Ritual and Religious Experience – Part 4
Charles Seymour
Directly one faces the problem of trying to discover, – from the fragments of the great Mystery Religions that have escaped the vandalism of the Christians of the fourth and fifth centuries AD. – what was the basis of their working, one comes, mentally, up against a closed door. It is a mental door that seems to be tightly locked; and there is one thing quite certain, the key to that door is not to be found in modern orthodox and rationalist histories. As a rule, for pure materialism a Church History written by a sound Protestant theologian, will beat easily any work issued by the Rationalist Press. There are, of course, exceptions to be found, such as “The Mystery Religions and Christianity”, and “The Religious Quests of the Graeco-Roman World”, both by Samuel Angus. But such exceptions are few and far between. Again, books by Roman Catholic historians are, as a rule, written in a patronising manner, and they display unconcealed bias. And so, they are difficult for a student to read if he is trying to be fairminded; for they irritate and rouse, almost subconsciously, a feeling of mistrust. This may be quite unwarranted, but there it is, unfortunately.
Then there are books written by Theosophists and Spiritualists. These also are obviously written from a particular point of view as to rouse mistrust. While the books written by the ‘Ancients’ which form the subject of one’s study do not, as a rule, convey their real intention in the surface meaning. So, unless one has a pretty strong subconscious drive to continue one’s studies, one is apt to drop the subject as not worthwhile.
In reality, it would seem that the best thing to do is to study a certain amount of modern psychology, and then go direct to the ancient sources. For in psychology lies the key to many of these ancient teachings. Afterwards, by meditation, one should strive to ‘intuit’ as much as one can of that which lies behind the veiled hints given us by the old-world initiates. “Understand in Silence”, was the rule of Plotinus, and that is really the only way to decipher the teachings of the Mysteries.
There is, however, a clue that helps considerably in any study of the Mystery Teachings. It is well known that the Greeks, thanks to the conquests of Alexander BC 330, became for the ancient world the apostles of cosmopolitanism and individualism. The destruction of the City States led to the discrediting of the local deities who were supposed to support and protect those States. The Greek Sophists, like the rising generation today, questioned all authority in the “City State”, and in the end they destroyed the authority of the “Polis”, by showing that no law or laws could be divine: all laws were man-made, and ‘what was law at Megara might well be unlawful at Athens.’ In thus destroying the supposed divine nature of the Authority of the State, they destroyed also the authority of the god who stood behind the State as an external authority. But in the place of that which they destroyed, they set up the doctrine that “Man is the measure of all things”; and in developing this idea, Socrates had to drink the cup of hemlock, because he taught that the ultimate authority on right and wrong is not external but internal. In this idea there is a clue to the inner meaning of much of the Mystery Teachings. The clue that we are now following is that of “Conscience”. A word that the Stoics made familiar to the ancient world hundreds of years before Orthodox Christianity, somewhere about AD 225, built its first church; but Conscience had then a meaning rather different to that it has today.
For Socrates and for Plato, there dwelt within each man a divinity. And in the Mysteries there was a regular teaching in ‘astronomizing’, ‘geometrizing’, ‘dancing’, and so forth, given in the Temple schools by specially trained Initiates. This training was intended to enable the would be initiate to attend upon that indwelling divinity, which was held to manifest itself to the ordinary man through the voice of “Conscience”.
In those days the initiated man was spiritually free in a way that many are not free today. His authority was this Divine Authority which was within himself, for the “daimonion” of Socrates was a regular and recognised type of spiritual religious phenomena. The Daimonia were a lesser race of divine beings, as opposed to the Theoi, or the great divinities. So far as the writer can discover, it is only with the advent of Christianity that the “daimonian” were relegated to the sphere of evil spirits. Previous to the early Christian Fathers, this term “daimonion” was the same as the Latin “numen”; and the Ancient Mysteries used both these terms in much the same way that Professor Otto of Marburg, when he particularises, uses the term “numen” in his books on theology, such as “The Idea of the Holy”. The object, then, of these Mystery rituals was to put the Initiate in direct touch with his own particular “daimonion”, or, as we should say, with his own Higher Self.
Now there is a modern, though unorthodox, teaching, that the Personality is the man in incarnation, and the Individuality is the Higher Self which overshadows this lower self or personality; and this teaching is much the same as that which is implicit in the idea of Socrates and his daimonion. It is also very similar to that which is to be found in St Paul’s teaching of the “inward man”, and St Peter’s comment on the “hidden heart”. The whole object, in the early stages at any rate, of the preparatory teaching given in the Temple schools, was to put the student in touch with what we should call his own Higher Self.
