The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
History
The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Volume 1
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor
Literature -- History and criticism
Yet it is not altogether improbable that in the Samothracian or Cabeiric
mysteries the link between the Asiatic and Greek popular schemes of
mythology lay concealed. Of these mysteries there are conflicting
accounts, and, perhaps, there were variations of doctrine in the lapse
of ages and intercourse with other systems. But, upon a review of all
that is left to us on this subject in the writings of the ancients, we
may, I think, make out thus much of an interesting fact,--that
'Cabiri', impliedly at least, meant 'socii, complices,' having
a hypostatic or fundamental union with, or relation to, each other; that
these mysterious divinities were, ultimately at least, divided into a
higher and lower triad; that the lower triad, 'primi quia infimi,'
consisted of the old Titanic deities or powers of nature, under the
obscure names of 'Axieros, Axiokersos,' and 'Axiokersa,'
representing symbolically different modifications of animal desire or
material action, such as hunger, thirst, and fire, without
consciousness; that the higher triad, 'ultimi quia superiores,'
consisted of Jupiter, (Pallas, or Apollo, or Bacchus, or Mercury,
mystically called 'Cadmilos') and Venus, representing, as before,
the [Greek (transliterated): nous] or reason, the [Greek: logos] or word or
communicative power, and the [Greek: eros] or love;-that the
'Cadmilos' or Mercury, the manifested, communicated, or sent,
appeared not only in his proper person as second of the higher triad,
but also as a mediator between the higher and lower triad, and so there
were seven divinities; and, indeed, according to some authorities, it
might seem that the 'Cadmilos' acted once as a mediator of the
higher, and once of the lower, triad, and that so there were eight
Cabeiric divinities. The lower or Titanic powers being subdued, chaos
ceased, and creation began in the reign of the divinities of mind and
love; but the chaotic gods still existed in the abyss, and the notion of
evoking them was the origin, the idea, of the Greek necromancy.
These mysteries, like all the others, were certainly in connection with
either the Phoenician or Egyptian systems, perhaps with both. Hence the
old Cabeiric powers were soon made to answer to the corresponding
popular divinities; and the lower triad was called by the uninitiated,
Ceres, Vulcan or Pluto, and Proserpine, and the 'Cadmilos' became
Mercury. It is not without ground that I direct your attention, under
these circumstances, to the probable derivation of some portion of this
most remarkable system from patriarchal tradition, and to the connection
of the Cabeiri with the Kabbala.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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