The Cults of the Greek States, Volume 3Clarendon Press, 1907 |
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Pagina 195 - ... established by the mystic contact. But these deities, the mother and the daughter and the dark god in the background, were the powers that governed the world beyond the grave : those who had won their friendship by initiation in this life would by the simple logic of faith regard themselves as certain to win blessing at their hands in the next. And this, as far as we can discern, was the ground on which flourished the Eleusinian hope...
Pagina 305 - Cecrope, ut aiunt, permansit hoc ius terra humandi ; quani 2 cum proxumi fecerant obductaque terra erat, frugibus obserebatur, ut sinus et gremium quasi matris mortuo tribueretur, solum autem frugibus expiatum ut vivis redderetur.
Pagina 177 - ... are being initiated into great mysteries. ... At first one wanders and wearily hurries to and fro, and journeys with suspicion through the dark as one uninitiated: then come all the terrors before the final initiation, shuddering, trembling, sweating, amazement: then one is struck with a marvelous light, one is received into pure regions and meadows with voices and dances and the majesty of holy sounds and shapes...
Pagina 352 - Per ego te frugiferam tuam dexteram istam deprecor, per laetificas 5 messium caerimonias, per tacita secreta cistarum et per famulorum tuorum draconum pinnata curricula et glebae Siculae sulcamina et currum rapacem et terram tenacem et inluminarum Proserpinae...
Pagina 195 - ... revealed, all these influences could induce in the worshipper, not indeed the sense of absolute union with the divine nature, such as the Christian sacrament or the hermit's reverie or the Maenad's frenzy might give, but at least the feeling of intimacy and friendship with the deities, and a strong current of sympathy was established by the mystic contact.
Pagina 296 - Even the self-mutilation necessary for the attainment of the status of the eunuch-priest may have arisen from the ecstatic craving to assimilate oneself to the goddess and to charge oneself with her power, the female dress being thereupon assumed to complete the transformation.
Pagina 195 - When we have weighed all the evidence and remember the extraordinary fascination a spectacle exercised upon the Greek temperament, the solution of the problem is not so remote or so perplexing. The solemn fast and preparation, the mystic food eaten and drunk, the moving passionplay, the extreme sanctity of the...
Pagina 385 - V 16 : Quid temperatus ab alimonio panis, cui rei dedistis nomen castus ? nonne illius temporis imitatio est, quo se numen ab Cereris fruge violentia maeroris abstinuit ? * Tertullian leiun.
Pagina 185 - I have eaten from the timbrel, I have drunk from the cymbal, I have carried the sacred vessel, I have crept under the bridal-chamber," belongs, not to Eleusis, but, as Clement and Firmicus Maternus themselves attest, to Phrygia and to Attis.