THE TRANSMISSION OF A SECRET KNOWLEDGE
Preface to the English edition of the essay by Nicola Bizzi From Eleusis to Florence: The transmission of a secret knowledge
By Boris Yousef
The essay From Eleusis to Florence: the transmission of a secret know-ledge by Nicola Bizzi is the largest and most complete study ever carried out on the Eleusinian Mystery Tradition, its origins, its history and life through the centuries, from the persecutions perpetuated by the Christians up to the Middle Ages, as well as from the Renaissance to our days.
A lot has been written about the Mysteries, even by respected professors and authoritative historians of religions, but few – actually very few – have truly understood the meaning of this extraordinary religious mysterical tradition, as the author clearly points out in the first volume of this huge editorial work. But the main news of this work by Nicola Bizzi, whose first volume was released in Italy in November 2017 and quickly became a bestseller, consists in the fact that for the first time in history a monumental work on the Eleusinian Mysteries has been written by one of its Initiate. And it was all fully authorized by the leaders of this institution. The author, in fact, is not only an appreciated historian but he also belongs, by family tradition and for more than thirty years of initiatory experience and path, to the Mystery Tradition of the Eleusinians “Mother”. The Eleusinians “Mo-ther” are an ancient initiatory order which descends directly from the Primary Priestly Tribes of Eleusis. A feared and respected initiatory order, which later inspired many mysterical and esoteric traditions – such as the Pythagorean Order or the Freemasonry, up to the Illuminati of Bavaria. However, it has always remained strictly inaccessible and unreachable for the “profane” world. They have always been the purest and most authentic custodians and defenders of Eleusinian Orthodoxy. Defenders of a secret history and of the initiatory message of the Two Goddesses, the Mother and the Daughter (Demeter and Kore-Persephone). They have allowed this ancient Tradition to survive as it was, with its own rituals and its own secret knowledge. Indeed, only recently the Eleusinians “Mother” have decided to reveal themselves to the world, believing that this is the right time to make such a move.
The essay From Eleusis to Florence: the transmission of a secret know-ledge (the Italian edition consists of three large volumes about almost 1000 pages each) combines historical accuracy and the revelation, for the first time ever, of several pages of hidden history and unpublished secret documents.
Without encroaching into the revelation of secrets that are and must be known only to the Initiates, Nicola Bizzi clearly explains the truth about the authentic origins of the Eleusinian Mystery Tradition, its symbology, its initiatory degrees, and its most truthful meanings. But above all, he retraces the entire history, from its most ancient origins – which date back to the Minoan civilization of Crete – up to its development in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. He explains that many of the greatest philosophers, writers, and scientists of antiquity (but also kings and emperors) were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. And for the first time, he reports important elements of the Eleusinian theology and cosmogony about many fundamental doctrinal topics, including the very origin of the Universe, the Gods, and the whole humankind.
He states very well how modern historians – because of a cultural and religious background that ties them to a prevailing and absolutizing monotheistic culture, and because of a destructive materialistic vision originated during the Age of Enlightenment – are inescapably trapped into a series of substantial limitations in understanding the dimension of the “Sacred” and the spirituality of the ancients. Limitations that have prevented them – until now – from fully understanding the true nature of the Mysteries and their deeper message.
Even the great Florentine Initiate Arturo Reghini, in the chapter La resurrezione iniziatica e quella cerimoniale (The initiatory and ceremonial resurrection) in his essay Le Parole Sacre di Passo dei primi tre Gradi e il Massimo Mistero Massonico (The Sacred Words of Passo of the first three Degrees and the Maximum Masonic Mystery)[1] dedicates many pages of his work to this topic. He firmly contests the discrediting defamations of primitive Christianity and its bishops against the “pagan” Mystery Tradition. He also examines the misrepresentation of the Mysteries and the lack of initiatory experience of many modern historians, academics, and scientists. These people – whose minds were and are permeated and molded by two millennia of dominant and absolutizing monotheistic culture – hysterically try to deny the validity and effectiveness of any pre-Christian manifestation of the Sacred. Moreover, they grasp at straws in a clumsy attempt to theorize or hypothesize that the ancient Mysteries, in particular the Eleusinian ones, were simply a sort of collective hallucinatory delirium due to a mystical-pathological status or to the intake of psychotropic substances, or to alleged elaborate deceptions orchestrated by the priests. These are extremely simplistic and reductive interpretations of what was, for over two millennia, the main and most famous expression of the Sacred in antiquity. Furthermore, this Tradition could count among its Initiated the greatest personalities of the ancient world in the political, scientific, and philosophical field.
As Reghini rightly observes, the early Christian writers, such as Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus, Tertullian, etc., were almost all apostates who (since they were initiated into other religions, also into the Eleusinian Mysteries as in the specific case of Clement, who then decided to embrace Christianity certainly not for sincere faith, but for mere convenience or political opportunity): «deprived the ancient Mysteries of any spiritual content; accused the “Devil” of having created for them ceremonies that were similar to the Christians ones (actually, it was exactly the other way around) to help spreading the “new religion”; they wanted the Sacred Ceremonies to appear ridiculous, maybe for incomprehension or bad faith; they accused the Eleusinians of immorality, judging them only basing upon their unquestionably and absolutely right criterion of “morality”, even adding unlikely fantasies and calumnies just to polemize»[2].
«But – Reghini goes on – in the fury of the Christians against the ancient Mysteries, we can see a first proof that there actually was a spiritual content in them. And it satisfied the noble and cultured minds, while overshadowing the worshipers of the cross and the fig leaf»[3].
