Chapter 20

"But what of the second group above-mentioned, the "things SHOWN"? It is not so easy naturally to get exact information concerning these, but they seem to have been specially holy objects, probably things connected with very ancient rituals in the past--such as sacred stones, old and rude images of the gods, magic nature-symbols, like that half-disclosed ear of corn above-mentioned (Ch. V.). "In the Temple of Isis at Philae," says Dr. Cheetham, "the dead body of Osiris is represented with stalks of corn springing from it, which a priest waters from a vessel. An inscription says: 'This is the form of him whom we may not name, Osiris of the Mysteries who sprang from the returning waters' (the Nile)." Above all, no doubt, there were images of the phallus and the vulva, the great symbols of human fertility. We have seen (Ch. XII) that the lingam and the yoni are, even down to to-day, commonly retained and honored as holy objects in the S. Indian Temples, and anointed with oil (some of them) for a very practical reason. Sir J. G. Frazer, in his lately published volumes on The Folk-lore of the Old Testament, has a chapter (in vol. ii) on the very numerous sacred stones of various shapes and sizes found or spoken of in Palestine and other parts of the world. Though uncertain as to the meaning of these stones he mentions that they are "frequently, though not always, UPRIGHT." Anointing them with oil, he assures us, "is a widespread practice, sometimes by women who wish to obtain children." And he concludes the chapter by saying: "The holy stone at Bethel was probably one of those massive standing stones or rough pillars which the Hebrews called masseboth, and which, as we have seen, were regular adjuncts of Canaanite and early Israelitish sanctuaries." We have already mentioned the pillars Jachin and Boaz which stood before the Temple of Solomon, and which had an acknowledged sexual significance; and so it seems probable that a great number of these holy stones had a similar meaning. (1) Following this clue it would appear likely that the lingam thus anointed and worshipped in the Temples of India and elsewhere IS the original [gr cristos] (2) adored by the human race from the very beginning, and that at a later time, when the Priest and the King, as objects of worship, took the place of the Lingam, THEY also were anointed with the chrism of fertility. That the exhibition of these emblems should be part of the original 'Mystery'-rituals was perfectly natural--especially because, as we have explained already (3) old customs often continued on in a quite naive fashion in the rituals, when they had come to be thought indecent or improper by a later public opinion; and (we may say) was perfectly in order, because there is plenty of evidence to show that in SAVAGE initiations, of which the Mysteries were the linear descendants, all these things WERE explained to the novices, and their use actually taught. (4) No doubt also there were some representations or dramatic incidents of a fairly coarse character, as deriving from these ancient sources. (5) It is, however, quaint to observe how the mere mention of such things has caused an almost hysterical commotion among the critics of the Mysteries--from the day of the early Christians who (in order to belaud their own religion) were never tired of abusing the Pagans, onward to the present day when modern scholars either on the one hand follow the early Christians in representing the Mysteries as sinks of iniquity or on the other (knowing this charge could not be substantiated except in the period of their final decadence) take the line of ignoring the sexual interest attaching to them as non-existent or at any rate unworthy of attention. The good Archdeacon Cheetham, for instance, while writing an interesting book on the Mysteries passes by this side of the subject ALMOST as if it did not exist; while the learned Dr. Farnell, overcome apparently by the weight of his learning, and unable to confront the alarming obstacle presented by these sexual rites and aspects, hides himself behind the rather non-committal remark (speaking of the Eleusinian rites) "we have no right to imagine any part of this solemn ceremony as coarse or obscene." (6) As Nature, however, has been known (quite frequently) to be coarse or obscene, and as the initiators of the Mysteries were probably neither 'good' nor 'learned,' but were simply anxious to interpret Nature as best they could, we cannot find fault with the latter for the way they handled the problem, nor indeed well see how they could have handled it better.

