The philosophers of course gave a symbolical interpretation of the intoxication of the souls which took part in the feast, explaining it as the ravishing of reason penetrated by divine intelligence. We will return to their doctrines presently.
The Jews of the Alexandrian period shared the belief in the celestial banquet with the Syrian paganism and transmitted it to the Christians. The Paradise of the elect was often conceived as a shady garden where tables were set out at which immortal guests passed their time in endless joy. Thus, not to mention better-known texts, Aphraates, a Syriac author of the first half of the fourth century, depicts the felicity of the Blessed, clothed in light, who are admitted to the divine table and are there fed with food which never fails. “There the air is pleasant and serene, a brilliant light shines, trees grow of which the fruit ripens perpetually, of which the leaves never fall, and beneath these shades, which give out a sweet fragrance, the souls eat this fruit and are never satiated.”[[522]]
The representation of this feast of Paradise recurs several times in the paintings of the catacombs, but in them the wine is poured out by Peace (Eirene) and Charity (Agape). An allegorical explanation gave a spiritual meaning to the food and drink consumed by the elect. But the old idea which was at the root of all the later development, the idea of a material repast in which the dead participated, did not disappear from popular faith when the conception that souls rose to the sky was adopted, and in many countries it has not been obliterated even today.[[523]]
Even in the pagan period, as we have said, enlightened minds accepted the old descriptions of joyous feasts in fresh meadows only in a figurative sense. A less coarse conception of immortality suffered them to be looked upon only as symbols or metaphors. This conception of celestial beatitude originated not in the cult of the dead but in the cult of the gods. It was at first as material as preceding conceptions, but it became purified as the idea of psychic survival was spiritualised.
We have seen in another lecture[[524]] that the “sight of the god” who was adored was the highest degree of initiation. Theurgy flattered itself that it could evoke divine apparitions at will. These visions have been described to us by those who claimed to have been favoured with them.[[525]] Their character and their effects have moreover been analysed in detail in the treatise of Jamblichus, On the Mysteries. The impression most immediately produced by these epiphanies was a boundless admiration for their splendour. The incomparable beauty with which the gods were radiant, the supernatural light in which they were wrapped, had such an effect on men that they could hardly bear the effulgence and nearly lost consciousness, but their souls were flooded with unspeakable joy and purified for ever.
To this ineffable delight of a heart possessed of divine love there was added the highest revelation for the intelligence.[[526]] Must not the infallible “gnosis” be that which was the result of instruction received directly from the mouth of a celestial power which had come down to earth?
The devotees who had obtained the signal favour of this resplendent vision, were thenceforth united to the deity who had manifested himself to them, and were certain to share his immortal life. The fugitive pleasure which they had felt on earth would become a bliss without end in the kingdom of the dead. There they would see face to face the god who protected them and learn from him all that had remained hidden from them in this life.
These ideas, half religious, half magical, are very ancient, especially in Egypt, but they were transformed by astrolatry. Here the celestial powers had not to be summoned by prayer or invoked by incantations in order that they might come and converse with the faithful, but were perpetually visible and offered themselves, day and night, to the veneration of humanity.
Henceforth the knowledge of divine things was no longer to be communicated by the words which the initiate believed that he heard in the silence of the sanctuary. It was revealed by a mysterious inspiration to him who had deserved it by a fervent observation of the heavens.[[527]] Thus by an illumination of the intelligence the astral powers unveiled their will and the secrets of their movements to their attentive servants. Here below this knowledge was always imperfect and fragmentary, but it would be completed in another world, when reason once more would rise aloft to the starry spaces whence it had descended.