“... And when one thinks about the importance attached by the States to the principle and the correct celebration of the Mysteries, to the stipulations made in their treaties for the security of their celebration, one sees to what degree those Mysteries had so long occupied their first and their last thought.
“It was the greatest among public as well as private preoccupations, and this is only natural, since according to Döllinger, ‘the Eleusinian Mysteries were viewed as the efflorescence of all the Greek religion, as the purest essence of all its conceptions.’ ”[478]
Not only conspirators were refused admittance therein, but those who had not denounced them; traitors, perjurers, debauchees,[479] ... so that Porphyry could say that: “Our soul has to be at the moment of death as it was during the Mysteries, i.e., exempt from any blemishes, passion, envy, hatred, or anger.”[480]
Truly,
Magic was considered a Divine Science which led to a participation in the attributes of the Divinity itself.[481]
Herodotus, Thales, Parmenides, Empedocles, Orpheus, Pythagoras, all went, each in his day, in search of the wisdom of Egypt's great Hierophants, in the hope of solving the problems of the universe.
Says Philo:
The Mysteries were known to unveil the secret operations of Nature.[482]
The prodigies accomplished by the priests of theurgic magic are so well authenticated and the evidence—if human testimony is worth anything at all—is so overwhelming that, rather than confess that the pagan theurgists far outrivalled the [pg 255]Christians in miracles, Sir David Brewster conceded to the former the greatest proficiency in physics and everything that pertains to natural philosophy. Science finds herself in a very disagreeable dilemma....
“Magic,” says Psellus, “formed the last part of the sacerdotal science. It investigated the nature, power, and quality of everything sublunary; of the elements and their parts, of animals, of various plants and their fruits, of stones and herbs. In short, it explored the essence and power of everything. From hence, therefore, it produced its effects. And it formed statues [magnetized] which procure health, and made all various figures and things [talismans], which could equally become the instruments of disease as well as of health. Often, too, celestial fire is made to appear through magic, and then statues laugh and lamps are spontaneously enkindled.”[483]