The Rudolf Steiner Archive

4. Mystery Wisdom and Myth

[ 1 ] The Mystic searched for forces within himself, he searched for entities within himself that remain unknown to man as long as he is stuck in the ordinary view of life. The Myste asks the great question about his own spiritual forces and laws that transcend the lower nature. Man with the ordinary, sensual-logical view of life creates gods for himself, or when he comes to the insight of creation, he denies them. The Myste recognizes that he creates gods; he recognizes why he creates them; he has, so to speak, come to understand the natural laws of the creation of gods. It is as if the plant suddenly became aware and learned the laws of its own growth, its own development. It develops in a state of unconsciousness. If it knew its laws, it would have to gain a completely different relationship to itself. What the lyricist feels when he sings of the plant, what the botanist thinks when he investigates its laws: that is what a knowing plant would have in mind as an ideal of itself. - So it is with the mystic in relation to his laws, to the forces at work within him. As a knower, he must create a divine beyond himself. And so the Initiates, too, stood by what the people would have created beyond nature. This is how they approached the world of gods and myths of the people. They wanted to recognize the laws of this world of gods and myths. Where the people had a god, where they had a myth, they sought a higher truth. - Consider an example: the Athenians had been forced by the Cretan king Minos to give him seven boys and seven girls every eight years. These were thrown to the Minotaur, a terrible monster, as food. The third time the sad mission was to leave for Crete, the king's son Theseus went along. When he arrived in Crete, Ariadne, King Minos' own daughter, took care of him. The Minotaur lived in the labyrinth, a maze from which no one who had fallen in could find their way out. Theseus wanted to free his hometown from the shameful tribute. He had to enter the labyrinth into which the monster's prey was usually thrown. He wanted to kill the Minotaur. He undertook this task; he overcame the terrible enemy and got out into the open again with the help of a ball of thread that Ariadne had handed him. - The mystic should realize how the creative human spirit comes to form such a narrative. Just as the botanist eavesdrops on plant growth in order to find its laws, he wanted to eavesdrop on the creative spirit. He sought a truth, a wisdom where the people had placed a myth. Sallustius reveals to us the position of a mystical sage in relation to such a myth: "One could call the whole world a myth, which includes bodies and things in a visible way, souls and spirits in a hidden way. If the truth about the gods were taught to everyone, the unintelligent would hold it in low esteem because they do not understand it, but the more capable would take it lightly; but if the truth is given in a mythical wrapping, it is protected from contempt and provides the impetus for philosophizing. "

[ 2 ] When one sought the truth content of a myth as a myth, one was aware that one was adding something to what was present in the popular consciousness. One was aware that one was placing oneself above this popular consciousness, just as the botanist places himself above the growing plant. One said something quite different from what was present in the mythical consciousness; but one regarded what one said as a deeper truth, which expressed itself symbolically in the myth. Man confronts sensuality as a hostile monster. He sacrifices the fruits of his personality to it. It devours them. It does so until the overcomer (Theseus) awakens in man. His knowledge spins him the thread by which he finds his way again when he enters the maze of sensuality to kill his enemy. The mystery of human knowledge itself is expressed in this overcoming of sensuality. The mystic knows this mystery, it is indicated by the same to a power in the human personality. Ordinary consciousness is not aware of this power. But it does work in it. It produces the myth, which has the same structure as the mystical truth. This truth symbolizes itself in the myth. - So what lies in the myths? They are a creation of the spirit, of the unconsciously creating soul. The soul has a very specific law. It must work in a certain direction in order to create beyond itself. At the mythological level it does this in images; but these images are built according to the laws of the soul. One could also say that when the soul progresses beyond the level of mythological consciousness to the deeper truths, these bear the same imprint as the myths before, for one and the same force is at work in their creation. Plotinus, the philosopher of the Neoplatonic school (204-269 AD), speaks about this relationship between figurative-mythical imagination and higher cognition with reference to the Egyptian priestly ways:

[ 3 ] "The Egyptian sages, whether on the basis of rigorous research or instinctively, do not use written characters to express their teachings and sentences as imitations of voice and speech when communicating their wisdom, but they draw pictures and lay down in their temples the thought content of each thing in the outlines of the pictures, so that each picture is a content of knowledge and wisdom, an object and a totality, although no argument and discussion. One then extracts the content from the picture and gives it words and finds the reason why it is so and not otherwise."

