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Plato: The Mysteries of Eleusis

The Mysteries of Eleusis

Men have called Love Eros because he has wings; the gods called him Pleros, for he has the power

of giving wings. —Plato, The Banquet

In heaven, learning is seeing; on earth, it is remembering. Happy is he who has gone through the

Mysteries; he knows the source and end of life. —Pindar

35The Youth of Plato and The Death of Socrates
Since we have attempted to make the greatest of the initiates of Greece live again in Pythagoras, and through him to examine the primordial and universal basis of religious and philosophic truth, it would be possible to omit mentioning Plato, who simply gave the truth a more imaginative and popular form. However, for this very reason we shall pause before the noble figure of the Athenian philosopher. There is a basic doctrine and synthesis of religions and philosophies. It is developed and deepened in the course of ages, but the foundation and heart remain the same. We have presented its main aspects, and is this not sufficient? No. It still remains for us to show the providential reason for its diverse forms, according to races and times. It is necessary to re-establish the chain of the Great Initiates, who were the real initiators of mankind. The strength of each of them will then be multiplied by that of all the others, and the unity of truth will appear in the very diversity of its expression. Like everything living, Greece had her aurora, her noon-time and her sunset. This follows the law of days, men, peoples, earths, heavens. Orpheus is the initiate of the dawn; Pythagoras, that of noontime; Plato, that of the sunset of Hellas, a sunset of glowing red, which in turn becomes the pink of a new dawn, the aurora of mankind. Plato follows Pythagoras, as in the Mysteries of Eleusis the torchbearer followed the hierophant. With him once again we shall enter by a new road, through the avenues of the sanctuary to the very heart of the temple, to the contemplation of the great arcanum. Before traveling to Eleusis, however, let us listen to our guide, to the divine Plato. Let him cause us to see his native skies; let him tell us the story of his soul and lead us to his beloved master. He was born in Athens, the city of the Beautiful and of humanity. Attica, exposed to all winds, sails like a ship in the Aegean Sea, and like a queen rules the islands, those white sirens lying on the deep blue of the waves. He grew up at the foot of the Acropolis under the eye of Pallas Athena, on that wide plain bordered by purple mountains and enveloped with a luminous blue, between the Pentelicus with its marble sides, the Hymette, crowned with scented pines where bees hum, and the quiet Bay of Eleusis. Somewhat somber and troubled was the political horizon during Plato's childhood and youth. He passed his childhood during the dreadful Peloponnesian War, that fratricidal battle between Sparta and Athens which paved the way for the dissolution of Greece. The great days of the Medic wars had passed; the time of Marathon and Salamis had gone. The year of Plato's birth, 429 B.C., is that of the death of Pericles, the greatest statesman of Greece, as honest as Aristides, as clever as Themistocles, the most perfect representative of Hellenic civilization, the tamer of that turbulent democracy, the burning patriot who knew how to preserve the calm of a demi-god in the midst of general revolts. Plato's mother doubtless told her son about a scene she must have witnessed two years after the birth of the future philosopher. The Spartans had invaded Attica; Athens, its national existence already threatened, had fought through an entire winter, and Pericles was the soul of its defense. In that dark year an impressive ceremony took place in the Ceramicus. The coffins of warriors who had died for the country were placed on funeral chariots and the people were called together before the monumental tomb which was destined to unite them. This mausoleum seemed a magnificent and sinister symbol of the grave Greece was digging for herself by her criminal fighting. It was then that Pericles uttered the most beautiful speech that has been preserved from antiquity. Thucydides transcribed it on tablets of brass, and this address shines there like a shield on the pediment of a temple. "The tomb of heroes is the whole universe, not columns covered with insipid inscriptions." -- Does not the consciousness of Greece and her immortality breathe in this saying? But with Pericles dead, what remained of the Greece who had lived in her men of action? Inside Athens were the discords of a demagoguery at bay; outside, the Lacedaemonian invasion ever at the gates, war on land and sea and the king of Persia's gold circulating like a corrupting poison in the hands of tribunes and magistrates. Alcibiades had replaced Pericles in the public favor. From a deceitful youth of Athens, this individual had become the man of the hour. Adventurer, politician, intrigant, charmer, he led his country to its ruin while he laughed. Plato had observed him well, for later he gave an excellent psychological study of this personality. He compares the mad lust for power which filled Alcibiades' soul with a great winged hornet "around whom the passions, crowned with flowers, perfumed with essences, intoxicated with wine and all the free pleasures which follow, come to buzz, goading him, elevating him and finally arming him with the fire of personal ambition. Then this tyrant of the soul, raging in madness, acts. If in himself he discovers thoughts and honest sentiments which can still evoke shame, he pursues and kills them. As a result he purges the soul of all temperance, filling it with the fury he has created." The sky over Athens therefore was rather dark during Plato's youth. When he was twenty-five he took part in the capture of Athens by the Spartans, following the disastrous naval battle of Aigos Potamos. Then he saw the entrance of Lysander into his native city, which meant the end of Athenian independence. He saw the great walls, constructed by Themistocles, demolished to the sound of festive music and the triumphant enemy literally dance upon the ruins of the country. Then came the Thirty Tyrants and their proscriptions. These spectacles saddened Plato's youthful soul, but they could not trouble it, for that soul was as gentle, as limpid, as open as the canopy of heaven above the Acropolis. Plato was a tall young man with broad shoulders; he was serious, meditative, almost always silent. However, when he opened his mouth an exquisite sensitivity, a charming gentleness streamed with his words. In him was nothing striking or excessive. His many capabilities were disguised, blended into the higher harmony of his being. A winged grace, a natural modesty hid the serious side of his mind; an almost feminine tenderness veiled the firmness of his character. In him, virtue was clothed with a smile and pleasure with an innocent purity. However, the dominant, extraordinary, unique characteristic of this soul was that in being born, it seemed to have made a mysterious pact with Eternity. Indeed, only the eternal seemed to live in the depths of his great eyes; other things pass away quickly like vain appearances in a deep mirror. Behind the visible, changing, imperfect forms of the world and its beings, the invisible, perfect, eternally radiant forms of these same beings, seen by the mind, and which are their everlasting achetypes, appeared to him. This is why the young Plato, without having formulated his doctrine, not even knowing that one day he would be a philosopher, was already aware of the divine reality of the Ideal and of its omnipresence. This is why upon seeing the processions of women, the funeral chariots, the armies, the festivals and mourning, his gaze seemed to see something else, and to say, "Why are they weeping? Why are they shouting with joy? They think they exist, yet they do not exist. Why can I not attach myself to what is born and to what dies? Why can I love only the Invisible which never is born, never dies, but remains forever?" Love and harmony are the core of Plato's soul, but what harmony and what love? -- The love of that everlasting Beauty and Harmony which embrace the universe. The greater and deeper the soul, the longer the time required for it to know itself. Plato's first enthusiasm was expressed in the arts. He was of fair and noble birth; his father claimed descent from King Codrus, his mother from Solon. His youth was that of a rich Athenian surrounded by the luxuries and seductions of an era of decadence. He enjoyed these without excess but without prudishness, living the life of his peers, enjoying a fine inheritance, surrounded and entertained by his many friends. So well has he described the passion of love in all its phases in his Phedre that it is impossible that he did not experience its transports and cruel disillusions. A single line, as passionate as a line from Sappho, as bright as a starry night on the sea of the Cyclades, has come down to us: "Would I were the heaven, thus to be all eyes, so that I might look at you!" In his search for supreme Beauty through all the modes and forms of beauty, he studied painting, music and poetry. The latter clearly seemed to meet all his needs. It ended by determining his desires. Plato had a marvelous facility for all styles of poetry. With equal intensity he enjoyed amorous and dithyrambic poetry, the epic, the tragedy and even comedy with its finest Attic wit. What then did he lack in order to become another Sophocles, thus to rescue the theatre