The Eleusinian Mysteries: Wisdom-Religion in Greek Garb

H.P. Blavatsky, Edward Pococke, Thomas Taylor, Alexander Wilder · Buddhas and Initiates Series · 109 pages

The largest study in this section that is not a single author's book: 109 pages in four parts, holding that the holy rites of Eleusis were the archaic Wisdom-Religion dressed in Greek garb. Part one is a tribute to the rites by a distinguished author, covering the nine days of the festival. Part two is Alexander Wilder's introduction to Thomas Taylor's dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries, and part three gives selections from the dissertation itself. Part four, the longest, is Blavatsky's own material.

Her reading takes the Mysteries as the efflorescence of Greek religion and the purest essence of all its conceptions. Bread and wine were offered before initiation, the hierophant's offering symbolising the spirit about to quicken matter — the divine wisdom of the higher Self taking possession of the candidate's inner Self through what was to be revealed to him; the hierophant was always an old unmarried man; and all perfective rites or finishings were mysteries analogous to telete, death. She traces the sacredness of bread and wine in ritual to the transformation of Cybele into Ceres-Demeter, and holds that this and many other features of the archaic system have been appropriated by the Roman Church. The section closes on the Divine Virgin, ever immaculate and ever prolific, fecundated by the fructifying rays of the sun and becoming mother of all that lives, whose very breath is Akasha-tattva, the universal essence.

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