[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

subject: 'The mystery is a special form of religion which existed amongst all ancient peoples, and
among primitive peoples still preserves very considerable importance. Its essence is the mystic
palingenesis, that is to say, a regeneration brought about by suggestion. In its most perfect stage this
palingenesis is a veritable substitution of personality: the man is invested with the personality of a
god, a hero or an ancestor, repeating and reproducing the gestures and actions attributed to him by
tradition.'
Only those deities who, owing to their own mythical history, bore within themselves the elements of
new birth, Demeter, Dionysus, Isis, Atys and Adonis, could confer palingenesis, the identification of
the self with the divinity, owing to the special conception which the Greeks had of the relations
between life and death. The postulant passed through the divine myth, revived the life of god and
passed, together with the god of sorrow, into joy, from life unto death. Professor Macchioro gives this
account:
'All the mysteries operated after the same manner. They consisted in a sacred drama and a series of
ritual acts, which reproduced the gestures and actions attributed to the Divinity. This is the principle
of the Eucharist, the eating of bread and drinking of wine to identify oneself with His acts. It was not
an objective but a subjective drama, its essence being the repetition of that which according to
tradition had been wrought by God.
It was led up to by preliminary instruction, heightened in effect by visions and ecstatic suggestions
conducting the initiated, himself an actor in them, to communion with God. The dramas became a
veritable event in the life of the man, like the sacrament, transforming him completely and assuring
him happiness after death. At first the mystery was a purely magical ceremony, but with time it
acquired a spiritual and moral content. The mystery religions had an enormous influence on the Greek
conscience, enabling it to comprehend the value of the Christian message.
'Orphism was the most important of these deriving its name from its alleged founder. It was a
particular form of that orgiastic and ecstatic religion which originated in the worship of Dionysus and
consisted in living over again his myth. Zagreus, the son of Zeus and Kore (Persephone), is slain at
Hera's instigation by the Titans who tear him to pieces and devour him except for his heart which
Athene saves and of which is born, as the son of Zeus and Semele, the second Dionysus. Palingenesis
here consisted in dying and being reborn again in Zagreus.
Mankind had birth from the ashes of the Titans smitten by the thunderbolt of Zeus in punishment for
their crime. This is why all men bear the burden of the Titans' crime; but as the Titans devoured
Zagreus, man has within him also the nature of Dionysus. Theologians said that it was the Titanic
nature innate in the body from which man must free himself to reunite with the Dionysiac nature
through the agency of the mysteries. Thus the Orphic Mystery took a lofty moral and spiritual
significance and exercised great influence on lofty souls such as Heraclitus, Pindar and Plato, and
when Christianity spread it was Orphism that gave the fundamentals to the Pauline theology.
'Orphism soon came in contact with the rural cult at Eleusis whose celebrated mysteries were without
ecstatic and orgiastic elements. Contact with Orphism transformed the cult adding the element of
redemption; from the fusion were born the Eleusinian Mysteries as known throughout antiquity. These
consisted of two parts, the Orphic centring round Zagreus and celebrated at Agrai, a suburb of Athens,
and termed "the Lesser Mysteries", and the Eleusinian centring round Demeter and Kore, celebrated at
Eleusis itself and termed "the Greater Mystery". The former were the necessary preparation for the
latter; they conferred the palingenesis in Zagreus, the new life which rendered the initiated worthy to
have access to the higher teaching of the great mysteries.
'Protected by the state, glorified by artists and poets, they were the centre of Greek life and flourished
uninterruptedly from the eighth century B.C. to the year A.D. 396 when Eleusis was destroyed by
mobs of monks. The secrets, protected by law, were respected; we know as little of the Lesser
Mysteries as we do of the Greater, that supreme vision which crowned the series of ceremonies on the
last day. Scholarship made repeated efforts to discover what took place until the Villa of the Mysteries
was discovered. This lies in the Street of Tombs, Pompeii, outside the Stabian Gate, and is divided
into two separate parts by a corridor.
The northeast-part is like an ordinary Pompeian house; the northwest part is arranged peculiarly. The
central portion is formed by a large hail decorated with frescoes and is reached from the corridor by
passing through two small rooms, entering the hall through a small side door; the way out from the
hall is by a large door opening on to a terrace. This large hall was originally a Triclinium (dining
room), and the two little rooms were originally Cubiculi (bedrooms); they have all suffered alterations
to adapt them for a purpose other than that for which they were intended.
The paintings contain the answer, for they extend all round the walls of the hall regardless of angles
and apertures. They contain twenty-nine figures, almost life-size, dressed in the style and costume of
the Greeks and resembling the Attic paintings of the second half of the fifth century B.C.
'It is evident that we have a single act divided into several episodes depicting the story of one draped
female figure who reappears in all the episodes. The story is a series of liturgical ceremonies by
means of which the woman is initiated into the Orphic Mystery and attains communion with Zagreus.
'1. The liturgy begins with a maiden who, aided by an attendant and two young boys, one holding a
mirror before her, and superintended by a priestess, is performing her bridal toilet. She is draped in the
sindon, a ritual veil which was placed on the neophytes in the mysteries; she is the mystic bride, the
catechumen, preparing to celebrate under the symbol of matrimony her communion with Dionysus. It
is she who is the protagonist of the entire liturgy.
'2. Draped in the sindon the maiden reverently approaches a nude youth evidenced to be a priest by
the high Dionysiac boots he is wearing. This embades, under the tender guidance of a priestess, is
reading a charge or ritual from a roll in order that the neophyte may be made cognisant of the rules, or
maybe of the significance of the initiation.
'3. Thus instructed and enabled now to share in the rite, the maiden, still draped in the sindon and now
wearing a crown of myrtle, moves to the right bearing on a ritual dish food in slices to take part in a
lustral repast. Before a sacrificial table is seated a priestess assisted by two attendants; with her left
hand she uncovers a dish brought by one attendant and in her right hand she holds a branch of myrtle
on which the other attendant, who has thrust into her girdle a ritual roll, is pouring a libation by means
of an oenochoe. This is the lustral agape which must be celebrated before the communion, as was the
custom in primitive Christianity.
'4. After the celebration of the agape the neophyte is worthy of a new birth, represented allegorically.
A Satyr and Satyra are seated; a fawn is stretching out its muzzle towards the Satyra who is offering it
her breast; on the left Old Silenus gazes on the scene playing ecstatically on a lyre. In the myth the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]