For it appears to me that among the many exceptional and divine things your Athens has produced and contributed to human life, nothing is better than those mysteries.
For by means of them we have been transformed from a rough and savage way of life to the state of humanity, and have been civilized. Just as they are called initiations, so in actual fact we have learned from them the fundamentals of life, and have grasped the basis not only for living with joy but also for dying with a better hope.
- Marcus, in Cicero, On the Laws (De legibus), 2.14.36, with reference to the Eleusinian mysteries
Is it possible the spells of Apocrypha should juggle men into such strange Mysteries?
- Shakespeare
. . . originators of mischief, parents of godless legends and deadly daimon-worship, seeing that they implanted the mysteries in human life to be a seed of evil and corruption.
- Clement of Alexandria, from Exhortation to the Greeks, 2.11, on the men who brought about the Mysteries
Scriabin’s passion for the Mysterium concept and his belief in its plausibility were galvanized by his discovery of Theosophy and, subsequently, his cursory studies of ancient Mystery religions. Both occurred after he conceived of the Mysterium.
Hence with the ancient Mysteries, as with Theosophy, the challenge is again to discern in Scriabin’s ideas the “appropriations” from the “coincidental” influences that connected the Mysteries to the Mysterium. Perhaps contrary to expectation, the connections of the Mysterium to the Mysteries are outnumbered by those to
Theosophy. There are also occasional interesting meeting points between Theosophy and the ancient Mysteries, many of which in turn point back to Scriabin.
The ancient Mystery religions are intimately connected with mythology, and treated mythology as reality. “Initiations” into the Mysteries thus involved
incantations and prayers to, and sometimes symbolic or theatrical portrayals of, figures from mythology. For the most part, the Mysteries are called Mysteries for good reason – for close to two thousand years, most of what happened in the ceremonies has been kept secret. As such the information that is available comes from interpretations of surviving pieces of art in the language of symbols; with the portrayals of deities (who to us are now myths) and their own symbolism; from written accounts of initiates – some of whom later withdrew their support of the Mysteries; and from a few miraculously surviving passages of written liturgy.
There were as many religions and types of Mysteries in the region of ancient Greece and Rome as there are major religions in today’s world. The majority of them are well-described in the sourcebooks, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World by Joscelyn Godwin, and The Ancient Mysteries by Marvin W. Meyer. To gain an impression of their nature it is only necessary to examine a few, but here is provided a partial list of them, generally named for geographic location or the deities honored:
Eleusinian, Mithraic, Dionysian, Orphic, Andanian, Anatolian, Egyptian, Sabazian, and even Judaic and Gnostic Christian. For present purposes, the more detailed examination will focus primarily on the first three listed.
In short, according to Godwin, the Mysteries offered a path to divine knowledge (recall the origin of the word “theosophy”). According to the
Theosophical Society, in “the seventh stage of initiation in the Mysteries, . . . the candidate becomes a selfless channel for communion with his inner god; the third and last stage of spiritual development.” This state is defined as “theopathy,” from the Greek word theos (god) and pathos (experience, feeling).
Several notable figures from history are said to have been initiates in the Mysteries. Blavatsky names some of the “Fathers of the Church” as having been initiates (though does not say in which Mysteries), including Clemens Alexandrinus (1888, xliv), or, Clement of Alexandria, a portion of whose denouncement of the Mysteries was featured in the epigraph of this section. Godwin cites as Orphic initiates the philosopher priest Plutarch and, “some say,” Saul of Tarsus (1981, 144), who in the Bible became Paul. Initiates in the Eleusinian Mysteries, according to Wasson, include the Greek playwright Sophocles and the Roman Emperor Augustus;
Joseph Campbell, in the documentary Mythos, claims Socrates as well.
