MYSTERIES. This is the name given to those religious assemblies of the ancients, whose ceremonies were conducted in secret, whose doctrines were known only to those who had obtained the right of knowledge by a previous initiation, and whose members were in possession of signs and tokens by which they were enabled to recognise each other.* For the origin of these mysteries we must look to the Gymnosophists of India, from whom they passed through Egpyt into Greece and Rome, and from whom likewise they were extended, in a more immediate line, to the northern part of Europe and to Britain. The most important of these mysteries were those of Mithras, celebrated in Persia; of Osiris and Isis, celebrated in Egypt; of Eleusis, instituted in Greece; and the Scandinavian and Druidical rites, which were confined to the Gothic and Celtic tribes. In all these various mysteries, we find a singular unity of design clearly indicating a common origin, and a purity of doctrine as evidently proving that this common origin was not to be sought for in the popular theology of the Pagan world. The ceremonies of initiation were all funereal in their character. They celebrated the death and the resurrection of some cherished being, either the object of esteem as a hero, or of devotion as a god. Subordination of degrees was instituted, and the candidate was subjected. to probations varying in their character and severity; the rites were practised in the darkness of night, and often amid the gloom of impenetrable forests or subterranean caverns; and the full fruition of knowledge, for which so much labour was endured, and so much danger incurred, was not attained until the aspirant, well tried and thoroughly purified, had reached the place of wisdom and of light. These mysteries undoubtedly owed their origin to the desire Warburton's definition of the Mysteries is as follows: "Each of the pagan gods had (besides the public and open) a secret worship paid unto him; to which none were admitted but those who had been selected by preparatory cere. monies, called INITIATION. This secret worship was termed the MYSTERIES."-Divine Legation, Vol. 1, B. ii. 2 4, p. 189. on the part of the priests of establishing an esoteric philosophy, in which should be taught the sublime truths which they had derived, (though they themselves at length forgot the source,) from the instruction of God himself through the ancient patriarchs. By this confinement of these doctrines to a system of secret knowledge, guarded by the most rigid rites, could they only expect to preserve them from the superstitions, innovations, and corruptions of the world as it then existed. "The distinguished few," says Oliver, "who retained their fidelity, uncontaminated by the contagion of evil example, would soon be able to estimate the superior benefits of an isolated institution, which afforded the advantage of a select society, and kept at an unapproachable distance the profane scoffer, whose presence might pollute their pure devotions and social converse, by contumelious language or unholy mirth."* And doubtless the prevention of this intrusion, and the preservation of these sublime truths, was the original object of the institution of the ceremonies of initiation, and the adoption of other means by which the initiated could be recognised, and the uninitiated excluded. - Such was the opinion of Warburton, who says that "the mysteries were at first the retreats of sense and virtue, till time corrupted them in most of the gods."† The Abbe Robin, in a learned work on this subject, places. the origin of the initiations at that remote period when crimes first began to appear upon earth. The vicious, he remarks, were urged by the terror of guilt to seek among the virtuous for intercessors with the deity. The latter, retiring into solitude to avoid the contagion of growing corruption, devoted themselves to a life of contemplation and the cultivation of several of the useful sciences. The periodical return of the seasons, the revolution of the stars, the productions of the earth, and the various phenomena of nature, studied with attention, rendered them useful guides to * History of Initiation, p. 2. Spence's Anecdotes, p. 309. Recherches sur les Initiations Anciennes et Modernes. Paris. 1780. men, both in their pursuits of industry and in their social duties. These recluse students invented certain signs to recall to the remembrance of the people the times of their festivals and of their rural labours, and hence the origin of the symbols and hieroglyphics that were in use among the priests of all nations. Having now become guides and leaders of the people, these sages, in order to select as associates of their learned labours and sacred functions only such as had sufficient merit and capacity, appointed strict courses of trial and examination, and this, our author thinks, must have been the source of the initiations of antiquity. The Magi, Brahmins, Gymnosophists, Druids, and priests of Egypt, lived thus in sequestered habitations and subterranean caves, and obtained great reputation by their discoveries in astronomy, chemistry and mechanics, by their purity of morals, and by their knowledge of the science of legislation. It was in these schools, says M. Robin, that the first sages and legislators of antiquity were formed, and in them he supposes the doctrines taught to have been the unity of God and the immortality of the soul; and it was from these mysteries, and their symbols and hieroglyphics, that the exuberant fancy of the Greeks drew much of their mythology.