[ 4 ] If you want to get to know the relationship between mysticism and mythical stories, you have to see how the world view of those who know that their wisdom is in harmony with the conception of the Mystery Being relates to the mythical. Such harmony is present to the fullest extent in Plato. How he interprets myths and how he uses them in his presentation can be regarded as authoritative. In "Phaedrus", a conversation about the soul, the myth of Boreas is cited. This divine being, who was seen in the rushing wind, once saw the beautiful Orithya, the daughter of the Attic king Erechtheus, who was picking flowers with her playmates. He was seized by love for her, stole her away and took her to his grotto. In the conversation, Plato has Socrates reject a purely intellectual interpretation of this myth. According to this interpretation, a completely external, natural fact is symbolically expressed in the story. The storm wind is said to have seized the king's daughter and hurled her off the rock. "Such interpretations," says Socrates, "are learned sophistry, however popular and common they may be today. For whoever has decomposed one of these mythological figures must, for the sake of consistency, also cast doubt on all the others in the same way and know how to explain them naturally. . . . But even if such a work could be brought to completion, in all cases it would not prove a happy talent on the part of the person doing it, but only a pleasing wit, a peasant wisdom and a ridiculous rashness. . . . Therefore I abandon such examinations and believe what is generally held of them. I do not examine them, as I have just said, but myself, whether I am not also a monster, more manifoldly formed and consequently more confused than a chimera, wilder than Typhon, or whether I represent a tamer and simpler being, to whom a part of a decent and divine nature has been bestowed. " What Plato does not approve of can be seen from this: an intellectual, rationalistic interpretation of the myths. This must be kept together with the way in which he himself uses myths to express himself through them. Where he speaks of the life of the soul, where he leaves the paths of the transient and seeks out the eternal in the soul, i.e. where the ideas no longer exist that are based on sensory perception and intellectual thinking, Plato makes use of myth. The "Phaedrus" speaks of the eternal in the soul. There the soul is depicted as a team of two horses with wings on all sides and a leader. One of the horses is patient and wise, the other stubborn and wild. If an obstacle gets in the way of the team, the stubborn horse uses it to hinder the good one in its will and to defy the leader. When the team arrives at the place where it is to follow the gods on the back of heaven, the bad horse throws the team into disarray. It depends on the power it has whether it can be overcome by the good horse and whether the team can get over the obstacle into the realm of the supernatural. Thus it happens to the soul that it can never rise completely undisturbed into the realm of the divine. Some souls rise to this eternal vision more, others less. The soul that has seen the hereafter remains unharmed until the next procession; the one that - because of the wild horse - has seen nothing, must try a new procession. These moves refer to the various incarnations of the soul. A procession means the life of the soul in a personality. The wild horse represents the lower nature, the wise horse the higher nature, the leader the soul longing for deification. Plato resorts to myth to depict the path of the eternal soul through the various transformations. In the same way, other Platonic writings turn to myth, to the symbolic narrative, to depict the inner being of man, the non-sensually perceptible.

[ 5 ] Plato is completely in tune with the mythical and parable-like expression of others. In ancient Indian literature, there is a parable attributed to the Buddha. A man who is attached to life, who does not want to die at any price, who seeks sensual pleasure, is pursued by four snakes. He hears a voice commanding him to feed and bathe the four snakes from time to time. The man runs away for fear of the evil snakes. He hears a voice again. It draws his attention to five murderers who are after him. The man runs away again. A voice draws his attention to a sixth murderer who wants to cut off his head with a drawn sword. The man flees again. He comes to a deserted village. He hears a voice telling him that thieves will soon plunder the village. As the man flees further, he comes to a great flood of water. He does not feel safe on this side of the river; he makes himself a basket out of straws, wood and leaves; in it he reaches the other bank. Now he is safe; he is a Brahmin. The meaning of this parable is that man has to pass through various states until he reaches the divine. The four snakes represent the four elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Air. The five murderers represent the five senses. The deserted village is the soul that has escaped the impressions of the senses, but is not yet safe when it is alone with itself. If it seizes only its lower nature within itself, it must perish. Man must put together the boat that will carry him across the flood of transience from one shore, the sensual nature, to the other, the eternal-divine one.

