The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and PhilosophyBlavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Religion
The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 3 of 4: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy
Blavatsky, H. P. (Helena Petrovna)
Theosophy
As was said in _Isis Unveiled_:
When men like Pythagoras, Plato and Iamblichus, renowned for their
severe morality, took part in the Mysteries and spoke of them with
veneration, it ill behoves our modern critics to judge them [and
their Initiates] upon their merely external aspect.
Yet this is what has been done until now, especially by the Christian
Fathers. Clement Alexandrinus stigmatises the Mysteries as “indecent and
diabolical” though his words, showing that the Eleusinian Mysteries were
identical with, and even, as he would allege, borrowed from, those of the
Jews, are quoted elsewhere in this work. The Mysteries were composed of
two parts, of which the Lesser were performed at Agræ, and the Greater at
Eleusis, and Clement had been himself initiated. But the Katharsis, or
trials of purification, have ever been misunderstood. Iamblichus explains
the worst; and his explanation ought to be perfectly satisfactory, at any
rate for every unprejudiced mind.
He says:—
Exhibitions of this kind in the Mysteries were designed to free us
from licentious passions, by gratifying the sight, and at the same
time vanquishing all evil thought, through the awful sanctity with
which these rites were accompanied.
Dr. Warburton remarks:
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.
Although persons of both sexes and all classes were allowed to take part
in the Mysteries, and a participation in them was even obligatory, very
few indeed attained the higher and final Initiation in these celebrated
rites. The gradation of the Mysteries is given us by Proclus in the fourth
book of his _Theology of Plato_.
The perfective rite, precedes in order the initiation Telete,
_Muesis_, and the initiation, _Epopteia_, or the final apocalypse
[revelation].
Theon of Smyrna, in _Mathematica_, also divides the mystic rites into five
parts:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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