And, with even more accuracy, Reghini states that «Clearly, the almost com-plete triumph of the new Asian religion, the non-random loss of the texts of many pagan authors, the establishment of a secular monopoly of culture and teachings, the very exploitation of universality of a pagan Rome, the hatred instilled for the ancient religions, the sharp suppression of every independent voice perpetuated by the Christians, made the devaluation of the Mysteries something that soon became traditionally accepted, and their simply scenic interpretation ended up looking obvious, natural, safe»[4].
Chapeau to Reghini (as Guénon would have said)! Let us now open a small parenthesis to underline what, in my opinion, can represent a limitation in Reghini’s vision – even if it is only a formal limitation rather than of content, and that still represents a limit in the vision of many so-called traditionalists. I am talking about the exaltation of “paganism” and the repeated use of the word “pagan” and its emphasis. I purposely put this term in quotation marks because it is not an adjective or an epithet that I love or that I like to use. I do not like it because it was created, on the Christian side, with the purely derogatory intent to denigrate a whole religious world. It represents the denigration of a set of multi-millennial mystery and spiritual traditions that the new cult, with intolerance and violence which were completely unknown to the ancient system of values of the Mediterranean area, attempted to destroy and eradicate.
The Eleusinians, like the exponents and Initiated of many other Mystery Traditions, including the Orphics and the Pythagoreans (whose roots originate from Eleusinity) have never called and will never call themselves “pagans”. “Pagans”, if anything, were (and still are) in our view the Christians, with their intolerance and their repugnance for the sacred values of universality of the Hellenic-Roman Tradition.
Going back to Reghini’s dissertation, it is interesting to notice how he finds that the “scenic” theory of the Mysteries, still quite widespread among many scholars during the first half of the 20th century, was based mainly on the belief that they consisted of a simple “representation”. It is identified as a mere “mystic drama” devoid of any real theophany. And this only on the basis of a widespread and erroneous comparison with the Christian high-medieval “Mysteries”, which were essentially simple dramatic representations. Indeed, Reghini states that the identity of this word used for both these mysteries may have led to a hasty and incorrect interpretation. However, this verbal identity is actually quite deceptive. I have already explained in this essay the meaning and the etymology of the Greek word Μυστήρια and of its intrinsic link with the verb μυέιν and with the concept of initiatory secret, which is “to keep our eyes and our mouth shut”. The word “Mysteries” used to designate medieval Christians is only – as the philologist Ugo Angelo Canello claims – a corruption of “ministries”. This is because these religious representations of the passion of Jesus Christ and so on were precisely a holy ministry, an office, an exercise.
Therefore, the Christian religion improperly uses the term “Mysteries”, derived from the Greek Μυστήρια, misinterpreting its meaning, as for many other Greek and Latin words (for example, religion, grace, virtue, charity, etc.). While “mystery” properly indicates the initiatory secret, the “not to be said” to the uninitiated, the inexpressible (because it transcends the common human experience), for the Christians it represents their own dogmas, the “mysteries of faith”. We are talking about, as Reghini writes, «the supreme truths, called “mysteries” because they must be accepted by faith, without being discussed and without even trying to understand them because their nature is incomprehensible»[5].
The religious content of these two “mysteries” – Reghini says – may in some way appear similar given that both represent the passion of a Deity. However, this is the only similarity between them, since the Christian “mysteries” certainly do not have the initiatory and palingenetic function of the ancient ones, primarily of the Eleusinian ones. The Christian equivalent of Initiation is to be sought, if anything, not in the medieval Christian “mysteries” but in the sacrament of Baptism.
Reghini also deals with the modern “scenic” theory of the ancient Mysteries that was so popular at his time. Some academics have found some sort of support of this thesis in the historical circumstance in which the Greek tragedy was born: which is, its connection with the cult of Dionysus-Zagreus and the scenic representations of his death. Basically, this is partially true, as evidenced by many historical and literary sources and by the Dionysian origin of Greek tragedy as it developed between the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. It can be seen as an extension in a dramatic sense (i.e. according to purely scenic-theatrical criteria) of the Rites in honor of this God. But, regardless of whether this is true and that, as Aristotle argues in his Poetics, the origin of the tragedy would be in the evolution of the satirical dithyramb (a particular type of Dionysian dithyramb performed by satyrs and introduced in the Peloponnese by Arion of Metimna) there is no doctrinal connection between the cult of Dionysus and the other main mystery cults of the Hellenic area. Indeed, the figure of Dionysus, in Eleusinity Mother and in its derivations, is not contemplated. Furthermore, it has always been seen as hostile. Many of the prerogatives, symbology, and characteristics of this God and his cult have been, on the contrary, assimilated and acquired by Christianity, as demonstrated by the historian and archaeologist Vittorio Macchioro in the 1920s. In fact, he succeeded in identifying an impressive number of correspondences between the Dionysian doctrine and the Pauline one[6].
In this essay, Nicola Bizzi dedicates an entire chapter, entitled The meaning of the Mysteries and the limitations of modern historians, to the misrepresentations, made in good faith or not, perpetuated by contemporary historians. Specifically, he focuses on the historians of religions and on their vision of the historical reality of the ancient Mysteries and their sacredness. He notices that much has been written and theorized about the mystery cults of the Mediterranean area, but the guidelines of most of these works show two substantial limitations. The first is constituted, despite the abundance of classical Greek and Latin sources in religious matters, by the fact that the ancient authors and chroniclers – such as Herodotus, Pausanias, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus and Polybius – while facing the interpretation of myths and religious doctrines, when they talk about mystery cults, they never show us the details. And if, sporadically, they do, they still maintain an attitude of discretion and confidentiality on certain topics which to the profane eyes of our contemporaries might even appear “conspiratorial”. On the contrary, it is a clear act of respect, derived from their following specific rules as well as a vow of silence. Most of these authors, indeed, had received a mystery initiation (and in some cases more than one). Therefore, they were well aware of the boundary line that must not be crossed when writing about the Gods.
