Apuleius in The Golden Ass gives an interesting account of his induction into the mysteries of Isis: how, bidding farewell one evening to the general congregation outside, and clothed in a new linen garment, he was handed by the priest into the inner recesses of the temple itself; how he "approached the confines of death, and having trod on the threshold of Proserpine (the Underworld), returned therefrom, being borne through all the elements. At midnight I saw the sun shining with its brilliant light: and I approached the presence of the Gods beneath and the Gods above, and stood near and worshipped them." During the night things happened which must not be disclosed; but in the morning he came forth "consecrated by being dressed in twelve stoles painted with the figures of animals." (1) He ascended a pulpit in the midst of the Temple, carrying in his right hand a burning torch, while a chaplet encircled his head, from which palm-leaves projected like rays of light. "Thus arrayed like the Sun, and placed so as to resemble a statue, on a sudden the curtains being drawn aside, I was exposed to the gaze of the multitude. After this I celebrated the most joyful day of my initiation, as my natal day (day of the New Birth) and there was a joyous banquet and mirthful conversation." (1) An allusion no doubt to the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the pathway of the Sun, as well as to the practice of the ancient priests of wearing the skins of totem-animals in sign of their divinity. One can hardly refuse to recognize in this account the description of some kind of ceremony which was supposed to seal the illumination of a man and his new birth into divinity--the animal origin, the circling of all experience, the terrors of death, and the resurrection in the form of the Sun, the symbol of all light and life. The very word "illumination" carries the ideas of light and a new birth with it. Reitzenstein in his very interesting book on the Greek Mysteries (1) speaks over and over again of the illumination ([gr fwtismos]) which was held to attend Initiation and Salvation. The doctrine of Salvation indeed ([gr swthria]) was, as we have already seen, rife and widely current in the Second Century B. C. It represented a real experience, and the man who shared this experience became a [gr qeios] [gr anqrwpos] or divine man. (2) In the Orphic Tablets the phrase "I am a child of earth and the starry heaven, but my race is of heaven (alone)" occurs more than once. In one of the longest of them the dead man is instructed "after he has passed the waters (of Lethe) where the white Cypress and the House of Hades are" to address these very words to the guardians of the Lake of Memory while he asks for a drink of cold water from that Lake. In another the dead person himself is thus addressed: "Hail, thou who hast endured the Suffering, such as indeed thou hadst never suffered before; thou hast become god from man!" (3) Ecstacy was the acme of the