right hand and the mystic kist in its left, about nine feet high. In another sacred enclosure of the Great Goddesses were their statues fifteen feet high; and in another temple where their mysteries were performed, which were imitations of the things done at Eleusis,' was a statue about eight feet high." Another ancient statue of Demeter was black, apparently because her mysteries were celebrated at night and in secrecy. Taking into consideration these circumstances and the practice of the stage, it may be fairly concluded that the weird figures which appeared at Eleusis before the trembling Mystics at initiation were of more than mortal stature, a circumstance which would increase the accompanying horror. Christie thought that these Eleusinian shows were at least in the main transparencies, and that the subjects of them are to be found on the Vases, and remarks: These scenes may be supposed to have consisted either of a dark superficies, in which transparent figures were placed, and hence their Vases with red figures on the black ground; or of opaque figures moved behind a transparent canvas, and hence their earlier Vases with black figures upon a red ground.' This may very likely have been one feature in the performance. The proper way to deal with spectres of this character is to laugh at them; and so we read that when that famous philosopher Apollonios Tyanensis and his friends were on their journey to India as they were going along in the bright moonshine, they [like Dionysos in the Batrachoi] fell in with an Empousa, who, now in this form, now in that, followed after them, until Apollonios, and at his instigation his companions, attacked it with scoffs and jeers, the only safeguard

1 Paus. viii. 25.

2 Ibid. 31.

3 Ibid. 5.

5

Cf. remarks of Paus. viii. 6, on

Aphrodite Melanis.

5 Disquisitions upon the Greek Painted Vases, 37.

against it, and it fled away jabbering.' But let us suppose that the 'terrestrial daemons,' with their masks, wings, black garments, and uncouth dreadful forms, have flitted away across the stage into the dark recesses of the Sekos. The agitated spirits of the Mystics are next to be soothed and refreshed by the lucid visions of the gods themselves.' And here let us note the introduction and influence of the psychical idea. How can man approach any nearer to Mother-Earth and her Daughter, and to PhanesIakchos, Spirit-of-the-Apparent and Growth-power of the Kosmos, than he is at first placed by nature? But when the divinities are regarded as anthropomorphic personages, with peculiar local habitations, then, though their dwelling be not with men, yet they may appear to mortals under special circumstances, and the latter may under certain conditions, especially at and after death, approach their abodes, and even in some mysterious way be united with them and made partakers of the divine nature. Peculiarly does this idea hold good with respect to such divinities as have once lived on earth, and still more so if they are supposed to have suffered there like mortals. The Uasar of Kam is the divinity who fulfils all these conditions in the highest degree; and, as noticed, he is identical, and was by the Hellenes regarded as being identical, with Dionysos. Their error lay in supposing that the Dionysiak rites were direct Kamic importations, and thus when in later times the Hellenik world acquired a general acquaintance with the Egyptian ritual, as a matter of course the ideas and ceremonial of Eleusis received a Uasarian colouring and hue; that is, the psychical element came into far greater prominence, the Earth-mother and her Daughter changed their simple phases, and became, like the Great Goddess of Apuleius, Pessinyntike, Athene,

1 Priaulx, Apollonius of Tyana, 5.

Aphrodite, Diktynna, Here, Uasi, etc., in wild confusion; and Dionysos-Uasar, the Great God, appeared no longer merely as the assistant torch-bearer, but as one of the first and most important of divinities. In later times, too, it would seem, especially considering the confused and contradictory accounts and opinions of the Fathers on the subject, that the ritual of various festivals, once distinct, became, as Paganism faded slowly before Christianity, blended and intermingled. Dionysos wholly joining Demeter, the two great divinities grown greater still by being identified rightly or wrongly with almost all the leading gods of the nations, made a last desperate stand against the conquering Galilaean at Eleusis, and were not finally subdued until more than fifty years after the death of Constantinus. The researches of the present day have revealed the mysteries of Aigyptos in almost all their varied intricacies. We know that they were psychical to the core, and represented in endless detail the eventful journey of the soul towards the Great God, terminating in its triumphant union with him. This idea of the pilgrimage of the soul finds expression in the later ages of Eleusis. Thus Bunsen remarks, 'It is easy to prove that the meaning and aim of the symbols was to shadow forth in a pious and reverent manner the progress of the soul in her pilgrimage through the finite. The real element of the mysteries consisted in the relations of the universe to the soul, more especially after death.'1 So the Neo-Platonik philosopher Sallustius, in his treatise Peri Theôn kai Kosmou, Concerning the Gods and the Existing State of Things, explains the rape of Persephone as signifying the descent of the soul; and we are informed that the Mysteries intimated obscurely by splendid visions the felicity of the soul here and hereafter when

