Eleusinian Mysteries : holy religious rites of Greece held at Eleusis; they dealt with the legends of Demeter, Kore (Persephone), & Dionysus.
... Dionysus, the god who, in Plutarch's* words is destroyed, who disappears, who relinquishes life and then is born again became for the Greeks the symbol of everlasting life. 11. Eleusinian mysteries: The Eleusinian mysteries were certainly the most ancient mysteries performed in Greece. Of pre-Achaean origin, they were initially an autumn festival of plowing and sowing based on the legend of Demeter... certainly true for Greece whose highly moralized Homeric gods were but very exterior aspects of its religion. Its deeper life fed itself on the mystic rites of Orpheus,9 Dionysus,10 and the Eleusinian mysteries,¹¹ all deeply rooted in antiquity and whose initiations were kept very secret. And if we do not know the fundamentals of the Orphic initiation, we do know its preliminaries: vegetarianism... Polytheism: Belief in or worship in more than one god. 6. Hierophanies: n. Sacred revelation. A hierophant was a priest in ancient Greece and more specifically the high priest in the Eleusinian mysteries. 7. The thunderbolt: The thunderbolt or lightning is celestial fire as an active force, terrible and dynamic. The thunderbolt of Parabrahman, the fire-ether of the Greeks is a symbol ...
... the mystic doctrine and practice of the Vedic Rishis; it was that that afterwards developed on a hundred branching lines into the later systems of Yoga. The Veda and the Greeks As to the Eleusinian mysteries, about which he has asked an explanation, they were connected with the same mystic knowledge as was held in India by the Vedic Rishis. Demeter and Persephone were goddesses worshipped by the... Earth-Mother and Persephone was the goddess of the Harvest, but in the mystic symbols Persephone represented the earth consciousness buried in the Ignorance and emerging into the Divine Light. The Eleusinian mysteries were instituted as an outward symbol of this secret knowledge. The Soma wine was the symbol of the divine or spiritual Ananda. This wine was however symbolic and cannot be exactly equated ...
... the New Enlightenment; no, its direct descendants were to be found among the builders of the Christian civilization. Plato and Pythagoras and Heraclitus and the initiates to the Orphic and the Eleusinian mysteries continued to live in and through Plotinus and Anselm and Paracelsus and the long line 'Of Christian savants and sages. The Middle Age had its own spiritual discoveries and achievements... natural idealism, the inborn spiritual outlook which Ireland possessed of yore – the Druidic Mysteries were more ancient than the Greek culture and formed perhaps the basis of the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries-which impelled her foremost to embrace the new revelation brought on by Christianity. As she was among the pioneers to champion the cause of the Christ, she became also the fortress where the ...
... their religion. Moreover, even their moralised gods were only the superficial & exterior aspect of the Greek religion. Its deeper life fed itself on the mystic rites of Orpheus, Bacchus, the Eleusinian mysteries which were deeply symbolic and remind us in some of Page 117 their ideas & circumstances of certain aspects of Indian Yoga. The mysticism & symbolism were not an entirely modern ...
... significant rites, symbols, secret lore within or on the border of the more primitive exterior religions. This took different forms in different countries; in Greece there were the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, in Egypt and Chaldea the priests and their occult lore and magic, in Persia the Magi, in India the Rishis. The preoccupation of the Mystics was with self-knowledge and a profounder world-knowledge; ...
... her. The number seven is symbolic in quite another sense." 17 This sense becomes perceptible when we consider the Lion that figures in the poem. The Neoplatonist tradition of the Eleusinian Mysteries brings in the signs of the Zodiac and makes descending souls drink the starry cup of intoxication placed between the signs Cancer and Lion which are regarded as being nearest to the earth ...
... Dravidians, is a conjecture supported only by other conjectures." 1 Sri Aurobindo demands a background such as preceded the schools of intellectual philosophy in Europe. Just as the "Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries prepared the rich soil of mentality out of which sprang Pythagoras and Plato", so too does the Rigveda represent "the starting point... for the later march of thought in India". 2 In fact, ...
... step of totally symbolic interpretation 107 Proper background to the highly developed Upanishads required 107 A background like the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries before Pythagoras and Plato 107 The Rigveda belongs to the oldest Age of Mysteries with inner and outer meanings 107 The Upanishad's forms and symbols ...
... significant rites, symbols, secret lore within or on the border of the more primitive exterior religions. This took different forms in different countries: in Greece there was the Orphic and the Eleusinian Mysteries, in Egypt and Chaldea the priests and their occult lore and magic, in Persia the Magi, in India the Rishis. The preoccupation of the Mystics was with self-knowledge and a profounder world ...
