seeming or philosophic interpretation, but in real fact, does the Hierophant become the Creator and Revealer of all things; the Sun is but his torch-bearer, the Moon his attendant at the altar, and Hermes his mystic herald. But the final word has been uttered: "Conx Ompax." The rite is consummated, and we are epoptæ forever!
One day more, and the Eleusinia themselves are completed. As in the beginning by lustration and sacrifices we conciliated the favor of the gods, so now by libation we finally commend ourselves to their care. Thus did the Greeks begin all things with lustration and end with libation, each day, each feast,—all their solemn treaties, their ceremonies, and sacred festivals. But, like all else Eleusinian, this libation must be sui generis, emptied from two bowls,—the one toward the East, the other toward the West. Thus is finished this Epos, or, as Clemens Alexandrinus calls it, the "mystical drama" of the Eleusinia.
Now, reader, you have seen the Mysteries. And what do they mean? Let us take care lest we deceive ourselves, as many before us have done, by merely looking at the Eleusinia.
Oh, this everlasting staring! This it is that leads us astray. That old stargazer, with whom Aesop has made us acquainted, deserved, indeed, to fall into the well, no less for his profanity than his stupidity. Yet this same star-gazing it is that we miscall reflection. Thus, in our blank wonder at Nature, in our naked analysis of her life, expressed through long lists of genera and species and mathematical calculations, as if we were calling off the roll of creation, or as if her depth of meaning rested in her vast orbs and incalculable velocities,—in all this we fail of her real mystery.
To mere external seeming, the Eleusinia point to Demeter for their interpretation. To her are they consecrated,—of her grief are they commemorative; out of reverence to her do the mystæ purify themselves by lustration and by the sacrifice that may not be tasted; she it is who is symbolized, in the procession of the basket, as our Great Mother, through the salt, wool, and sesame, which point to her bountiful gifts,—while by the poppies and pomegranates it is hinted that she nourishes in her heart some profound sorrow: by the former, that she seeks to bury this sorrow in eternal oblivion,—by the latter, that it must be eternally reiterated. The procession of the torches defines the sorrow; and by this wild, despairing search in the darkness do we know that her daughter Proserpine, plucking flowers in the fields of light, has been snatched by ruthless Pluto to the realm of the Invisible. Then by the procession of Iacchus we learn that divine aid has come to the despairing Demeter; by the coming of, Aesculapius shall all her wounds be healed; and the change in the evening from the mystæ to epoptæ is because that now to Demeter, the cycle of her grief being accomplished, the ways of Jove are made plain,—even his permission of violence from unseen hands; to her also is the final libation.
But the story of the stolen Proserpina is itself an afterthought, a fable invented to explain the Mysteries; and, however much it may have modified them in detail, certainly could not have been their ground. Nor is the sorrowing Demeter herself adequate to the solution. For the Eleusinia are older than Eleusis,—older than Demeter, even the Demeter of Thrace,—certainly as old as Isis, who was to Egypt what Demeter was to Greece,—the Great Mother2 of a thousand names, who also had her endlessly repeated sorrow for the loss of Osiris, and in honor of whom the Egyptians held an annual festival. Thus we only remove the mystery back to the very verge of myth itself; and we must either give up the solution or take a different course. But perhaps Isis will reveal herself, and at the same time unveil the Mysteries. Let us read her tablet: "I am all that, has been, all that is, all that is to be; and the veil which is over my face no mortal hand hath ever raised!" Now, reader, would it not be strange, if, in solving her mystery, we should also solve the Sphinx's riddle? But so it is. This is the Sphinx in her eldest shape,—this Isis of a thousand names; and the answer to her ever-recurring riddle is always the same. In the Human Spirit is infolded whatsoever has been, is, or shall be; and mortality cannot reveal it!