1 God in History, ii. 73.

6

purified from the defilements of a material nature,'1 and adumbrated the future expansion of its 'splendid and winged powers.' 2 So, again, Sallustius, who was a friend of the Emperor Julianus, asserts that the intention of all mystic ceremonies is to conjoin us with the world and the gods.' This is the occult union of the purified and perfected Uasarian with Uasar. Leaving, therefore, the rest of the show, and referring the curious to the exposure of the ancient mysteries by Clemens, Arnobius, and others, let us glance at the later mystic manifestations of Dionysos, who appears in splendour to mortals.' So Themistios, writing in the fourth century of the Christian era, illustrates his father's exposition of the Aristotelic philosophy by the priest throwing open the propylaea of the temple of Eleusis; whereupon the statue of the Goddess, under a burst of light, appeared in full splendour, and the gloom and utter darkness in which the spectators have been enveloped were dispelled.' 'In all initiations and mysteries the gods exhibit many forms of themselves, and appear in a variety of shapes; and sometimes an unfigured light of themselves is thrown forth to the view; sometimes this light is shaped according to a human form, and sometimes it proceeds into a different shape.' 7 The approximation to divinity was only to be attained by a triumph over the carnal nature; and where this prevailed the soul was comparatively dead, and so Plotinos says that to be plunged in matter is to descend into Hades and then fall asleep.'8 Dionysos, like Uasar, had suffered, and had also triumphed in and over his sufferings; and,

1 Cf. the Sokratik consideratious in the Phaidon on the desirability of death as a release from the body. 2 Vide Taylor, Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries. 3 Protrept. cap. ii. 4 Adversus Gentes. Eleusinian

5 For

details vide

Meursius, Eleusinia, which has been a great storehouse for subsequent writers. Also Lenormant, Monographie de la Voie sacrée eleusinienne. Christie, Disquisitions, 59.

7 Proklos, Commentary in Platon Repub.

Ennead. i.; lib. viii.

like Uasar, he represented the Sun, and especially the nocturnal or subterranean Sun, Sol Inferus, who in the blessed regions of the West sinks to the Under-world, sailing in his mystic boat,2 the golden solar cup; for his nightly journey from the West to the East is accomplished in a golden cup, wrought by Hephaistos.' 4 So Stesichoros, B.C. 632-552, sings how Halios [Helios], Hyperion's son, went down into his golden cup and sailed away o'er ocean to the deep realms of night, to visit his beloved ones in the sacred laurel grove. And thus in the Kamic mysteries the soul of the Uasarian having descended into Kerneter, the Under-world, is struck with ecstasy at the magnificent appearance of the subterranean Sun, which he apostrophises in a long address: Hail, thou who hast come as the soul of souls reserved in the West! Hail, thou descending light formed in his disk! Thou hast traversed the heaven; thou hast followed above in yellow. The gods of the West give thee glory; they rejoice at thy perfections.'6 And as the Mystic at Eleusis had to withstand the daemons and spectres, which in later times illustrated the difficulties besetting the soul in its approach to the gods, so the Uasarian had to repel or satisfy the mystic crocodiles, vipers, avenging assessors, daemons of the gate, and other dread beings whom he encountered in his trying passage through the valley of the shadow of death. But as at last the Uasarian penetrated, despite all opposition, to the secret presence of the divine Uasar, so the Eleusinian Mystic was permitted to behold his divinity, and to see holy phantoms,'' and awful but ravishing

1 Cf. Macrob. Sat. i. 18; R. P. Knight, Worship of Priapus, 113; D'Hancarville, Arts de la Grèce, i. 233, 271-3.

2 Vide Cooper, Serpent Myths of Ancient Egypt, 40-1.

3

Apollod. ii. 5; Paus. iii. 16.

39.

4 Mythol. of the Aryan Nations, ii.

5 Apud Athen. xi. 4.

6 Funereal Ritual, xv.

7 St. Croix, Recherches, i. 215. Lobeck charges Sancrucius'' quem omnes gregatim sequuntur,' with