Mystery-Religions

561 Pages·2012·1.862 MB·English

by  Angus, Selby

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This Dover edition, first published in 1975, is an unabridged
and unaltered republication of the second (1928) edition of
the work originally published by John Murray, in London, in
1925 under the title The Mystery-Religions and Christianity.
9780486143514
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 74-12657
Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
23124009
www.doverpublications.com
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Plotinus, Enneades, VI. 5, 7.
τ σοφ ν δ’ ο σοφα.
Euripides, Bacchae, 395.
Uno itinere non potest pervenire ad tam grande Secretum.
Q. Aurelius Symmachus, Rel. III (Seeck’s ed. p. 282).
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FOREWORD
FOR over a thousand years the ancient Mediterranean world
was familiar with a type of religion known as
Mystery-Religions which changed the religious outlook of the
Western world, and which are operative in European
civilization and in the Christian Church to this day. Dean
Inge, e.g. in his Christian Mysticism, p. 354, says that
Catholicism owes to the Mysteries “ the notions of secrecy, of
symbolism, of mystical brotherhood, of sacramental grace,
and, above all, of the three stages in the spiritual life: ascetic
purification, illumination, and ποπτεα as the crown.” These
Mysteries covered an enormous range, and manifested a great
diversity in character and outlook, from Orphism to
Gnosticism, from the orgies of the Cabiri to the fervours of
the Hermetic contemplative. Some of them, e.g. the Eleusinia,
were Greek, but the majority were of Oriental provenance and
all were infected by the spirit of the Orient. The most
important were the Greek Eleusinia, the cults of the
Cappadocian Men, the Phrygian Sabazios and the Great
Mother, the Egyptian Isis and Serapis, and the Samothracian
Cabiri, the Dea Syria and her satellites, the Persian Mithra.
For over eleven centuries Eleusis supported the hope of man
till destroyed by the fanatic monks in the train of Alaric in
396. The Orphic gospel was heard in the Mediterranean for at
least twelve centuries. For eight centuries Queen Isis and the
Lord Serapis swayed their myriads of devotees in the Greek
world, and for five centuries in the Roman. The Great Mother
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was passionately revered for six centuries in Italy. For over
half a millennium the approach to religion for thoughtful
minds was by the Gnostic path. Such facts—since no religion
persists by its falsehood, but by its truth—entitle the ancient
Mysteries to due consideration. As an important background
to early Christianity and as the chief medium of
sacramentarianism to the West they cannot be neglected; for
to fail to recognize the moral and spiritual values of
Hellenistic-Oriental paganism is to misunderstand the early
Christian centuries and to do injustice to the victory of
Christianity. Moreover, much from the Mysteries has
persisted in various modern phases of thought and practice.
As we attempt to re-live the experiences or to recapture the
mentality of the past, to break upon the inexorable silences of
perished centuries, to give heed to those who laboriously
devoted themselves to the everlasting human problem, and to
understand the old emphases which have shifted, our attitude
must be that of sympathy as also of appreciation of every
effort made by the human spirit toward reality and toward the
attainment of—
“ that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the Mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lightened.”
Every endeavour to secure “ news from the inner court of
things ” and to bring man into touch with the Eternal is of
worth in our human story. Without undue generosity we may
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have patience with men who set out for a goal which they
never reached, realizing that the failures of former generations
are as interesting, and often more instructive, than their
successes.
In estimating the Mysteries we must not judge them, any
more than any other religions, by their lowest forms, but, as
Cicero recognized, we must take the example from the
highest and judge them rather by their ideals. It is an historic
injustice to compare the Bacchi of one religion with the
thyrsus-bearers of another. If there is only one River of Truth,
into which tributaries from all parts flow, as asserted by the
most readable of the Christian Fathers, Clement of
Alexandria, who lived in the heyday of the Mysteries, we
need not disdain the tributaries. The pagan misunderstandings
of primitive Christianity are a warning to the student of
religious history. Celsus in all good faith viewed his equally
honest opponent’s religion as gross superstition. The holiest
rite—Agape—of the first believers was travestied as the
occasion of immoralities and ‘Thyestean banquets.’ The
absence of image, sacrifice, and temple seemed to lead to the
obvious conclusion that Christians were ‘Atheists.’
This disability of the adherent of one religion to understand
the adherent of another religion is an unlovely fact in the
history of religions and by no means antiquated to-day. Men
are separated in their religious sympathies by culture,
tradition, era, individual and group experiences. The saintly
John Wesley saw in Catherine of Genoa “a fool of a saint.” A
