What are the Mystery School lessons? Below are the words of those who experienced it for themselves, witnessed the initiations, or heard about them from first-hand accounts.
What does it mean to experience the lessons of a mystery school? As I discussed in my last blog, one of the primary lessons is to overcome fear. Below are the words of those had personal experience with a Mystery School, witnessed the initiations, or heard about them from first-hand accounts.
For among the many excellent and indeed divine institutions which your Athens has brought forth and contributed to human life, none, in my opinion, is better than those mysteries. For by their means we have been brought out of our barbarous and savage mode of life and educated and refined to a state of civilization; and as the rites are called “initiations,” so in very truth we have learned from them the beginnings of life, and have gained the power not only to live happily, but also to die with a better hope. Cicero Laws II xiv, 36[i] Thrice happy are those of mortals, who having seen those rites depart for Hades; for to them alone is granted to have a true life there; to the rest, all there is evil Sophocles, Frag 719[ii]Beautiful indeed is the Mystery given us by the blessed gods: death is for mortals no longer an evil, but a blessing. Inscription found at Eleusis[iii]
The soul at the point of death has the same experience as those who are being initiated in great mysteries. Plutarch[iv]
The Great Mysteries focus on experiences of life and death and how we as mortal beings perceive them. Notice also that initiates who have experienced the mysteries, speak about knowing a peace that is presumably not possible otherwise. As described above, the mysteries involve gaining a fuller, happier life by living without fear of one’s inevitable death.
The image used for this post is at the entrance to Machu Picchu. Next up: How some of the mystery school teachings were experienced and where they show up in the Bible.
[i] http://www.san.beck.org/Eleusis-Intro.html consulted March 2013, quoted by Sanderson Beck in The Divine Mother and the Veil of Death The Mysteries of Eleusis.
[ii] Eliade, Primitives; 300.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Naydler; 54.