(1) F. Nork, Der Mystagog, mentions that the Roman Penates were commonly anointed with oil. J. Stuart Hay, in his Life of Elagabalus (1911), says that "Elagabal was worshipped under the symbol of a great black stone or meteorite, in the shape of a Phallus, which having fallen from the heavens represented a true portion of the Godhead, much after the style of those black stone images popularly venerated in Norway and other parts of Europe."

(2) J. E. Hewitt, in his Ruling Races of Pre-historic Times (p. 64), gives a long list of pre-historic races who worshipped the lingam.

(3) See Ch. XI.

(4) See Ernest Crawley's Mystic Rose, ch. xiii, pp. 310 and 313: "In certain tribes of Central Africa both boys and girls after initiation must as soon as possible have intercourse." Initiation being not merely preliminary to, but often ACTUALLY marriage. The same among Kaffirs, Congo tribes, Senegalese, etc. Also among the Arunta of Australia.

(5) Professor Diederichs has said that "in much ancient ritual it was thought that mystic communion with the deity could be obtained through the semblance of sex-intercourse--as in the Attis-Cybele worship, and the Isis-ritual." (Farnell.) Reitzenstein says (op. cit., p. 20.) that the Initiates, like some of the Christian Nuns at a later time, believed in union with God through receiving the seed.

(6) Farnell, op. cit., iii. 176. Messrs. Gardner and Jevons, in their Manual of Greek Antiquities, above-quoted, compare the Eleusinian Mysteries favorably with some of the others, like the Arcadian, the Troezenian, the Aeginaean, and the very primitive Samothracian: saying (p. 278) that of the last-mentioned "we know little, but safely conjecture that in them the ideas of sex and procreation dominated EVEN MORE than in those of Eleusis."

After all it is pretty clear that the early peoples saw in Sex the great cohesive force which kept (we will not say Humanity but at any rate) the Tribe together, and sustained the race. In the stage of simple Consciousness this must have been one of the first things that the budding intellect perceived. Sex became one of the earliest divinities, and there is abundant evidence that its organs and processes generally were invested with a religious sense of awe and sanctity. It was in fact the symbol (or rather the actuality) of the permanent undying life of the race, and as such was sacred to the uses of the race. Whatever taboos may have, among different peoples, guarded its operations, it was not essentially a thing to be concealed, or ashamed of. Rather the contrary. For instance the early Christian writer, Hippolytus, Bishop of Pontus (A.D. 200), in his Refutation of all Heresies, Book V, says that the Samothracian Mysteries, just mentioned, celebrate Adam as the primal or archetypal Man eternal in the heavens; and he then continues: "Habitually there stand in the temple of the Samothracians two images of naked men having both hands stretched aloft towards heaven, and their pudenda turned upwards, as is also the case with the statue of Mercury on Mt. Cyllene. And the aforesaid images are figures of the primal man, and of that spiritual one that is born again, in every respect of the same substance with that (first) man."

This extract from Hippolytus occurs in the long discourse in which he 'exposes' the heresy of the so-called Naassene doctrines and mysteries. But the whole discourse should be read by those who wish to understand the Gnostic philosophy of the period contemporary with and anterior to the birth of Christianity. A translation of the discourse, carefully analyzed and annotated, is given in G. R. S. Mead's Thrice-greatest Hermes (1) (vol. i); and Mead himself, speaking of it, says (p. 141): "The claim of these Gnostics was practically that the good news of the Christ (the Christos) was the consummation of the inner doctrine of the Mystery-institutions of all the nations; the end of them all being the revelation of the Mystery of Man." Further, he explains that the Soul, in these doctrines, was regarded as synonymous with the Cause of All; and that its loves were twain--of Aphrodite (or Life), and of Persephone (or Death and the other world). Also that Attis, abandoning his sex in the worship of the Mother-Goddess (Dea Syria), ascends to Heaven--a new man, Male-female, and the origin of all things: the hidden Mystery being the Phallus itself, erected as Hermes in all roads and boundaries and temples, the Conductor and Reconductor of Souls.