Within the Eleusinian Mysteries – which honored the goddess Demeter – were Greater and Lesser Mysteries. As Godwin describes, the Lesser Mysteries, conducted in groups, were to impart information about the higher worlds; the Greater Mysteries, conducted individually, were intended to cause direct contact with the beings who inhabit the higher worlds . Both were reputed to be life-changing experiences. In The Road to Eleusis – Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries, R. Gordon Wasson describes the Eleusinian Mysteries thus:
The initiates lived through the night in the telesterion of Eleusis, . . . and they would come away all wonderstruck by what they had lived through:
according to some, they were never the same as before. (Wasson 1978, Foreword)
The Greater Mysteries were intended to take the candidate through the gates of death (Godwin 1981, 34). Godwin further describes them:
[The philosopher priest] Plutarch [ca. 45-125 A.D.] said that when death comes it is like initiation into the Greater Mysteries. . . . As in shamanic, Masonic, and other later initiations, the candidate was placed in a trance, his consciousness taken out of his body, and in this state he experienced higher states of being and met some of the denizens of the invisible worlds. Some were demonic, others beneficent; . . . (Godwin 1981, 35)
Wasson echoes this sentiment: “Rebirth from death was the secret of Eleusis (1978, 44).”
Meyers’ sourcebook The Ancient Mysteries provides startling information about the Roman Mithraic Mysteries in celebration of Mithras, a Persian god. In the Mithras Liturgy, the final encounter with the highest god will produce divine
revelation, culminating in an experience of immortalization. Interestingly, passages from Homer’s Iliad are quoted in the final spells. Meyer calls the Liturgy “one of the most interesting and perplexing of texts concerning the worship of Mithras in late antiquity (1987, 211-12).”
Several magical components appear in the Liturgy, including descriptions of breathing techniques, recipes, amulets, magical rites, and magical words of power.
The magical words are at times onomatopoetic, symbolic, or involve speaking in tongues. Meyer cites onomatopoetic and symbolic examples: “PPP – popping like thunder, . . . [and] AEEIOYO, which uses the seven Greek vowels in a series.” Some of the magic words are derived from foreign languages, such as Hebrew and
Egyptian, and are manipulated “for the sake of power” through the use of
permutations: IAO, the ineffable name of God in Hebrew, and its permutations OAI and AIO; and PSINOTHER, NOPSITHER and THERNOPSI, permutations of the phrase “the son of God” in Egyptian (Meyer 1987, 212).
Provided from Meyers’ book is a section of the Mithras Liturgy, taken from the “Great Magical Papyrus of Paris” and translated by the author. Here the
incantatory nature of the Mysteries is revealed, along with a ritualistic (if not
frightening) sense of magic. In tone, the Liturgy is eerily similar to parts of Scriabin’s text for the Acte préalable, his lesser work to which the Mysterium material was
transferred. Though whether Scriabin had access to texts such as these or was
directly influenced by them is, of course, a mystery. This excerpt includes an introductory fragment and portions of the invocational “verses”:
Be gracious to me, . . . as I write these mysteries handed down [not] for gain but for instruction; . . . so that I alone may ascend into heaven as an inquirer and behold the universe.
This is the invocation of the ceremony:
First origin of my origin, AEEIOYO,
first beginning of my beginning, PPP SSS PHR[ ], spirit of spirit, the first of the spirit in me, MMM,
fire given by god to my mixture of the mixtures in me, the first of the fire in me, EY EIA EE,
water of water, the first of the water in me, OOO AAA EEE, earthy substance, the first of the earthy substance in me, YE YOE, my complete body – I, NN whose mother is NN – which was formed by a noble arm and an incorruptible right hand in a world without light and yet radiant, without soul and yet alive with soul, YEI AYI EYOIE:
now if it be your will, METERTA PHOTH – METHARTHA PHERIE, in another place – IEREZATH,
give me over to immortal birth and, following that, to my underlying nature, so that, after the present need which is pressing me exceedingly, I may gaze upon the immortal beginning with the immortal spirit,
ANCHREPHRENESOYPHIRIGCH . . .
