sun, in the west, plunged at evening, and out of which, in the east, it bounded refreshed in the morning. But the daring prows of his ships, guided by pioneering thought and skill, pa.s.sed its islands and touched its ultimate sh.o.r.es. Once the Polar Circle was a frightful and frozen mystery, enthroned on mountains of eternal ice and wearing upon its snowy brow the flaming crown of the aurora borealis. But his hardy navigators, inspired by enterprise and philanthropy, armed with science, and supplied by art, have driven the awful phantom back, league by league, until but a small expanse of its wonders remains untracked by his steps. Once the crowded Sky was a boundless mystery, a maze of motions, a field where ghastly comets played their antics and shook down terrors on the nations. But the theories of his reason, based on the gigantic grasp of his calculus and aided by the instruments of his invention, have solved perplexity after perplexity, blended discords into harmony, and shown to his delighted vision the calm perfection of the stellar system. So, too, in the moral world he has lifted the shrouds from many a dark problem, and extended the empire of light and love far out over the ancient realm of darkness and terror. But the secret of Death, the mystery of the Future, remains yet, as of old, unfathomed and inscrutable to his inquiries. Still, as of old, he kneels before that unlifted veil and beseeches the oracles for a response to faith.
The ancient Mysteries in their princ.i.p.al ceremony but copied the ordination and followed the overawing spirit of Nature herself.
The religious reserve and awe about the entrance into the adytum of their traditions were like those about the entrance into the invisible scenes beyond the veils of time and mortality. Their initiation was but a miniature symbol of the great initiation through which, and that upon impartial terms, every mortal, from King Solomon to the idiot pauper, must sooner or later pa.s.s to immortality. When a fit applicant, after the preliminary probation, kneels with fainting sense and pallid brow before the veil of the unutterable Unknown, and the last pulsations of his heart tap at the door of eternity, and he reverentially asks admission to partake in the secrets shrouded from profane vision, the infinite Hierophant directs the call to be answered by Death, the speechless and solemn steward of the celestial Mysteries. He comes, pushes the curtain aside, leads the awe struck initiate in, takes the blinding bandage of the body from his soul; and straightway the trembling neophyte receives light in the midst of that innumerable Fraternity of Immortals over whom the Supreme Author of the Universe presides.
CHAPTER II.
METEMPSYCHOSIS; OR, TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.