of Athens from its near decadence? This ambition tempted him; his friends were engaged in it. At twenty-seven he had composed several tragedies and was about to present one in a contest. It was at this time that Plato met Socrates, who used to converse with young men in the gardens of the Academy. He spoke about the Just and the Unjust, about the Beautiful, the Good and the True. The poet listened to the philosopher, returning the next day and the following days. At the end of a few weeks, a complete revolution had taken place within him. The happy young man, the poet filled with illusions, no longer recognized himself. The course of his thoughts, the goal of his life had changed. Another Plato had been born in him at the word of the one who called himself "an accoucheur of souls." What had taken place? By what sorcery had this reasoner with the face of a satyr torn the handsome, genial Plato from luxury, pleasure and poetry in order to convert him to the great renunciation that is wisdom? A very simple man, but a great oddity was this good Socrates. Son of a sculptor, he had carved the three Graces during his adolescence. Then he threw down the chisel, saying that he would rather carve his own soul than blocks of marble. From that moment he dedicated his life to the search for wisdom. He was seen in the gymnasia, on the public square, at the theater, chatting with young men, artists, philosophers and asking each of them to prove what he had affirmed. For several years the Sophists had fought among themselves in the city of Athens like a cloud of grasshoppers. The Sophist is the counterfeit and living negation of the philosopher, as the demagogue is the counterfeit of the statesman, the hypocrite the counterfeit of the priest, the black magician the infernal counterfeit of the true initiate. The Greek type of Sophist is more subtle, more reasoning, more corrosive than the others, but the type itself is to be found in all decadent civilizations. The Sophists increased as fatally as the worms in a decomposing corpse. Whether they are called atheists, nihilists or pessimists, the Sophists of all centuries resemble one another. They forever deny God and the soul, that is, the supreme Truth and Life. Those of Socrates' time, like Gorgias, Prodicus and Protagoras, said that there is no difference between truth and falsehood. They were confident that they could prove any idea whatsoever, and also its opposite, stating that there is no justice other than force, no truth except the individual's opinion. With this, satisfied with themselves, setting high fees for their lessons, they incited young men to debauchery, intrigue and tyranny. Socrates approached the Sophists with his insinuating gentleness, his subtle good nature, like an ignorant man who wishes to be taught. His eye shone with fire and benevolence: Then, from, question to question, he forced them to say the opposite of what they had first claimed and to confess candidly that they did not even know what they were talking about. Socrates then showed that the Sophists, who pretended to possess universal knowledge, knew neither the cause nor the principle of anything. Having thus reduced them to silence, he did not glory in his victory, but, smiling, thanked his adversaries for having taught him by their answers, adding that to know that one knows nothing is the beginning of real wisdom. What did Socrates himself believe and teach? He did not deny the gods; he rendered them the same worship as did his fellow citizens, but he said that their nature was impenetrable and confessed that he understood nothing of the physics or metaphysics which were taught in the Schools. The important thing, he said, is to believe in the Just and True and apply it in one's life. His discussions carried great weight for he himself furnished the example, since he was an irreproachable citizen, an intrepid soldier, honest judge, faithful and impartial friend, the absolute master of all his passions. Thus the tactics of moral education change according to time and place. In the circle of his initiate disciples, Pythagoras derived morality from the heights of cosmogony. In Athens, on the public square, among men like Cleon and the Gorgias, Socrates spoke of the innate sense of the Just and True in order to rebuild the world and the weakened social state. And both Pythagoras and Socrates, the one in the descending order of principles, the other in the ascending order, affirmed the same truth. Pythagoras represents the principles and method of the highest initiation; Socrates announces the age of open science. In order not to forsake his role as a public exponent, Socrates refused to have himself initiated into the Mysteries of Eleusis; on the other hand, he understood and believed in the total and supreme Truth which the great Mysteries taught. When he spoke of them, the expression of the good, spirited Socrates changed like an inspired faun, possessed by a god. His eyes lighted up, color passed over his face and from his lips fell one of those simple, luminous statements which reveal the very foundations of things. Why was Plato so irresistibly charmed and captivated by this man? In seeing him, Plato understood the superiority of the Good over the Beautiful. For the Beautiful accomplishes the True only in the mirage of art, while the Good is brought about in the depths of souls. Rare and powerful is this charm, for the senses have no share in it. The sight of a truly just man made the shimmering splendors of visible art fade in Plato's soul, finally to disappear in presence of a diviner dream. This man showed him the inferiority of that beauty and glory he had believed in until then, when compared with the beauty and glory of the active soul, which forever attracts other souls to the same Truth. On the other hand, the pomp of art merely succeeds in reflecting for an instant a deceptive truth, under a disguise. This shining, eternal Beauty, "the splendor of the True," killed the changing, deceptive beauty in Plato's soul. Thus, abandoning and forgetting all he had loved previously, Plato gave himself to Socrates in the flower of his youth, with all the poetry of his soul. This great victory of Truth over Beauty had incalculable consequences for the history of the human spirit. Meanwhile, Plato's friends were waiting for him to make his debut in poetry on the tragic stage. He invited them to his house for a great celebration, and all were astonished that he wanted to give this festival at that time, for it was customary to give it only after having won the prize, and when the winning tragedy had been played. But none refused an invitation to the home of a son of a rich nobleman, where the Muses and Graces met in the company of Eros. For a long time his house had been a rendezvous for the elegant youth of Athens. Plato spent a fortune on the banquet. The table was set in the garden. Young men with torches lighted the way for the guests. The three most beautiful hetaerae of Athens attended. The banquet continued all night. Hymns to Love and Bacchus were sung. The flute players danced their most voluptuous dances. At last, Plato himself was asked to recite one of his dithyrambics. Smiling, he arose and said, "This banquet is the last I shall give. Beginning today I renounce the pleasures of life in order to dedicate myself to wisdom, and to follow the teachings of Socrates. Know then: I even renounce poetry, for I have recognized its inability to express the Truth I seek. No longer will I write verses, and in your presence I am about to burn all those I have composed." A loud cry of amazement and protest arose from the table, around which the guests, wearing crowns of roses, were lying upon sumptuous couches. These faces, red with wine, gaiety and light table talk, expressed surprise and indignation. Among the gentlemen and Sophists were laughs of incredulity and scorn. They considered Plato's project folly and sacrilege; they challenged him to take back what he had said. But Plato confirmed his decision with a calmness and assurance which would tolerate no turning back. He concluded by saying, "I thank all those who have wished to take part in this farewell celebration, but I shall keep near me only those who wish to share my new life. From now on Socrates' friends will be my only friends." His words passed like a cold breath over a field of flowers. To happy faces they suddenly brought the sad, troubled look of people in a funeral procession. The courtesans arose and had themselves carried away on their litters, casting hateful glances at the master of the house. The Sophists disappeared with ironic and sportive words: "Farewell, Plato! Be happy! You will come back to us. Farewell! Farewell!" Two serious young men remained with him. He took these faithful friends by the hand, and leaving the half-empty jugs of wine, the roses, the lyres and flutes overturned, the full cups, Plato led them into the inner court of the house. There they saw piled up on a small altar a pyramid of papyrus scrolls. These were Plato's poetic works. Taking a torch, the smiling poet set fire to the pile, saying, "Vulcan, come here! Plato needs you!" When the flames finally had flickered out, the friends with tears in their eyes silently said farewell to their future teacher. But Plato, remaining alone, did not weep. A peace, a wonderful serenity filled his whole being. He thought of Socrates whom he was going to see. The light of dawn touched the terraces of the houses, the columns and pediments of the temples; soon the first ray of the sun made Minerva's helmet glisten on the top of the Acropolis. ...

