Download or read book The Eleusinian Mysteries and Rites written by Dudley Wright and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2021-04-25 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brochure by Brother Wright, a Masonic scholar of Oxford, England, contains the ripest scholarship on Eleusis, its rites, symbols, and legends. This study of the Grecian mysteries shows the ties between the rituals celebrated in the 7th century BC and the 19th cent Freemasonry tradition. As the author noted, there is a striking resemblance in many points to the Operative and Speculative Freemasonry practices, which laid the basis of this work.

Download or read book The Mysteries of Eleusis and Bacchus written by Thomas Taylor and published by FilRougeViceversa. This book was released on 2021-07-30 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These observances once represented the spiritual life of Greece, and were considered for two thousand years and more the appointed means for regeneration through an interior union with the Divine Essence. However absurd, or even offensive they may seem to us, we should therefore hesitate long before we venture to lay desecrating hands on what others have esteemed holy. We can learn a valuable lesson in this regard from the Grecian and Roman writers, who had learned to treat the popular religious rites with mirth, but always considered the Eleusinian Mysteries with the deepest reverence. It is ignorance which leads to profanation. Men ridicule what they do not properly understand. Alcibiades was drunk when he ventured to touch what his countrymen deemed sacred. The undercurrent of this world is set toward one goal; and inside of human credulity—call it human weakness, if you please—is a power almost infinite, a holy faith capable of apprehending the supremest truths of all Existence. The veriest dreams of life, pertaining as they do to "the minor mystery of death," have in them more than external fact can reach or explain; and Myth, however much she is proved to be a child of Earth, is also received among men as the child of Heaven. The Cinder-Wench of the ashes will become the Cinderella of the Palace, and be wedded to the King's Son.

Download or read book The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries written by Thomas Taylor and published by Health Research Books. This book was released on 1996-09 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1875 These observances once represented the spiritual life of Greece, and were considered for two thousand years and more the appointed means for regeneration through an interior union with the Divine Essence. We can learn a valuable lesson in this rega.

Download or read book The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries written by Thomas Taylor and published by New York : J.W. Bouton. This book was released on 1875 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries written by Thomas Taylor and published by . This book was released on 1891 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mystery Cults of the Ancient World written by Hugh Bowden and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A richly illustrated history of antiquity's secret religious rituals This is the first book to describe and explain all of the ancient world's major mystery cults--one of the most intriguing but least understood aspects of Greek and Roman religion. In the nocturnal Mysteries at Eleusis, participants dramatically re-enacted the story of Demeter's loss and recovery of her daughter Persephone; in the Bacchic cult, bands of women ran wild in the Greek countryside to honor Dionysus; and in the mysteries of Mithras, men came to understand the nature of the universe and their place within it through frightening initiation ceremonies and astrological teachings. These cults were an important part of life in the ancient Mediterranean world, but their actual practices were shrouded in secrecy, and many of their features have remained unclear until now. By richly illustrating the evidence from ancient art and archaeology, and drawing on enlightening new work in the anthropology and cognitive science of religion, Mystery Cults of the Ancient World allows readers to imagine as never before what it was like to take part in these ecstatic and life-changing religious rituals--and what they meant to those who participated in them. Stunning images of Greek painted pottery, Roman frescoes, inscribed gold tablets from Greek and South Italian tombs, and excavated remains of religious sanctuaries help show what participants in these initiatory cults actually did and experienced. A fresh and accessible introduction to a fascinating subject, this is a book that will interest general readers, as well as students and scholars of classics and religion.

