his spiritual organs of perception, just as the normal man
experiences the images of physical things with his eyes and ears. But
as an image is nothing in itself if it is not aroused in the
perception by an outer object, so the mythical image is nothing unless
it is excited by real facts of the spiritual world. Only in regard to
the physical world, man is at first outside the exciting causes,
whereas he can only experience the images of myths when he is within
the corresponding spiritual occurrences. In order, however, to be
within them, he must have gone through initiation. Then the spiritual
occurrences within which he is perceiving are, as it were, illustrated
by the myth-images. Any one who cannot take the mythical element as
such illustration of real spiritual occurrences, has not yet attained
to the understanding of it. For the spiritual events themselves are
supersensible, and images which are reminiscent of the physical world
are not themselves of a spiritual nature, but only an illustration of
spiritual things. One who lives merely in the images lives in a dream.
Only one who has got to the point of feeling the spiritual element in
the image as he feels in the sense-world a rose through the image of
a rose, really lives in spiritual perceptions. This is the reason why
the images of myths cannot have only one meaning. On account of their
illustrative character, the same myths may express several spiritual
facts. It is not therefore a contradiction when interpreters of myths
sometimes connect a myth with one spiritual fact and sometimes with
another.

From this standpoint, we are able to find a thread to conduct us
through the labyrinth of Greek myths. Let us consider the legend of
Heracles. The twelve labours imposed upon Heracles appear in a higher
light when we remember that before the last and most difficult one, he
is initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. He is commissioned by King
Eurystheus of Mycenae to bring the hell-hound Cerberus from the
infernal regions and take it back there again. In order to undertake
the descent into hell, Heracles had to be initiated. The Mysteries
conducted man through the death of perishable things, therefore into
the nether-world, and by initiation they rescued his eternal part from
perishing. As a Mystic, he could vanquish death. Heracles having
become a Mystic overcomes the dangers of the nether-world. This
justifies us in interpreting his other ordeals as stages in the