Mysticism and its Results | Page 9

before Saul:
"To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me."[34] The appearance
of Samuel was regarded as a real transaction by the writer of
Ecclesiasticus, for he says: "By his faithfulness he was found a true
prophet, and by his word he was known to be faithful in vision; for
after his death he showed the king his end, and lift up his voice from
the earth in prophecy."[35] The rabbins 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 mê ti phasma nerterôn tod ê]?

HERCULES. [Greek: ou psuchagôgon tond' epoiêsô 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]--
"Hæc 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 minutiæ 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