Download or read book Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia written by Giovanni Casadio and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2009-09-01 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Vergil's Aeneid, the poet implies that those who have been initiated into mystery cults enjoy a blessed situation both in life and after death. This collection of essays brings new insight to the study of mystic cults in the ancient world, particularly those that flourished in Magna Graecia (essentially the area of present-day Southern Italy and Sicily). Implementing a variety of methodologies, the contributors to Mystic Cults in Magna Graecia examine an array of features associated with such "mystery religions" that were concerned with individual salvation through initiation and hidden knowledge rather than civic cults directed toward Olympian deities usually associated with Greek religion. Contributors present contemporary theories of ancient religion, field reports from recent archaeological work, and other frameworks for exploring mystic cults in general and individual deities specifically, with observations about cultural interactions throughout. Topics include Dionysos and Orpheus, the Goddess Cults, Isis in Italy, and Roman Mithras, explored by an international array of scholars including Giulia Sfameni Gasparro ("Aspects of the Cult of Demeter in Magna Graecia") and Alberto Bernabé ("Imago Inferorum Orphica"). The resulting volume illuminates this often misunderstood range of religious phenomena.

Download or read book The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries written by Thomas Taylor and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-11-20 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Download or read book The holy rites of Eleusis were Archaic Wisdom Religion dressed in Greek garb written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Edward Pococke, Thomas Taylor, Alexander Wilder and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Eleusinian Mysteries were viewed as the efflorescence of all the Greek religion, as the purest essence of all its conceptions. The offering of bread and wine to the candidate by the Hierophant symbolised the spirit that was about to quicken matter: i.e., the divine wisdom of the Higher Self was to take possession of the candidate’s inner Self or Soul through what was to be revealed to him. The transformation of Cybele to Ceres-Demeter was the basis for the sacredness of bread and wine in ritualism. Cybele is the Moon-Goddess of the Athenians, Pallas or Minerva, invoked in her festivals as Monogenes Theou, the One Mother of God, and Virgin Queen of Heaven. Esoterically, Cybele is Kabeiros, a representative of the Phoenician Kingly Race. The Hierophant was always an old unmarried man. This and so many other features of the great archaic system, known as the Sacred Wisdom Science, have been appropriated by the Romish Church. One of the greatest mysteries is how the ever immaculate and yet ever prolific Divine Virgin who, fecundated by the fructifying rays of the Sun, becomes the Mother of all that lives and breathes on her vast bosom. Her very “Breath” is Akasha-tattva or Universal Essence, i.e., Vital Electricity — Life itself. The Mysteries are fragments of a grand pre-historic Philosophy, as old as the world itself. They are not only the foundation-stone of modern Philosophy, they also gave birth to hieroglyphics, as permanent records were needed to preserve and commemorate their secrets. The fact that the Sanskrit and Greek words for Initiation to the Greater Mysteries, Avapta and Epopteia, imply revelation not by human agent but by receiving the Sacred Drink, points out to the pre-Vedic origin of the Eleusinia. A cup of Kykeon, quaffed by the Mystes at the Eleusinian Initiation, forcibly connects the inner, highest “spirit” of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical Soma, with his “irrational soul” or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life on earth in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven. One well versed in the esoteric mythologies of various nations can trace the Mysteries back to the ante-Vedic period in India. Only those of the strictest virtue and purity were admitted. Those who consciously engaged in Black Magic or were responsible for homicide, whether accidental or not, and other evil acts were excluded. Every approach to the Mysteries