(1) Reitzenstein, op. cit., quotes the discourse largely. The Thrice-greatest Hermes may also be consulted for a translation of Plutarch's Isis and Osiris.

All this may sound strange, but one may fairly say that it represented in its degree, and in that first 'unfallen' stage of human thought and psychology, a true conception of the cosmic Life, and indeed a conception quite sensible and admirable, until, of course, the Second Stage brought corruption. No sooner was this great force of the cosmic life diverted from its true uses of Generation and Regeneration (1) and appropriated by the individual to his own private pleasure--no sooner was its religious character as a tribal service (2), (often rendered within the Temple precincts) lost sight of or degraded into a commercial transaction--than every kind of evil fell upon mankind. Corruptio optimi pessima. It must be remembered too that simultaneous with this sexual disruption occurred the disruption of other human relations; and we cease to be surprised that disease and selfish passions, greed, jealousy, slander, cruelty, and wholesale murder, raged--and have raged ever since.

(1) For the special meaning of these two terms, see The Drama of Love and Death, by E. Carpenter, pp. 59-61.

(2) Ernest Crawley in The Mystic Rose challenges this identification of Religion with tribal interests; yet his arguments are not very convincing. On p. 5 he admits that "there is a religious meaning inherent in the primitive conception and practice of ALL human relations"; and a large part of his ch. xii is taken up in showing that even such institutions as the Saturnalia were religious in confirming the sense of social union and leading to 'extended identity.'

But for the human soul--whatever its fate, and whatever the dangers and disasters that threaten it--there is always redemption waiting. As we saw in the last chapter, this corruption of Sex led (quite naturally) to its denial and rejection; and its denial led to the differentiation from it of Love. Humanity gained by the enthronement and deification of Love, pure and undefiled, and (for the time being) exalted beyond this mortal world, and free from all earthly contracts. But again in the end, the divorce thus introduced between the physical and the spiritual led to the crippling of both. Love relegated, so to speak, to heaven as a purely philanthropical, pious and 'spiritual' affair, became exceedingly DULL; and sex, remaining on earth, but deserted by the redeeming presence, fell into mere "carnal curiosity and wretchedness of unclean living." Obviously for the human race there remains nothing, in the final event, but the reconciliation of the physical and the spiritual, and after many sufferings, the reunion of Eros and Psyche.

There is still, however, much to be said about the Third State of Consciousness. Let us examine into it a little more closely. Clearly, since it is a new state, and not merely an extension of a former one, one cannot arrive at it by argument derived from the Second state, for all conscious Thought such as we habitually use simply keeps us IN the Second state. No animal or quite primitive man could possibly understand what we mean by Self-consciousness till he had experienced it. Mere argument would not enlighten him. And so no one in the Second state can quite realize the Third state till he has experienced it. Still, explanations may help us to perceive in what direction to look, and to recognize in some of our experiences an approach to the condition sought.

Evidently it is a mental condition in some respects more similar to the first than to the second stage. The second stage of human psychologic evolution is an aberration, a divorce, a parenthesis. With its culmination and dismissal the mind passes back into the simple state of union with the Whole. (The state of Ekagrata in the Hindu philosophy: one-pointedness, singleness of mind.) And the consciousness of the Whole, and of things past and things to come and things far around--which consciousness had been shut out by the concentration on the local self--begins to return again. This is not to say, of course, that the excursus in the second stage has been a loss and a defect. On the contrary, it means that the Return is a bringing of all that has been gained during the period of exile (all sorts of mental and technical knowledge and skill, emotional developments, finesse and adaptability of mind) BACK into harmony with the Whole. It means ultimately a great gain. The Man, perfected, comes back to a vastly extended harmony. He enters again into a real understanding and confidential relationship with his physical body and with the body of the society in which he dwells--from both of which he has been sadly divorced; and he takes up again the broken thread of the Cosmic Life.