36The Initiation of Plato and the Birth of Platonic Philosophy
Three years after Plato had become Socrates' pupil, the latter was condemned to death by the Areopagus, and died, surrounded by his disciples, after drinking the hemlock. Few historical events have been as frequently described as this. However, few happenings have occurred whose causes and significance are so little understood. Today it is believed that the Areopagus was right to condemn Socrates as an enemy of the state religion because in denying the gods, he was attacking the foundation of the Athenian republic. We shall show that this assertion contains two major errors. Let us first recall what Victor Cousin wrote at the beginning of The Apology of Socrates in his beautiful translation of Plato's works: "Anytus, it must be said, was a commendable citizen; the Areopagus, an equitable and temperate tribunal; and, if anything is to be wondered at, it is that Socrates was not accused long before, and that he was not condemned by a larger majority." The philosopher, a Minister of Public Education, did not see that if he was right they should have condemned both philosophy and religion in order to glorify only the politics of lying, violence and absolutism. For if philosophy inevitably destroys the foundations of the social state, it is merely a pompous folly, and if religion can exist only by suppressing the search for truth, it is but a sinister tyranny. Let us try to be fairer to Greek religion and to Greek philosophy. There is a vital and significant fact which has escaped the attention of most modern historians and philosophers. Persecutions in Greece, which were very rarely aimed toward philosophers, never originated in the temples, but always arose among those engaged in politics. Greek civilization did not know that struggle between priests and philosophers which has played such a great role in our civilization since the destruction of Christian esoterism in the second century of our era. Without interference Thales could teach that the world comes from water, Heraclitus, that it comes from fire; Anaxagoras could say that the sun is a mass of incandescent fire; Democritus could claim that all comes from atoms. No temple was disturbed, for in their sanctuaries all this was known, and more besides. It was also realized that the so-called philosophers who denied the gods could not eradicate them from the national consciousness, and that true philosophers believed in them in the manner of initiates, seeing in them the symbols of the great ranks of the spiritual Hierarchies, of the Divine that penetrates nature, of the Invisible that governs the visible. Esoteric doctrine therefore served as the link between true philosophy and true religion. This is the deep, primordial and final fact which explains their hidden significance in Hellenic civilization. Who, therefore, accused Socrates? The priests of Eleusis, who had cursed the authors of the Peloponnesian War, shaking the dust from their robes toward the Occident, uttered no word against him. As for the temple of Delphi, it gave him the most beautiful tribute that can be paid to any man. Pythia, asked what Apollo thought of Socrates, answered, "There is no man more free, more just, more intelligent." The two indictments leveled against Socrates: of corrupting youth and of not believing in the gods, were therefore, only pretexts. With regard to the second accusation, Socrates victoriously answered his judges, "I believe in my personal spirit. Therefore I have all the more reason to believe in the gods, who are the spirits of the universe!" Then why this implacable hatred against the sage? He had fought injustice, unmasked hypocrisy, shown the falseness of so many vain pretentions. Men pardon all the vices and all the atheisms, but they do not pardon those who expose them. This is why the real atheists who were sitting in the Areopagus caused the death of the just and innocent, by accusing him of the crime they themselves had committed. In his admirable defense, recorded by Plato, Socrates himself explains this with perfect simplicity, "These are my fruitless searches for wise men among the Athenians who have aroused so much dangerous hostility against me. Hence all the calumnies spread on my account. Intriguers, active and numerous, speaking about me according to a concerted plan and with a very appealing eloquence, for a long time have filled your ears with the most perfidious rumors, ceaselessly pursuing their system of calumny. Today they have won from me Melitus, Anytus and Lycon. Melitus represents the poets; Anytus, the politicians and artists; Lycon, the orators." A tragic poet without talent, a wicked, fanatical man of wealth, a brazen-faced demagogue succeeded in having the best of men condemned to death. But that death made him immortal. Proudly he could say to his judges, "I believe more firmly in the gods than do any of my accusers. It is time for us to leave each other, I to die, and you to live. Which of us has the better part? No one knows but God." Far from attacking true religion and its national symbols, Socrates had done everything possible to strengthen them. He would have been the greatest support of his country, if his country had known how to understand him. Like Jesus, he died forgiving his executioners, and became the model of martyred sages for all mankind. For Socrates represents the definitive appearing of individual initiation and open science. The serene picture of Socrates dying for truth, spending his last hour discussing the immortality of the soul with his pupils, imprinted this most beautiful of spectacles and holiest of Mysteries upon Plato's heart. This was his first, his great initiation. Later he was to study physics, metaphysics and many other sciences, but always he remained Socrates' pupil. He willed us his living image by putting into the mouth of his teacher the treasures of his own thought. This flower of modesty makes him the ideal of the disciple, his fire of ecstasy makes him the poet of philosophers. Regardless of the fact that we know he did not establish his school until he was fifty, and that he lived to be eighty, we can imagine him only as young. For eternal youth is the inheritance of souls who unite divine honesty with depth of thought. Plato had received from Socrates the great impetus, the active male principle of his life, his faith in justice and truth. He owed the science and substance of his ideas to his initiation into the Mysteries. His genius consists in the new form -- at once poetic and dialectic -- which he knew how to give them. He did not take this initiation from Eleusis only. He sought it in all the accessible sources of the ancient world. After Socrates' death, Plato began to travel. He studied with several philosophers of Asia Minor. From there he went to Egypt to establish a relationship with its priests, going through the initiation of Isis. Unlike Pythagoras, he did not reach the higher stage where one becomes an adept, where one acquires the effective, direct view of divine Truth and supernatural powers. He stopped at the third stage, which confers perfect intellectual clarity and dominion of intelligence over soul and body. Then he went to southern Italy to talk with the Pythagoreans, knowing full well that Pythagoras had been the greatest of Greek sages. He purchased one of the master's manuscripts at a high price. Thus having dipped into the esoteric tradition of Pythagoras at its very source, he borrowed the main ideas