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Part Two the Logic of Mystery PART TWO THE LOGIC OF MYSTERY APPHTA IEPA: An Inquiry into the Sacred Symbolism of Ancient Greek Mysteries PRELIMINARY REMARKS I propose to investigate thoroughly and in detail the symbolism of the ancient Greek mysteries, and the ritual which is the natural vehicle and physical manifestation of that symbolism, casting on the subject a fresh, unprejudiced, self-effacing and innocent eye, giving rein to feeling no less than mind, with a view to revealing its meaning and general significance in its own context, as organically and functionally embedded in the entire life and spirit of ancient Hellenism. The reason for the necessity of a new beginning in the study of this all- important question, as well as the methodology best adapted to bring light its real nature, intricate structure and adequate solution, will be briefly, and in their general contour, explained in a moment. But before this can be done, we ought to examine the general nature of the problem itself and the essential peculiarities of the situation as we face them; for these are our only guides in the appropriate handling of the matter in question. It is, as always, the nature and characteristics of this content, of the subject-matter, which govern and dictate the type and pattern of the method to be followed in pursuing its properly conducted study: there is no universal methodological panacea, mechanically safeguarding the truth of its results, and blindedly transplanted from subject to subject and from problem to problem. What I shall try to formulate here, in a concise and, necessarily, dogmatic way, is to be seen as providing the general framework in whose context the present inquiry should be read. Evidently the precise nature and full content of such guidelines and principles can emerge and be properly appreciated only when viewed in the light of the investigation itself, on the correctness of whose conclusions the very validity of these general principles partly depends. But this is a ÚfiÙÂÚÔÓ - ≈ÛÙÂÚÔÓ, I believe; unavoidable, if one wishes to write 242 PRELIMINARY REMARKS neither an introduction to, nor a revelation on, his subject. Accordingly, I am not asking the reader to accept what I am briefly presenting here before proceeding to the inquiry; I am simply presuming that he will bear the former in his mind, while following the latter. At the end, let him judge the whole. Ritual is the concentrated quintessence of the correct and proper service due to the Godhead. Man is found in the World and before the gods, the one no less than the other. In his normal and natural condition and position he is also aware (in feeling and thought) of the fact - he lives with it and in it. He is in constant encounter with the gods: he honours and praises them, propitiates them, begs for their forgivance and asks for their gifts, trembles before their actions and is fearful of their powers, atones for his omissions and faults in the face of them, thanks for rewards and successes bestowed on him - all this in a variety of ways and as his heart is inclined to do. In a word, he worships them. This worship must be, in the beginning, spontaneous and, thus, irregular; individual and, to a certain degree, arbitrary. But as time goes on, through constant repetition by the same person on various occasions, and by the several members of a family or social group, by the individual or by the tribe, a certain coagulation takes place; the secondary and the accidental are cleansed out, as it were, by continuous friction; the fundamental and essential emerges in each form of worship, as the universal typus appropriate to each of the basic religious attitudes of Man towards God. The result of this crystallization and normalization is ritual in its endless, unchanged repetition, the image of Man’s archetypal postures before God. Of course there is immense variety in the ritual of a natural religion, like the ancient Greek; there is distinction and division within the main types, answering, in its essentials, to the diversity of actual situations. But the procedures have been standardized not in a conventional way, but according to how the tribal, regional or national soul (as the case might be) lives the corresponding attitude towards divinity, how the gesture accompanying and expressing placation or adoration, imploring or glorifying, atonement or abandonment is normally manifested. The Rite is a gesture of cosmic significance. Ritual is the gesture-language of Man to God. Man has put into it all the blood of his soul to make the formalized posture burst with life; all PRELIMINARY REMARKS 243 his energy, in order to present the quintessence of the attitude corresponding to the particular act of worship which he performs. A mystery, in its religious substance, is a ritual of a particular essential character, of a certain formal type, and with a specific purpose. The ritual of a mystery is secretive; and this because the participants must satisfy special conditions of purity and preparedness, over and above the normal qualifications required for the involvement in whatever îÂÚÔ˘ÚÁ›·. To be able to take part in a mystery, one should have an appropriate status of sanctity: the mystery divides people into the holy and the profane. We may say that the mystery ritual is occult. Special consecration is demanded because of the paramount importance of the end to be achieved through the mystery ritual. For in the mysteries, one is not only speaking and meaningfully gesticulating to God, something immensely grand and significant is also effected, realized. This is not the place to enter into further details as to the realized good, the purpose of the mystery; the inquiry, in its various parts, will provide ample and thorough clarification on the matter. I shall only give here the general nature of the intended result, in so far as it is requisite for the present point. Through the mystery ritual one enters into actual communion with the gods. Not only mystic, secret channels of communication are being opened between man and the Godhead inaccessible to the common gesture-language represented by the ordinary cultus; much more than that, gates are thrown wide open and roads are discovered (or rather actualized) there and then, by and through the performance of the sacred rite, gates and roads leading eventually to beatific existence, whose reality is then promised and whose stamp is already impressed on the initiate, resulting in special protection even throughout his earthly life. I shall briefly indicate this state of affairs by saying that the mystery rite achieves divinisation. I need not warn that the way one should understand this divinisation differs from mystery to mystery; nor that the foregoing short description is geared to the Eleusinian mysteries and Orphic theology. But the main consideration for the purpose at hand is this: a special holy status of a divine order accrues to the initiate as a result of his participation in the mystery rite; he is brought into special connection with the divine order. Hence the 244 PRELIMINARY REMARKS necessity for his special preparation. We referred to this requirement when we called mysteries occult rituals. Here we discover a further appositeness in the appellation: mysteries are occult rituals as they achieve something super-natural and out of the ordinary world-order. Extreme caution must evidently accompany the use of words like occult and, to a far greater extent, supernatural in the treatment of ancient religious ideas and feelings. Occult, we should never forget, signifies the hidden and secret, and is opposed not to the systematic world order, cosmic and divine simultaneously, but only to what is apparent and explicit. As to the supernatural, it must be taken in this connection as almost connoting the unsuspectingly and strangely natural as well as the deeply natural. Effects can be produced, and results achieved by all types of ritual. In sacrifice, for instance, the honorific and thanksgiving elements are in general unmistakably dominant; and yet the prayer was an essential part of it, in which glorification and solicitation were the two main poles. But the ritual in such cases only makes the request, as it were, known to the god concerned; the actual outcome depends on very many other considerations, and is far from rendered certain by the ritual itself. Quite to the contrary with a mystery ritual: it necessitates and entails the final accomplishment of the purpose associated with it. It has the power to safeguard its results by and through itself; this is its mystic, occult, magical efficacity. But what then accounts for the difference? Evidently it is the specific nature and essential character of the mystery rite which I shall call symbolic and shall briefly hint at its explanation thus: the principle of all magic consists in the reproduction by the magician of the reality to be affected in a form which he can directly and physically handle, so that by manipulating the surrogate, the real object is accordingly influenced. This surrogate is not a bare simulacrum or any other conventional substitute for the reality whose modification is desired; one cannot inflict change on anything by playing with its mere image. The reality, the substantial essence, itself of the object is made to inhabit, after a fashion, the surrogate; and this is what the magical art really consists of. To intellectualize magical operations in one way or another is immaterial. Whether because of the Stoic universal Û˘Ì¿ıÂÈ·, or, more plausibly, by virtue of the serial Neoplatonic structure of reality, PRELIMINARY REMARKS 245 the phenomenon of magic requires this reproduction of the object in its reality at the magician’s disposal.
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