Everyone has noticed the extraordinary consent sometimes observable among the members of an animal community--how a flock of 500 birds (e. g. starlings) will suddenly change its direction of flight--the light on the wings shifting INSTANTANEOUSLY, as if the impulse to veer came to all at the same identical moment; or how bees will swarm or otherwise act with one accord, or migrating creatures (lemmings, deer, gossamer spiders, winged ants) the same. Whatever explanation of these facts we favor--whether the possession of swifter and finer means of external communication than we can perceive, or whether a common and inner sensitivity to the genius of the Tribe (the "Spirit of the Hive") or to the promptings of great Nature around--in any case these facts of animal life appear to throw light on the possibilities of an accord and consent among the members of emaciated humanity, such as we dream of now, and seem to bid us have good hope for the future.

It is here, perhaps, that the ancient worship of the Lingam comes in. The word itself is apparently connected with our word 'link,' and has originally the same meaning. (1) It is the link between the generations. Beginning with the worship of the physical Race-life, the course of psychologic evolution has been first to the worship of the Tribe (or of the Totem which represents the tribe); then to the worship of the human-formed God of the tribe--the God who dies and rises again eternally, as the tribe passes on eternal--though its members perpetually perish; then to the conception of an undying Savior, and the realization and distinct experience of some kind of Super-consciousness which does certainly reside, more or less hidden, in the deeps of the mind, and has been waiting through the ages for its disclosure and recognition. Then again to the recognition that in the sacrifices, the Slayer and the Slain are one--the strange and profoundly mystic perception that the God and the Victim are in essence the same--the dedication of 'Himself to Himself' (2) and simultaneously with this the interpretation of the Eucharist as meaning, even for the individual, the participation in Eternal Life--the continuing life of the Tribe, or ultimately of Humanity. (3) The Tribal order rises to Humanity; love ascends from the lingam to yogam, from physical union alone to the union with the Whole--which of course includes physical and all other kinds of union. No wonder that the good St. Paul, witnessing that extraordinary whirlpool of beliefs and practices, new and old, there in the first century A.D.--the unabashed adoration of sex side by side with the transcendental devotions of the Vedic sages and the Gnostics--became somewhat confused himself and even a little violent, scolding his disciples (I Cor. x. 21) for their undiscriminating acceptance, as it seemed to him, of things utterly alien and antagonistic. "Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and the table of devils."

(1) See Sanskrit Dictionary.

(2) See Ch. VIII.

(3) There are many indications in literature--in prophetic or poetic form--of this awareness and distinct conviction of an eternal life, reached through love and an inner sense of union with others and with humanity at large; indications which bear the mark of absolute genuineness and sincerity of feeling. See, for instance, Whitman's poem, "To the Garden the World" (Leaves of Grass, complete edition, p. 79). But an eternal life of the third order; not, thank heaven! an eternity of the meddling and muddling self-conscious Intellect!