«On these Mysteries – Herodotus writes – which I know without exception, my mouth will keep a religious silence»[7]. Other authors – for instance, Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Iamblichus, Virgil and the emperor Julian – when talking about religious subjects, they did it as initiates. They turned to other initiates, and therefore used a deliberately enigmatic language which was rich in symbols and metaphors. A language that was, however, perfectly understandable for their interlocutors, who held the correct reading keys.
The second – and the main – limitation of many modern historians of religions is purely cultural. Two thousand years of Christianity and of a prevailing monotheistic culture have enormously shaped the conscience and the mindset of Western man. In this way, when issues such as the spirituality and religion of the ancients are addressed, many people cannot fully understand how the Greeks and the Romans conceived and lived their relationship with the deities. And because of that, many academics often fall into the trap of the alleged moral superiority of Christianity.
A trap that, precisely because of the acquired cultural formation, both at school and family level, can lead to mistakenly consider monotheism as a natural evolution of Western spirituality. Or it is seen as the overcoming, in a positive and qualitative sense, of ancient “myths” and “superstitions” that were based on ignorance. A trap into which both scholars with a secular approach and those with a catholic one – or at least with a Judeo-Christian one – fall inexorably. Both base their studies and their own research and interpretations on the denial of the existence of the Gods and on the consequent assumption that, in the context of the ancient rites, these Gods did not actually manifest themselves in front of the initiates.
It is sad to notice that historians and scholars belonging to the Freemasonry have often fallen into this trap (with the due exceptions of great enlightened minds such as Robert Ambelain, Jean Marie Ragon or Arturo Reghi-ni), given that they should have acquired, especially if they had achieved a high degree, the most correct reading keys for the interpretation of the relationship with the Transcendent.
As Nicola Bizzi underlines in his essay, he generally does not agree with Walter Burkert’s interpretations of the mystery cults of antiquity. Burkert was a professor of History of Religions and Greek Philosophy at the University of Zurich, and he has published numerous essays. Even though the author does not agree with this scholar’s thought, he considers certain statements by Burkert to be valid. That is, the complaint about the survival, in the study of mystery religions, of some stereotypes and preconceptions that must absolutely be questioned, since they lead us, at best, to partial truths, if not to real misunderstandings.
The first stereotype denounced by Burkert is that which sees mystery religions as “late”, typical of late antiquity, the imperial period or the late Hellenistic period «when the brilliant Greek mind was yielding to irrationalism»[8]. Absolutely false, since the birth of the main mystery cults, as Nicola Bizzi explains very well, is to be placed in very archaic times, precisely between the thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C. It is a moment of transition from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age, a sort of hinge of the human History, a time during which incredible revolutions and transformations took place. Changes of political, social, religious and, not least, climatic and environmental nature could be seen everywhere.
The second stereotype is that according to which the mystery religions would be of “oriental” origin, style and spirit. It is true that regions like Anatolia, Persia or Egypt in the past could have been called “oriental” based on a purely euro-centric point of view, and that Egypt in particular was seen by some ancient authors as the cradle of civilization and religion, but we must agree with Burkert when he writes that the so-called “oriental” mystery cults (the Mysteries of Isis and Osiris for Egypt, those of Attis and Cybele for Anatolia, and those of Mithras for Persia) «seem to reflect the oldest archetype of Eleusis»[9].
Finally, the third stereotype concerns the presumption that the birth and spread of mystery religions was dictated by a “spiritualist” turning point, a sort of fundamental change in the religious attitude of the ancient Mediterranean peoples that was functional or preparatory to the rise of Christianity. A stereotype that is linked to the unjustified theories of a hypothetical or alleged late-ancient “crisis” of “pagan” religiosity. A hypothesis that is the result of a distorted Christian-centered vision that is well connected to the cultural limitations that I have just considered. Therefore, we can agree with Burkert when he says that «the constant use of Christianity as a reference system when it comes to mystery religions leads to distortions»[10].
In the second volume of From Eleusis to Florence: the transmission of a secret knowledge, Bizzi refutes that particular and pernicious materialistic vision – which is unfortunately still very widespread and rooted in the academic world – according to which the ecstatic and palingenetic experiences related to the Initiations into the ancient Mysteries would be due to the mere use of psychotropic substances. It is worthwhile, in this preface, to complete this overview, to see together the main points of this study. «For thousands of years the mind-altering plants have maintained a leading role in man’s social and spiritual life, and the deep sensitive and inner changes that they produced were, in all probability, the common denominator of all ancient religions».
With these disconcerting words, not many years ago, Gilberto Camilla, Vice President of the Italian Society for the Study of States of Consciousness, began his preface to the Italian edition of the essay The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries by Robert Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl Ruck[11]. Notoriously, this book aims at “proving” that behind the cultural heritage and the initiatory experience of Eleusinity there would be nothing but the intake of psychotropic substances.
Facing such absurd and groundless inferences, the Italian Eleusinian Mother School could certainly not remain indifferent, presenting its own answer which we hope will put an end (once and for all) to a shameful sequence of speculations and misinformation that the text quoted above has greatly contributed to create.
Nicola Bizzi, as I have already said, has the authority to do so. Besides being a historian and representing a lay organization such as the Eleusinian Mother School, he belongs, by family tradition and initiatory experience, to the Eleusinian Ecclesial Institution. For this reason, his exposition takes into account two different points of view: the “secular” point of view, the one of a historian, and a more strictly doctrinal and theological point of view, not for this reason separated from a correct historical and scientific analysis.
