Part 1
MYSTERIA HISTORY OF THE SECRET DOCTRINES _and_ MYSTIC RITES _of_ ANCIENT RELIGIONS AND Medieval and Modern Secret Orders
By DR. OTTO HENNE AM RHYN
_State Archivist of St. Gall_ SWITZERLAND
STOCKHAM PUBLISHING COMPANY, _Inc._ CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
COPYRIGHT, 1895, By J. FITZGERALD
_TRANSLATOR’S NOTE._
The Mysteries of the Ancient Grecian religions; the cryptic teachings and occult interpretations of the popular religious beliefs communicated to disciples by the priests in the temples of ancient Egypt, Assyria, and India: the interesting, half fabulous, half historical episode of Pythagoras and the Pythagorean League in Magna Graecia; the mystic, ascetic, and semi-monastic communities of the Therapeutae and the Essenes in Palestine a century before the birth of Jesus Christ; the later developments of Mysticism in the time of the Roman Empire, as seen in the history of Apollonius of Tyana and in Isis worship, Mithras worship, worship of the Great Mother, etc.; the secret creed and rites of the Knights Templar and the usages of the lodges of the Stonemasons in the Middle Age; the constitution and procedure of the Femgerichte of Westphalia in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the origin and history and the aims of Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, Illuminism, and a swarm of honest and fraudulent secret organizations in modern times: all these topics have before been made subject matter of numerous learned tractates or of popular compends; but hitherto these doctrines, rites, associations, have not been studied in their unity, in their mutual relation. One service which the author of this work renders to the student of this particular phase of human psychology—the longing for mystery and secret associations—is that he develops this relationship, thus enabling the reader to get a clear understanding of the whole subject.
But the author does very much more than to co-ordinate the facts of mystic associations. He is both a scholar and an artist. Having amassed whatever information regarding the Mysteries and allied phenomena is accessible in universal literature, he handles his materials with the skill of a consummate master of style and of the art of popular exposition. The result is a history of the ancient Mysteries and of their counterparts and imitations in later times, as authentic as the most painstaking research could make it, yet possessing all the charm and grace of a literary masterpiece.
JOSEPH FITZGERALD.
_CONTENTS._
PART FIRST.—MYSTERIES OF THE EAST AND OF BARBAROUS NATIONS. PAGE 1. Introduction 1 2. The Gods 5 3. Egypt 9 4. The Higher Development of Egyptian Religion 12 5. A Reformation in the Land of Nile 16 6. The Egyptian Realm of the Dead 18 7. The Secret Teaching of the Priests of Nileland 20 8. Babylon and Ninive 26 9. Zoroaster and the Persians 32 10. Brahmans and Buddhists 33 11. Secret Leagues of Barbarous Peoples 36
PART SECOND.—THE GRECIAN MYSTERIES AND THE ROMAN BACCHANALIA. 1. Hellas 38 2. Hellenic Divine Worship 41 3. The Hellenic Mysteries 45 4. The Eleusinian Mysteries 49 5. The Mysteries of Samothrace 57 6. The Mysteries of Crete 59 7. The Dionysia 60 8. The Roman Bacchanalia 62 9. Debased Mysteries from the East 65
PART THIRD.—THE PYTHAGOREAN LEAGUE AND OTHER SECRET ASSOCIATIONS. 1. Pythagoras 72 2. The Pythagoreans 79 3. The Orphici 84 4. Mysterious Personages of Ancient Times 86
PART FOURTH.—SON OF MAN. SON OF GOD. 1. Hellenism and Judaism 91 2. The Essenes 94 3. Christianism 96 4. Jesus 102 5. The Early Christians 107 6. The New Testament 110 7. The Elements of the Church 114
PART FIFTH.—A PSEUDO-MESSIAH. A LYING PROPHET. 1. Apollonius of Tyana 117 2. Alexander, the False Prophet 124
PART SIXTH.—THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR. 1. The Middle Age 129 2. The Templars 132 3. The Secrets of the Templars 136 4. The Downfall of the Knights Templar 140
PART SEVENTH.—THE FEMGERICHTE. 1. Courts of Justice in the Middle Age 147 2. The Secret Tribunal 152 3. The End of the Feme 160
PART EIGHTH.—STONEMASONS’ LODGES OF THE MIDDLE AGE. 1. Medieval Architecture 162 2. The Stonemasons’ Lodges of Germany 164 3. French Craftsmen 169 4. The English Stonemasons 172 ASTROLOGERS AND ALCHEMISTS 174
PART NINTH.—RISE AND CONSTITUTION OF FREEMASONRY. 1. Rise of Freemasonry 178 2. Constitution of the Order 184 3. The Lodge 188
PART TENTH.—SECRET SOCIETIES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 1. Miscellaneous Secret Societies 193 2. Obscurantist Influences 196 3. The “High Degrees” Swindle 199 4. Apostles of Nonsense 203 5. The Swedish Rite 210 6. The New Rosicrucians 211