was guarded with the same jealous care everywhere, and the penalty of death was inflicted upon Initiates of any degree who divulged secrets entrusted to them. Why Truth keeps hiding like a tortoise within her shell? Because Truth is too dangerous even for the highest Lanoo. No one can be entrusted with full knowledge of the Secret Science before his time. In Egypt the Mysteries had been known since the days of Menes. The Greeks received them much later when Orpheus introduced them from India. Thus, even in the days of Aristotle, few were the true Adepts left in Europe and even in Egypt. While darkness fell upon the face of the profane world, there was still eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation. Athenians, the real barbarians of Hellas, charged Æschylus with sacrilege and condemned him to be stoned to death because, they claimed, having been uninitiated, he had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his trilogies on a public stage. But he would have incurred the same condemnation, had he been initiated. Every truth revealed by Jesus, and which the Jews and early Christians understood, was concealed by a Church that has always pretended serving Him. To deprive the Greeks of their Sacred Mysteries, which bind in one the whole of mankind, was to render their very lives worthless to them. Blessed is he who has seen these things before he goes beneath the hollow earth; for he understands the end of mortal life, and the beginning of a new life. The Lesser grades of Eleusinia symbolised the descend of Persephone, Ceres-Demeter’s daughter, to earth and were preparatory to Greater Mysteries, when the daughter returns to her divine abode and is finally reunited with her mother. Similarly, Northern Buddhism has its “Greater” and its “Lesser” vehicle, the Mahayana or Esoteric, and the Hinayana or Exoteric School. The object of the Lesser Mysteries was to instruct the candidate about the condition of the unpurified soul invested with an earthly body, and enveloped in a material and physical nature that, until and unless purified by high philosophy and ethics, is destined to suffer pain and death through its attachment to embodied life. Selfishness is the prisoner of the divine soul. Physical body is the prison. And real hell is life here, on earth. The Book of Job is a complete representation of ancient Initiation, and the trials which generally precede this grandest of all ceremonies. Still, the cunning translators of the Hebrew Bible imply that Job’s “Champion,” “Deliverer,” and “Vindicator,” was Messiah. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the Hindus, the real Champion and Deliverer it Atman; with the Neo-Platonists, Nous Augoeides; with the Buddhists, Agra; with the Persians, Ferouer. The true Champion is the immortal spirit in every man. It alone can redeem our soul and save us from ourselves, if we follow its behests instead of squandering our divine inheritance by pandering to our lower nature. There were two classes of participants, the Neophytes and the Perfect. And two castes of Magi, the initiated and those who were allowed to officiate in the popular rites only. Neophytes first taught in upper temples were initiated in crypts. Oral instructions were given at low breath, in solemn silence and secrecy. Jesus and Paul classified their doctrines as esoteric and exoteric: The Mysteries of the Kingdom of God for the Apostles, the parables for the multitude. Aristides calls Mysteries the common temple of the earth. Epictetus says that all that is ordained therein was established by the Masters of Wisdom for the instruction of mortals and the correction of their customs. Plato asserts that the object of the Mysteries was to re-establish the soul in that state of perfection from which it had fallen. Baptism was one of the earliest Chaldeo-Akkadian rites of inner purification. Candidates were immersed thrice into water by Hydranos, the Baptist. At the Mysteries of the Anthesteria at limnai, i.e., the Feast of Flowers at the temple lakes, after the usual baptism by purification of water, the Mystai were made to pass through to the gate of Dionysus, that of the purified. After their Second Birth was accomplished, and the Mystai had returned from their baptism in the sea, the Tau or Egyptian cross was laid upon the breast. The Mysteries of the Jews were identical with those of Pagan Greeks, who took them from the Egyptians, who borrowed them from the