The Eleusinians have always been in favor of the full freedom of expression of men and, for the defense of this principle, they have fought a lot, even sacrificing, with thousands of martyrs, their lives when freedom – of religion, thought, and expression – was dramatically disappearing. In order to preserve this principle of freedom even today, in this phase of millenarian transformations, the Eleusinians Mother have taken the decision to officially reappear in society, making public much of their experience and their knowledge.
Of what has been and still is the cultural heritage of Eleusinity as a whole, less than a ten percent is known by the profanes. And this ten percent is dramatically polluted by centuries of arbitrary interpretations by ancient and modern authors, as well as by doctrinal influences of other cults (such as, for example, the Dionysian one), which have nothing to do with Eleusinity.
The reasons for this lack of information could easily be attributed to the practice of the vow of silence and to the need for the Eleusinians to hide themselves and their Knowledge in order to defend themselves against the persecutions perpetuated by the Christians. But this would be a too simplistic explanation.
Actually, the vow of silence of the Initiated, in the past was – and still is today – one of the foundations of this initiatory reality. It was referred to specific phases of the initiatory ceremony and to certain contents of the divine revelatory message which in this very context was explained. In short, this vow was extended to a minimum part of the precepts, notions, and practices that the Mystes could learn starting by the first degree of initiation. And it was not a silence for its own sake, but a rule dictated by the need to preserve some human and divine knowledge that, in the wrong hands, would have been misrepresented or compromised.
Everything else, about the eighty percent of the precepts, rules, and ceremonial practices, has always been in the public domain for every citizen of the classical age or the Roman Empire, whatever their religious beliefs was. Simply because all this was an integral part of everyday life, culture, and morality of the time.
As Bizzi explains, it took two thousand years of Christian imposition for these concepts to be erased from the cultural sphere and popular consciences. The annihilation of such a heritage of values was absurd; misinformation, historical misrepresentation, and that aura of mystery and suspicion grew increasingly. Those that, in ancient times, were simply ordinary manifestations of what was not only a great religion, but above all a great school of thought, the most widespread in the whole Mediterranean area, were distorted and forgotten.
Because of this misinformation, we can read the most aberrant things about Eleusinity even today. What is more worrying is that certain statements do not come from ordinary citizens, but from university professors, historians of religions, writers, scientists and other “qualified” exponents of the academic establishment.
The sleep of reason, we know, generates monsters. And what else if not the sleep of reason may have given birth to a work like that by Gordon-Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck?
Nicola Bizzi demolishes one by one the theses of these three men, demonstrating that, within the Mysteries, no psychotropic substance was assumed. Indeed, they were prohibited. He also explains what the kykeon really was, the sacred drink of the Mysteries, and what was its deepest symbolic meaning.
The publication of the essay by Gordon-Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck, and above all its worldwide diffusion, was one of the motivations that have led the Eleusinians to get out of their isolation and gradually make public their cultural heritage.
The use and effects of psychotropic or psychedelic substances taken from plants is as old as the world. Thus, in Eleusis the Mystagogues and Hierophants must have been fully aware of them. So much so that it was strictly banned! Evidently Gordon-Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck missed out on the fact – also known in antiquity – that an Eleusinian Initiated could not make use of substances in order to alter his state of consciousness or to cause an estrangement from reality. The Initiation itself and years of intense spiritual exercises and practices taught the ancient Eleusinians, especially those who had achieved the Epopteia, to dominate their own thinking and to reach high states of consciousness. They could also reach the state of Ecstasy exclusively with their own strength, without the need of any psychotropic support.
The Eleusinian Mystery Tradition teaches us that in order to understand the secrets of human and divine nature (secrets that, once revealed, through learning and Initiation are no longer such. Indeed, Eleusinity has no dogmas) the mind of man must be absolutely clear, pure, and constantly under control. So much so that, in priestly schools the use of wine was strictly forbidden! The use of any drug or, in any case, of any substance capable of altering the normal perceptions of our minds, has always been strictly prohibited to an Eleusinian, and still is today. Those who use and consume drugs, those who drink too much alcohol, even those who take psychiatric drugs, cannot be Eleusinians. So, now that you know that, you should not be surprised by our indignation while reading a booklet like that by Gordon-Wasson, Hofmann, and Ruck.
Let us ask ourselves: what would have happened if an essay aimed at demonstrating that the entire Jewish-Christian religious experience is based upon a hallucinatory experience, on the mere intake of hallucinogenic mushrooms or other psychotropic substances, had been published? Substances that would have led Moses to believe that he had heard the voice of Yahweh in the desert, drugs that would have made the Jews believe that they had even seen the sea opening in front of their very eyes just to let them pass. Or that the miracles of Christ were merely the result of collective hallucinations caused by drugs. I understand the freedom of the press and of expression, but we believe that someone near Rome would have been a little offended…
Am I too presumptuous to think that these remarks of mine on Nicola Bizzi’s essay would have pleased Arturo Reghini? After all, he formulated very similar theses in his writings, proving that he perfectly understood how much the modern misrepresentations of the Mysteries have their origins «in the spiritual obtuseness and the uncivilized mentality brought in the West by Christianity and the consequent tendency to see a comedy or an illusion in every (ancient and pre-Christian) spiritual manifestation»[12].