[ 6 ] Consider the Egyptian Osiris mystery in this light. Osiris had gradually become one of the most important Egyptian deities. The idea of him supplanted other ideas of the gods that existed among certain sections of the population. A significant mythical circle now formed around Osiris and his wife Isis. Osiris was the son of the sun god, his brother was Typhon-Set, his sister Isis. Osiris married his sister. He ruled Egypt with her. The evil brother Typhon was bent on destroying Osiris. He had a box made that was exactly the length of Osiris' body. At a banquet, the box was offered as a gift to the person who fitted into it exactly. No one but Osiris succeeded. He lay down in it. Then Typhon and his comrades pounced on Osiris, closed the box and threw it into the river. When Isis heard the horror, she wandered around desperately looking for the body of her husband. When she found him, Typhon seized him again. He tore it into fourteen pieces, which were scattered in various places. Various Osiris tombs were shown in Egypt. Here and there, in many places, parts of the god were said to have been buried. Osiris himself, however, emerged from the underworld, defeated Typhon, and a ray from him shone on Isis, who thereby gave birth to the son, Harpocrates or Horus.

[ 7 ] And now compare this myth with the world view of the Greek philosopher Empedocles (490 to 430 BC). He assumes that the one primordial being was once torn into the four elements of fire, water, earth and air or into the multiplicity of existence. He contrasts two powers which bring about the becoming and passing away within this world of being, love and conflict. Empedocles says of the elements:

[ 8 ] They themselves remain the same, but running through each other
they become human beings and all the countless other beings,
now gathering together in love's power to form one entity;
now scattering again as individuals through hatred and strife.

[ 9 ] So what are the things of the world from Empedocles' point of view? They are the various mixed elements. They could only come into being because the primordial One has been torn into the four entities. This primordial One is thus poured out into the elements of the world. When we encounter a thing, it is a part of the poured-out divinity. But this divinity is hidden within it. It first had to die so that things could come into being. And what are these things? Mixtures of the components of God, brought about in their structure by love and hate. Empedocles says this clearly:

[ 10 ] Here for clear proof the structure of human limbs,
How through love the substances now unite in one
All, as many as the body possesses in the flower of existence;
Then, torn apart in pernicious strife and contention,
They again wander about individually on the edge of life.
It is the same with the shrubs and water-dwelling fish
And with the game of the mountains and the winged ships.

[ 11 ] It can only be Empedocles' view that the wise man finds again the divine primal unity that has been enchanted in the world and entwined in love and hate. But if man finds the divine, he himself must be a divine. For Empedocles is of the opinion that the same can only be recognized through the same. Goethe's saying expresses his conviction of knowledge:

[ 12 ] Were not the eye sunlike,
How could we behold the light?
Does not God's own power live in us,
How can the divine delight us?

[ 13 ] These thoughts about the world and man, which go beyond sensory experience, could be found in the myth of Osiris. The divine creative power is poured into the world. It appears as the four elements. God (Osiris) is killed. Man with his knowledge, which is of a divine nature, is to awaken him again; he is to find him again as Horus (son of God, Logos, wisdom) in the contrast between conflict (Typhon) and love (Isis). In Greek form, Empedocles himself expresses his basic conviction with the ideas that resonate with the myth. Love is Aphrodite; Neikos is strife. They bind and unbind the elements.