Every careful reader has noticed the confusedness of Paul's mind and arguments. Even taking only those Epistles (Galatians, Romans and Corinthians) which the critics assign to his pen, the thing is observable--and some learned Germans even speak of TWO Pauls. (1) But also the thing is quite natural. There can be little doubt that Paul of Tarsus, a Jew brought up in the strictest sect of the Pharisees, did at some time fall deeply under the influence of Greek thought, and quite possibly became an initiate in the Mysteries. It would be difficult otherwise to account for his constant use of the Mystery-language. Reitzenstein says (p. 59): "The hellenistic religious literature MUST have been read by him; he uses its terms, and is saturated with its thoughts (see Rom. vi. 1-14." And this conjoined with his Jewish experience gave him creative power. "A great deal in his sentiment and thought may have REMAINED Jewish, but to his Hellenism he was indebted for his love of freedom and his firm belief in his apostleship." He adopts terms (like [gr sarkikos], [gr yucikos] and [gr pneumatikos]) (2) which were in use among the hellenistic sects of the time; and he writes, as in Romans vi. 4, 5, about being "buried" with Christ or "planted" in the likeness of his death, in words which might well have been used (with change of the name) by a follower of Attis or Osiris after witnessing the corresponding 'mysteries'; certainly the allusion to these ancient deities would have been understood by every religionist of that day. These few points are sufficient to acentuate{sic} the two elements in Paul, the Jewish and the Greek, and to explain (so far) the seeming confusion in his utterances. Further it is interesting to note--as showing the pagan influences in the N. T. writings--the degree to which the Epistle to Philemon (ascribed to Paul) is FULL--short as it is--of expressions like PRISONER of the Lord, FELLOW SOLDIER, CAPTIVE or BONDMAN, (3) which were so common at the time as to be almost a cant in Mithraism and the allied cults. In I Peter ii. 2 (4), we have the verse "As newborn babes, desire ye the sincere MILK of the word, that ye may grow thereby." And again we may say that no one in that day could mistake the reference herein contained to old initiation ceremonies and the new birth (as described in Chapter VIII above), for indeed milk was the well-known diet of the novice in the Isis mysteries, as well as (in some savage tribes) of the Medicine-man when practising his calling.

(1) "Die Mysterien-anschauungen, die bei Paulus im Hintergrunde stehen, drangen sich in dem sogenarmten Deuteropaulinismus machtig vor" (Reitzenstein).

(2) Remindful of our Three Stages: the Animal, the Self-conscious, and the Cosmic.

(3) [gr desmios, stratiwths, doulos].

(4) See also I Cor. iii. 2.

And here too Democracy comes in--strangely foreboded from the first in all this matter. (1) Not only does the Third Stage bring illumination, intuitive understanding of processes in Nature and Humanity, sympathy with the animals, artistic capacity, and so forth, but it necessarily brings a new Order of Society. A preposterous--one may almost say a hideous--social Age is surely drawing to its end, The debacle we are witnessing to-day all over Europe (including the British Islands), the break-up of old institutions, the generally materialistic outlook on life, the coming to the surface of huge masses of diseased and fatuous populations, the scum and dregs created by the past order, all point to the End of a Dispensation. Protestantism and Commercialism, in the two fields of religion and daily life have, as I have indicated before, been occupied in concentrating the mind of each man solely on his OWN welfare, the salvation of his OWN soul or body. These two forces have therefore been disruptive to the last degree; they mark the culmination of the Self-conscious Age--a culmination in War, Greed, Materialism, and the general principle of Devil-take-the-hindmost--and the clearing of the ground for the new order which is to come. So there is hope for the human race. Its evolution is not all a mere formless craze and jumble. There is an inner necessity by which Humanity unfolds from one degree or plane of consciousness to another. And if there has been a great 'Fall' or Lapse into conflict and disease and 'sin' and misery, occupying the major part of the Historical period hitherto, we see that this period is only brief, so to speak, in comparison with the whole curve of growth and expansion. We see also that, as I have said before, the belief in a state of salvation or deliverance has in the past ages never left itself quite without a witness in the creeds and rituals and poems and prophecies of mankind. Art, in some form or other, as an activity or inspiration dating not from the conscious Intellect, but from deeper regions of sub-conscious feeling and intuition, has continually come to us as a message from and an evidence of the Third stage or state, and as a promise of its more complete realization under other conditions.

Through the long night-time where the Nations wander From Eden past to Paradise to be, Art's sacred flowers, like fair stars shining yonder, Alone illumine Life's obscurity.

O gracious Artists, out of your deep hearts 'Tis some great Sun, I doubt, by men unguessed, Whose rays come struggling thus, in slender darts, To shadow what Is, till Time shall manifest.

(1) See the germs of Democracy in the yoga teaching of the Hindus, and in the Upanishads, the Bhagavat Gita, and other books.