That Arturo Reghini clearly understood the meaning and goal of the ancient Mysteries, their message, as well as their intrinsic link with philosophy and the reality of their perpetuation through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, has been attested by his many works. Above all, it has been attested by his constant insistence on the correlation between death and Initiation. And not only, he insists that the philosopher, like the initiated in Eleusis, “intends to die”, and intends to do so, as recalled by Marcus Tullius Cicero (a great Eleusinian Initiate) «cum laetitia vivendi rationem accepimus, sed etiam cum spe meliore moriendi»[13]. Yet, until today the authentic history of the survival and perpetuation of this Mystery Tradition through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance had never been written in a complete way. And this is what Nicola Bizzi finally did.
What almost all modern historians miss is the very survival and perpetuation of the Eleusinian Mystery Tradition. They even struggle to consider, in their studies and researches, the considerable period of time (sixteen centuries!) of uninterrupted activity of the Mother Sanctuary of Eleusis and its institutions (which absolutely makes it the most long-lived place of worship in human history). Therefore. we should not be surprised if they do not understand the dynamics of such survival and the enormous influence that the Eleusinian Mystery Tradition had during Humanism and into the development of the Renaissance, with its great artistic, architectural, scientific and literary expressions. An influence that has also determined most of the major historical events that took place in Italy and in Europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As Bizzi explains in his essay, it is correct to speak of Eleusinian Mysteries, but one should – in a broader sense – speak of Eleusinity. This is useful to show the exact extent of a Tradition that has been able to perpetuate itself in an uninterrupted manner from the most remote antiquity up to present days. A tradition that survived the terrible era of the Christian persecutions and the dark times of the Middle Ages, to the point of re-emerging and re-exploding in all its splendor during the Humanism and the Renaissance. In From Eleusis to Florence, especially in the second volume, Bizzi explains how the Italian Renaissance was the main and most obvious show of force of this tenacious Tradition. In fact, that extraordinary season known as the Renaissance, shows Eleusinity and Mystery Tradition in all its various expressions: from Art to Literature, from Philosophy to Architecture to Science. From the paintings by Piero Della Francesca, Raffaello Sanzio, and Masolino da Panicale, to the grandiose architectural achievements of Leon Battista Alberti; from the treatises by Giorgio Gemisto Pletone, Coluccio Salutati, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Matteo Palmieri, Tommaso Campanella and Giordano Bruno, to the poems and works by Michele Marullo, Torquato Tasso, Celio Calcagnini and Ludovico Ariosto; from the universal genius of Leonardo Da Vinci to the revolutionary science of Galileo Galilei. The main protagonists of the Renaissance were all great initiated, the custodians of an arcane wisdom, as many important Italian families of that time, starting precisely from the Medici in Florence.
The Mystery Schools of the Eleusinians Mother, surviving the Christian persecutions of the late Roman Empire and becoming clandestine to continue to exist, have handed down and preserved a vast heritage of ancient texts. Until today, these documents have remained completely unknown to the profane world. Originally, they were kept in the libraries and archives of the Mother Sanctuary of Eleusis and within its priestly schools. They were also hidden in other important Temples and Sanctuaries of Eleusinity in Greece, in Asia Minor, in Egypt, in Italy and in other regions of the Mediterranean Sea. They have been saved from destruction and secured by diligent priests and initiated, who have often risked their own lives to protect them.
When the Christians took political power in Rome, firmly grasping in their hands the reins of the empire, it is sadly known that from persecuted people they became persecutors. They undertook a series of discriminatory actions against all the other doctrines, traditions, and religions that until then had been fully protected by the authorities and institutions of the State. Cults that had peacefully lived together for centuries under the banner of tolerance, mutual respect, and Mos Maiorum, now had to be destroyed.
Starting from the fourth century A.D., and especially after the promulgation in 380 A.D. by Theodosius and Gratianus of the infamous Edict of Thessalonica which imposed Christianity as the only religion, (actually forbidding all the others) many were preparing to fall and to accept this single cult. A cult that represented an exclusive and darkening thought, which brought with itself a heavy curtain of intolerance and persecution. From Theodosius onwards, all that was attributable to traditional religiosity and spirituality, from works of art to sacred architecture, from philosophy to literature, to the simple expressions of ancient popular religiosity, was pejoratively branded as “pagan”, forbidden, destroyed, subjected to censorship and to damnatio memoriae.
The sad story of the destruction of the Serapeum of Alexandria and its famous Library and of the murder of Hypatia, an extraordinary Eleusinian initiated and eminent philosopher and scientist, barbarously raped and massacred by Christian monks under the command of the Alexandrian Patriarch Cyrill – now venerated by the Church as a Saint! – it is only the best known case of a long and endless repression that lasted for centuries. Everywhere, from the fourth to the seventh century, both in the East and in the West, the Temples were looted, burned, and demolished, the libraries set on fire. The loss of the cultural and religious heritage of Greek-Roman classicism was immense, incalculable. It is thought that only a small part of ancient literature survived and was preserved, including that of scientific and religious nature.
Facing the slow and inexorable death of a model of civilization that had guaranteed for centuries the plurality of thought and the full freedom of worship and expression, and the systematic destruction of Temples, Shrines and Libraries, most of the ancient religions and mystery traditions (first of all the Eleusinians, but also the Isiac, the Mithraic, and other minor ones) soon understood that the only way to survive was to become clandestine.
Of course, not all the mystery religions of antiquity managed to save their institutions and their heritage in the same way. Not all of them had the means, the time, the possibilities and the resources necessary to do it, hiding in a dramatic historical moment in which it was extremely dangerous to profess – even in private – their faith and their religiosity. Some traditions did not resist the impact of the persecutions and the violence of the Christian repressive campaign. Seeing that most of their leaders and priestly classes were arrested, imprisoned or exterminated, they ended up separating or dissolving. It certainly went better for others cult, at least at the beginning, but they still failed to save their heritage of values and knowledge for a long time, if not for a few centuries, ending up being annihilated or absorbed by some of the many Christian heretical currents, in particular by Gnosticism. However, the case of the Eleusinians “Mother” on one side and the Pythagoreans on the other was different, their clandestine survival is attested and documented by many sources.
