CHAPTER IV

THE ORPHIC AND OTHER MYSTERIES
The Orphic mysteries were those performed in honour of Dionysus or Bacchus, and there is little to say about them save that the mystic part of the ceremonies appear to have been both less elaborate and less exalted than the Eleusinian, and the public ceremonies often included orgies and periods of a wild licence.1 Bacchus represented the new vernal life, vegetation, the new-born year, and especially the vine and grapes. The mythology is extremely complicated, and although it is of great interest to the anthropologist it is little to the purpose of a student of secret societies.
Bacchus appears under three forms in the myths. First: Zagreus, whom Jove in the form of a dragon begat on Proserpine. Secondly: the son of Zeus and Semele, entitled the Theban and the Conqueror. Thirdly: Iacchus, who appeared on the sixth day of the ceremonies at Eleusis, “who seems to have been imagined only that he might consecrate in some degree the alliance between the secret worship of Bacchus and that of Ceres.”2
The following is a translation from a Greek papyrus preserved in the Berlin Museum, and dating from the time of Ptolemaios Philopator in the third century b.c., which was discovered by Professor Schubart and published by him in a Berlin newspaper in 1917. It shows that some sort of standard ritual existed for the mysteries of Dionysus, and what was true of one cult may have been true of all.
1“This opposition strikes us at once; and what conformity could in fact subsist between the savage licentiousness of the Bacchic worship and the severe character and the high destination of the worship of Ceres?” Ouvaroff, Op. cit., p. 86.
2 Ouvaroff, Op. cit. p. 92.
25
26
FAMOUS SECRET SOCIETIES
“By Order of the King. All in this country who initiate into the rites of Dionysos are ordered to take ship down to Alexandria; those who live at Naukratis or nearer within ten days, those who live above Naukratis within twenty days of the publishing of this decree. They shall hand in a written declaration to Aristobulos in the Registrar’s office within three days of their arrival; moreover, they are at once to give information about those from whom they received the cult, for three generations, and shall hand in the sacred ritual (logos) sealed, after having written each man his name upon it.”
In this connexion it seems worth remembering that Dionysus under his different names was connected with the festival of the Eleusinia. Iacchos, described by Strabo as^ “the daemon of Demeter, the founder of the mysteries,” is only known as a visitor at Eleusis, but he is purely Athenian, since he is not found in other mysteries borrowed from Eleusis. He is identified with Bacchus in Sophocles’s Antigone. There are other instances of connection between the Bacchic and Eleusinian cults, mostly of the fifth century and later, but the Orphic cult never captured Eleusis as it did other centres. There is, similarly, mention of the two goddesses in the Sabazian and other mysteries, and a tradition that Bacchus is the son of Persephone.
The mysteries of the Cabeiri seem to have been of an orgiastic nature similar to the Bacchic. Phallic worship was an integral part of the cult, as is shown by contemporary references. Herodotus (b. b.c. 385) says that the Athenians were the first of all the Greeks to adopt the custom of representing the god Hermes anecto pene, and had this from the Pelasgians, not from the Egyptians. The Pelasgians, he adds, formerly dwelt in Samothrace, and from them the Samothracians had the mysteries of the Cabeiri, from which the above symbol was taken.
In another passage concerning Cambyses he relates that the king “went also into the temple of the Cabeiri, into which it is not lawful for anyone but the priest to enter, and these images he actually burned, after having scoffed at them exceedingly. These, too, are like the images
THE ORPHIC AND OTHER MYSTERIES 27
of Hephaestus, and men say that the Cabeiri are his sons.”1
St.rahn (first century B.c.) tells us that the Curetes were by many held to be the same as the Corybantes, the Cabeiri, and other sects, whose mysteries are partly secret, partly not, and relate to the orgiastic worship of the Mother of the Gods in Phrygia. These sects, whatever minute differences dis¬ tinguish them from one another, all are possessed by some divine and passionate frenzy, “inasmuch as in the conduct of their rites they terrify men by armed dances, accompanied with noisy shouting, ringing of bells, beating of drums, clash of arms, fluting and uproar, while they pose as servants of the gods; and they are supposed to share their ritual to a certain extent with the Samothracians, Lemnians, and many others, on account of the same people being called minister¬ ing priests.”
The same author tells us elsewhere that the priests, leaders of the dances and ministers all have their appro¬ priate names in the rites of the Cabeiri, which are similar to those of the Cottytian Rites prevailing in Thrace, whence sprang the Orphic mysteries.
The Cabeiri were demigods about whose ancestry varied tales were current in different places.
Pausanias, a Greek historian (second century a.d.), attributes the establishment of the worship of the Cabeiri among the Thebans to one Methapus, an Athenian. Later on he excuses himself from writing about the mysteries of the Cabeiri, saying it would not be lawful. It is not permissible to enter the groves sacred to them, and those who have profaned these sanctuaries have come to a horrible end, of which he offers divers examples.
Article by Gerald FitzGibbon, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, viii, 190.