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PREAMBLE.
The last little volume gave the reader a brief outline of what is known of the cult of Mithra and the spread of the Mithriac Mysteries in the Western world. We have now to deal with a Mithriac Ritual of the most instructive and intensely interesting character, which introduces us to the innermost rite of the carefully guarded secrets of the Mithriaca.
This Ritual is all the more precious in that our knowledge of the Liturgies of the ancient Pagan cults of the West is of the scantiest nature. A few fragments only remain, mostly in the form of hymns; whereas the Ritual before us is complete, and the only complete one so far discovered. Dieterich calls it a {9} Liturgy; but a Liturgy is a service in which several take part, whereas it is plain that our Ritual was a secret and solemn inner rite for one person only.
The credit of unearthing it from the obscurity in which it was buried, and of conclusively demonstrating its parent-age, is due to Dieterich; for though Cumont in his great work quotes several passages from the unrevised text, he does so only to reject it as a genuine Mithriac document.
It is dug out of the chaos of the great Paris Magic Papyrus 574 (Supplement grec de la Bibliotheque nationale), the date of which is fixed with every probability as the earliest years of the fourth century A.D.. The original text of the Ritual has, however, been plainly worked over by a school of Egyptian magicians, who inserted most of the now unintelligible words and names (ashma ovomata, nomina barbara, nomina arcana), and vowel-combinations and permutations (voces {10} mysticæ), of their theurgic language, which were known in Egypt as "words of power." The subject is naturally one of the most obscure that is known to scholarship, and so far no one has thrown any real light on it. That, however, there was once in Egypt and Chaldeæ a science of this "nature language," or "tongue of the gods," which subsequently passed into the superstition of a purely mechanical tradition, is highly probable; and one means towards a recovery of the understanding of its nature is a study of the still living tradition of mantra-vidya, or the science of mantrah, or mystic utterances and invocations, in India of to-day.
When these evidently later insertions are removed, there still remains a certain number of nomina arcana and mystica voces which cannot be removed without doing violence to the text. It, therefore, follows that these stand as part of the Ritual. Did they, however, form part {11} of the original Ritual? The original Ritual must have contained, one would have imagined, Persian names. But the distinguished scholar Bartholomae, whom Dieterich has called in to his assistance, declares that nothing Persian can be made out of them without violent changes of the letters. But why, it might be asked, should not the original Persian Ritual have contained nomina arcana taken over from Chaldeæ? However this may be, our Greek Ritual evidently contained certain names and words "of power," before it reached the hands of the Egyptian magical school who inserted the majority of the mantric formulæ in our present text. The latter are, of course, entirely eliminated from the translation, while the former are marked by obeli.
On the whole the most likely supposition is that we have before us (when the latter insertions are removed) a Ritual translated or paraphrased into Greek, and adapted for use in Egypt, {12} and that, too, for picked members of the most esoteric circles. For our Ritual is not for the initiation of a neophyte of the lower grades, but for a candidate who is to self-initiate himself in the solitary mystery of apotheosis, whereby he became a true " Father " of the inmost rites, one possessing face to face knowledge and gnosis.
Dieterich thinks that this Greek ritual was first made in Egypt about 100-150 A.D., and was used in the Mysteries until 200 A.D. It was then that it got into the hands of the magical school, and was included, together with many other pieces, some of them similarly treated, in a collection which was copied on the papyrus which we now possess, about 300 A.D.
It is exceedingly probable, therefore, that we have in this Ritual of initiation certain theurgic practices of Egyptian tradition combined with the traditional Mithraic invocations done into Greek.
As to the chanting of the vowels, it is {13} of interest to learn from Demetrius, On Interpretation, c. 71 (p.20 Raderm.), that: "In Egypt the priests hymn the Gods by means of the seven vowels, chanting them in order; instead of the pipe and lute the musical chanting of these letters is heard. So that if you were to take away this accompaniment you would simply remove the whole melody and music of the utterance (logos)."
The statement of Nicomachus of Gerasa the "musician " and mystic (second century A.D.), is still clearer; for he not only tells us about the vowels and consonants, but also of certain other " unarticulated " sounds which were used by the theurgists, and which are directed to be used in the rubrics of our Ritual. In speaking of the vowels or "sounding letters " - each of the seven spheres being said to give forth a different vowel or nature-tone - Nicomachus (c. 6) informs us that these root-sounds in nature are combined with certain material elements, as they are in spoken speech with the {14} consonants; but " just as the soul with the body, and music with the lyre- strings, the one produces living creatures and the other musical modes and tunes, so do those root-sounds give birth to certain energic and initiatory powers of divine operations. It is because of this that whenever theurgists are awe- struck in any such operation, they make invocation symbolically by means of "hissings" and "poppings" and un-articulated and discordant sounds.
The exact translation of the Greek terms, surigmoj and poppusmoj is somewhat of a difficulty. The first denotes a shrill piping sound or hissing, the Latin stridor. It is used of such different sounds as the rattling of ropes, the trumpeting of elephants and a singing in the ears. The second is used of a clicking or clucking with the lips and tongue, and of the whistling, cheeping, chirruping, warbling or trilling of birds. It is used of the smack of a loud kiss and also of the cry "hush." Both Aristophanes and Pliny {15} tell us that it was used as a protection against, or rather a reverent greeting of, lightning; and the latter adds that this was a universal custom. The English " pop" perhaps represents the idea of the Greek most nearly. In the Ritual, however, I have rendered it by "puff" as it is connected with breath. It is evident that we have here to do with certain nature-sounds, which have disappeared from articulate speech, except in some primitive languages such as the "clicking" of the Zulus. It pertains to the art of onomatopiia or onomatopoiesis, or the forming of words expressive of natural sounds. The ' root-idea seems to be that in mystic operations designed to bring man in touch with the hidden powers of nature, the language of nature must be employed.
As we have said, the Ritual before us is not of the nature of a church or temple service; on the contrary, it contains directions for a solitary sacrament, in which the whole effort of the celebrant {16} is to stir into activity, and bring into conscious operation, his own hidden nature or the root-substance of his being. It is a yoga-rite (unio mystica), or act for union, in which the physical breath, the etheric currents, and the psychic auræ, or life-breaths, or prana's work together with the inbreathing of the Great Breath, or Holy Spirit, or Atmic Energy.
It should therefore prove of very great interest to many who have of late heard much concerning yoga, both in its higher contemplative modes, and also in its modes of deep and psychic breathing (hatha-yoga); for it may be news to many that in the ancient West, especially in Egypt, there was a high art of this selfsame yoga which has been developed so elaborately in India.
We will now give a translation of the Ritual and then proceed to comment on it. The prayers and utterances are printed in italics, and the rubrics or instructions in Roman type.
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