and framework of his system from that philosopher. Returning to Athens, Plato established his school which has become famous under the name of the Academy. In order to continue Socrates' work, it was necessary to propagate truth. But Plato could not teach the things publicly which the Pythagoreans covered with a threefold veil. The vows, prudence and his goal itself prevented him from doing so. It is really esoteric doctrine which we find in his Dialogues, but disguised, altered, charged with a rational dialectic like something foreign, concealed in legend, myth, parable. The esoteric teaching is no longer presented in Plato with the impressive totality Pythagoras gave it, and which we have tried to reconstruct, an edifice established on a firm foundation -- all parts of which are strongly cemented, but in analytic fragments. Plato, like Socrates, bases himself on the ground of the young men of Athens, on the worldly attitude of the rhetoricians and Sophists. He fights them with their own weapons. But his genius is always present; at every point he breaks the network of their dialectic to rise like an eagle in a bold flight into the sublime truths which are his home, his native atmosphere. These dialogues have an incisive, singular charm; in addition to the ecstasy of Delphi and Eleusis, here one enjoys marvelous clarity, Attic wit, the malice of the good-natured Socrates, the fine, winged irony of the sage. Nothing is easier than to discover the different points of esoteric doctrine in Plato and at the same time to observe where he found them. The doctrine of the archetypes of things, expounded in Phedre is a corollary of Pythagoras' doctrine of Sacred Numbers. The Timeus gives a very confusing explanation of esoteric cosmogony. As for the doctrine of the soul, its migrations and its evolutions, this is to be found in all the works of Plato, but nowhere is it more clearly expressed than in the Banquet, in Phaedo, and in The Legend of Er, placed at the end of that dialogue. We see Psyche beneath a veil, but how beautiful and appealing she is in her exquisite form and divine grace! We have seen that the key to the cosmos, the secret of its constitution, is found in the principle of the three worlds reflected by the microcosm and macrocosm in the human and divine ternary. Pythagoras masterfully formulated and summed up this doctrine in the symbol of the sacred Tetrad. This doctrine of the eternally living Word constituted the great arcanum, the source of magic, the shining temple of the initiate, his invincible citadel far above the ocean of things. Plato neither could nor wished to reveal this mystery in his public teaching. In the first place the oath of the Mysteries kept him silent. In addition, all would not have understood; the common man would have unworthily profaned this theogonic mystery, which embraces the generation of the worlds. In order to fight the corruption of custom and the unleashing of political passions, something different was necessary. The door to the Beyond was about to close, and with it the great initiation, the door to which opens fully only to the great prophets, to the very rare, true initiates. Plato replaced the doctrine of the three worlds with three concepts which, in the absence of organized initiation, remained for two thousand years as three roads leading to the supreme goal. These three concepts refer equally to the human world and the divine world; they have the advantage of uniting them, although in a somewhat abstract manner. Here Plato's creative genius is seen. He threw great light upon the world by placing the ideas of the True, the Beautiful and the Good on the same level. Clarifying them one by one, he proved that they are three rays from the same Source which, when united constitute this Source Itself, that is, God. In seeking the Good, that is, the just, the soul becomes purified; it prepares itself to know truth. This is the first, indispensable condition of the soul's development. By following and enlarging the idea of the Beautiful, it attains the intellectual Beautiful, that intelligible light, that mother of things, that animator of forms, that substance and instrument of God. By plunging itself into the World-Soul, the human soul feels an expansiveness. By pursuing the idea of the True, it attains pure Essence, the principles contained in pure Spirit. It recognizes its immortality by the identity of its principle with the divine Principle. Thus perfection is attained; this is the Epiphany of the soul. By opening these broad paths to the human spirit, Plato defined and created, outside the narrow systems of particular religions the category of the Ideal, which was to replace organic initiation for centuries down to our own day. He marked out the three paths which lead to God like the sacred way from Athens to Eleusis by way of the Gate of Ceramicus. Having entered the temple with Hermes, Orpheus and Pythagoras, we are well able to judge the solidity and rightness of the broad roads built by Plato, the divine engineer. Knowledge of initiation gives the justification and reason for the being of Idealism. Idealism is a bold affirmation of the divine truths by the soul, which in its solitude questions itself and judges celestial realities by its own intimate faculties and its inner voices. Initiation is the penetration of these same truths by the experience of the soul, by direct vision of the spirit, by inner awakening. At the highest stage it is the communication of the soul with the divine world. The Ideal is an ethic, a poetry, a philosophy; Jnitiation is an action, a vision and a sublime presence of truth. The Ideal is the dream and the longing for the divine homeland; Initiation, the temple of the elect, is the clear remembering and even the possessing of it. In creating the category of the Ideal, the initiate Plato created a refuge and opened the way of salvation to millions of souls who cannot attain direct initiation in this life, but painfully strive for truth. Thus Plato made philosophy the foyer to a future sanctuary by inviting into it all men of good will. The idealism of his many pagan or Christian sons appears like the preliminary as it were, to the great initiation. This explains the immense popularity and radiant power of Platonic ideas. This power lies in their esoteric basis. This is why the Academy of Athens, founded by Plato, lasted for centuries and extended into the great Alexandrian School. This is why the first Church Fathers paid homage to Plato; this is why St. Augustine took two-thirds of his theology from him. Two thousand years had passed since Socrates' disciple had breathed his last sigh in the shadow of the Acropolis. Christianity, the barbaric invasions, the Middle Ages, had passed over the world. But antiquity was born again out of its own ashes. In Florence the Medici wished to establish an Academy, and invited a Greek scientist, exiled from Constantinople, to organize it. What name did Marsilio Ficino give it? He called it The Platonic Academy. Today, after so many philosophical systems, built one upon another, have crumbled into dust, today, when science has searched for the ultimate transformations of matter, finding itself before the unexplained and invisible, still today, Plato comes to us. Forever simple and modest, but shining with eternal youth, he holds out the sacred branch of the Mysteries to us, the branch of myrtle and cypress, with the narcissus, the flower of the soul, promising a divine renaissance in a new Eleusis.

