Section I., Eleusinian Mysteries

139:* Hence we may perceive the reason why Ceres as well as Saturn was denominated a legislative deity; and why illuminations were used in the celebration of the Saturnalia, as well as in the Eleusinian Mysteries. 145:* When the person turns the back upon his higher faculties, and disregards the communications which he receives through them from the world of unseen realities, an oblivion ensues of their existence, and the person is next brought within the province and operation of lower and worldly ambitions, such as a love of power, passion for riches, sensual pleasure, etc. This is a descent, fall, or apostasy of the soul,—a separation from the sources of divine life and ravishment into the region of moral death. In the Phædrus, in the allegory of the Chariot and Winged Steeds, Plato represents the lower or inferior part of man’s nature as dragging the soul down to the earth, and subjecting it to the slavery of corporeal conditions. Out of these conditions there arise numerous evils, that disorder the mind and becloud the reason, for evil is inherent to the condition of finite and multiform being into which we have “fallen by our own fault.” The present earthly life is a fall and a punishment. The soul is now dwelling in “the grave which we call the body.” In its incorporate state, and previous to the discipline of education, the rational element is “asleep.” “Life is more of a dream than a reality.” Men are utterly the slaves of sense, the sport of phantoms and illusions. We now resemble those “captives chained in a subterraneous cave,” so poetically described in the seventh book of The Republic; their backs are turned to the light, and consequently they see but the shadows of the objects which pass behind them, and “they attribute to these shadows a perfect reality.” Their sojourn upon earth is thus a dark imprisonment in the body, a dreamy exile from their proper home.”—Cocker’s Greek Philosophy.

147:* Porphyry: Cave of the Nymphs. In the later Greek, νυμφη signified a bride. 150:* Homer: Hymn to Ceres. “We were plucking the pleasant flowers, the beauteous crocus, and the Iris, and hyacinth, and the narcissus, which, like the crocus, the wide earth produced. I was plucking them with joy, when the earth yawned beneath, and out leaped the Strong King, the Many-Receiver, and went bearing me, grieving much, beneath the earth in his golden chariot, and I cried aloud.” 159:* Manteis, μαντεις, not ἱερεις. The term is more commonly translated prophets, and actually signifies persons gifted with divine insight, through being in an entheastic condition, called also mania or divine fury. 160:* “The soul is a composite nature, is on one side linked to the eternal world, its essence being generated of that ineffable element which constitutes the real, the immutable, and the permanent. It is a beam of the eternal Sun, a spark of the Divinity, an emanation from God. On the other hand, it is linked to the phenomenal or sensible world, its emotive part being formed of that which is relative and phenomenal.”—Cocker. 163:* Hymn to Ceres. “For nine days did holy Demeter perambulate the earth . . and when the ninth shining morn had come, Hecate met her, bringing news.” Apuleius also explains that at the initiation into the Mysteries of Isis the candidate was enjoined to abstain from luxurious food for ten days, from the flesh of animals, and from wine.—Golden Ass, book xi. p. 239 (Bohn).

Apuleius also explains that at the initiation into the Mysteries of Isis the candidate was enjoined to abstain from luxurious food for ten days, from the flesh of animals, and from wine.—Golden Ass, book xi. p. 239 (Bohn). 164:* Only persons taking a view solely external will suppose the galaxy to be literally the milky belt of stars in the sky. 164:† Cave of the Nymphs. 165:* Theology of Plato, book vi. 166:* The Moon typified the mother of gods and men. The soul descending into the lunar orb thus came near the scenes of earthly existence, where the life which is transmitted by generation has opportunity to involve it about. 166:† The condition most unlike the former divine estate. 169:* An orbicular figure symbolized the maternal, and a cone the masculine divine Energy. 169:† Proclus: Theology of Plato, book vi. c. 10. 170:* Homer: Hymn to Ceres. “To her Metaneira gave a cup of sweet wine, but she refused it; but bade her to mix wheat and water with pounded pennyroyal. Having made the mixture, she gave it to the goddess.” 172:* Γυνη, gune, woman, from γουνος, gounos, Latin cunnus. 175:* Uncandidness was more probably the fault of which Clement was guilty. 175:† Divine Legation of Moses, book ii. 175:‡ “The wisest and best men in the Pagan world are unanimous in this, that the Mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest ends by the worthiest means. 176:* Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians.

176:* Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians. 179:* A golden serpent, an egg, and the phallus. The epopt looking upon these, was rapt with awe as contemplating in the symbols the deeper mysteries of all life, or being of a grosser temper, took a lascivious impression. Thus as a seer, he beheld with the eyes of sense or sentiment; and the real apocalypse was therefore that made to himself of his own moral life and character.—A. W. 180:* “Exiled from the true home of the spirit, imprisoned in the body, disordered by passion, and beclouded by sense, the soul has yet longings after that state of perfect knowledge, and purity, and bliss, in which it was first created. Its affinities are still on high. It yearns for a higher and nobler form of life. It essays to rise, but its eye is darkened by sense, its wings are besmeared by passion and lust; it is ‘borne downward until it falls upon and attaches itself to that which is material and sensual,’ and it flounders and grovels still amid the objects of sense. And now, Plato asks: How may the soul be delivered from the illusions of sense, the distempering influence of the body, and the disturbances of passion, which becloud its vision of the real, the good, and the true?” “Plato believed and hoped that this could be accomplished by philosophy. This he regarded as a grand intellectual discipline for the purification of the soul. By this it was to be disenthralled from the bondage of sense, and raised into the empyrean of pure thought, ‘where truth and reality shine forth.’ All souls have the faculty of knowing, but it is only by reflection and self-knowledge, and intellectual discipline, that the soul can be raised to the vision of eternal truth, goodness, and beauty—that is, to the vision of God.”—Cocker: Christianity and Greek Philosophy, x. pp. 351-2.

181:* “It is linked to the phenomenal or sensible world, its emotive part (επιθυμητικον) being formed of what is relative and phenomenal.” 183:* Kircher: Obeliscus Pamphilius, page 227. 184:* Plutarch: Euseb. 184:† I. e. Exposition of the laws and operations of Nature. 185:* Μυστηριωδης, mystery-like.