received doctrine, once established, should be removed.
It must be borne in mind, that only the vaguest ideas at present prevail as to the mystical secrets[1] of the old priests. Everybody knows that the Egyptians, Greeks, and other Eastern nations concealed the vital doctrines of their theology from the ignorant and vulgar, and it was only by a gradual process of initiation that the meaning of the sacred writings and ceremonies were explained. And then, after this preparation, the initiates were allowed to be full partakers in the religious rites. It is a misfortune that all the ritual of the older religions has been destroyed, and it is particularly regretable that no scrap of the sacred writings, or temple ritual of pagan Greece of Rome, has survived to our time. We do not even know whether the Hebraized or Christianized version of the Masonic ritual, as we now know it, has anything more than a faint resemblance to its primitive form. Besides the ordinary services in the pagan temples, it is well known that there were in certain periods especially mysterious celebrations of the nature of dramatic shows or plays, in some cases apparently intended to form the concluding spectacle of the initiations. A few ancient authors have alluded to these shows, but when everything is collected from their works, it amounts to very little indeed. Plutarch, St. Clement of Alexandria
- ↑ To avoid misunderstanding, it may be stated here, that throughout the present inquiry the doctrine of the mysteries is assumed to have been a defined scientific tradition, communicated orally to the initiates or mystics, who secretly passed it on from generation to generation. Therefore, mysticism being synonymous with gnosticism, it must not be confounded with the speculative mistiness which is cultivated by certain dreamy philosophers of our day. The mystic (μύστης) in the old sense has naturally become extinct, together with the gnosis which formerly instructed him.