PART ELEVENTH.—THE ILLUMINATI. 1. The Illuminati 216 2. Imitations of Illuminism 226
PART TWELFTH.—SECRET SOCIETIES OF VARIOUS KINDS. 1. Societies of Wits 230 2. Imitations of Ancient Mystic Leagues 232 3. Imitations of Freemasonry 234
MYSTERIA.
_PART FIRST._ _Mysteries of the East and of Barbarous Nations._
1. INTRODUCTION.
In all ages mystery has had a special attraction for mankind. Curiosity is innate in us. The child asks about everything, What is this, what is it for, why is it made so, or so? The child fairly harries its parents with questions, never wearies of raising new ones, often so unexpected and so difficult, that it would puzzle the wisest philosopher to answer them. And this instinct of inquiry is dominant in the adult, too. The grown man wants to know what is to be found behind every curtain, every locked door, in every sealed letter. And when sated with such trifles he must push inquiry further, into the infinite; must lift the veil that hides the wondrous image at Sais; must pluck from the forbidden tree of knowledge the tempting golden fruit. He would with the Titans storm heaven, and ascend to heights “where stirs no breath of air, where stands the boundary-stone of creation.” At last when Faust, after manifold crosses and disappointments, sees that “we can know nothing,” the thought “consumes the heart within him.”
And so we must ever be worried by the reflection that the great riddle of existence will not be solved; nay, never can be solved. Why, we ask, why does anything exist at all? and what does exist, whence comes it, and whither does it go? And though oceans of ink were written on worlds of paper to define the relation between the Here and Beyond, we should not know, after it all, the lot of the thought-endowed tenant of the narrowest human brain-case after its term of living is reached. Never shall we be able to comprehend Being as having a beginning and an end, but neither shall we ever understand how, without beginning or end, it may endure for ever, and extend limitless ever farther and farther into the shoreless ocean of the All. The thinker must by force refrain himself from such inference, lest his brain should be seized by delirium; and the progressive man of action turns to what is sure and clear and understandable, while the listless disciple of Buddha, despairing of ever comprehending existence, longs for nirvana, the soul’s state of everlasting rest and freedom from cares.
Mankind, then, is encompassed by a vast mystery which never has been discovered, though it presses upon us with force all around, and though we know it exists and are conscious that it attends us at every step we take. But man is too proud to endure the thought that anything is beyond his powers: man must in all things do what the primordial creative power does. The Eternal Incomprehensible created worlds that no mortal eye can see: man with the help of glasses sees them. The Eternal set worlds circling around worlds in such wise that for long we mortals were led into error, and took the earth to be the centre of the universe: but men made calculations and measurements, and discovered that their giant sphere was but a grain of sand among colossal worlds. The Eternal caused mountains to rise and rivers to flow, man, too, piled up mountains and scooped out river-beds and seas. Immense oceans separated the continents: man navigated the oceans and discovered shores never seen before. The lightning, issuing from the clouds, rends asunder great trees that have stood for centuries: man imitates the lightning, and employs the electric current for sending messages across continents and oceans, and for illumination. Steam, vapor of water, he harnesses to his car, or employs it to propel ships across the seas. He takes the sun’s rays and makes of them a limner’s pencil. Even the Eternal himself man fashions after his own thoughts, and gives to him a name and attributes, a throne and a court, a form, and even a son. And lest he should in any point fail of acting like the Unsearchable, man sets over against the grand everlasting mystery of creation and eternity, which he cannot comprehend, other mysteries of his own invention—the mystery of the Incarnation, the Resurrection, Redemption, the Trinity, and the rest; and requires his fellow men to acknowledge and reverence these things as mysteries, and to worship as truth what man’s own self-conceit has devised in rivalry with the Eternal.
