The Eleusinian mysteries & rites. - The Masonic Trowel

106 ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES AND RITES
nature is capable of receiving. Without the
possibihty of the participation of intellect in the
lower material sphere nothing but an irrational and
a brutal life would subsist.
But, according to some writers, the initiates into
the third degree were taught that the gods and
goddesses were only dead mortals, subject while
alive to the same passions and infirmities as them-
selves ; and they were taught to look upon the
Supreme Cause, the Creator of the Universe, as
pervading all things by His virtue and governing
all things by His power. Thus the meaning of
Mystes is given as " one who sees things in disguise,"
and that of Epopt as " one who sees things as they
are, without disguise." The Epopt, after passing
through the ceremonial of exaltation, was said to
have received Autopsia, or complete vision. Virgil
declared that the secret of the Mysteries was the
Unity of the Godhead, and Plato owned it to be
" difficult to find the Creator of the Universe, and,
when found, impossible to discover Him to all the
world." Varro, in his Vv^ork Of Religions, says that
' there were many truths which it was inconvenient
for the State to be generally known ; and many
things which, though false, it was expedient the
people should believe, and that, therefore, the Greeks
shut up their Mysteries in the silence of their sacred
enclosures." The Mysteries declared that the future
life was not the shadowy, weary existence which