Choosing a suitable stopping point is difficult, as the reader must wait forty-nine lines for a period. Following the first round of “verses,” further instructions continue:
. . . Draw in breath from the rays, drawing up three times as much as you can, and you will see yourself being lifted up and ascending to the height, so that you seem to be in midair. You will hear nothing either of man or of any other living thing, nor in that hour will you see anything of mortal affairs of earth, but rather you will see all immortal things. . . .
Onomatopoetic sounds and magical words later become more prominent:
Then make a long hissing sound, next make a popping sound, and say:
PROPROPHEGGE MORIOS PROPHYR PROPHEGGE NEMETHIRE ARPSENTEN PITETMI MEOY ENARTH PHYRKECHO
PSYRIDARIO TYRE PHILBA. (Meyer 1987, 213-15)
The meaning of such passages are a mystery in today’s world but serve as an interesting comparison with the ritualistic nature of Scriabin’s text for the Acte préalable and his approach to the Mysterium.
In mythology, Dionysus, the god of wine, agriculture and theater, was devoured by the Titans as a child (through a convoluted series of events he was later re-born from Zeus’ thigh). Zeus, in retaliation, then destroyed the Titans and from their ashes made mankind. In Dionysian cults, the view held that since Dionysus was a divine being and mankind made from the ashes of the Titans – who had consumed Dionysus – a “divine spark” inhabited the bodies of all people. As Godwin reveals, this divine spark could be realized and released through Dionysian or (Bacchic) Mysteries. Godwin also phrases the purpose another way, namely to awaken the
“third eye,”and “to make man aware of the great mind of which his intellect is a part (1981, 133).” In Theosophy, this phenomenon is described as the “fundamental identity of all Souls with the Universal OverSoul, the latter being itself an aspect of the Unknown Root . . . (Blavatsky 1888, 17).”
As Godwin, Meyer, Blavatsky and mythology affirm, another and more unusual manifestation of Dionysus’ nature – and that of his followers – was the practice of omophagia, the consumption of raw animal flesh. Along with their belief in mankind’s divine spark, Dionysian cults were also notorious for occasionally going into mad frenzies and tearing apart and consuming whatever animals they
encountered. On occasion this practice extended to unfortunate people who had done them wrong or doubted their religion. This might be interpreted as a form of sacrament owing to Dionysus’ own early childhood misfortune.
While the followers of Orpheus also laid claim to the god Dionysus, the nature of the two religions – and Orpheus and Dionysus themselves – bear little apparent resemblance. Godwin states that Orpheus was a reformer of and within the cult of Dionysus. “Like Christ in Judaism and Buddha in Hinduism, he was rejected by followers of the old faith but succeeded in founding a new one alongside it (Godwin 1981, 144).” Orphism shares with Dionysianism the goal of release from earthly conditions through the immortal soul, the “divine spark,” but the Orphics pursued it in a more controlled and intellectual way. Godwin contrasts the Orphic and Dionysian schools further, stating that the teachings of Orphism were perfectly at one with early Christian ethics, “and the figure of Orpheus was borrowed in
Christian iconography for representations of David and even of Christ himself (1981, 145).”
It is also interesting that Orpheus was assassinated by the “Bacchantes” – women maddened by Dionysus – who, in good Dionysian form, tore him apart.
Perhaps this is among the reasons that for the Orphics, the practice of omophagia became the original transgression, and they recounted the myth of Dionysus in order to show the enormity of the sin (Meyer 1987, 64).
In mythology, Orpheus was the son of Apollo (the god of, among many things, music) and like his father, played the lyre. With his lyre and voice, and his divine heredity, he was able to charm animals and plants, and even the beings of the Underworld. M.L. West, in The Orphic Hymns, adds, “rivers stayed in their courses, even the rocks and trees came sidling down the mountain (1983, 4).” His musical talent was so divinely powerful that he outsang the Sirens to save the Argonauts from them. And when he was torn apart and decapitated by the Bacchantes, his head kept singing.