They were the strongest and best organized initiatory institutions, they were certainly not without resources and important political protections and, above all, they were the most determined to preserve their huge heritage.
The Eleusinian ecclesial institutions and the related mystery schools – as Bizzi explains in the second volume of From Eleusis to Florence – after the closure in 380 A.D. of the Sanctuary of the Mother of Eleusis operated by the last Pritan of Hierophants officially in charge, Nestorius the Great, were moved into the Platonic Academy in Athens. It was founded simultaneously with the closure of the Sanctuary by the Neoplatonic philosopher Plutarch of Athens, Nestorius’s nephew, from whom he had inherited both the knowledge and the sacred title. The Athenian academic institution represented a safe port for the Eleusinians and their mystery schools until the time of Justinian. When the Academy was suppressed by a decree of the latter, safe protections and alternative sites had already been set.
A similar path was also undertaken by the Pythagorean Order, although it was not anymore part of Eleusinity for political and doctrinal reasons, and they no longer recognized the superior authority of Eleusis. The great French Initiated Jean Marie Ragon, who lived between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – and this must be emphasized – in addition of being a Freemason, was also an Eleusinian. He has left us in-depth documentation concerning the survival of this order. He traces back their history from Justinian (sixth century) to the nineteenth century[14]. But we will speak more deeply about these events in the future and in the appropriate context. Let us now focus on the Eleusinians “Mother”. Towards the end of the fourth century A.D., the Eleusinian ecclesial institutions became clandestine, thing that was probably agreed or negotiated with the Christian authorities in exchange for a formal closure of the Sanctuary of Eleusis. Thus, it was possible to safeguard and secure not only the Hierà (the sacred objects of Eleusinity, among which there were really “powerful” objects) and the treasures kept in the Temples, but also the archives and libraries of what for sixteen centuries had been the main religious and initiatory center of the whole Mediterranean area. Eleusinity was indeed universally considered “the témenos of humanity”.
In fact, not many years later, in 396 A.D., when the Visigoths of Alaric at the instigation of some Christian bishops sacked and destroyed the Sanctuary of Eleusis, they could not get their hands neither on the Hierà nor on the treasures, nor on the precious secret documents that they were intended to steal on behalf of their chiefs: everything had already been taken away and secured, and the barbarian hordes merely destroyed the sacred statues and burned the empty buildings. Even other main Temples and Sanctuaries of Eleusinity were looted. Fortunately, many archives and libraries were carried to a safe place by the Priests before the Christian hatred tried to destroy these sacred buildings.
Strictly focusing only on the Sanctuary of Eleusis – which had been continuously in operation starting from 1216 B.C. up to 380 A.D. (a remarkable period of time) and which had prestigious schools of initiation and priesthood – the number of documents kept in its libraries must have been impressive, not inferior to the famous Library of Alexandria. Unfortunately, we do not have a precise estimate, but we know that there were kept, in addition to a large number of sacred and mystery texts, numerous masterpieces of ancient literature. Furthermore, there was a wide repertoire of historical works, chronicles, scientific and mathematical treatises, philosophical works and geographical maps, as well as of course the meticulous archiving of centuries of initiatory and religious activity. We do not even have a precise estimate of how much, among such textual materials, was placed in the Platonic School of Athens and how much, instead, was transferred to other places considered safer. We only know how much of this heritage has survived today, thanks to the diligence and dedication of many generations of scribes and archivists of the Eleusinian Mother School, whose roots have to be found in Italy in the fifteenth century and which is still present and operating in Florence.
But, as Bizzi observes, the Eleusinians “Mother” know very well that the books and documents now in their possession represent only a small part of the original patrimony. In fact, it is attested by numerous chronicles and documentations of the Renaissance and the following centuries, that during the Middle Ages, for reasons of security, many texts were also entrusted to small groups of European families (mostly “enlarged” families, on the model of the fratrie), descendants of the eight Priestly Tribes of Eleusis. Among these, several of them became known over time as some of the most prestigious noble houses in Europe.
Many were the families and noble houses that, directly or indirectly, could say to come from the eight Primary Tribes of Eleusis. From 380 A.D. onwards, some of them had received the task of transmitting, defending, and preserving at all costs (alongside the legitimate Eleusinian ecclesial institutions) the Eleusinian Mistery Tradition. Other than a few circumscribed and risky statements, partly concealed by symbolism and never obvious, which occurred in the Renaissance (think of the Medici in Florence, the Guise-Lorraine in France, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in Rimini, the Da Varano in Camerino, Giorgio Gemisto Pletone, Piero Della Francesca, etc.), these families were never publicly exposed, and it was unthinkable that they could do such a thing. They always had to protect and defend themselves on several fronts, both against the Catholic Church and against other opposing initiatory realities.
