Purification, it is clear, was an essential feature of the mysteries, and this brings us to the consideration of the meaning of the word mystery. The usual derivation of the word is from μύω, I close the apertures whether of eyes or mouth. The _mystes_, it is supposed, is the person vowed to secrecy who has not seen and will not speak of the things revealed. As such he is distinguished from the _epoptes_ who has seen, but equally may not speak; the two words indicate successive grades of initiation. It will later be seen (p. 480) that in the Orphic Mysteries the word _mystes_ is applied, without any reference to seeing or not seeing, to a person who has fulfilled the rite of eating the raw flesh of a bull. It will also be seen that in Crete, which is probably the home of the mysteries, the mysteries were open to all, they were not mysterious. The derivation of mystery from μύω, though possible, is not satisfactory. I would suggest another and a simple origin. The ancients themselves were not quite comfortable about the connection with μύω. They knew and felt that _mystery_, secrecy, was not the main gist of ‘a mystery’: the essence of it all primarily was purification in order that you might safely eat and handle certain _sacra_. There was no revelation, no secret to be kept, only a mysterious _taboo_ to be prepared for and finally overcome. It might be a _taboo_ on eating first-fruits, it might be a taboo on handling magical _sacra_. In the Thesmophoria, the women fast before they touch the _sacra_; in the Eleusinian mysteries you sacrifice a pig before you offer and partake of the first-fruits. The gist of it all is purification. Clement[396] says significantly, ‘Not unreasonably among the Greeks in their mysteries do ceremonies of purification hold the initial place, as with barbarians the bath.’ Merely as an insulting conjecture Clement[397] in his irresponsible abusive fashion throws out what I believe to be the real origin of the word _mystery_. ‘I think,’ he says, ‘that these orgies and mysteries of yours ought to be derived, the one from the wrath (ὀργή) of Demeter against Zeus, the other from the pollution (μύσος) relating to Dionysos.’ Of course Clement is formally quite incorrect, but he hits on what seems a possible origin of the word _mystery_, that it is the doing of what relates to a μύσος, a pollution, it is primarily a ceremony of purification. Lydus[398] makes the same suggestion, ‘Mysteries,’ he says, ‘are from the separating away of a pollution (μύσος) as equivalent to sanctification.’ The bathing with the pig was not the only rite of purification in the mysteries, though it is the one of which we have most definite detail. From the aetiology[399] of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, we may conjecture that there were, at least for children, rites of purification by passing through fire, and ceremonies of a mock fight or stone-throwing (λιθοβολία, βαλλητύς). All have the same intent and need not here be examined in detail.