[ 14 ] The representation of a myth's content in a style such as that observed here must not be confused with a merely symbolic or even allegorical interpretation of the myths. This is not what is meant here. The images that make up the content of the myth are not invented symbols for abstract truths, but real spiritual experiences of the initiate. He experiences the images with the spiritual organs of perception, just as the normal person experiences the images of sensual things with his eyes and ears. But just as little as an imagination is something in itself if it is not aroused in perception by the external object, so little is the mythical image something without the arousal of the real facts of the spiritual world. It is only in relation to the sense world that man stands at first outside the exciting things; whereas he can only experience the mythical images if he stands within the corresponding spiritual processes. But in order to stand within, he must, according to the old mystical opinion, have gone through initiation. The spiritual processes in which he looks are then, as it were, illustrated by the mythical images. He who is not able to take the mythical as such an illustration of the true spiritual processes has not yet penetrated to understanding. For the spiritual processes themselves are supersensible; and images that are reminiscent of the sensory world in their content are not themselves spiritual but merely an illustration of the spiritual. He who lives merely in images is dreaming; he who has brought himself to feel the spiritual in the image, as one feels the rose in the sensory world through the imagination of the rose, lives only in spiritual perceptions. This is also the reason why the images of myths cannot be unambiguous. Because of their character as illustrations, the same myths can express different spiritual facts. It is therefore not a contradiction if myth explainers refer one myth to this spiritual fact and another to a different one.

[ 15 ] From this point of view, you can find a thread running through the various Greek myths. Consider the legend of Heracles. The twelve labors imposed on Heracles appear in a higher light when one considers that he allows himself to be initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries before the last, the most difficult one. On behalf of King Eurystheus of Mycenae, he is to fetch the hellhound Cerberus from the underworld and bring him back down again. In order to be able to enter the underworld, Heracles must be initiated. The Mysteries led man through the death of the ephemeral, i.e. into the underworld; and they wanted to save his eternal from destruction through initiation. As Myste, he was able to overcome death. Heracles overcomes the dangers of the underworld as Myste. This justifies interpreting his other deeds as inner stages of the soul's development. He overcomes the Nemean lion and brings it to Mycenae. In other words, he makes himself the ruler of the purely physical power in man; he tames it. He goes on to kill the nine-headed Hydra. He overcomes them with fires of fire and dips his arrows into their bile so that they become infallible. In other words, he overcomes lower science, sensory knowledge, through the fire of the spirit and takes from what he has gained in this lower knowledge the strength to see the lower in the light that is suitable for the spiritual eye. Heracles catches the hind of Artemis. She is the goddess of the hunt. Heracles hunts for what nature can offer the human soul. The other works can be interpreted in the same way. It is not possible to follow every course here; and only how the meaning in general points to the inner development should be presented.

[ 16 ] A similar interpretation is possible for the Argonaut train. Phrixus and his sister Helle, the children of a Boeotian king, suffered much at the hands of their stepmother. The gods sent them a ram with a golden coat (fleece), which carried them away through the air. When they crossed the strait between Europe and Asia, Helle drowned. The strait is therefore called the Hellespont. Phrixus reached the king of Colchis, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea. He sacrificed the ram to the gods and gave the fleece to King Aëtes. He had it hung up in a grove and guarded by a terrible dragon. The Greek hero Jason, together with other heroes, Heracles, Theseus and Orpheus, undertook to fetch the fleece from Colchis. He was given difficult tasks in order to obtain the treasure of Aëtes. But Medea, the king's magical daughter, supported him. He tamed two fire-breathing bulls, plowed a field and sowed dragon's teeth so that men in armor grew out of the earth. On Medea's advice, he threw a stone among the men, whereupon they killed each other. Jason puts the dragon to sleep with Medea's magic and is then able to win the fleece. He returns to Greece with it. Medea accompanies him as his wife. The king hurries after the fugitives. To stop him, Medea kills her brother Absyrtus and scatters his limbs in the sea. Aëtes is stopped by collecting them. This is how the two were able to reach Jason's homeland with the fleece. - Every single fact demands a deeper explanation of its meaning. The fleece is something that belongs to man, something that is infinitely valuable to him; something that was separated from him in ancient times and whose recovery is linked to the overcoming of terrible powers. So it is with the eternal in the human soul. It belongs to man. But he finds himself separated from it. His lower nature separates him from it. Only if he overcomes it, puts it to sleep, can he regain it. This is possible if his own consciousness (Medea) comes to his aid with its magic power. Medea becomes for Jason what Diotime became for Socrates as a teacher of love. Man's own wisdom has the magic power to attain the divine after overcoming the transient. Only a human-lower nature can emerge from the lower nature, the harnessed men who are overcome by the power of the spiritual, the advice of Medea. Even if man has already found his eternal, the fleece, he is not yet safe. He must sacrifice a part of his consciousness (Absyrtus). This is demanded by the world of the senses, which we can only understand as a manifold (fragmented) world. For all this, one could go even deeper into the description of the spiritual processes behind the images; however, only the principle of myth formation should be indicated here.

