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Author : R. Gordon Wasson,Albert Hofmann,Carl A. P. Ruck Publisher : North Atlantic Books Page : 196 pages File Size : 47,9 Mb Release : 2008-11-25 Category : Body, Mind & Spirit ISBN : 1556437528
The Road to Eleusis by R. Gordon Wasson,Albert Hofmann,Carl A. P. Ruck Pdf
Unlock the secrets of the Eleusinian Mysteries: A deep exploration of secret rites, psychedelic sacraments, and spiritual revelations that captivated ancient Greek society for nearly two millennia. Uncover the evocative history of The Road to Eleusis. Once held in hushed whispers, the Eleusinian Mysteries were a series of secret rituals and initiations in honor of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. They stood as an enigmatic cornerstone of ancient Greek spirituality, capturing imaginations and fevered intrigue for close to two millennia. But beneath the veils of tradition and ceremony lay a potent secret. First unveiled in this book's controversial 1978 release, a groundbreaking trio—a mycologist, chemist, and historian—proposed a radical theory: the sacred potion imbibed during these clandestine rites was infused with a potent, psychoactive entheogen. This was not just a challenge to conventional interpretations: it was a revolutionary reframe of the role that naturally occurring psychedelic drugs have played in spiritual rituals and rites since time immemorial. The Road to Eleusis goes beyond dissecting ancient rites: it charts how the authors reshaped our modern understanding of entheogens' role in spiritual ceremony, revealing facets of the Mysteries previously thought lost to history. The authors share intriguing new insights on experiential religious practices, perspectives on the healing potential of psychedelics, and how—and why—the secrets of the Mysteries were deliberately concealed. The book's revelations reach beyond the scholarly into legal, social, and spiritual realms—all while recasting everything we thought we knew about the rites and rituals of Hellenic cults and expanding our understanding of foundational tenets of Western philosophical and spiritual thought. This 30th-anniversary edition brings with it an enlightening preface by religious luminary Huston Smith and a renewed exploration of the chemical findings by Peter Webster. It powerfully argues for a reimagining of Western religious history and the transformative magic of entheogens.
Bronze Age Eleusis and the Origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries by Michael B. Cosmopoulos Pdf
This book provides a synthesis of the archaeology of Eleusis during the Bronze Age, reconstructing the origins and early development of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries by George Emmanuel Mylonas Pdf
The most famous conspiracy of silence in the history of antiquity is examined here by one of the three archaeologists entrusted by the Archaeological Society of Athens with the final excavations of the Sanctuary. He traces the history of the cult in the archaeological remains, from the first traces of habitation at the site in the Middle Bronze Age (around 1900 B.C.) to its final grandeur and decay in Imperial Roman times. A guided tour of the Museum at Eleusis, illustrated with photographs of objects in the Museum, as well as air views, plans, and detailed photographs of the ruins closely correlated with the text, takes into account the needs of the visitor at the site as well as the reader at home. Originally published in 1961. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Robert Gordon Wasson,Albert Hofmann,Carl A. P. Ruck
Author : Robert Gordon Wasson,Albert Hofmann,Carl A. P. Ruck Publisher : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P Page : 156 pages File Size : 52,5 Mb Release : 1978 Category : History ISBN : STANFORD:36105037329617
The Eleusinian Mysteries and Rites by Dudley Wright Pdf
This brochure by Brother Wright, a Masonic scholar of Oxford, England, contains the ripest scholarship on Eleusis, its rites, symbols, and legends. This study of the Grecian mysteries shows the ties between the rituals celebrated in the 7th century BC and the 19th cent Freemasonry tradition. As the author noted, there is a striking resemblance in many points to the Operative and Speculative Freemasonry practices, which laid the basis of this work.
Written by an international team of acknowledged experts, this excellent book studies a wide range of contributions and showcases new research on the archaeology, ritual and history of Greek mystery cults. With a lack of written evidence that exists for the mysteries, archaeology has proved central to explaining their significance and this volume is key to understanding a phenomenon central to Greek religion and society.