We often speak with insistence, in a certain kind of books erroneously called “conspiracy” essays, of some “bloodlines” which, since incredibly remote times, would control the destinies of the world. Families that would control and manage political events behind the scenes or through a third party; groups that are not in harmony with each other, since they have different interests and objectives. And this eternal conflict would have always given rise to hidden wars whose reflection has often been embodied by real conflicts among armies and nations. Or, however, these bloodlines would represent the origin and the occult causes of wars. Well, there is certainly some truth about this, but these are issues that are rarely perceived or understood by the masses, or at least by those who do not know any initiatory contexts. Those who believe they know, or those who hold only a partial and often distorted picture of this reality, often speak improperly about the “Illuminati”. Or they speak of secret “brotherhoods of the all-seeing eye”, without realizing that these “confraternities” (let us call them so) have always had, in the last millennia, a tenacious and equally determined adversary in Eleusinity and in its Mystery Tradition. But, if Eleusinity is not a very discussed matter, or at least very few talk about it and in a distorted way, in the last decades people talk and write a lot about occultism. We often read about groups with occult powers that are believed to have been fighting each other since immemorial time. These people would fight to control the destiny of our planet, and in these books, we can rarely find mention of the Eleusinians.
Those looking for “profane” non-fiction news often face a wall of impenetrable secrecy. And yet, apparently, it was precisely the Eleusinians through some groups of families and their relative bloodlines, who have influenced in a decisive way through the secret work of their Unknown Superiors (the leaders of the Ecclesial Institution of the Eleusinian Mother, often infiltrated even within the Church) the main facts and events of our history. Events ranging from the advent of Humanism to the Renaissance. Through the work of the “Pythagorean” branch, these people also influenced the birth of numerous secret and initiatory societies during the eighteenth century, from the Illuminati of Bavaria of Adam Waishaupt to the Illuminati of Berlin and Avignon of Dom Pernety, up to the “Egyptian” Freemasonry of Raimondo Di Sangro and Cagliostro or to the Strict Templar Observance of Karl Gotthelf Von Hund. And, according to some interpretations that for the moment we do not intend to confirm or deny, these bloodlines, directly or indirectly attributable to the eight Primary Tribes of Eleusis, would not be completely extraneous to epochal facts such as the “discovery” of America, the French Revolution, the American Revolution or the advent of Fascism in Italy.
However, the transmission of the Mystery Tradition through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was not always a linear path without obstacles. It would be naive to think it. If it was, in a certain way, rather organic and direct in the context of the two main lines of transmission (the Eleusinian Mother and the Pythagorean one, and above all in the context of “minor” branches derived from them) this path has often assumed the characteristics of an immense fragmented mosaic. A mosaic whose tesserae have never been – nor by profane historians (most of them would not even understand what we are talking about), nor by the exponents of other initiatory realities – relocated in the right place. It is attested that many “minor” branches (a term, this, undoubtedly improper, but necessary for the purposes of understanding) have survived until now, jealously turning in on themselves. They consider themselves the jealous guardians of their excerpts of truth, of their fragments of the columns of the Temple (let me use this metaphor) and of their partial sources, avoiding with obstinacy and determination every contact and every comparison with other similar realities.
Even if Bizzi knows a lot about the transmission of his own specific initiatory tradition – the Eleusinian Mother rite – he recognizes in all modesty, despite decades of studies and research, that he does not know everything about the “Daughter” Rites of Eleusinity, first of all the Samothracian and the Orphic ones. The same goes for realities that, although belonging to the Tradition and to the transmission line of Eleusinity “Mother”, have been separated from it since a long time, pursuing their journey in isolation. In particular, I refer to some of the dispersed tribes of Eleusis, whose descendants live even today in Italy and in other European and foreign countries. In the past, they have already shown to refuse an honest dialogue, but I hope that they will read these lines and change their minds. Beyond the “Daughter” and the Pythagorean rites and the complex reality determined by their dispersion in the sphere of Eleusinity “Mother” of some of the primary Tribes of Eleusis, some important fragments of the Tradition have survived in Italy and elsewhere, in the context of restricted groups of families. An example is provided by Roberto Sestito in his essay, Storia del Rito Filosofico Italiano[15], when he speaks about the Fratrie.
The context to which Sestito refers, that of the prodromes of the Neapolitan “Egyptian” Freemasonry, could apparently be excluded from our discussion, but we will see that this is not the case. Indeed, the author points out that the founders of the nineteenth century Neapolitan Freemasonry, in their historical Prolegomena of the Scottish Rite Constitutions published in 1820 (which most likely are the transcription of the 1750 Constitutions of Prince of Sansevero Raimondo Di Sangro) are explicitly linked to a “regional” tradition of southern Italy. This tradition expressly has “Pythagorean” features, and a descendant of the Count of Clavel, owner of a villa in Anacapri (a place where the Count, after the First World War, used to spend most of his time together with Amedeo Rocco Armentano and Italo Tavolato) claimed to have known that some members of the Mizraimite Rite had never left Naples, representing for Italy a sort of «treasure casket»[16].
Moreover, in the Annals of the Italian Philosophical Rite, in relation to the Rite of Mizraìm and the relative Supreme Council for France, they speak of a «Calabrian constitution»[17].
As Sestito points out, the term Calabrian constitution would hide a precise philosophical allegory, as for the Egyptian rite, independently of the pure and simple geographical reference, because, as Giustiniano Lebano writes in his article, «The word “Egypt” in arcane language does not refer to the famous geographical location. It stays for Aig-Ipt-Os. Once the various terms have been explained through hermeneutics, we discover that they actually stay for each Urbe Arcana connected to the vast band of the urban zodiac of the arcane universe. Therefore, Egypt is an arcane word that explains the Arcane world. And the Egyptians were called the Sub-con-stituted»[18].
As Sestito points out, it would seem that in Naples, in the first half of the eighteenth century, an initiatory current came to light. With its own criteria, it succeeded in finding its place among the high degrees of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry and among the vertices of other esoteric orders with Hermetic, Egyptian, and Templar features. In short words, «a superb spiritual rebirth that was not limited only to Freemasonry and was like other similar examples, occurred in other eras and with rather similar aims»[19].