[ 17 ] The legend of Prometheus is of particular interest in terms of such an interpretation. Prometheus and Epimetheus are sons of the Titan Japetus. The Titans are children of the oldest generation of gods, Uranos (heaven) and Gaea (earth). Kronos, the youngest of the Titans, overthrew his father from the throne and seized control of the world. In return, he and the other Titans were overpowered by his son Zeus. And Zeus became the supreme god. Prometheus sided with Zeus in the battle of the Titans. On his advice, Zeus banished the Titans to the underworld. But the attitude of the Titans lived on in Prometheus. He was only half a friend of Zeus. When Zeus wanted to destroy mankind because of their arrogance, Prometheus took care of them, taught them the art of numbers and writing and other things that lead to culture, namely the use of fire. Zeus was angry with Prometheus for this. Hephaestus, the son of Zeus, had to create an image of a woman of great beauty, whom the gods adorned with every possible gift. Pandora was the name of the woman: the all-gifted one. Hermes, the messenger of the gods, brought her to Epimetheus, Prometheus' brother. She brought him a small box as a gift from the gods. Epimetheus accepted the gift, even though Prometheus had advised him never to accept a gift from the gods. When the box was opened, all kinds of human plagues flew out of it. All that remained inside was hope, because Pandora quickly closed the lid. Hope therefore remained as a dubious gift from the gods. - Prometheus was forged onto a rock in the Caucasus at Zeus' command because of his relationship with humans. An eagle constantly feeds on his liver, which is constantly being replaced. Prometheus has to spend his days in agonizing loneliness until one of the gods voluntarily sacrifices himself, that is, consecrates himself to death. The tormented man endures his suffering as a steadfast sufferer. It was made known to him that Zeus would be dethroned by the son of a mortal if he did not marry this mortal. It was important to Zeus to know this secret; he sent Hermes, the messenger of the gods, to Prometheus to find out about it. He refused to give any information. - The legend of Heracles is linked to the legend of Prometheus. Heracles also comes to the Caucasus on his travels. He killed the eagle that ate Prometheus' liver. The centaur Chiron, who, although suffering from an incurable wound, cannot die, sacrifices himself for Prometheus. He is then reconciled with the gods.

[ 18 ] The Titans are the power of will, which emerges as nature (Kronos) from the original world spirit (Uranos). We should not just think of forces of will in abstract form, but of real beings of will. Prometheus belongs to them. This characterizes his nature. But he is not quite a Titan. In a certain sense, he is like Zeus, the spirit who assumes world domination after the untamed force of nature (Kronos) has been tamed. Prometheus is therefore a representative of those worlds that have given man the forward-moving, half natural, half spiritual force, the will. On the one hand the will points towards good, on the other towards evil. Depending on whether it tends towards the spiritual or the transient, its destiny is shaped. This destiny is the destiny of man himself. Man is forged to the transitory. The eagle gnaws at him. He must endure. He can only achieve the highest if he seeks his destiny in solitude. He has a secret. It consists in the fact that the divine (Zeus) must wed itself to a mortal, the human consciousness bound to the physical body, in order to give birth to a son, the human wisdom (the Logos) that redeems God. This makes the consciousness immortal. He must not reveal this secret until a Myste (Heracles) approaches him and removes the violence that continually threatens him with death. A being, half animal, half human, a centaur, must sacrifice himself in order to redeem man. The centaur is man himself, the half-animal, half-spiritual man. He must die so that the purely spiritual man can be redeemed. What Prometheus, the human will, spurns, Epimetheus, the intellect, the wisdom, takes. But the gifts offered to Epimetheus are only sufferings and plagues. For the mind clings to the void, to the transitory. And only one thing remains - the hope that the eternal will one day be born from the transient.

