Egypt and Eleusinian Mysteries

By Nicola Bizzi

In the past, in the historical and religious-historical fields, the issue of the origins of Eleusinity and its Mysteries has been the subject of intense debates that have often split the academic world in two. Despite the archaeological evidence that emerged from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries excavations, many debates still continue today. And the substantial reason for the absence of a unanimous agreement can be largely sought in the non-objective and misleading interpretation of numerous ancient sources. These sources were strongly conditioned by a prejudice founded on the false myth of the presumed superiority of Egypt, and its religious traditions, in the Hellenic world. A perspective that we find in many Greek authors, who tended to mythize the Egyptian culture, mistakenly indicating it as the mother of all wisdom and of every religious prototype.
In this book, Nicola Bizzi, Italian historian, Freemason and Eleusinian initiate, author of the best seller From Eleusis to Florence: The transmission of a secret knowledge, clearly explains the truth about the authentic origins of the Eleusinian Mystery Tradition, which date back to the Minoan civilization of Crete.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edizioni Aurora Boreale
• Release date: Feb 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9788898635948

Book preview

Τεληστήριον

NICOLA BIZZI

EGYPT

and

ELEUSINIAN

MYSTERIES

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Title: Egypt and Eleusinian Mysteries

Author: Nicola Bizzi

Publishing series: Telestèrion

ISBN e-book version: 978-88-98635-94-8

All rights reserved

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

© 2020 Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Via del Fiordaliso 14 - 59100 Prato

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www.auroraboreale-edizioni.com

ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES AND ELEUSINITY

It is correct to say Eleusinian Mysteries, but one should – in a broader sense – speak about Eleusinity as well.

The deepest roots of Eleusinity lie in the culture and civilization of the ancient Pre-Greek peoples who inhabited the Aegean lands; ethnically, they were very similar populations, with black hair and olive complexion, and since the most remote times, they inhabited the Cycladic islands, Crete, mainland Greece, and the coasts of Asia Minor. They were part of Cretan Empire of Minos and had two elements in common: the cult of the ancient Titans (who were defeated, according to the Hellenic tradition, by Zeus and the other Olympic Gods during the so-called Titanomachy) and the designation of their progeny by female line (Matriarchy). Another fundamental idea of their culture was the common identification with the same sacral lineage, they were the heirs of a great civilization.

With the collapse of the Minoan Empire, which occurred around 1500 B.C., and with the arrival of new populations ethnically and culturally alien to the Aegean area coming from the North (plain of the Danube, current Ukraine and the Caucasian area), all lied to the cult of those gods whom the Aegean people considered to be usurpers, began a great phase of tension. The climax was reached in 1184 B.C., with the conclusion of what is commonly known as the Trojan War. It was not simply a conflict dictated by commercial reasons or a mere desire for conquest, nor a stereotype of ancient literature, but a war between two completely different and irreconcilable worlds opposed to each other: on one hand a coalition of invading peoples joined by the cult of the new usurpers, determined to annihilate anything that did not conform with their own vision of the world; on the other, the last bastion of the Aegean-Minoan culture, a union of similar peoples who strenuously defended their cultural and religious identity (the cult of the ancient Titans), as their own patrimony of values as well. And with the ruinous fall of Troy, the maximum religious and cultural center of the Lelegic-Pelasgian and Aegean peoples, the great heritage of these civilizations was secretly transferred to Attica, in a small town overlooking the Gulf of Salamis: Eleusis. The Tradition reports us that here the Titan Goddess Demeter arrived, in a human form, seeking for her Daughter Kore, who had been kidnapped by the Olympic Deities – by order of Zeus – to prevent her mission to redeem humanity. Here, in the very year of Her arrival (1216 B.C.), the Goddess instituted the Sacred Mysteries, pronouncing the Speech of Revelation.

From that moment Eleusis became the major point of reference for all those who recognized themselves in the Sole and True Know-ledge. It was the religion of the ancient Titans, and Eleusis became a center of initiation and cultural irradiation for the whole ancient world. From all over the world, people came to Eleusis to be initiated. And, therefore, Eleusinian temples and sanctuaries were built everywhere.

Eleusinity continued to gradually spread during history, reaching all the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and all the districts of Europe, from the misty lands of the North up to Colchis, Scythia, and Caucasus.