Thus are mysteries of man’s invention propagated from generation to generation. The love of mystery is contagious; the one who hears of mysteries will himself invent more, and with them impose upon others. And the Initiates shut themselves up in secret chambers, swear fearful oaths never to betray to anyone what others know already, employ emblems which they interpret in one sense or another, speak in language peculiar to themselves, exchange special signs with one another, whisper to each other mysterious words, admit persons to their secret associations with direful or with harmless tests and rites, and form aristocracies of intellect, of creed, or of benevolence, of art or of science, even of humor and of folly. Such is the origin of mystic teachings and secret societies, the teachings designed to hold the societies together, and the societies to propagate the teachings: one hand washes the other. In all ages, among all races we find these mysteries existing under the most various forms, and for ends the most diverse, but they all have this in common that they shut out the profane (outsiders), and that their end is to win and hold power and influence. But they have also had secondary aims such as could be attained without secret doctrines or secret association; and these aims have been of all kinds. Now the purpose may be to promote social freedom and religious or scientific enlightenment, anon to repress these; again, it may be to enrich the members, or, on the other hand, to stimulate them to self-sacrificing charity; or a society will have for its object the Beautiful, and will create works of art to glorify the Eternal, but another society will despise whatever is ideal, professing contempt for the world and themselves; or the aim may be nothing short of the destruction of all human society and a return to Chaos.
A variegated picture and full of life! At the head of the moving procession stalk priests in long robes, begarlanded, carrying the sacred image of Isis or chanting hymns to the Eleusinian Demeter. Then come the wild-eyed troops of the Bacchantes, and in sharp contrast to these, philosophers of the Pythagorean League, in white cloaks, looking down on the populace with a smile of mild scorn; after these the unpretending Essenes, who shoulder the cross of suffering, the Roman brotherhoods (collegia), and then the English and German gilds of stonemasons, with hammer, compass, and square; the Knights Templar, in white cloaks blazoned with the red cross, their haughty mien betraying contempt of all authority; the Fathers of the Company of Jesus, in black cassock and four-cornered hat, eyes sanctimoniously downcast, every man of them a corpse in the hands of his superiors; then come seigneurs and scholars and men of every condition, in white aprons and blue ribbons, and last of all an indistinguishable multitude of variously-clad figures. Let us contemplate the several groups of this picture. First, the priests of the so-called heathen religions of antiquity. Here we have men using a twofold manner of speech. To the people they gave out a teaching different from that communicated to the Initiates of their secret associations, their mysteries. How came that about, how is it accounted for, and how can it be justified?
2. THE GODS.
To answer these questions we must study the origin of religious ideas and the forms they assumed in different periods. Here we meet a phase of thought which stands related to the vain attempts to fathom the Eternal, to scrutinize the Unsearchable, and which, therefore, is necessarily connected with the earliest expression of man’s love of the mysterious.
In the dim ages before the dawn of civilization, when the cave-dweller, or the lake-dweller, had completed his day’s work, and his children were in safety for the night, and their hunger stilled, then, in the glad consciousness of duty discharged, he would rise above mere sense, and would contemplate his surroundings with greater attention than would be possible amid his hard labors as breadwinner. Then, surely, what most profoundly impressed his imagination was the blue vault of the sky across which by day the sun, source of light and warmth, or of blazing and scorching heat, and at night the mild-faced moon, diffusing her witching beams, and the innumerable twinkling stars glided in strange unalterable series. Beneath the arch lay extended the surrounding country, and the man gazed on the diversified panorama of snow-decked alp, roaring cataract, mirror-like lake, and verdant daisy-gemmed prairie. Or he contemplated the tossing billows of the sea, the dread phenomena of the thunder clap and the lightning flash, the ravages of the hurricane, the crash of mountains rent by internal forces, the pitiless, headlong sweep of the river that has overflowed the plain.