* The candidates for initiation were not only expected to be of a clear and unblemished character, and free from crime, but their future conduct was required to be characterized by the same purity and innocence. They were, therefore, obliged, by solemn engagements, to commence a new life of piety and virtue, upon which they entered by a severe course of penance.† The mysteries were held in the highest respect, by both the government and the people. It was believed that he who was initiated would not only enjoy an increased share of virtue and happiness in this world, but would be entitled to celestial honours in the next. "Thrice happy they," says Sophocles, "who de I give these ingenious speculations of the Abbe Robin, although I dissent from much of his doctrine, because they add another item to the history of the theories on this interesting subject. † Warburton, Divine Legation, B. ii., Sect. 4. scended to the shades below after having beheld these rites; for they alone have life in Hades, while all others suffer there every kind of evil." And Isocrates declares that "those who have been initiated in the mysteries, entertain better hopes, both as to the end of life and the whole of futurity." The ancient historians relate many circumstances in illustration of the sanctity in which the mysteries were held. Livy tell us the following story: Two Acarnanian youths who had not been initiated, accidentally entered the temple of Ceres, during the days of the mysteries. They were soon detected by their absurd questions, and being carried to the managers of the temple, though it was evident that they had come there by mistake, they were put to death for so horrible a crime.* Plutarch records the fact that Alcibiades was indicted for sacrilege, because he imitiated the mysteries of Eleusis and exhibited them to his companions in the same dress in which the hierophant showed the sacred things, and called himself the hierophant, one of his companions the torch bearer, and the other the herald.† Lobeck, one of the most learned writers on this subject, has collected several examples of the reluctance with which the ancients approached a mystical subject, and the manner in which they shrunk from divulging any explanation or fable which had been related to them at the mysteries. To divulge them was considered a sacrilegious crime, the prescribed punishment for which was immediate death. I would not, says Horace, dwell beneath the same roof, nor trust myself in the same frail bark, with the man who has betrayed the secrets of the Eleusinian rites.§ Liv. Hist. xxi. 14. † Plut. Alcibiad. 22. Lobeck's Aglaophamus, vol. i. app. 131, 151; vol. ii. p. 1287. ૐ Vetabo, qui Cereris sacrum Vulgârit arcanæ, sub iisdem Sit trabibus, fragilemque mecum [Carm. iii. 3, 26. On the subject of their relation to the rites of Freemasonry, to which they bear in many respects so remarkable a resemblance, that some connection seems necessarily implied, there are two principal theories. The one, is that embraced and taught by Dr. Oliver, namely, that they are but deviations from that common source, both of them and of Freemasonry, the patriarchal mode of worship established by God himself. With this pure system of truth, he supposes- the science of Freemasonry to have been coeval and identified. But the truths thus revealed by divinity, came at length to be doubted or rejected through the imperfection of human reason, and though the visible symbols were retained in the mysteries of the Pagan world, their true interpretation was lost.* That the instruction communicated in the mysteries of Paganism were an impure derivation from the sublime truths of the patriarchal theology, I have no hesitation in believing. But that they were an emanation from Freemasonry, as we now understand the terms, I am not yet prepared to admit, notwithstanding the deep veneration in which I hold the learning of Dr. Oliver. I prefer, therefore, the second theory, which, leaving the origin of the mysteries to be sought in the patriarchal doctrines, where Oliver has placed it, finds the connection between them and Freemasonry commencing at the building of King Solomon's Temple. Over the construction of this building, Hiram, the Architect of Tyre, presided. At Tyre the mysteries of Bacchus had been introduced by the Dionysian Artificers, and into their fraternity Hiram, in all probability, had, as I have already suggested, been admitted.† Freemasonry, whose tenets had always existed in purity among the immediate descendants of the patriarchs, added now to its doctrines the guard of secrecy, which, as Dr. Oliver himself remarks, was necessary to preserve them from perversion or pollution.† This, then, it seems to me, is the true connection between the Signs and Symbols, p. 217. + See Antiquity of Masonry, and Hiram the Builder, in this work. Hist. of Initiation, p. 2. |