37The Mysteries of Eleusis
The Mysteries of Eleusis were the object of special veneration in Greek and Latin antiquity. The very authors who ridiculed the mythological fables did not dare touch the cult of the "great goddesses." Their reign, quieter than that of the Olympians, proved itself more certain and more effective. At a very early time, a Greek colony coming from Egypt had brought into the quiet Bay of Eleusis the cult of the great Isis under the name of Demeter, the universal Mother. Since then, Eleusis had continued to be a center of initiation. Demeter and her daughter Persephone presided over the minor and major Mysteries, hence the prestige they attained. In Ceres the people worshipped the Earth Mother and goddess of agriculture; the initiates saw in her the celestial Light-Mother of souls and divine Intelligence, Mother of the cosmogonic gods. Her cult was officiated over by priests belonging to the most ancient sacerdotal family of Attica. They called themselves the sons of the moon, that is, those born to be mediators between earth and heaven, coming out of the sphere where the bridge is thrown between the two regions through which souls descend and ascend. From the beginning their function had been "to extol in this abyss of miseries, the pleasures of the heavenly dwelling and to teach the means of finding the path again." Hence their name, Eumolpides, or "singers of gracious melodies," gentle regenerators of men. The priests of Eleusis always taught the great esoteric doctrine which came to them from Egypt, but in the course of ages they clothed it in all the charm of a plastic, captivating mythology. By means of a subtle and profound art, these charmers knew how to use earthly passions to express celestial ideas. They put to good use the appeal of the senses, the pomp of ceremonies, the seductions of art, in order to lead the soul into a better life, and the intelligence to the understanding of divine truths. Nowhere did the Mysteries appear in such human, living, colorful form. The myth of Ceres and her daughter, Proserpine, form the heart of the cult of Eleusis. Like a shining procession, all Eleusian initiation revolves and develops around this luminous center. And, in its esoteric sense, this myth is the symbolic representation of the story of the soul, of its descent into matter, of its sufferings in the darkness of forgetfulness, then of its reascent, its return to divine life. In other words, it is the drama of the Fall and Redemption in its Hellenic form. For the cultivated and initiated Athenian of Plato's time the Mysteries of Eleusis offered the explanatory complement, the radiant counterpart to the performance of tragedies in Athens. There in the Theatre of Bacchus, before the public audience, the terrible incantations of Melpomene evoked earthly man, blinded by his passions, pursued by the Nemesis of his crimes, crushed by an implacable and often incomprehensible Destiny. There also were heard the Promethean struggles, the curses of the Erynnies, the despairing cries of Oedipus and the Furies of Orestes. There gloomy Terror and lamentable Pity reigned. At Eleusis, on the other hand, in the sanctuary of Ceres, everything was bright. The vision widened for those initiates who had become seers. For each soul the story of Psyche-Persephone was a surprising revelation. Life was explained as an expiation or a test. Above and beyond his earthly present, man discovered the starry regions of a divine past and future. After the agonies of death came the hopes, the liberations, the Elysian joys. Through the portals of the open temple came the songs of the happy, the all-encompassing light of a glorious Beyond. Thus the Mysteries, in comparison with Tragedy, were the divine drama of the soul, completing and explaining the earthly drama of man. The Lesser Mysteries were celebrated in the month of February at Agrae, a town near Eleusis. The aspirants who had taken a preliminary examination and provided proof of their birth, education and respectability, were received at the entrance of the enclosure by the priest of Eleusis called the hieroceryx, or sacred herald, resembling Hermes, and like him wearing the petasus and carrying the caduceus. He was the guide, the mediator, the interpreter of the Mysteries. He led the aspirants to a small temple with Ionic columns, dedicated to Kore, the great Virgin, Persephone. The gracious sanctuary of the goddess was hidden at the end of a quiet valley in the midst of a sacred grove, surrounded by yews and white poplars. Then the priestesses of Proserpine, the hierophants, left the temple, wearing immaculate peplos, with bare arms, and crowned with narcissus wreaths. They formed a line at the top of the steps, and began a solemn chant in the Dorian mode. Accompanying their words with broad gestures, they intoned, "O, neophytes of the Mysteries, here you stand at the threshold of Proserpine! What you are about to see will surprise you. You will learn that your present life is but a tapestry of false, confused dreams. The sleep which throws around you a mantle of darkness, bears your dreams and your days on its stream like floating debris, which disappears from sight. But there beyond, a world of eternal Light spreads itself! May Proserpine be kind to you, and teach you to cross the river of darkness, to penetrate the celestial Demeter!" Then the prophantid or prophetess who led the chorus, descended three steps and spoke this curse in a solemn voice, with a look of dread: "But woe to those who may have come here to desecrate the Mysteries! -- For the goddess will pursue these perverse hearts through their entire lifetime, and in the kingdom of the Shades she will not release her prey!" Then several days were spent in ablutions, fasts, prayers and instruction. On the evening of the last day, the neophytes met in the most secret part of the sacred grove to attend the Rape of Persephone. The scene was played in the open air by the priestesses of the temple. This custom was derived from very early times, and the basis of this performance, the dominant idea always remained the same, although the form varied greatly in the course of the ages. From Plato's time, thanks to the then recent development of tragedy, the former hieratic severity gave place to a more humane and refined taste and to a more passionate rendition. Directed by the hierophant, the anonymous poets of Eleusis had made of this scene a little drama which was approximately as follows: (The neophytes arrive by twos, entering a clearing. At the side one sees rocks and a grotto surrounded by a wood of myrtle and a few poplar trees. In the foreground is a meadow, where Nymphs are lying beside a stream. At the back of the grotto one perceives Persephone seated. Naked to the waist like a Psyche, her light, graceful breasts chastely emerge from delicate gauze which falls about her like a vapor of blue. She seems to be happy, unaware of her beauty, and is embroidering a long veil of multicolored threads. Demeter, her mother, is standing near her, wearing the kalathos, her scepter in her hand.) HERMES (The herald of the Mysteries, to the spectators): Demeter gives us two excellent things: fruit, so that we do not live like beasts, and initiation, which gives a gentler hope to those who take part in it, both for the end of this life and for all eternity. Listen carefully to the words you are about to hear, to the things you are about to see! DEMETER (In a serious voice): Beloved daughter of the gods, remain in this grotto until my return, and embroider my veil. Heaven is your homeland; the universe is yours. You see the gods; they come at your call. But do not listen to the voice of the wily Eros, with his soft glances, his treacherous counsels. Do not leave the grotto, and never pick the seductive flowers of earth; their deadly perfume will cause you to lose the light of heaven, and even the memory of it! Weave my veil and live happily with the nymphs, your companions, until my return. Then, on my chariot of fire drawn by serpents, I will bear you once again into the splendors of ether, beyond the Milky Way! PERSEPHONE: Yes, august and fearful mother. By this light which surrounds you and which is dear to me, I promise. May the gods punish me if I do not keep my word! (Exit, Demeter) THE CHORUS OF NYMPHS: O Persephone! O Virgin, O chaste Bride of Heaven, who embroiders the face of the gods in your veil, may you never know the vain illusions, the innumerable misfortunes of earth! Eternal Truth smiles upon you! Your heavenly husband, Dionysus, is waiting for you in the Empyrean. Sometimes he appears to you in the form of the distant sun; his rays kiss you, he breathes your breath, you drink his light . . . You possess each other . . . O Virgin, who then is happier than you? PERSEPHONE: On this veil of blue with endless folds, I embroider the numberless faces of beings and forms with my ivory needle. I have completed the history of the gods; I have embroidered frightful Chaos with his hundred heads and thousand arms. From him mortals are supposed to come. Who then causes them to be born? The Father of the gods told me that it is Eros. But I have never seen him; I do not know his face. Who then will paint his countenance for me? THE NYMPHS: Do not think of that! Why this vain question? PERSEPHONE (Arising and throwing aside her veil): Eros, the oldest and the youngest of the gods, inexhaustible source of joys and tears! Thus they spoke of you to me. Terrible god, quite unknown, alone of all the Immortals invisible, the only desirable one, mysterious Eros! What ecstasy, what trembling overcomes me at your name! THE CHORUS: Do not seek to know morel Dangerous questions have destroyed men and even gods! PERSEPHONE (Gazing into the Abyss, her eyes filled with fear): Is it a memory? Is it a dreadful foreboding? Chaos ... Man ... The Abyss of generations, the cry of births, the furious tumult of hate and war ... the gulf of Death! I hear, I see all this, and this Abyss draws me, overwhelms me! I must descend! Eros with his burning torch makes me descend! I am about to die! Away from me, terrible dream! (She covers her face with her hands, and sobs.) THE CHORUS: O divine Virgin, it is as yet but a dream. Nevertheless it will take form, it will become fateful reality and your heaven will disappear like an empty dream if you yield to your guilty desire! Obey this warning! Take up your needle; weave your veil! Forget the cunning, impudent, criminal Eros! PERSEPHONE (Takes her hands from her face, which has changed expression; she smiles through her tears): Fool that you are! Insensate that I was! I remember now; I heard it said in the Olympian Mysteries: Eros is the handsomest of gods; on winged chariot he presides at the evolutions of the Immortals, at the blending of archetypal essences. He it is who leads bold men, the heroes, from the depths of Chaos to the heights of ether. He knows all. Like the Fire-principle, he transcends all worlds; he holds the keys of earth and heaven! I wish to see him! THE CHORUS: Rash one, Stop! EROS (Emerging from the grove in the form of a winged youth): You called me, Persephone? Here I am! PERSEPHONE (Sitting down): They called you cunning, but your face is innocence itself! They said you were all-powerful, and you seem a frail child. They say you are a traitor, but the more I look at your eyes, the more my heart opens, the more I put confidence in you, lovely playful youth! -- They said you were wise and clever. Can you help me to embroider this veil? EROS: Willingly! Here I am near you, at your feet! What a marvelous veil! It seems dipped in the blue of your eyes. What admirable forms your hand has embroidered -- less beautiful, however, than the divine embroiderer, who has never seen herself in a mirror! (He smiles mischievously.) PERSEPHONE: See myself! Would that be possible? (She blushes) But do you recognize these faces? EROS: Yes, I know them! -- The story of the gods. But why do you stop with Chaos? It is there that the fight begins! Will you not weave the War of the Titans, the birth of men and their loves? PERSEPHONE: My knowledge stops here, my memory fails. Will you not help me embroider the rest? EROS (Throwing her an ardent glance): Yes, Persephone, but on one condition. First you must come and pick a flower with me on the meadow; the most beautiful flower of all! PERSEPHONE (Seriously): My august, wise mother forbade me. "Do not listen to the voice of Eros," she told me, "Do not pick the flowers of the meadow. Otherwise you will be the most miserable of Immortals!" EROS: I understand. Your mother does not want you to know the secrets of earth and hell. If you smelled the flowers of the meadow, the secrets would be revealed to you! PERSEPHONE: Do you know them? EROS: All of them. And, you see, I am only the younger and more agile for it! O daughter of the gods, the Abyss has terrors and tremors that heaven does not know! He does not understand heaven who has not traversed earth and hell! PERSEPHONE: Can you make me understand them? EROS: Yes, Look! (He touches the earth with the point of his bow; a large narcissus springs up.) PERSEPHONE: O, what a lovely flower! It makes my heart tremble; a divine recollection surges up in me! Sometimes, sleeping on my beloved star which an everlasting sunset gilds, upon awakening, on the deep red of the horizon I have seen a star of silver floating in the pearly depth of the pale green sky. It seemed to me that it was the torch of the immortal bridegroom, the promise of the gods, of divine Dionysus. But the star kept descending . . . and the torch died out in the distance ... This marvelous flower resembles that star. EROS: I who transform and unite everything, I who make the small in the image of the great, from the depth of the mirror of heaven, I who mix heaven and hell on earth, who create all forms in the deep ocean, have brought your star to life again from the Abyss, in the form of a flower so that you can touch it, pick it, smell it! THE CHORUS: Take care that this magic is not a trap! PERSEPHONE: What do you call this flower? EROS: Men call it Narcissus; I call it Desire. See how it looks at you, how it turns to you! Its white petals tremble as if they were alive. From its golden heart comes a perfume, filling all the air with pleasure. As soon as you bring this magic flower close to your eyes, in a great and marvelous tableau you will see the monsters of the Abyss, the earth-depths and the heart of men. Nothing will be hidden from you. PERSEPHONE: O wonderful flower! My heart is beating with your intoxicating perfume! My fingers burn from touching you! I want to breathe your aroma, to press you to my lips, to place you upon my heart, even if I must die for it! (The earth opens beside her. Out of a gaping, dark crevice one sees Pluto on a chariot drawn by two black horses, slowly arising. He seizes Persephone at the moment she picks the flower, pulling her violently to him. She struggles vainly in his arms, screaming loudly. Immediately the chariot sinks and disappears. Its rumbling dies in the distance, like subterranean thunder. Moaning, the Nymphs dart about the grove. Eros flees with a burst of laughter.) THE VOICE OF PERSEPHONE (underground): My Mother! Help! Mother! HERMES: O Neophytes of the Mysteries, whose life is still clouded by the fumes of evil life, this is your story. Remember and meditate upon this saying of Empedocles: "Generation is a terrible destruction, which causes the living to pass among the dead. Once you lived the true life, and then, drawn by magic, you fell into the earthly Abyss, subjugated by the body. Your present is but a fatal dream; only the past and future really exist. Learn to remember; learn to foresee." During this scene, night has fallen. Mournful torches are lighted between the black cypresses beside the little temple, and the spectators move away in silence, followed by the pleading chants of the priestesses, calling: "Persephone! Persephone!" -- The Lesser Mysteries have ended. The neophytes have become mystics, the veiled ones. They will return to their customary occupations, but the great veil of the Mysteries has been spread over their eyes. Between them and the external world, a cloud has been introduced. At