These manifestations of the forces of nature, whether winsome or fearsome, impressed the man; and acknowledging his nothingness and impotence he prostrated himself before them and worshiped them. But in worshiping the forces of nature, he must needs think of them as a personality; and the process of personification necessarily began with the phenomena which possess the most pronounced individuality, viz., on the earth, rocks, mountains, trees, animals, rivers, lakes; in the sky, the sun, moon, and stars; between earth and sky, the clouds, winds, thunder, and lightning; finally, fire, the production of which was the first step in human culture.
The further observation of nature led man from particular to general concepts: those were formed more easily, these were hard to compass, and to understand their import required a greater power of reflection. Mythology had its origin in the simple worship of nature, and in this wise.
In the mind of the man who knows nothing of the true relations of the heavenly bodies, all existence must be divided into two principal categories, heaven overhead, earth underfoot. Heaven and Earth—that is the beginning of all mythologies and cosmogonies. Heaven and Earth are for the Israelite the first works of the Eternal; for the Chinese they are “father and mother of all things”; for the Hellenes and the Teutons the first divine beings (Uranos and Gaea, Wodan and Ertha). As men further considered the question how this whole scene of nature, both in its grateful and in its terrible aspects, came to be, Heaven and Earth were regarded as sexed beings, Heaven as fructifying, noble, lofty, male, controlling the lightning and thunder; Earth as prolific, conceptive, passive, female. Heaven and Earth formed a union, and Sun, Moon, and Stars were reputed their children. Among the heavenly bodies the first place is held by the Sun, god of day, who, at his rising in the East by magic power compels his brother and sister deities to obey him: he reigns alone in a sea of light and splendor. Sister and consort of the Sun is the Moon, and the course of these two across the heavens, their rising and their setting, their shining and their obscuration are the source of endless fanciful myths: in these myths, however, there are frequent transformations, the same hero being now the Sun, again Heaven, and the same heroine being now the Moon, anon the Earth. And phantasy discovered in Sun and Moon so many diverse properties that it separated these from one another, and by degrees formed out of them distinct personalities. The Sun, rising out of the ocean and again sinking into it, became Poseidon (Neptune), and the invisible Sun that through the night tarries in the underworld became god of the world of shades, Pluto; and so with other phenomena of the sun. The Moon, too, in her different forms of waxing, full, and waning moon, rising and setting moon, gives rise to groups of three or four sisters (Graces, Fates, Furies), and to many other forms of goddesses, and these are sad, austere, chaste, or alluring, winsome, complaisant; or the Moon assumes the form of some fair daughter of man, who, being loved by some god, becomes mother of gods and heroes. Hence god-descended races and dynasties, whose fortunes and wars are the subject of epics, tragedies, and romances, and the innumerable host of the stars, in the fanciful shapes in which imagination grouped them, afforded inexhaustible material for story and myth. Here was seen a herd faithfully guarded by the herdsman, there a chase conducted by bold hunters, or a company of daring mariners going to win the golden fleece, or the golden apples of the Hesperides, or the thousand eyes of the watchful Argus. On the mantle of the goddess of night phantasy saw pictured Aries, Taurus, Capricornus, Capella, Ursus Major, Orion, Bootes, Draco, Hercules, and all the other figures of the endless web of poesy in which are told the wondrous deeds of gods and heroes.