The Riddle of the Rosetta by Jed Z. Buchwald,Diane Greco Josefowicz Pdf
A major new history of the race between two geniuses to decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, set against the backdrop of nineteenth-century Europe In 1799, a French Army officer was rebuilding the defenses of a fort on the banks of the Nile when he discovered an ancient stele fragment bearing a decree inscribed in three different scripts. So begins one of the most familiar tales in Egyptology—that of the Rosetta Stone and the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. This book draws on fresh archival evidence to provide a major new account of how the English polymath Thomas Young and the French philologist Jean-François Champollion vied to be the first to solve the riddle of the Rosetta. Jed Buchwald and Diane Greco Josefowicz bring to life a bygone age of intellectual adventure. Much more than a decoding exercise centered on a single artifact, the race to decipher the Rosetta Stone reflected broader disputes about language, historical evidence, biblical truth, and the value of classical learning. Buchwald and Josefowicz paint compelling portraits of Young and Champollion, two gifted intellects with altogether different motivations. Young disdained Egyptian culture and saw Egyptian writing as a means to greater knowledge about Greco-Roman antiquity. Champollion, swept up in the political chaos of Restoration France and fiercely opposed to the scholars aligned with throne and altar, admired ancient Egypt and was prepared to upend conventional wisdom to solve the mystery of the hieroglyphs. Taking readers from the hushed lecture rooms of the Institut de France to the windswept monuments of the Valley of the Kings, The Riddle of the Rosetta reveals the untold story behind one of the nineteenth century's most thrilling discoveries.
Author : Jan N. Bremmer Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG Page : 366 pages File Size : 44,5 Mb Release : 2014-07-28 Category : Religion ISBN : 9783110376999
Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World by Jan N. Bremmer Pdf
The ancient Mysteries have long attracted the interest of scholars, an interest that goes back at least to the time of the Reformation. After a period of interest around the turn of the twentieth century, recent decades have seen an important study of Walter Burkert (1987). Yet his thematic approach makes it hard to see how the actual initiation into the Mysteries took place. To do precisely that is the aim of this book. It gives a ‘thick description’ of the major Mysteries, not only of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries, but also those located at the interface of Greece and Anatolia: the Mysteries of Samothrace, Imbros and Lemnos as well as those of the Corybants. It then proceeds to look at the Orphic-Bacchic Mysteries, which have become increasingly better understood due to the many discoveries of new texts in the recent times. Having looked at classical Greece we move on to the Roman Empire, where we study not only the lesser Mysteries, which we know especially from Pausanias, but also the new ones of Isis and Mithras. We conclude our book with a discussion of the possible influence of the Mysteries on emerging Christianity. Its detailed references and up-to-date bibliography will make this book indispensable for any scholar interested in the Mysteries and ancient religion, but also for those scholars who work on initiation or esoteric rituals, which were often inspired by the ancient Mysteries.
The holy rites of Eleusis were Archaic Wisdom-Religion dressed in Greek garb by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Edward Pococke, Thomas Taylor, Alexander Wilder Pdf
The Eleusinian Mysteries were viewed as the efflorescence of all the Greek religion, as the purest essence of all its conceptions. The offering of bread and wine to the candidate by the Hierophant symbolised the spirit that was about to quicken matter: i.e., the divine wisdom of the Higher Self was to take possession of the candidate’s inner Self or Soul through what was to be revealed to him. The transformation of Cybele to Ceres-Demeter was the basis for the sacredness of bread and wine in ritualism. Cybele is the Moon-Goddess of the Athenians, Pallas or Minerva, invoked in her festivals as Monogenes Theou, the One Mother of God, and Virgin Queen of Heaven. Esoterically, Cybele is Kabeiros, a representative of the Phoenician Kingly Race. The Hierophant was always an old unmarried man. This and so many other features of the great archaic system, known as the Sacred Wisdom Science, have been appropriated by the Romish Church. One of the greatest mysteries is how the ever immaculate and yet ever prolific Divine Virgin who, fecundated by the fructifying rays of the Sun, becomes the Mother of all that lives and breathes on her vast bosom. Her very “Breath” is Akasha-tattva or Universal Essence, i.e., Vital Electricity — Life itself. The Mysteries are fragments of a grand pre-historic Philosophy, as old as the world itself. They are not only the foundation-stone of modern Philosophy, they also gave birth to hieroglyphics, as permanent records were needed to preserve and commemorate their secrets. The fact that the Sanskrit and Greek words for Initiation to the Greater Mysteries, Avapta and Epopteia, imply revelation not by human agent but by receiving the Sacred Drink, points out to the pre-Vedic origin of the Eleusinia. A cup of Kykeon, quaffed by the Mystes at the Eleusinian Initiation, forcibly connects the inner, highest “spirit” of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical Soma, with his “irrational soul” or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life on earth in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven. One well versed in the esoteric mythologies of various nations can trace the Mysteries back to the ante-Vedic period in India. Only those of the strictest virtue and purity were admitted. Those who consciously engaged in Black Magic or were responsible for homicide, whether accidental or not, and other evil acts were excluded. Every approach to the Mysteries was guarded with the same jealous care everywhere, and the penalty of death was inflicted upon Initiates of any degree who divulged secrets entrusted to them. Why Truth keeps hiding like a tortoise within her shell? Because Truth is too dangerous even for the highest Lanoo. No one can be entrusted with full knowledge of the Secret Science before his time. In Egypt the Mysteries had been known since the days of Menes. The Greeks received them much later when Orpheus introduced them from India. Thus, even in the days of Aristotle, few were the true Adepts left in Europe and even in Egypt. While darkness fell upon the face of the profane world, there was still eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation. Athenians, the real barbarians of Hellas, charged Æschylus with sacrilege and condemned him to be stoned to death because, they claimed, having been uninitiated, he had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his trilogies on a public stage. But he would have incurred the same condemnation, had he been initiated. Every truth revealed by Jesus, and which the Jews and early Christians understood, was concealed by a Church that has always pretended serving Him. To deprive the Greeks of their Sacred Mysteries, which bind in one the whole of mankind, was to render their very lives worthless to them. Blessed is he who has seen these things before he goes beneath the hollow earth; for he understands the end of mortal life, and the beginning of a new life. The Lesser grades of Eleusinia symbolised the descend of Persephone, Ceres-Demeter’s daughter, to earth and were preparatory to Greater Mysteries, when the daughter returns to her divine abode and is finally reunited with her mother. Similarly, Northern Buddhism has its “Greater” and its “Lesser” vehicle, the Mahayana or Esoteric, and the Hinayana or Exoteric School. The object of the Lesser Mysteries was to instruct the candidate about the condition of the unpurified soul invested with an earthly body, and enveloped in a material and physical nature that, until and unless purified by high philosophy and ethics, is destined to suffer pain and death through its attachment to embodied life. Selfishness is the prisoner of the divine soul. Physical body is the prison. And real hell is life here, on earth. The Book of Job is a complete representation of ancient Initiation, and the trials which generally precede this grandest of all ceremonies. Still, the cunning translators of the Hebrew Bible imply that Job’s “Champion,” “Deliverer,” and “Vindicator,” was Messiah. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the Hindus, the real Champion and Deliverer it Atman; with the Neo-Platonists, Nous Augoeides; with the Buddhists, Agra; with the Persians, Ferouer. The true Champion is the immortal spirit in every man. It alone can redeem our soul and save us from ourselves, if we follow its behests instead of squandering our divine inheritance by pandering to our lower nature. There were two classes of participants, the Neophytes and the Perfect. And two castes of Magi, the initiated and those who were allowed to officiate in the popular rites only. Neophytes first taught in upper temples were initiated in crypts. Oral instructions were given at low breath, in solemn silence and secrecy. Jesus and Paul classified their doctrines as esoteric and exoteric: The Mysteries of the Kingdom of God for the Apostles, the parables for the multitude. Aristides calls Mysteries the common temple of the earth. Epictetus says that all that is ordained therein was established by the Masters of Wisdom for the instruction of mortals and the correction of their customs. Plato asserts that the object of the Mysteries was to re-establish the soul in that state of perfection from which it had fallen. Baptism was one of the earliest Chaldeo-Akkadian rites of inner purification. Candidates were immersed thrice into water by Hydranos, the Baptist. At the Mysteries of the Anthesteria at limnai, i.e., the Feast of Flowers at the temple lakes, after the usual baptism by purification of water, the Mystai were made to pass through to the gate of Dionysus, that of the purified. After their Second Birth was accomplished, and the Mystai had returned from their baptism in the sea, the Tau or Egyptian cross was laid upon the breast. The Mysteries of the Jews were identical with those of Pagan Greeks, who took them from the Egyptians, who borrowed them from the Chaldaeans, who got them from the Aryans, who inherited them from the Atlanteans, and so on. But what Gods and Angels had revealed, exoteric religions, beginning with that of Moses, reviled, reveiled, and hid for ages from the sight of the world. The lure of lucre was the final nail in the coffin of the Eleusinia. An Athenian demagogue and sycophant, whose eloquence was described as of a coarse and vehement character, degraded the Sacred Mysteries by persuading the State to levy a charge for those seeking admission to higher life. Thus initiation had