The Greek Mysteries
The Greek Mysteries
The principle of Greek constitutional development is the reaction of the city upon the clans that made it up. These clans were defined from each other by their religious observances, their cults and myths. We follow in the amalgamation of these myths the development of Greek mythology and the consequences in the growth of the Greek state. The first of these amalgamations we trace in the Iliad and Odyssey. Here we have a refining and harmonizing of the myths for the courts of the ancestral kings of Homeric fame, but one that did not take hold of the rites and cults of the common people. The beginning of this and its most general expression is found in the cosmogonies, such as that of Hesiod. The real popular movement went out from the mysteries which put in the place of conflicting cults of the separate clans, out of which the various Greek communities were built, a common worship which took in all who were Greek and would become initiated. But in order to rise above its former local character it had to take on a symbolic meaning, and represented therefore, a deepening of the religious consciousness. This deepening took the form of symbolic identification with the drama of the god's experience that was celebrated. As important results of the mysteries, we have therefore the popular cults rising above local divisions, and thus making possible democratic constitutions in the cities, and a deepening through symbolism of the religious forms, as well as the Aristotelian purification of the emotions through their dramatic presentations in honor of the divinity.
