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

in] Magical Secret Societies 55
ancient days it was the custom that these rites should be imparted openly to
all, and things that among other people were communicated in dead secrecy
(eV aTropprJTco) among the Cretans, they said, no one concealed from anyone
who wished to know such matters.
What seems to be behind this rather obscure statement is
this. Initiation-rites of adolescence, as contrasted with initiation-
rites of a magical fraternity, are comparatively public and open 1 .
Every tribesman has a right to be initiated ; nearly every tribesman
is initiated and knows the secrets of initiation. A magical
fraternity on the other hand is always more or less of a secret
society. The rites of both sets of initiation are closely analogous 2 .
They centre round the new birth, that is the new set of social
relations, the new soul, and are figured by real sleep or mimic
death. The rites of adolescence, and probably what we have
called mother-rites, are primary, the magical fraternity-rites a
later development. Crete, the mother of initiation-rites in the
iEgean, kept the memory of her adolescence-rites and their com-
parative publicity, but when her initiation-rites passed to Greece
proper and to Thrace, they had reached the magical fraternity
stage. They were not only mysteries, but mysterious.
In the rites described by Euripides we have no mention of a
new birth, though perhaps this is implied by the new name given,
' Bacchos.' The candidate has to hold aloft the torches of the
Mountain Mother, and he has to accomplish two things, the Feasts
of Raw Flesh and the Thunders of night-wandering Zagreus.
The torch-light dance or procession upon the mountains (opet-
{3daia) is sufficiently known from the Bacchae. The Feasts of
Raw Flesh (a)fjLo