[ 19 ] The thread that runs through the Argonauts, Heracles and Prometheus saga also proves itself in Homer's Odysseus poem. One may find the application of the interpretation forced here. But on closer consideration of everything that comes into consideration, even the strongest doubter of such interpretations must lose all doubts. Above all, the fact that Odysseus is also said to have descended into the underworld must come as a surprise. One may think what one likes about the poet of the Odyssey: it is impossible to attribute to him the fact that he allows a mortal to descend into the underworld without relating him to what the passage into the underworld meant within the Greek world view. But it meant the overcoming of the transient and the resurrection of the eternal in the soul. It must therefore be admitted that Odysseus accomplished this. And thus his experiences, like those of Heracles, take on a deeper meaning. They become a description of something non-sensual, of the development of the soul. In addition, the Odyssey is not narrated in the way that an external course of events demands. The hero travels on miracle ships. The actual geographical distances are dealt with in the most arbitrary way. The sensual-real cannot matter at all. This becomes understandable if the sensual-real processes are only told in order to illustrate a spiritual development. Moreover, the poet himself says at the beginning of the work that it is about the search for the soul:

[ 20 ] Tell me, Muse, of the man, the many-souled one, who many times
wandered, after he destroyed the holy Troy:
saw many cities and learned custom,
also endured so much in the sea of grievous suffering,
striving at the same time for his own soul and the return of his friends.

[ 21 ] A man who seeks the soul, the divine, is before us; and the wanderings in search of this divine are told. - He comes to the land of the Cyclopes. These are hulking giants with one eye on their foreheads. The most fearsome, Polyphemus, devours several companions. Odysseus saves himself by blinding the Cyclops. This is the first stage of the life pilgrimage. Physical force, the lower nature, must be overcome. Whoever does not take away its power, does not blind it, will be devoured by it. Odysseus then arrives on the island of the sorceress Circe. She transforms some of his companions into grunting pigs. She is also defeated by him. Circe is the lower spiritual power that clings to the ephemeral. She can only push man deeper into animality through abuse. - Odysseus must overcome her. Then he can descend into the underworld. He becomes Myste. Now he is exposed to the dangers to which the Myste is exposed when ascending from the lower to the higher degrees of initiation. He reaches the sirens, who lure the person passing by to his death with sweet magic sounds. These are the creations of the lower imagination, which are first pursued by those who have freed themselves from the sensual. He has made it as far as the freely creative spirit, but not as far as the initiated spirit. He pursues delusions from whose power he must free himself. -Odysseus must make the horrible passage between Scylla and Charybdis. The budding Myste wavers back and forth between spirit and sensuality. He cannot yet grasp the full value of the spirit; but sensuality has already lost its former value. A shipwreck kills all Odysseus' companions; he alone rescues himself to the nymph Calypso, who takes him in kindly and cares for him for seven years. Finally, at Zeus' command, she releases him to his homeland. The Myste has arrived at a stage where all but the worthy one, Odysseus alone, fail. This worthy one, however, enjoys the peace of gradual initiation for a time, which is determined by the mystical-symbolic number seven. - Even before Odysseus reaches home, he arrives on the island of the Phaeacians. Here he finds a hospitable welcome. The king's daughter offers him her hospitality, and King Alcinous himself entertains and honors him. Odysseus is once again confronted by the world and its pleasures; and the spirit that clings to the world (Nausikaa) awakens in him. But he finds his way home, to the divine. At first, nothing good awaits him in his home. His wife Penelope is surrounded by a host of suitors. She promises to marry each of them when she has finished a certain fabric. She avoids keeping her promise by always unraveling at night what she has woven by day. The suitors must be overcome by Odysseus so that he can be reunited with his wife in peace. The goddess Athena transforms him into a beggar so that he will not be recognized when he enters. This is how he overcomes the suitors. - Odysseus seeks his own deeper consciousness, the divine powers of the soul. He wants to be united with them. Before the Myste finds them, he must overcome everything that competes for the favor of this consciousness as a suitor. It is the world of the lower reality, the transient nature, from which the crowd of these suitors originates. The logic that is applied to them is a web that always unravels once it has been spun. Wisdom (the goddess Athena) is the sure guide to the deepest powers of the soul. She transforms man into a beggar, that is, she strips him of everything that comes from transience.

