CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION TO THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
The object of all Pagan Mysteries was to explain to the initiate the meaning of this present life; to calm his fears of death; to reassure his soul about its immortality; and by cleansing him from impurity to do away with the necessity of expiating crimes in a future existence.
Such, at least, was the explanation given by an older generation of scholars with a marked tendency to lay stress on the moral and religious teaching given in the Mysteries, and even to attribute to the mystae, the initiated, a knowledge of natural philosophy that had been handed down by sages from pre-historic times, although later overlaid in the mind of the vulgar with incrustations of myth and superstition. Of late years the work of Sir James Frazer has altered our conception of the knowledge of natural science and philoso¬ phy possessed by the ancients, and the current trend of thought expresses doubt about the value of the moral teaching given in the Mysteries. It is not the function of this book to decide between the rival schools, each of which may possibly have gone as far astray as the other, though in different directions; its aim is merely to pass on some reliable information about these ancient cults, not by com¬ piling a catalogue of all their manifestations, but by devoting most attention to those which best merit close observance, while giving others little more than a mention.
Those of most importance on account of the influence they exercised on their times are undoubtedly the Mysteries of Eleusis and of Mithra, which have consequently been
2 FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
treated very fully. Of the rest, those of Egypt are perhaps of most interest; but these have been dealt with so fully by learned Egyptologists in recent years that a mere outline of the religion which evolved them has been deemed suf¬ ficient here, though considerably more detail has been included of that branch of Egyptian eschatology woven round the myth of Isis and Osiris.
The practices of such sects as the Gnostics and the Druids have also called for description in this section of the book, mainly because of the general curiosity that exists con¬ cerning them.
The reader should bear one thing in mind: the ancient Mysteries seem for the most part to have been not so much separate societies as integral parts of the life of society in general. Their significance may be either entirely religious, or religious and political as in the Eleusinian cult, or adminis¬ trative as well as containing the other two elements as in the priestly caste of Egypt; but in any case they are not something isolated from the society in which they flourish. They are rather to be regarded as bodies set apart by the nation for some special purpose, of religion or statecraft, or of both. In this aspect they are easily recognizable as differing from the secret societies of our own era, which are often either in conflict or, at the best, largely out of sym¬ pathy and touch with important sections of the nation at large.
One more thing has to be borne in mind. Whatever truths or futilities were veiled in these Mysteries behind a curtain of allegory, all of them alike adopted certain symbols to remind the initiate of the lessons he had been taught, and all of them demanded an oath of secrecy from him. This vow was usually particularly well kept; so conjecture and uncertainty hang over the paths travelled by the mystae of old; in some instances we are enabled to retread a short stretch by their side, but in the main the general direction of the journey is as much as all our researches will enable us to indicate.