the same time, an inner eye has opened within them, by which they dimly see another world, filled with attractive forms which move in depths of alternating light and darkness. The Great Mysteries which followed the Lesser Mysteries, and which were also called the Sacred Orgies, were celebrated at Eleusis only every five years, in the month of September. These festivals, all of them symbolic, lasted nine days. On the eighth, the insignia of initiation were distributed to the mystics: the thyrsis and a basket called a cistus, surrounded with branches of ivy. The latter contained mysterious objects. To understand the latter would give one the secret of life. But the basket was carefully sealed. One was not permitted to open it until the end of the initiation and then only in the presence of the hierophant. Then they were filled with exultant joy; torches were waved, and were passed from one to another; shouts of joy were heard. On that day a procession bore from Athens to Eleusis the statue of Dionysus, which was called Iacchos, crowned with myrtle. His coming to Eleusis announced the great rebirth, for he represented the divine spirit permeating everything, the regenerator of souls, the mediator between earth and heaven. Then they entered the temple by the mystic door in order to spend the sacred night, the night of initiation there. They entered first beneath a vast portico in the outer enclosure. There the herald with terrible threats and the cry Eskato Bebeloi, Go Back, Profane Ones, dispersed the intruders who sometimes succeeded in slipping into the enclosure unobserved. He made the latter swear, under penalty of death to reveal nothing of what they were about to see, adding, "Here you stand at the subterranean threshold of Persephone. In order to understand the future life and your present condition, it is necessary that you traverse the kingdom of death; this is the test of the initiates. You must know how to brave the darkness in order to enjoy the light!" Then they dressed themselves in the faun's skin, the picture of the laceration and tearing of the soul, as it plunged into corporeal life. After this they extinguished the torches and lamps and entered the subterranean labyrinth. At first the mystics groped in the darkness. Soon they heard noises, groans and dreadful voices. Lightning flashes, accompanied by thunder, split the darkness. By this light frightful visions could be seen: sometimes a monster, a chimera or a dragon; sometimes a man, torn by the claws of a sphinx; sometimes a human larva. These appearances were so sudden that there was no time to distinguish the means which produced them, while the total obscurity which followed, redoubled the horror. Plutarch compares the terror caused by these visions, to the state of a man on his death bed. The strangest scene, bordering upon real magic, took place in a crypt where a Phrygian priest, dressed in a flowing Asiatic robe with red and black vertical stripes, was standing before a copper brazier, which dimly lighted the room by its fitful light. With a gesture which tolerated no denial, he forced the arrivals to sit down at the entrance, throwing into the fire large handfuls of narcotic perfumes. Immediately the room was filled with thick, swirling smoke, and soon one could see a confused array of changing animal and human forms. At times long serpents stretched themselves out, only to become sirens, finally to roll themselves up endlessly; at other times busts of voluptuously poised Nymphs with outstretched arms changed into bats. Charming heads of youths were transformed into muzzles of dogs. And all these monsters, beautiful and ugly in turn, fluid, airy, deceiving, unreal, vanishing as quickly as they appeared, turned, glistened, intoxicated, surrounded the fascinated visitors as though to block their way. At times the priest of Cybele raised his short staff amidst the vapors, and the outpouring of his will seemed to impress a whirling movement and a disturbing vitality upon the multiformed circles. "Come," said the Phrygian. The neophytes arose and entered the circle. Then the majority of them felt gently touched by something, others were grasped quickly by invisible hands and thrown to the ground. Some withdrew in fright and returned the way they had come. The more courageous passed only after several attempts, but a truly firm determination made a quick end to the sorcery." Then they reach a large circular room, poorly lighted by a few torches. In the center is a single column, a bronze tree, whose metallic foliage spreads over the whole ceiling." In this foliage are seen chimera, gorgons, harpies, owls, sphinxes and vampires -- images of all earthly evils, of all the demons which fasten upon man. These monsters, reproduced in shining metals, are entwined in the branches, apparently awaiting their prey. Beneath the tree on a magnificent throne sits Pluto- Aidoneus, wearing a cloak of velvet. He is seated on a fawn-skin, his hand holds the trident, his countenance reveals anxiety. Beside the King of the Underworld, who never smiles, is his wife, the tall, slender Persephone. The neophytes recognize in her the features of the hierophant who has already played the role of the goddess in the Lesser Mysteries. She is still beautiful, more beautiful, perhaps, in her sorrow, but how changed she is in her robe of mourning, strewn with silver tears, wearing her crown of gold! She is no longer the Virgin of the Grotto; now she knows the life of the depths, and she suffers. She reigns over the lower powers, she is sovereign among the dead, but is an alien to her own kingdom. A wan smile lights her face, darkened by the shadow of hell. In that smile is the knowledge of Good and Evil, the inexpressible charm of experienced, silent pain! Suffering teaches pity. With a look of compassion she welcomes the neophytes, who kneel and place crowns of narcissus at her feet. Then in her eyes shines a dying flame, a lost hope, a distant remembrance of heaven! Suddenly at the end of an ascending gallery, torches shine and, like a trumpet blast, a voice exclaims, "Enter, neophytes! Iacchos has returned! Demeter awaits her daughter! Evohe!" The sonorous echoes from underground repeat this cry. Persephone rises from her throne as though suddenly awakened from a long sleep, filled with an electrifying thought: "Light! Mother! Iacchos!" She tries to move forward, but Aidonee holds her back by the hem of her robe. She falls back upon her throne as if dead. Then the torches are suddenly extinguished, and a voice shouts, "To die is to be born again!" But the neophytes hasten through the gallery of heroes and demigods toward the opening of the tunnel where Hermes and the torchbearer await them. Their fawn's skin is taken off, they are sprinkled with lustral water, are clothed in fresh linen and are led into the splendidly lighted temple where the hierophant -- the High Priest of Eleusis, the majestic elder, clothed in velvet, receives them. This is how Porphyrus described the highest initiation of Eleusis: "Crowned with myrtle, along with the other initiates we enter the entrance hall of the temple, still blind, but the hierophant who is within will soon open our eyes. But first, for nothing is to be done in haste, let us wash in the holy water. We are led before the hierophant. From a book of stone, he reads to us things which we must not divulge, under penalty of death. Let us say only that they are in harmony with the place and circumstance. You would laugh, perhaps, if you heard them outside the temple, but here you have no desire to laugh as you listen to the words of the elder (for he is always old) and as you look at the exposed symbols." And you are far from laughing when, by her special language and signs, by vivid sparkling of light and clouds piled upon clouds, Demeter confirms everything that we have seen and heard from her holy priest. Then, finally, the light of a serene wonder fills the temple; we see the pure Elysian fields; we hear the chorus of the blessed ones. Now it is not merely through an external appearance or through a philosophical interpretation, but in fact and in reality that the hierophant becomes the creator and the revelator of all things; the sun is but his torchbearer, the moon, his helper at the altar, and Hermes, his mystical messenger. But the last word has been uttered: Knox Om Pax.