The education given in these schools was an all-round training. In addition to developing the intellect by studies, such as geometry and astronomy, and training the intuition by the study of meditation, ritual dancing was taught. And one of the few things that we are fairly certain of with regard to the Mysteries is that dancing played a very important part in the working of their rituals. There is much in the ritual dances of, say, certain of the Mohammedan tribes in North Africa and in India to explain why this should be so. For ritual dancing has a very curious psychological effect not only on those taking part in it, but also on the onlookers; – an effect that anyone can understand who has watched – “with sympathy” – a Khattak dance in North India, or a well-staged Nautch.
In the Mysteries ritual dancing was used with the idea of producing a definite religious – or perhaps it would be better to say, numinous – experience. Of course, it is open to anyone to say that such induced experience is not real, and that it is purely emotional. This may be the case; but the fact that an experience is emotional does not make it unreal. There are emotions which are very real and produce very definite physiological effects; fear is one, and hate is another. And the religious emotion produced by ritual dancing is just as real as fear, or hate; and like them, it produces effects that are real in their own sphere.
Commentary by Christian Gilson
Seymour’s opening paragraph is an interesting reflection on the works of the Classicists of his time, and quite a damning one at that. The domination of a Christian narrative in this period is clear, along with a moral cleansing of the translations of many classical texts. Indeed, it is from the authors that Seymour is talking about that we get the distortion of ‘Platonic Love’. Our present understanding is that this is referring to a close, intimate but nonsexual relationship. Plato however, had no such understanding, his writing is clear in describing a close sexual relationship between two people of the same sex. However, most writing by classicists of the period that Seymour is reading would refuse to acknowledge such a thing, in fear that their works may be used to give moral and historical support to relationships that were socially unacceptable at the time.
Seymour is right to complain, this bias, whether open or concealed, placed a veil over the original texts which obscured meaning and even changed it, to serve a purpose that was seen to be more important. This whitewashing of history has not continued into the 21st Century and thankfully there are now a range of far more open and informative texts available to the scholar. There are also many popularising authors who do not have the patronising manner referred to by Seymour. Amongst such authors are academics such as Mary Beard, or Catherine Nixy. The mental door Seymour posits has clearly been unlocked and pushed open. Perhaps not to the extent or in the manner that he wanted. Amongst the modern spiritual publishing houses there are a plethora of texts of varying reliability on every form of classical religious practice. These texts though come under the same scornful eye as those of the Theosophists and Spiritualists of Seymour’s time. Much that has been written for the neopagan audience shuns historical accuracy, relying on material gained from working with ancient myth using modern spiritual techniques. Many books re-invent the methods of the Egyptian and Greek temples of the mysteries. Such texts fall under the same suspicion as those written with a Christian bias. To actually return to the every day life and worship of classical society requires careful academic and archaeological study, and even then, there is much conjecture involved. Many will argue does this matter if the techniques that we use lead us to insights that help us to grow as individuals, to continue the Great Work of Regeneration?
It clearly does matter to Seymour, who refers us back to the original texts. However, as many classics students know these texts represent only a small fragment of the written output of these civilisations. We cannot blame the loss simply on the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria. In her book ‘The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World’ Catherine Nixy clearly charts the destruction of texts and all reference to pre-Christian practices of the Mystery religions. She usesthe work of a great many modern classics scholars to show how the Early Christians systematically worked to obliterate anything that they felt challenged their theological position. Much in the same way as the modern caliphates have tried to do in Syria. A stance we wholeheartedly condemn as thoughtless and barbaric.
Carl Jung argued that the mystery traditions of the ancient world and particularly that field known to us as magic, was and is the seed of all psychology. That is to say it is the collected understanding of the way in which the human mind operates and can be trained. In the Red Book he writes “The practice of magic consists in making what is not understood understandable in an incomprehensible manner.” (Pg 314) Thus magic and psychology act in very similar if not identical ways. This does of course require a large step for some modern readers, to stop seeing magic as a way to influence the world. Indeed, Jung tells us “Magic is the working of men on men, but your magic action does not affect your neighbour; it affects you first, and only if you withstand it does an invisible effect pass from you to your neighbour.” (Red Book pg308) These ideas then are for Seymour the key to the door of the ancient mystery schools.