... 18 North-West Frontier, 63 Northerners, 1 Oldenberg, 110 Old High German, 90 Origins of Aryan Speech, The, 26fn. Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, 107 Ouranos, 89 ovis vignei, 59 Oxford History of India, The, 4fn. Oxus, 77 Painted Grey Ware (PGW), 5, 6, 57, 98 Paippalada version, 87 Pali ...
... Christ but the world-soul which hangs here. 1948 Performs the ritual of her Mysteries. [ p. 221 ] It is "Mysteries" with capital M and means mystic symbolic rites as in the Orphic and Eleusinian "Mysteries". When written with capital M it does not mean secret mysterious things, but has this sense, e.g. a "Mystery play". 1936 Page 303 The passage running from "It was the gate of ...
... invasion through the Punjab is not a myth of the philologists. Now, in ancient Europe the schools of intellectual philosophy were preceded by the secret doctrines of the mystics; Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries prepared the rich soil of mentality out of which sprang Pythagoras and Plato. A similar starting-point is at least probable for the later march of thought in India. Much indeed of the forms ...
... systematic and discursive thought. The Veda is to him the full articulate scripture of an epoch resembling the one whose failing remnants survived in Greece in practices like the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries. In the Age of the Mysteries, "the spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race was concealed, for reasons now difficult to determine, in a veil of concrete and material figures and ...
... reward for their earthly justice and piety. 43 Triptolemus was the introducer of agriculture and had an important part in the cult of Demeter (goddess of the earth) at the Eleusinian Mysteries. He is not described elsewhere as a judge of the dead. 44 Orpheus is no doubt mentioned not as a singer and poet but as the founder of Orphism. 45 Musaeus ...
... underworld as a reward for their earthly justice and piety. Triptolemus was the introducer of agriculture and had an important part in the cult ofDemeter (goddess of the earth) at the Eleusinian Mysteries. He is not described elsewhere as a judge of the dead. Page 92 Orpheus is no doubt mentioned not as a singer and poet but as the founder of Orphism. Musaeus ...
... from the thigh of his father Zeus. The Bacchic rites, it was believed, were capable of making man more nearly completely divine. At Eleusis, the most important part of religion consisted of Eleusinian mysteries. It appears that the Eleusinianism was impregnated with Orphism, and when the yogic development contained in the mysteries reached their highest point of development, Orphic communities began ...
... ancient times their respective ages of mysteries during which ancient systems of yoga 1ere developed, the historical curve of development, however took different turns. The age of the Orphic and Eleusinian mysteries in Greece was followed by a gradual development through Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato into an age of intellectual efflorescence; in India, the age of Vedic Mysteries was followed, after co ...
... of intuitive faculties. This period was again the period of Intuition. It is well-known that in many ancient civilizations, there was the age of mystery such as that of Orphic beliefs and Eleusinian mysteries in ancient Greece. But when that period of mysteries declined, the age of Reason began to develop. There was no parallel movement such as the one that developed in the period of intuition of ...
... marked "missing". If that happened, my niece was there, wide awake, to stir me into consciousness. We felt as if we had entered into some "prophet cavern" or some ancient Greek temple where Eleusinian mysteries were being performed, the Mother being the presiding Priestess. Amal said, "This is exactly the impression I had. I told it to the Mother and I used the word ’ancient’ for the presiding Priestess ...
... God, which is the true being & governing force of existence,—then the apparent mechanical Force reveals itself as no blind or mechanical movement of dead life, that insoluble riddle, that ultra-Eleusinian mystery of modern Rationalism, but the conscious Will of the Sole Existence, its Tapas, its Atmashakti or Chit-Shakti which formulates itself freely into laws and processes—the daivyá adabdhá vratá of... imperative endeavour. The frequent attempt of man to escape from his own soul by plunging his head into the running waters of Matter, is one of the recurrent jests, one of the constantly laughable mysteries of the universe. He cannot keep his head down in that alien medium; after some moments he must come Page 485 up gasping for the necessary breath of his natural existence. Since we cannot... then, the fact once thus triply established, our business is not to account for its existence, which, moreover, must in the nature of things be inexplicable to the mind, since Maya is an original mystery & therefore incapable of solution, but to grasp at the one means of escape, of release, of the great & final liberation. The intellectual difference between the two systems is immense, their temperamental ...
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