Greek Mysteries

 

The greek classic between 420 BC and 300 BC is symbolized by the owl of the goddess Athene.  The greek mysteries were derived from the Egyptian mysteries. They consist of

  • The mysteries of Eleusis in which the mysteries of Demeter (Athene) and the connected Persephone were practiced
  • The Dionysos cult
  • The Mysteries of Ephesus with the Temple of Artemis where the spiritual students were led to experience of the creative world word (Logos).

The Stoa sees in the Logos a dormant origin and the rational principle of an ordered cosmos, from which all activity proceeds. The Logos created both the causality and a kind of karmic connections. The Logos can be found as the logos spermatikos (reason nucleus) in every being.

  • The Samothrace Mysteries : Here the great gods were revered as Kabiri (Greek Κάβειροι, the great, lat. Cabiri).

An important cult was also Delphi with his oracle. The greek mysteries slowly spread to Rome.  Much later in Italy, the first Visconti tarot cards were published around 1450.

  • The orphans were a further religious movement that spread from around the 5th century BC (possibly more) in Greece, the greek populated southern Italy and the northern Black Sea coast

Dionysius divided the Mysteries into the three classes of cleansing, mystery, and perfection. (P. Dionysos Areopagus: de Eccles, Hierarch, Cap.)

== Greek mythology ==

Greece with its mythology is often looked at as the source of european philosophy. Terms such as the Absolute and the Logos and the related Artemis Mysteries of Ephesus originate from this cultural circle.

In the greek Theogony, chaos is usually placed at the beginning, which resembles the emptiness of other systems. Plato also speaks of a divine demiurge.

The caves-parableof Plato (* 428/427 BC), † 348/347 BC) speaks of people living in a cave (the dark Maya cave), who hold on shadows to reality, and it raises the question
whether one should  drag them to the entrance to the light.

The school of Pythagoras, together with vegetarianism, had a soul - doctrine, just like Plotinus.

Modern philosophy, in the absence of introspection and self-realization (atma-jnana), lives in the dark platonic Maya cave with its deceptions, delusions and illusions, which it regards as overcome with its knowledge theories.

From the Greek mysteries, the deeds of Heracles are widely known, which are a veiled description of the initiation path, and on the other hand the  Oedipus-myth, the Iliad and the Odyssey, whose mystical background was already mentioned by R. Steiner.

Emperor Augustus banished the poet Ovid et al. because in his poetry he had too openly indicated the mysteries. But Ovid had metamorphoses already almost finished. Amor has in some writings the role of the Cupid of the sixth Tarot Card, as with the "arrow of lead" (Saturn phase) and the following transformation into the laurel bush at the river in the Hades "(beginning of stage 14).

(s.a. Eleusis, oder über den Ursprung und die Zwecke der alten Mysterien, Johann Ludwig Ewald, 1819 and Ueber die alten und neuen Mysterien, Johann-August Freiherr von Starck, 1782)