become a commodity — and as necessary as baptism has since become with the Christians. The first hour for the demise of the Mysteries struck on the clock of the Races with the Macedonian conqueror. The first strokes of its last hour sounded 47 BCE in the Thebes of the Celts. But the Mysteries of Eleusis could not be so easily disposed of. They were indeed the religion of mankind, and shone in all their ancient splendour if not in their primitive purity. It took several centuries to abolish them, and they could not be entirely suppressed before the year 396 of our era. The Eleusinian Mysteries were archaic Wisdom-Religion dressed in Greek garb. Prehistoric Greece was colonised by two great Indian races, the Solar and the Lunar dynasties. Springing up from the kingdoms of Cashmir and Tibet, the prehistoric colonists of Greece consisted of the two great primitive and radical races of Aryavarta, the Solar or ancient Budhistic dynasty (Surya Vansa), and the Lunar dynasty (Chandra Vansa). The former were the earliest settlers in Greece and their religious exponents appear to have been the Dodan, or Brahmanical priests of the great tribe, Doda. As history progressed, the original Lamaic system of religion has been so much modified and so far compromised, as to be compelled to seek refuge in the asyla of the Grecian Mysteries, instead of the state-position it once occupied. Inside Greece, Bacchus was a prosonym of Zagreus, the successor of the Lamaic sovereignty in whose service was Orpheus, the founder of the Mysteries. Outside Greece, Bacchus was the Tartarian Jupiter Hammon whose Lamaic worship accompanied the emigrants of Tartary to Egypt. In Budhistic belief, the young Lama is born again from the consort of the Jaina Pontiff, Semele or Su-Lamee, the Great Lama Queen. The Eleuth-Chiefs, who spread the Lamaic doctrines in the Attic territory, became Eleusine. Their forms of worship and Tartar ceremonials composed the staple of the celebrated Eleusinian Mysteries. The high-born Brahmans or Culini lived on the Peloponnesian Mount Cyllene. The Mysteries were communicated to Culyus-Celeus, ruler of the land of the Rarhya, by Demeter herself. Yet the Greeks besmirched their noble ancestry by belittling their Hierophants as troglodytes. Three Hierarchs represented Budhistical and Brahmanical power. Two orders of priests officiated over the initiations. The descendants of the High Budha Priest or Eumolpidai, and the Budhist Keerukos or Keryx, the sacred herald of the Greeks, the latter aided by the daughters of the late Eleusinian high-caste king Culyus or Celeus. Modern Greek authors who treat Eleusinian worship as mysteries, rather than the old national form of worship, name those admitted to the Lesser Mysteries as Mokshtai or Mystai, from the Budhist word Moksha. After taking an oath of secrecy to preserve the old religion of the country against the more attractive heresy of Homer and his popular gods, those admitted to the Greater Mysteries were styled avapta or epoptai. Iacchos (Bacchos), properly Yogin, who appeared on the sixth day of the Mysteries, is none other than Dio Nausho or Dionysos, son of the Jaina Pontiff (Jeyus), and the Great Lama Queen, Soo Lamee or Semele. Couros, a prosonym of Iacchos, is Gooros or Guru, a spiritual teacher. Hence, Demeter is styled by the Greeks Couro-trophos or Guru-nurse. Erectheus-Poseidon was worshipped jointly with Athene and is identified with Poseidon or Po-Sidhan, Prince of all Saints, Chief of Saidan, and Prince of Sidon. Saidan, Eracland, and Phœnicia, are in close proximity to Afghanistan; Sidan is repeated in the Phœnicia of Palestine. Poseidon was worshipped jointly with Adheene, the Virgin Queen of Heaven, modified by the Greeks as Athene. She is the Egyptian Neeti, corruptly written Neith. The mysterious name of Onge-Athene was also derived from AUM, the Triple Fire representing the highest Tetraktys.
The Eleusinian Mysteries and Rites by Dudley Wright Pdf
The Eleusinian Mysteries were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. They are the "most famous of the secret religious rites of ancient Greece." It is thought that their basis was an old agrarian cult which probably goes back to the Mycenean period (c. 1600 - 1100 BC) and it is believed that the cult of Demeter was established in 1500 BC. The mysteries represented the myth of the abduction of Persephone from her mother Demeter by the king of the underworld Hades, in a cycle with three phases, the "descent" (loss), the "search" and the "ascent," with the main theme the "ascent" of Persephone and the reunion with her mother. It was a major festival during the Hellenic era, and later spread to Rome. The name of the town, Eleusis, seems to be Pre-Greek and it is probably a counterpart with Elysium and the goddess Eileithyia. The rites, ceremonies, and beliefs were kept secret and consistently preserved from antiquity. The initiated believed that they would have a reward in the afterlife. There are many paintings and pieces of pottery that depict various aspects of the Mysteries. Since the Mysteries involved visions and conjuring of an afterlife, some scholars believe that the power and longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from psychedelic agents."
The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries by Thomas Taylor Pdf
1875 These observances once represented the spiritual life of Greece, and were considered for two thousand years and more the appointed means for regeneration through an interior union with the Divine Essence. We can learn a valuable lesson in this rega.