late Dean of Westminster, Dr. Farrar, spoke disparagingly of
one, whose death-scene in the interests of moral integrity has
appealed to the imagination of twenty-three centuries, as “the
ugly Greek.” A cultured Greek like Herodotus was astonished
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at the aniconic worship of Persia, and the Romans were
bewildered to find no image in the temple of Jerusalem.
In the study of the Mysteries we shall see truth and error side
by side, the spirituality of the true epoptes and the magic
sacramentarianism of the literalist, the inability to distinguish
between the cult act and the religious experience. We shall
detect the conjunction of faith and credulity, the degeneration
of mysticism into occultism, the revivalist phenomena and
mass-psychology, and those pathological conditions of
illusion, suggestion, and hypnotic hallucination and emotional
excitations which too easily issue in moral aberrations. We
shall meet the extravagances and extremes which are the
concomitants of every great movement, and which in healthy
creative periods are kept in restraint, but waiting to force their
way to the front with any weakening of the originating
conception or native power.
On the other hand, the Mysteries stood for much of
permanent value. Above all they emphasized the perfect
humanity and passion of the Deity, and suggested a
fellowship of suffering as the pre-condition to participation in
the divine victory. This Sympathia was more akin to the
mediaeval desire to share the sufferings of the Saviour in
extreme forms, as in the marks of the Cross or the wounds of
Christ. They offered a gospel of salvation by means of union
with Saviour-Gods, and of a Hereafter of blessedness for
initiates. As trans-social organizations they furthered personal
religion. In their general trend they made for monotheism. In
their emotional triumphs they satisfied the need of exaltation
and escape. By their cosmic outlook they made men
comfortable in an uncomfortable Universe. Never was there
an age which heard so distinctly and responded so willingly to
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the call of the Cosmos to its inhabitants. The unity of all Life,
the mysterious harmony of the least and nearest with the
greatest and most remote, the conviction that the life of the
Universe pulsated in all its parts, were as familiar to that
ancient cosmic consciousness as to modern biology and
psychology. By the articulation of their symbolism they
adumbrated that indefinable aspect of man’s religion of which
Otto has so excellently taken account in his Das Heilige, as
they also witnessed, if feebly, with Bonaventura: “ If you
would know how these things come to pass, ask it of desire,
not intellect; of the ardours of prayer, not of the teaching of
the schools.”
The Mysteries can no more be studied in isolation than can
early Christianity. Hence a study of the Mysteries demanded a
prolonged study of their background of ancient magic and
sorcery in all their varieties, theosophy, theurgy and
occultism, daemonology, astrology, solar monotheism and
Element-Mysticism ; also of their kindred philosophies,
Stoicism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neo-Platonism. The
reading, therefore, of e.g. Sextus Empiricus, Plotinus, the
Commentaries of Proclus, the magic papyri, the Astronomica
of Manilius, is directly relevant to an understanding of the
world of the Mysteries.
Quotations from ancient sources are enclosed in single
quotation marks; those from modern authorities in the usual
double marks. Translations from both are, unless otherwise
specified, by the writer.
A Selected Bibliography has been added, restricted to
accessible works, which, it is hoped, will enhance the value of
the book to students. The chief ancient sources are also given.
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To my colleague Principal G. W. Thatcher, of Camden
College, Sydney, and to Professor Leslie H. Allen, of Royal
Military College, Duntroon, thanks are due for having read
the manuscript and given me the advantage of useful
criticisms and suggestions. I am especially indebted to
Professor Vittorio Macchioro, of the Royal University and
National Museum of Naples, for the care with which he read
the manuscript, and for the great privilege which he afforded
me of examining important archaeological remains of the
Mystery-Religions under his expert guidance. As on a former
occasion I would once more record my gratitude to Professor
H. A. A. Kennedy, New College, Edinburgh, for valuable
suggestions in revision of the manuscript. It is fair to add that
in such a wide and controversial field the writer alone is
responsible for the views expressed.
As a Britisher I would take this occasion of expressing my
grateful appreciation of American hospitality extended
unstintingly during visits to Western Theological Seminary,
Pittsburg, Southern Baptist Seminary, Louisville, the
Presbyterian Seminary of Kentucky, the Union Theological
Seminary, New York, and Chicago University, where the
material of the volume was delivered, wholly or partially in
lecture form since November 1920. I would also make
grateful mention of a memorable week as guest of Manitoba
College, Winnipeg, Canada, in October 1923, and of a visit to
the University of Toronto.
S. A.
EDINBURGH,
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