Hence it may come as no surprise that Schloezer declares the myth of
Orpheus to have been Scriabin’s favorite legend, and that he believed an artist to be an “unconscious magus.” To Scriabin, the magic Orphic power of art was real and he was its rescuer –
Indeed, he regarded himself as an Orpheus, wielding power through his art over both the psychic and physical worlds. It was thanks to this
self-identification with Orpheus that Scriabin was able to form the idea of the Mysterium. (Schloezer 1987, 235)
In the last centuries B.C., the Orphics established a literary canon – the Orphic Hymns. What may have been particularly interesting if not influential to Scriabin was that many of the hymns, before the body of the text, designate a specific type of incense: “30. TO DIONYSOS, incense—storax . . . 37. TO THE TITANS, incense—frankincense . . . 48. TO SABAZIOS, incense—aromatic herbs . . . (Meyer 1987, 105-8).” The Mysterium, a “harmony of sounds, of colors, of fragrances,” was to include pillars of incense in its polyphonic score.
While the purpose of the ancient Mysteries seems closely akin to that of the Mysterium, Schloezer declares that when the idea first took shape in Scriabin’s mind, his knowledge of the ancient mysteries was “practically nil.” He apparently took no interest at all in the Greek theater or medieval mystery plays. Much later in his creative work, he began to search for connections between his work and antiquity.
What he learned of the ancient Mysteries confirmed in his mind his role as magus, even as priest in a ceremony. From the similarities he discovered – some of which Schloezer says were imagined, likely owing to the limited knowledge even today of the Mysteries’ content – he sensed that his plan embodied ancient traditions.
He also perceived the uniqueness of his approach, believing he had discovered things that historians had missed. In Scriabin’s imagination his Mysterium had completely different connotations, and his role would enable him “to transmit the magic message presaged by the participants in the ancient mysteries. . . . to revive the forgotten achievements of the ancient mystagogues [those who conducted the Mysteries]
(Schloezer 1987, 180/90).” But there were also attributes of the ancient Mysteries he rejected.
The theatrical nature into which the Mysteries evolved was distasteful to Scriabin – as Schloezer says, to him this evolution carried the “taint of decadence.”
As Scriabin believed firmly in the religious nature of art, the loss of the religious and liturgical character of the Mysteries – in his view – placed the Mysterium in its own unique category. According to Schloezer, the Christian community of Scriabin’s world had a negative attitude, even hostility toward the theater – and Scriabin felt the attitude was justified. He saw the theater as a parody of life, a “symptom of the deepest spiritual degradation.” This view resurfaces regarding the opera that Scriabin began to write, abandoned in favor of the Mysterium, which would consummate in reality what the opera was merely intended to portray.
Scriabin also found himself at odds with some of the “purification” rites for initiation in the Mysteries. Some Mysteries, for example, decreed abstinence from meat, wine and sex for ten days prior to initiation (Godwin 1981, 19) – acceptable to Scriabin. For other Mysteries however – like the Dionysian orgies – meat, wine and sex were integral. The research of Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck – as well as Godwin and Meyer – reveals that other substances than wine were often involved. While the Eleusinian Mysteries included bathing in the sea for purification – again, likely
acceptable to Scriabin – they also implemented various types of hallucinogens.
Albert Hofmann provides compelling research to the effect that the Mystery initiates at Eleusis had derived hallucinogens from ergot, a parasite found on wheat (Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck 1978, 34). Bowers and Godwin both mention the role of
hallucinogenic mushrooms in the Mysteries, again including the Eleusinian. While Scriabin is said to have enjoyed wine in his younger days – though accounts differ as to how much – Bowers states that to him such “poisons sacrées (substances to induce visions) . . . were ‘coarse’ means and ways to reproduce spiritual realities (1973, 107).”
To Scriabin, art was sufficient.