Chaldaeans, who got them from the Aryans, who inherited them from the Atlanteans, and so on. But what Gods and Angels had revealed, exoteric religions, beginning with that of Moses, reviled, reveiled, and hid for ages from the sight of the world. The lure of lucre was the final nail in the coffin of the Eleusinia. An Athenian demagogue and sycophant, whose eloquence was described as of a coarse and vehement character, degraded the Sacred Mysteries by persuading the State to levy a charge for those seeking admission to higher life. Thus initiation had become a commodity — and as necessary as baptism has since become with the Christians. The first hour for the demise of the Mysteries struck on the clock of the Races with the Macedonian conqueror. The first strokes of its last hour sounded 47 BCE in the Thebes of the Celts. But the Mysteries of Eleusis could not be so easily disposed of. They were indeed the religion of mankind, and shone in all their ancient splendour if not in their primitive purity. It took several centuries to abolish them, and they could not be entirely suppressed before the year 396 of our era. The Eleusinian Mysteries were archaic Wisdom-Religion dressed in Greek garb. Prehistoric Greece was colonised by two great Indian races, the Solar and the Lunar dynasties. Springing up from the kingdoms of Cashmir and Tibet, the prehistoric colonists of Greece consisted of the two great primitive and radical races of Aryavarta, the Solar or ancient Budhistic dynasty (Surya Vansa), and the Lunar dynasty (Chandra Vansa). The former were the earliest settlers in Greece and their religious exponents appear to have been the Dodan, or Brahmanical priests of the great tribe, Doda. As history progressed, the original Lamaic system of religion has been so much modified and so far compromised, as to be compelled to seek refuge in the asyla of the Grecian Mysteries, instead of the state-position it once occupied. Inside Greece, Bacchus was a prosonym of Zagreus, the successor of the Lamaic sovereignty in whose service was Orpheus, the founder of the Mysteries. Outside Greece, Bacchus was the Tartarian Jupiter Hammon whose Lamaic worship accompanied the emigrants of Tartary to Egypt. In Budhistic belief, the young Lama is born again from the consort of the Jaina Pontiff, Semele or Su-Lamee, the Great Lama Queen. The Eleuth-Chiefs, who spread the Lamaic doctrines in the Attic territory, became Eleusine. Their forms of worship and Tartar ceremonials composed the staple of the celebrated Eleusinian Mysteries. The high-born Brahmans or Culini lived on the Peloponnesian Mount Cyllene. The Mysteries were communicated to Culyus-Celeus, ruler of the land of the Rarhya, by Demeter herself. Yet the Greeks besmirched their noble ancestry by belittling their Hierophants as troglodytes. Three Hierarchs represented Budhistical and Brahmanical power. Two orders of priests officiated over the initiations. The descendants of the High Budha Priest or Eumolpidai, and the Budhist Keerukos or Keryx, the sacred herald of the Greeks, the latter aided by the daughters of the late Eleusinian high-caste king Culyus or Celeus. Modern Greek authors who treat Eleusinian worship as mysteries, rather than the old national form of worship, name those admitted to the Lesser Mysteries as Mokshtai or Mystai, from the Budhist word Moksha. After taking an oath of secrecy to preserve the old religion of the country against the more attractive heresy of Homer and his popular gods, those admitted to the Greater Mysteries were styled avapta or epoptai. Iacchos (Bacchos), properly Yogin, who appeared on the sixth day of the Mysteries, is none other than Dio Nausho or Dionysos, son of the Jaina Pontiff (Jeyus), and the Great Lama Queen, Soo Lamee or Semele. Couros, a prosonym of Iacchos, is Gooros or Guru, a spiritual teacher. Hence, Demeter is styled by the Greeks Couro-trophos or Guru-nurse. Erectheus-Poseidon was worshipped jointly with Athene and is identified with Poseidon or Po-Sidhan, Prince of all Saints, Chief of Saidan, and Prince of Sidon. Saidan, Eracland, and Phœnicia, are in close proximity to Afghanistan; Sidan is repeated in the Phœnicia of Palestine. Poseidon was worshipped jointly with Adheene, the Virgin Queen of Heaven, modified by the Greeks as Athene. She is the Egyptian Neeti, corruptly written Neith. The mysterious name of Onge-Athene was also derived from AUM, the Triple Fire representing the highest Tetraktys.