Such is the light in which mythology appeared when, in the beginnings of scientific inquiry, the forces of nature were personified. As centuries passed the true sense of these myths, transmitted from father to son, was lost, and the whole was taken to be actual fact. But the master minds discerned the true state of the case, and soon regained the real meanings. Such men as Aristotle, Plutarch, and others often told in their writings what they thought regarding the traditions, but not so the wily priests within the walls of the temples. Their secret doctrines doubtless conveyed a more or less rationalistic interpretation of the myths and a purer theology, though it must be admitted that, in order to guard the mysteries of the secret associations, and to save the priesthood from becoming superfluous, this teaching was tricked out in mysticism, symbolism and allegory; and above all that it was accompanied by certain dramatic representations and certain moralizing ceremonies.
The countries of antiquity whereof we know with certainty that they possessed “mysteries,” i. e., secret associations under priestly guidance, are Egypt, Chaldaea, and Greece.
3. EGYPT.
As the sources of the Nile were undiscovered till a very recent date, so do the sources of Egyptian civilization remain hidden still. We know fairly well how the population of Egypt was made up. It consisted of an aboriginal stock, whose physical characters, as given in writings or in sculptures, show that it was of negro origin, and of a conquering people belonging to the same race as the inhabitants of Europe in high antiquity: this race invaded the Nile land probably from Asia, made themselves masters of it, and in time mingled with the aborigines. The great moving cause of Egyptian civilization was always the Nile, called in Egypt Hapi; for the Nile was the essential factor, by the annual overflow of its fertilizing waters in Summer and Autumn, in determining the conformation of the land, the climate, the seasons, and, consequently, the manners and usages of the inhabitants. Hence in the language of the natives, Egypt was called Kemt, the dark land, because of the rich deposits of loam left after the floods of the Nile.
But this name attached only to the Nile valley, bounded on the East and West by stony deserts, which the Egyptians did not reckon as belonging to their country. The Semites called the land Misr, or Misraim; the Greeks gave first to the river, then to the region, the name Egypt (on what grounds we know not), and finally to the river the name Neilos. It has ever been a land of enigmas, this Nileland. Whence comes its river? Why does it overflow the country in Summer and Autumn? Why those mighty pyramids? What were the doings in those temples, planted so close together? What mean those strange characters, the hieroglyphs? Why do the gods wear heads of animals, and why, on the other hand, have the sphinxes a human head on a lion’s body?
In order to exercise undisputed mastery over the country the conquerors divided among themselves all the land and all the authority. They formed two hereditary classes or estates—Priests, who controlled the minds, and Warriors, who controlled the bodies of the conquered people. Of the subject race there were several classes, most probably six, though the accounts we have are mutually contradictory. These classes are: Artists, mechanics, traders, mariners, agriculturists, herdsmen; in the latter class of the swineherds, most despised of all Egyptians, because of the unclean animal which they tended.
Now, while the warrior class had the management of military affairs and the executive government, and as a rule supplied the occupants of the throne, the priests possessed the legal lore and the scientific knowledge, and prescribed to the people what they must believe, while among themselves and in the company of Initiates they thought very differently.
The Egyptian religion has its foundation in astronomy. The regular overflow of the Nile, which involved a precise division of the year into seasons, must at an early period have led to a diligent observation of the course of the stars, in order to make timely preparation for the floods; and the splendor of the starry sky in that region, near the tropics, where hardly a single constellation is out of sight through the whole year, favored the study of astronomic science. The Egyptians contemplated the glories of the heavens, not with the stolidity of the Chinese, who therein see only objects to be counted and measured; nor yet with the idealist imagination of Europeans. Hence their personifications of the world of stars are uncouth, confused, without grace or charm.
The heavenly body that for us is mightiest of all, the sun, must have been for the Egyptians the most ancient and the mightiest of gods. Their sun-god was named Re. But even as among the Hellenes, so in Egypt the several attributes of the sun were assigned to different personalities. Thus, the rising sun, as the youthful warrior-god Horos, was early distinguished from Re; over against Horos stood his opposite and his twin-brother, Set, spirit of darkness. For mothers the sun-god had Isis, Hathor, and Neit, goddesses of heaven. To these deities were added Aah, the moon-god, and the gods of the several stars and constellations. Besides these gods of the whole land, particular places and regions had their own gods; thus Ptah was lord and god of Memphis, Amon of Thebes, and so on.