Not to Demeter, then, nor even to Isis, do the Eleusinia primarily point, but to the human heart. We no longer look at them; henceforth they are within us. Long has this mystic mother, the wonder of the world, waited for the revelation of her face. Let us draw aside the veil, (not by mortal hand,—it moves at your will,) and listen:—
"I am the First and the Last,—mother of gods and men. As deep as is my mystery, so deep is my sorrow. For, lo! all generations are mine. But the fairest fruit of my Holy Garden was plucked by my mortal children; since which, Apollo among men and Artemis among women have raged with their fearful arrows. My fairest children, whom I have brought forth and nourished in the light, have been stolen by the children of darkness. By the Flood they were taken; and I wandered forty days and forty nights upon the waters, ere again I saw the face of the earth. Then, wherever I went, I brought joy; at Cyprus the grasses sprang up beneath my feet, the golden-filleted Horæ crowned me with a wreath of gold and clothed me in immortal robes. Then, also, was renewed my grief; for Adonis, whom I had chosen, was slain in the chase and carried to Hades. Six months I wept his loss, when he rose again and I triumphed. Thus in Egypt I mourned for Osiris, for Atys in Phrygia, and for Proserpina at Eleusis,—all of whom passed to the underworld, were restored for a season, and then retaken. Thus is my sorrow repeated without end. All things are taken from me. Night treads upon the heels of Day, the desolation of Winter wastes the fair fruit of Summer, and Death walks in the ways of Life with inexorable claims. But at the last, through Him, my First-begotten and my Best-beloved, who also died and descended into Hades, and the third day rose again,—through Him, having ceased from wandering, I shall triumph in Infinite Joy!"
That, reader, is not so difficult to translate into human language. Thus, from the beginning to the end of the world, do these Mysteries, under various names, shadow forth the great problem of human life, which problem, as being fundamental, must be religious, the same that is shadowed forth in Nature and Revelation, namely: man's sin, and his redemption from sin,—his great loss, his infinite error, and his final salvation.
Sorrow, so strong a sense of which pervaded these Mysteries that it was the name (Achtheia) by which Demeter was known to her mystic worshippers,—human sorrow it was which veiled the eyelids; toward which veiling (or muesis) the lotus about the head of Isis and the poppy in the hand of Demeter distinctly point. Hence the mystæ, whom the reader must suppose to have closed their eyes to all without them,—even to Nature, except as in sympathy she mirrors forth the central sorrow of their hearts. But this same sorrow and its mighty work, veiled from all mortal vision, shut out by very necessity from any sympathy save that of God, is a preparation for a purer vision,—a second initiation, in which the eyes shall be reopened and the mystæ become epoptæ; and of such significance was this higher vision to the Greek, that it was a synonyme for the highest earthly happiness and a foretaste of Elysium.
As this vision of the epoptæ was the vision of real faith, so the muesis, or veiling of the mystæ, was no mere affectation of mysticism. Not so easily could be set aside this weight of sorrow upon the eyelids, which, notwithstanding that, leading to self, it leads to wandering, leads also through Divine aid to that peace which passeth all understanding. Thus were the Hebrews led out of Egyptian bondage through wanderings in the Wilderness to the Promised Land. Even thus, through rites and ceremonies which to us are hieroglyphics hard to be deciphered, which are known only as shrouded in infinite sorrow,—as dimly shadowing forth some wild search in darkness and some final resurrection into light,—through these, many from Egypt and India and Scythia, from Scandinavia and from the aboriginal forests of America, have for unnumbered ages passed from a world of bewildering error to the heaven of their hopes. To the eye of sense and to shallow infidelity, this may seem absurd; but the foolishness of man is the wisdom of God to the salvation of His erring children. Happy, indeed, are the initiated! Blessed are the poor in spirit, the Pariah, and the slave,—all they whose eyes are veiled with overshadowing sorrow! for only thus is revealed the glory of human life!
There are many things, kind reader, which, in our senseless staring, we may call the signs of human weakness, but which, by a higher
The worship of this Great Mother is not more wonderful for its antiquity in time than for its prevalence as regards space. To the Hindu she was the Lady Isani. She was the Ceres of Roman mythology, the Cybele of Phrygia and Lydia, and the Disa of the North. According to Tacitus, (
