Mysticism and its Results | Page 9

say that the woman was the mother of Abner; she is said to have had the spirit of Ob, which Dean Milman has remarked is singularly similar in sound to the name of the Obeah women in Africa and the West Indies. Herodotus also mentions Thesprotia, in Epirus, as the place where Periander evoked the spirit of his wife Melissa, whom he had murdered.[36]
{37}
It was a very general opinion, in later days, that demons had power over the souls of the dead, until Christ descended into Hades and delivered them from the thrall of the "Prince of Darkness." The dead were sometimes raised by those who did not possess a familiar spirit. These consulters repaired to the grave at night, and there lying down, repeated certain words in a low, muttering tone, and the spirit thus summoned appeared. "And thou shalt be brought down, and shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be, as of one that hath a familiar spirit, out of the ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust."[37]
Euripides also refers to necromancy.[38]
ADMETUS. [Greek: hora ge m�� ti phasma nerter?n tod ��]? HERCULES. [Greek: ou psuchag?gon tond' epoi��s? xenon].
ADM. See! is not this some spectre from the dead?
HER. No dead-invoker for thy guest hast thou.
Seneca describes the spirits of the dead as being evoked by the Psychagogus in a cave rendered gloomy and as dark as night by the cypress, laurel, and other like trees.[39] Claudian refers to the same superstition.[40] And Lucan,[41] where Erictho recalls a spirit to animate {38} the body it had left, by horrid ceremonies. So Tibullus:[42]--
"H?c cantu finditque solum, manesque sepulchris, Elicit, et tepido devocat ossa toro."
The celebrated Heeren, in his "Politics of Ancient Greece" (ch. iii., p. 67, Am. ed.), remarks, in reference to the mysteries of Eleusis, that they exhibited the superiority of civilized over savage life, and gave instructions respecting a future life and its nature. For what was this more than an interpretation of the sacred traditions which were told of the goddess as the instructress in agriculture, of the forced descent of her daughter to the lower world, etc.? And we need not be more astonished if, in some of their sacred rites, we perceive an excitement carried to a degree of enthusiastic madness which belonged peculiarly to the East, but which the Hellenes were very willing to receive. For we must not neglect to bear in mind that they shared the spirit of the East; and did they not live on the very boundary-line between the East and the West? As those institutions were propagated farther to the west, they lost their original character. We know what the Bacchanalian rites became at Rome; and had they been introduced north of the Alps, what form would they have there assumed? But to those countries it was possible to {39} transplant the vine, not the service of the god to whom the vine was sacred. The orgies of Bacchus suited the cold soil and inclement forests of the North as little as the character of its inhabitants.
Without going further into detail (the minuti? of which are thus opened to every scholar), we must presume that the mythology of the children of Ham, the origin of pagan worship, fostered by variant mysteries to obtain and maintain temporal power, spread itself through the then known world. So far as we know, the secret doctrines which were taught in the mysteries may have finally degenerated into mere forms and an unmeaning ritual. And yet the mysteries exercised a great influence on the spirit of the nation, not of the initiated only, but also on the great mass of the people; and perhaps they influenced the latter still more than the former. They preserved the reverence for sacred things, and this gave them their political importance. They produced that effect better than any modern secret societies have been able to do. The mysteries had their secrets, but not everything connected with them was secret. They had, like those of Eleusis, their public festivals, processions, and pilgrimages, in which none but the initiated took a part, but of which no one was prohibited from being a spectator. While the multitude was permitted to gaze at them, it learned to believe that there was something sublimer than anything with which it was acquainted, revealed only to the initiated; and {40} while the worth of that sublimer knowledge did not consist in secrecy alone, it did not lose any of its value by being concealed. Thus the popular religion and the secret doctrines, although always distinguished from each other, united in serving to curb the people. The condition and the influence of religion on a nation were always closely connected