Download or read book A Companion to the Classical Greek World written by Konrad H. Kinzl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-01-11 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion provides scholarly yet accessible new interpretations of Greek history of the Classical period, from the aftermath of the Persian Wars in 478 B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. Topics covered range from the political and institutional structures of Greek society, to literature, art, economics, society, warfare, geography and the environment Discusses the problems of interpreting the various sources for the period Guides the reader towards a broadly-based understanding of the history of the Classical Age

Download or read book Greek Mysteries written by Michael B. Cosmopoulos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-18 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an international team of acknowledged experts, this excellent book studies a wide range of contributions and showcases new research on the archaeology, ritual and history of Greek mystery cults. With a lack of written evidence that exists for the mysteries, archaeology has proved central to explaining their significance and this volume is key to understanding a phenomenon central to Greek religion and society.

Download or read book The Book of Greek and Roman Folktales Legends and Myths written by William Hansen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-29 with total page 579 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first anthology to present the entire range of ancient Greek and Roman stories- from myths and fairy tales to jokes Captured centaurs and satyrs, talking animals, people who suddenly change sex, men who give birth, the temporarily insane and the permanently thick-witted, delicate sensualists, incompetent seers, a woman who remembers too much, a man who cannot laugh-these are just some of the colorful characters who feature in the unforgettable stories that ancient Greeks and Romans told in their daily lives. Together they created an incredibly rich body of popular oral stories that include, but range well beyond, mythology-from heroic legends, fairy tales, and fables to ghost stories, urban legends, and jokes.

Download or read book The Greek Myths written by Robin Waterfield and published by Quercus. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly readable and beautifully illustrated re-telling of the most famous stories from Greek mythology. The Greek Myths contains some of the most thrilling, romantic, and unforgettable stories in all human history. From Achilles rampant on the fields of Troy, to the gods at sport on Mount Olympus; from Icarus flying too close to the sun, to the superhuman feats of Heracles, Theseus, and the wily Odysseus, these timeless tales exert an eternal fascination and inspiration that have endured for millennia and influenced cultures from ancient to modern. Beginning at the dawn of human civilization, when the Titan Prometheus stole fire from Zeus and offered mankind hope, the reader is immediately immersed in the majestic, magical, and mythical world of the Greek gods and heroes. As the tales unfold, renowned classicist Robin Waterfield, joined by his wife, writer Kathryn Waterfield, creates a sweeping panorama of the romance, intrigues, heroism, humour, sensuality, and brutality of the Greek myths and legends. The terrible curse that plagued the royal houses of Mycenae and Thebes, Jason and the golden fleece, Perseus and the dread Gorgon, the wooden horse and the sack of Troy--these amazing stories have influenced art and literature from the Iron Age to the present day. And far from being just a treasure trove of amazing tales, The Greek Myths is a catalogue of Greek myth in art through the ages, and a notable work of literature in its own right.

Download or read book Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition written by Glenn Alexander Magee and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Glenn Alexander Magee's pathbreaking book argues that Hegel was decisively influenced by the Hermetic tradition, a body of thought with roots in Greco-Roman Egypt. Magee traces the influence on Hegel of such Hermetic thinkers as Baader, Böhme, Bruno, and Paracelsus, and fascination with occult and paranormal phenomena. Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition covers Hegel's philosophical corpus and shows that his engagement with Hermeticism lasted throughout his career and intensified during his final years in Berlin. Viewing Hegel as a Hermetic thinker has implications for a more complete understanding of the modern philosophical tradition, and German idealism in particular.

Download or read book The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries written by Thomas Taylor and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2019-10-30 with total page 123 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In offering to the public a new edition of Mr. Thomas Taylor's admirable treatise upon the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, it is proper to insert a few words of explanation. These observances once represented the spiritual life of Greece, and were considered for two thousand years and more the appointed means for regeneration through an interior union with the Divine Essence. However absurd, or even offensive they may seem to us, we should therefore hesitate long before we venture to lay desecrating hands on what others have esteemed holy. We can learn a valuable lesson in this regard from the Grecian and Roman writers, who had learned to treat the popular religious rites with mirth, but always considered the Eleusinian Mysteries with the deepest reverence.

Download or read book The Mysteries of Eleusis written by Georges Méautis and published by . This book was released on 1932 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Greek Religion written by Walter Burkert and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-06-06 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Greek Religion . . . already has the standing of a classic, and the publication of an English version, which incorporates new material and is in effect a second edition, demands a toast . . . Anyone who pretends to survey Greek religion must be phenomenally learned. Burkert is. His book is a marvel of professional scholarship." London Review of Books "This book has established itself as a masterpiece, packed with learning but also rich in ideas and connections of every sort. Its appearance in a good English translation is an event not only for Hellenists but for all those interested in the study of religion . . . nobody else could have produced an account of the subject of comparable range and power. This will be the best history of Greek religion for this generation." New York Review of Books Cover illustration: detail from an Attic vase, 450 B.C., showing a victory sacrifice (The Mansell Collection).