The Eleusinian Mysteries. A Study of Religious History. VII-VIII. François Lenormant. Collected by Robert Hutwohl (original) (raw)

1880, The Contemporary Review

AT the present day it is definitively proved that there was not in the mysteries of Eleusis, any more than in the other mysteries of Greece, any dogmatic teaching; that the proceedings in them were not by way of a communication, made directly by the hierophantês to the mystês, of formal doctrinal beliefs different from the public religion and superior to it. There were, on the nights of the initiations, rites and representations of a symbolic nature, intended to awaken religious impressions in the souls of the initiated; to make them penetrate further into the knowledge of divine things, and into the inner meaning of the myths presented for adoration; and, above all, to apply to them the merits of the vicissitudes in the history of the gods by throwing down the barrier between man and the divinity. But everywhere, at Eleusis as well as at Samothrake and in the other mysteries, the teaching remained closely attached to the ceremonies themselves, and it resulted immediately therefrom for those who could understand them. It did not form a distinct part intended to supply the solution of an enigma which had long been paraded before the eyes.