[ 22 ] The Eleusinian festivals, which were celebrated in honor of Demeter and Dionysus in Greece, appear to be completely immersed in mystery wisdom. A sacred road led from Athens to Eleusis. It was studded with mysterious signs that could put the soul in a sublime mood. In Eleusis there were mysterious temple buildings whose service was provided by priestly families. The dignity and wisdom to which the dignity was linked were passed down from generation to generation in the priestly families. (You can find instructive information about the furnishings of these sites in the "Supplements to the last investigations on the Acropolis in Athens" by Karl Bötticher; Philologus Suppl. Vol. 3, No. 3.) The wisdom that enabled them to serve here was Greek mystery wisdom. The festivals, which were celebrated twice a year, offered the great world drama of the fate of the divine in the world and that of the human soul. The minor mysteries were celebrated in February, the major ones in September. The festivals were associated with initiations. The symbolic representation of the world and human drama formed the final act of the Mystic Consecrations, which were performed here. The Eleusinian temples were built in honor of the goddess Demeter. She is a daughter of Kronos. She gave birth to a daughter, Persephone, to Zeus before his marriage to Hera. She was once stolen by Pluto, the god of the underworld, during a game. Lamenting, Demeter hurried across the wide earth in search of her. In Eleusis, she was found sitting on a stone by the daughters of Keleus, an inhabitant of Eleusis. She entered the service of Keleus' family in the form of an old woman to care for her mistress' son. She wanted to give this son immortality. That is why she hid him in the fire every night. Once the mother realized this, she wept and lamented. From then on, it was impossible to grant immortality. Demeter left the house. Keleus built a temple. Demeter's grief for Persephone was immense. She caused the earth to become barren. The gods had to reconcile her if terrible things were not to happen. So Pluto was persuaded by Zeus to release Persephone back into the upper world. But first the god of the underworld gave her a pomegranate to eat. As a result, she was forced to descend to the underworld again and again periodically. From then on, she spent a third of the year in the underworld and two thirds in the upper world. Demeter was reconciled; she returned to Olympus. But in Eleusis, the place of her fear, she founded the festival service that would henceforth always serve as a reminder of her fate.

[ 23 ] It is easy to recognize the meaning of the Demeter-Persephone myth. What alternates between the underworld and the upper world is the soul. The eternity of the soul and its eternal transformation through birth and death is depicted in the image. The soul comes from the immortal, Demeter. But it has been abducted by the perishable and has itself been destined to share in the fate of transience. It has partaken of the fruit in the underworld: the human soul is saturated with the transitory; it cannot therefore dwell permanently in the heights of the divine. It must always return to the realm of transience. Demeter is the representative of that being from which human consciousness has arisen; but this consciousness must be thought of as it could have arisen through the spiritual forces of the earth. Demeter is therefore the primordial being of the earth; and the endowment of the earth with the seed-powers of the crops through her only points to a still deeper side of her being. This being wants to give man immortality. Demeter hides her fosterling in the fire at night. But man cannot bear the pure violence of the fire (the spirit). Demeter must refrain from it. She can only establish a temple service through which man, as far as he is able, can partake of the divine.

[ 24 ] The Eleusinian festivals were a loudly spoken confession of faith in the eternity of the human soul. This confession found its pictorial expression in the Persephone myth. Together with Demeter and Persephone, Dionysus was celebrated in Eleusis. Just as Demeter was the divine creator of the eternal in man, Dionysus was worshipped as the eternally changing divine in the whole world. The god who was poured out into the world, dismembered in order to be spiritually reborn (see page 72 f), had to be celebrated together with Demeter. (A brilliant description of the spirit of the Eleusinian Mysteries can be found in the book "Sanctuaires d'Orient" by Edouard Schuré. Paris 1898.)