In the Eleusinian context there is a precise schematization of these phases. The phase before 1.216 B.C. – which we will examine in the chapter The Eleusinian Daughter Orders and Rites and the secondary branches of Eleusinity, which was prior the formal institutionalization of the Mysteries and the building of the Mother Sanctuary of Eleusis, and which is the most interesting one from a historical and anthropological point of view (since it coincides with the tumultuous events and with the social transformations that led from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age) – it is called Proto-Eleusinian Awareness. This was followed by the Ancient Eleusinian (1.216-780 B.C.), which consolidated and developed the mystery religion continuing the Lelegic-Cretan Rite. During this phase, all the Aegean-Mediterranean peoples of the Minoan-Cretan civilization, that had common traditions and worshipped the ancient Titans, gathered around the spiritual light of Eleusis. Later, there was the Middle Eleusinian (780-360 B.C.): the cult spread westwards, towards Sicily, Magna Graecia, and the coasts of North Africa. Then, there was the phase called New Eleusinian (360 B.C. - 50 A.D.), during which there was the great spread of the cult in all the territories subject to Rome. Finally, we have the last phase called Late Eleusinian (50 A.D. - 380 A.D.), during which there was the greatest expansion of the cult among the popular classes of the whole Empire, but which also saw the beginning, with the seizure of power from the Christians, of the great persecutions. Persecutions that for the followers of the Sole and True Knowledge culminated, as we shall see, in 396 A.D., with the profanation and the definitive destruction of the Telestérion and the sacred places of Eleusis.

The enigmatic statue of Vealed Isis, created in 1922 by the Belgian artist Auguste

Puttemans, notoriously initiated into Freemasonry, inspired by the statue described by Plutarch in De Isis et Osiris. It is currently located at the Herbert Hoover National Historic Site, in West Branch, Iowa (United States of America)

THE MYSTERIES

As the great Irish esotericist John Heron Lepper wrote, one could say that the existence of secret or closed societies – in which certain teachings or practices are passed on to chosen individuals who must undergo a series of tests – responds to a very general predisposition of human nature¹. This is unquestionably true, but this is not an exhaustive explanation, since the birth and the diffusion, in the ancient world, of rites of mysterious nature founded on the principle of initiation as a prerogative for the access to a certain knowledge, cannot be explained only through an anthropological and sociological perspective.

Ezio D’Intra, in his introduction to the Italian edition of the work of Victor Magnien Les Mystères d’Eleusis. Leurs origines. Le rituel de leurs initiations, has rightly pointed out that «The ancient man in general, especially the spiritual hierarchies of the past, had access to the experiences of the Sacred with a frequency, certainty, and lucidity that made them absolutely not akin to those, – poor, rare, and transitory, or falsified from prejudices, or artificially self-induced by strange inner thoughts – mostly unhealthy, of the modern spiritualism»².

In the classical world and in the pre-Christian era, men were closer to the Gods and, at the same time – in a real communion – the Gods were closer to them. It was from the Gods that mankind had received precise teachings, rules, and doctrines, and the answers to the greatest questions that the human beings, since they had left the caves, had begun to wonder: Who are we? Where do we come from? Where do we go?

By mystery we mean a series of cults, religious practices, and rites developed and spread in antiquity throughout the Greek and Mediterranean world, in the ancient Near East, and later throughout the Hellenistic area and in the Roman Empire, whose roots are to be found in the Pre-Greek cultures of the Aegean, Cretan, and Anatolian coasts. Cults, religious practices, and rituals were characterized by an initiatory path, which gave gradual access to knowledge and to a following personal advancement. Essential to them was a strict vow of silence, to which all initiates were voted: the uninitiated were not allowed to have access to the teachings, to the revelations, and to everything that happened in the context of these ceremonies.

The word derives from the Greek μυστήριον (mysterion), then later latinized in mysterium. The etymology of the word goes back to an Indo-European root (my-) of onomatopoeic origin, which means to shutup (from which the word mute derives). The Greek words μύω [myo] (being initiated into the Mysteries), μύησις [myesis] (initiation), and μύστης [mystes] (the initiated) come from this etymological root. The verb myo was used with the meaning to keep your mouth shut or to keep your eyes shut, expressions that clearly show the esoteric nature of certain rites which, as Aristotle confirms to us, «They were called Mysteries because the listeners had to shut up and not tell any of these things to anyone»³.

The ancient Mysteries, as Piero Coda has pointed out, has generally the following features:

1) They require an initiation (μύησις);

2) There are precise rites;

3) The commitment not to talk about what it is seen nor spoken out;