Was initiated in all the Mysteries of Byblus and Tyre, in the sacred operations of the Syrians, and in the Mysteries of the Phœnicians.[522]
As was said in Isis Unveiled:
When men like Pythagoras, Plato and Iamblichus, renowned for their severe morality, took part in the Mysteries and spoke of them with veneration, it ill behoves our modern critics to judge them [and their Initiates] upon their merely external aspect.
Yet this is what has been done until now, especially by the Christian Fathers. Clement Alexandrinus stigmatises the Mysteries as “indecent and diabolical” though his words, showing that the Eleusinian Mysteries were identical with, and even, as he would allege, borrowed from, those of the Jews, are quoted elsewhere in this work. The Mysteries were composed of two parts, of which the Lesser were performed [pg 282] at Agræ, and the Greater at Eleusis, and Clement had been himself initiated. But the Katharsis, or trials of purification, have ever been misunderstood. Iamblichus explains the worst; and his explanation ought to be perfectly satisfactory, at any rate for every unprejudiced mind.
He says:—
Exhibitions of this kind in the Mysteries were designed to free us from licentious passions, by gratifying the sight, and at the same time vanquishing all evil thought, through the awful sanctity with which these rites were accompanied.
Dr. Warburton remarks:
The wisest and best men in the Pagan world are unanimous in this, that the Mysteries were instituted pure, and proposed the noblest ends by the worthiest means.
Although persons of both sexes and all classes were allowed to take part in the Mysteries, and a participation in them was even obligatory, very few indeed attained the higher and final Initiation in these celebrated rites. The gradation of the Mysteries is given us by Proclus in the fourth book of his Theology of Plato.
The perfective rite, precedes in order the initiation Telete, Muesis, and the initiation, Epopteia, or the final apocalypse [revelation].