°? The ritual has been consummated, and we are seers forever." What then did the great hierophant say? What were the sacred words, what was that supreme revelation? The initiates learned that the divine Persephone whom they had seen in the midst of the terrors and tortures of hell, was the human soul, bound to matter in this life or subjected, in the next, to illusions and ever greater torments if it lived a slave to its passions. The soul's earthly life is an expiation or a test of preceding existences. But the soul can be purified by discipline; it can remember and have forebodings through the combined effort of intuition, reason and will, and can share beforehand in the great truths of which it must take full and complete possession in the vast Beyond. Then only will Persephone again become the pure, luminous, ineffable Virgin, the dispenser of love and joy. As for her mother Ceres, in the Mysteries she was the symbol of the divine Intelligence and the spiritual principle of man, to which the soul must reunite itself if it is to attain its perfection. If one is to believe Plato, Iamblicus, Proclus and all the Alexandrian philosophers, within the temple the elite of the initiates experienced visions of an ecstatic and marvelous nature. I have quoted the testimony of Porphyrus. Here is that of Proclus: "In all the initiations and Mysteries, the gods (here this word means all orders of spirits) manifest themselves in many forms, assuming a great variety of guises; sometimes they appear in a formless light, again in quite different form." This is the passage from Apuleus: "I approached the confines of death, and having reached the threshold of Proserpine, I returned, having been carried across all the elements (the elemental spirits of earth, water, air and fire). In the depths of midnight I saw the sun shining with a glorious light, and at the same time I saw the lower gods and the higher gods. Drawing near to these divinities, I paid them the tribute of devout adoration." However vague these testimonies may be, they seem to refer to esoteric phenomena. According to the doctrine of the Mysteries, the ecstatic visions of the temple were produced in the purest of elements, in spiritual light akin to celestial Isis. The oracles of Zoroaster call it nature speaking through herself,' that is, an element by means of which the Magus gives a visible, instantaneous expression to thought, and which serves as both body and clothing for souls, which in reality are the most beautiful thoughts of God. This is why the hierophant, if he was able to produce this phenomenon of bringing the initiates into contact with the souls of heroes and gods (Angels and Archangels), was likened at that moment to the Creator, to the Demiurge, the torch bearer, or to the Sun, that is, to supersensible Light, and Hermes, to the divine Word, which is his interpreter. Whatever value these visions may have had, antiquity is unanimous in describing the happy exaltation which the highest revelations of Eleusis produced. A new happiness, a superhuman peace descended into the heart of the initiates. Life seemed conquered, the soul delivered, the fearful cycle of existences fulfilled. With clear joy and an ineffable certainty everyone again found themselves in the pure ether of the universal Soul. We have just relived the drama of Eleusis in its intimate, hidden meaning. I have indicated the main thread which guides one through this labyrinth; I have shown the great unity dominating its richness and complexity. With a wise and sovereign harmony, the various ceremonies were linked to the divine drama which formed the ideal center, the luminous focal point of these religious festivals. Thus the initiates gradually were identified with the action. At first only simple spectators, later they became actors, and finally they recognized that the drama of Persephone really took place within themselves. And what surprise, what joy they experienced in this discovery! If they suffered, if they fought with her in this present life, like her they had the hope of again finding divine felicity, the light of the great Intelligence. The words of the hierophant, the scenes and revelations of the temple, gave them a foretaste of what was to come. It seems unnecessary to say that each one understood these things according to his degree of education and his intellectual capacity. For as Plato says (and this is true for all time) many people carry the thyrsus and rod, but are little inspired. After the age of Alexander, the Eleusians were affected in a certain measure by pagan decadence, but their exalted foundation remained, saving them from the decay which struck other temples. Through the depth of their sacred doctrine, as well as through the splendor of their presentation, the Mysteries stood their ground for three centuries in the face of a rising Christianity. Then they joined the elite company, who, without denying that Jesus was a revelation of an heroic and divine nature, did not wish to forget, as the Church of that time already was forgetting, the old science and the sacred doctrine. An edict of Theodosius was required, forbidding the ceremonies of the temple of Eleusis, in order to put an end to this august cult, in which the magic of Greek art had delighted in incorporating the highest doctrines of Orpheus, of Pythagoras and of Plato. Today the refuge of ancient Demeter has disappeared without a trace beside the silent Bay of Eleusis, and only the butterfly, Psyche's insect, crossing the blue gulf on spring days, remembers that here the great exile, the human soul, once evoked the gods, and that here it recognized its eternal home. Notes for this chapter:

66Contemporary science would see in these facts only simple hallucinations or suggestions. The science of
ancient esoterism attributed both a subjective and objective value to this kind of phenomenon, which was frequently produced in the Mysteries. It believed in the existence of elemental spirits without an individualized soul and without reason. Half-conscious, they fill the earthly atmosphere and are in some way the souls of the elements. Magic, which is will put into action in the manipulation of secret powers, makes these beings visible at times. Heraclitus speaks of them when he says, "Nature, in all places is full of daemons." Plato calls them daemons of the elements, Paracelsus names them elementals. According to Paracelsus they are attracted by the magnetic atmosphere of man, are electrified and are capable of assuming all imaginable human forms. The more man is given over to his passions, the more he becomes their prey without being aware of it. The magus alone subdues them and uses them. But they constitute a sphere of deceiving illusions and follies which it is necessary to master and pass upon one's entrance into the spiritual world. Bulwer Lytton calls them "the guardian of the threshold" in his unusual novel, Zanoni.

67This is the tree of dreams mentioned by Virgil in the descent of Aeneus into hell, in the sixth book of the
Aeneid, which reproduces the main scenes of the Mysteries of Eleusis with poetic amplifications.

68The gold objects contained in the cist were the pine cone (symbol of fertility and generation), the spiral
serpent (universal evolution of the soul; fall into matter and redemption by the spirit); the egg (recalling the sphere of divine perfection, the goal of man.)

69These mysterious words have no meaning in Greek. This proves that they are very ancient, and come from
the Orient. Wilford gives them a Sanscrit origin. Knox would come from Kansha, meaning object of the greatest desire; Om from Urn, the soul of Brahma, and Pax from Pasha, tour, exchange, cycle. The supreme blessing of the hierophant of Eleusis means therefore: "May your desires be fulfilled; return to the universal Soul!"

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