In his writing on Greek history Seymour elides a considerable period of time, and as a result his description of the changes to society and the death of Socrates are confused. He separates the terms “City State” from “Polis” when the two are in fact synonymous. He then talks of the destruction of the “City State” when in fact it was by the establishment of “City States” that Alexander manage to conquer and control a vast empire. Furthermore, in the writings of Plato, Socrates distances himself from the Sophists. At his trial he is accused of ‘impiety’ and of ‘corrupting the youth of Athens’. The latter was due to him teaching the youth to question everything and accept nothing at face value, a wise idea but one liable to upset those in power who claimed authority.
Putting aside the confusion of this section, the main point holds true. That law had begun as a matter of divine proclamation that Socrates and others brought in to question. Then more than 63 years after the death of Socrates we find Alexander the Great putting this into practice, showing that local gods could not protect their cities and so their law could not hold authority. What develops instead is a rule of law based on human understanding and thought, reflecting on experience. Certainly, we have here the seeds of what we are, by the twelfth century, to call ‘conscience’. He is right to explain that the meaning of the word has changed considerably since its first stirrings in ancient Greece. There is a distinct period in which humanity goes through a very important development, moving away from the collective to the individual, and through it we can see the evolution of language as a marker, showing the birth and formation of the individual as we understand him/her today.
In writing “The Idea of the Holy” Rudolph Otto was trying to explore an understand the religious experience. In the book Otto calls them the nonrational feelings, the sense of the tremendous, the awe full, the mysterious, or, in a word of his choosing, the “numinous”. It is an exploration of the nonrational factor in the idea of the Divine and its relation to the rational. The “numen” then is not so much the soul as Seymour suggests but more the sense of the “Wholly other” the spiritual reality that subtends physical manifestation.
The aim of the Mystery School as explained here by Seymour is a sound one that has changed little. The aim is to give the Initiate the skills, and discipline necessary in order to create an altered state of consciousness by which they are able to create or access the state of mind recognised as the religious experience. In Otto’s terms to enable them to have access to the “numinous” the “wholly other” and so engage in and mange that experience which is characterised as being ”mysterium tremendems et fascinans.” In the writings of the golden Dawn and Aleister Crowley it is “the knowledge and conversation of the holy guardian angel.” This is an essential point in the development of the initiate, for it is only by achieving this that they can actively and consciously begin to align their manifest will with their true or Divine will. It is this condition that is the true mark of the adept
Ritual dancing is an important and powerful tool in the spiritual development of the m individual, and one which seems to be sadly missing from many modern esoteric practises. When writing about dance in Islam, Seymour, is referring to the Mevlevi order of Sufism. A group who use ritualised dance as a form of worship. By entering into a meditational state and dancing in a continual circular motion the dancers emulate the movements of the planets in the solar system. Their right hand raised to receive the blessing of God and their left hand lowered to pass this blessing to the earth. Whilst dancing they are engaged in ‘Dikr’ the continual mindfulness of God, they are transported from the physical into the spiritual and so may be said to be having a religious experience. However, it must be remembered that Sufism is not part of the main stream Muslim tradition. In fact, traditional Sunni Islam forbids the use of dance.
The reference to Khattak and Nautch is interesting and clearly Seymour was able to watch this. Khattak is a very stylised form of dancing initially developed in the reign of the Mughal cemperors it took the form of a martial dance using swords. Whilst Kathak is a highly stylised dance form in which hand gestures carry a specific meaning. This form of dancing is used in Hindu ritual settings to retell the stories from scripture. These forms of dancing require great concentration and physical control and so are less likely to stimulate religious experience. Yet dance is found in other forms of mystery religion, and in the United Kingdom many dances have been preserved and are performed for their meditational benefits, here I am referring to the Circle Dance movement so beautifully described by June Watts in her 2006 book “Circle Dancing: Celebrating the Sacred in Dance.”
The validity of such experiences is an interesting one. For if we deny the validity of a religious experience induced through dance then we must deny the experience as brought about through prayer, or meditation, or any other devotional activity. For such an activity is created to produce this effect. If we rely simply on the grace of God to produce a religious experience, we may be waiting a very long time. There is a long tradition in many religions of working in a disciplined way towards the experience of God. Within the writings of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, and Swami Prabhavananda, to name but a few, we are clearly told that when we strive towards the Divine, it is then that the Divine strives towards us. Simply to wait for grace to act and for God to reach out for us seems to be a very lazy and unproductive option. Despite how much we sit and listen to ritual, it is only when we reach out and engage intellectually, and emotionally, in thought and word and deed that we are able to access and encounter the Divine.
