Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

ch. in] The Kouretes as Medicine-Men 51
speech, explains that the order of the cosmos is fixed and that
such thiugs as portents cannot be. Minos then sends for the
priests and medicine men, the Idaean Daktyls, presumably to
purify the palace and bring peace and understanding. They leave
their secret sanctuary on Ida—the strange manner of its building
they describe, they come in white robes to the terror-stricken
palace and in solemn anapaests tell of the manner of their life
on Mount Ida and of the initiation ceremonies that have made
them what they are and have given them authority to cleanse and
interpret.
Their avowal of ritual acts performed on Mount Ida is as
follows :
There in one pure stream
My days have run, the servant I
Initiate of Idaean Jove;
Where midnight Zagreus roves, I rove.
I have endured his thunder-cry,
Fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts;
Held the Great Mother's mountain flame;
Enhallowed 1 and named by name
A Bacchos of the Mailed Priests.
Robed in pure white I have borne me clean
From man's vile birth and coffined clay
And exiled from my lips alway
Touch of all meat where Life hath been 1 .
The analogies between these rites and the initiation rites
discussed in the last chapter are obvious. We have here as there
to do with mysteries performed by the ' mailed priests,' the
Kouretes, and these mysteries are mysteries of Zagreus, and of
the Great Mother, and of Zeus. But, be it noted, it is Idaean,
not Diktaean Zeus whom the Kouretes now serve. This leads us
to suspect—what is indeed I believe the fact—that we have to do
with initiation ceremonies of a later and more highly developed
type, initiation ceremonies not merely tribal and social, whether
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