of it all, brought by
Pythagoras from Egypt is very old. Known in Memphis, it was known too
in Babylon, perhaps before Memphis was. But the legend of Isis and
that of Ishtar--both of whom descended into hell--lack the transparent
charm which this idyl unfolds and of which the significance was
revealed only to initiate in epiphanies at Eleusis.

Before these sacraments Greece stood, a finger to her lips. Yet the
whispers from them that have reached us, while furtive perhaps, are
clear. They furnished the poets with notes that are resonant still.
They lifted the drama to heights that astound. Even in the fancy balls
of Aristophanes, where men were ribald and the gods were mocked,
suddenly, in the midst of the orgy, laughter ceased, obscenities were
hushed. Afar a hymn resounded. It was the chorus of the Initiate going
measuredly by.

The original mysteries were Hermetic. Enterable only after a prolonged
novitiate, the adept then beheld an unfolding of the theosophy of the
soul. In visions, possibly ecstatic, he saw the series of its
incarnations, the seven cycles through which it passed, the Ship of a
Million Years on which the migrations are effected and on which, at
last, from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, it sails to its primal
home.

That home was colour, its sustenance light. There, in ethereal
evolutions, its incarnations began. At first unsubstantial and wholly
ineffable, these turned for it every object into beauty, every sound
into joy. Without needs, from beatitude to beatitude blissfully it
floated. But, subjected to the double attraction of matter and of sin,
the initiate saw the memories and attributes of its spirituality fade.
He saw it flutter, and fluttering sink. He saw that in sinking it
enveloped itself in garments that grew heavier at each descent.
Through the denser clothing he saw the desires of the flesh pulsate.
He saw them force it lower, still lower, until, fallen into its
earthly tenement, it swooned in the senses of man. From the chains of
that prison he learned that the soul's one escape was in a recovery of
the memory of what it had been when it was other than what it had
become.

That memory the mysteries provided. Those of Eleusis differed from the
Egyptian only in detail. At Eleusis, in lieu of visions, there were
tableaux. Persephone, beckoned by desire, straying then from Olympos,
afterward fainting in the arms of Pluto, but subsequently, while
preparing her own reascension, s