Customer Reviews

Essay on the Eleusinian Mysteries

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A very rare find, not for the faint of mind (as some reviewers are). This is a beautiful facsimile reprint of an otherwise unavailable and irreplaceable addition to scholarly literature on the Eleusinian Mysteries (in ancient Greece), concerning the great moral truths that were revealed to the initiated (among whom, for example, were Aeschylus, Pindar and Plato) along with the oral and written traditions of wisdom that continue to give us many, and yet so few tantalizing glimpses of the ethical heart of ancient civilization that has been largely lost to the onslaught of barbarian power. There is no modern equivalent for this type of classical research in its moral earnestness as opposed to such recent Jungian psychologizing of religious phenomena as that of, say, Karl Kerenyi. Co-published by Mandrake Press (UK) and Homes Publishing (USA) in a series of rare works by Aleister Crowley and others. Highly recommended.

Work published in 1817, with the aim to 'examine' the relationship between polytheism and the Eleusian mysteries.
Nearly the entire text is completely outdated by new archeological findings and research.
The only sentences that were useful for me, were:
"At the conclusion of the Mysteries of Eleusis the congregation was dismissed in these words: Conx, Om, Pax. These mysterious words are pure Sanscrit. They are Camsha, Om, Pacsha.
Camsha signifies the object of our most ardent wishes. Om is the famous monosyllabic used at the conclusion of a prayer, like amen. Pacsha signifies change, course, duty, fortune."
Totally unimportant work.