The casket that kept such a precious seed was probably kept in the environment of the Fratrie. These were mysterious associations typical of southern Italy, whose solidarity bounds were always very close and resistant, for customs and mentality, to all the social and religious innovations. Furthermore, they have been perpetuated over time without the need for written statutes or regulations. The fratria, in the interpretation that Sestito gives us, was an association derived from an ancient model, we could easily say from the Greek γένος (genos). It transcended the model of the traditional family, normally very closed, to open up to certain individuals even of different social level or belonging to other geographical locations. It was created when there was the need to maintain and transmit a secret, a hidden knowledge or a baggage of traditions destined to remain the prerogative of a few and not to become of public domain or the object of an extended sharing. A concept similar to that of the Scottish clan, or to that of the tribes (think about the Priestly Tribes of Eleusis), extended families whose existence and actions were based on the defense and the handing down of a tradition.
In his essay, Sestito clearly refers to a transmission of an initiatory knowledge and of certain ancient mystery Traditions in southern Italy. Actually, it was a geographically widespread phenomenon and, in many respects and various forms, extendable to the entire European continent, even though the Italian peninsula unquestionably represented, for a whole series of more or less known reasons, the core of this phenomenon. But the example called into question by Sestito is explanatory for the purpose of understanding the dynamics of a such a complex phenomenon which is, at the same time, impenetrably inaccessible to most.
In fact, as many sources confirm, it is thanks to the work of something very similar to the fratrie that the Mystery Tradition has managed to survive, both in Italy and in other European nations, with an uninterrupted thread, to our days. Both the Eleusinians “Mother” and those of other Orders and Rites know this very well. Indeed, regardless of the parallel survival of the ecclesial institutions hidden within the Neoplatonic Schools, the Academies, and other similar structures, most of the heritage of Eleusinity survived within groups of families. These groups could or could not be in contact with each other (even if for many centuries they preferred not to be), and even widen themselves, on the model of a clan, a tribe or a fratria if they needed to (for example, in the case of the lack of a direct heir by blood line, resorting to adoptions of trusted people or to weddings planned for this purpose). Families in which this transmission often occurred according to an unwritten rule motivated by a whole series of security reasons: that of the generational leap, with the passage – for example – from grandfather to grandchild. And many of these families have coincided, in history, with important dynasties, noble families, and lords, as in the case of the Medici, the Gonzaga, the Este, the Visconti, the Da Varano, the Da Montone or the Malatesta.
Here below it is the text of another interesting secret manuscript dating back to the nineteenth century, acquired and preserved until now by the Eleusinian Mother School of Florence. Despite some form of censorship that has brought to the omission of the names, replacing them with the initials of the owner, it is very clear and explanatory:
«In some families, some “legends” (we would not know how to call them otherwise) seem to have been handed down from father to son or from grandfather to grandchild, and through these tales it was possible to reconstruct a legacy that was lost and unknown to the most (…). For example, we know that the Count of V., who lived in Lorraine during the eighteenth century, was able to gather much information from other families, and added it to that already in his possession, handed down by his ancestors in the castle of F.
Information that allowed him to constitute twelve volumes of six hundred pages each. But the Count of V. knew that he had collected only the hundredth part of a certain secret tradition. He was not the only one, in modern times, to hold a secret literary collection. It was said, for example, that the collection of the Count of S.G. was colossal and that G.C., a well-known figure in literature, possessed a similar one. Another one, surely, was in the hands of the Kings of F.
If you could gather all the information, you could come up with something sensational. However, every family, club, or school has always been rigorously jealous of its cultural heritage, always ready to take without giving anything in return. It seems that these notions, achieved through many centuries, are the same as those of the Etruscan Vates, who were all from the Eleusinian school, and so the Proto-Eleusinian of the Kureta Order of the Cretan Rite, the secret circles of the Eleusinian Orphic, of the Samothracians, of the Pythagoreans, of the Eleusinians of the Egyptian Rite, of the Roman Rite, etc., as well as the Selective School of the Eleusinian Mother and the secret circle of priests of the God Ampu, into which some Platonists were also accepted. All these people would learn the Knowledge, or the Archaic-Erudite Discipline, from the Minoans-Leleges, or from those Pelasgian populations scattered in the Aegean Sea and in Anatolia. Populations who considered themselves the heirs of the last Atlanteans. If this is true, it is nevertheless surprising how these notions, oral and written, have survived the wears and tears of the last centuries, above all if we consider that very few were chosen to hand them down. Here we speak of an order of ideas that is hard to understand by many».
During the delicate and difficult period of transition represented by the end of the Roman Empire and the advent of the Middle Ages, characterized by the most absolute clandestinity (the only alternative to death and persecution), the primary objective of the Eleusinians “Mother” was the safeguarding of the Hierà (the sacred objects of worship) and of what had been possible to save of the archives and libraries of the Temples. The two Eleusinian families that traditionally held the priestly primacy, namely the Eumolpidae and the Kerykes, continued the Tradition by taking two different paths. The Eumolpidae found their continuity within the Neo-Platonic School of Athens, with Plutarch of Athens (nephew of Nestorius and heir of the title of Pritan), and then with Sirianus, Proclus, Asclepigenia and a long line of other guides, managing to survive the forced closure of the School by the Byzantine Christian authorities and to pass on the Tradition to the present days. They are still present in Greece and in other European nations, even if very jealous and withdrawn.
The Kerykes decided to take their own path, being more determined to maintain the original purity of the Rites (they considered the Eumolpidae too contaminated by other traditions). They chose to pass on the cultural and religious heritage of Eleusinity within their families and generations, first in Greece and in the Balkan peninsula, then in Italy, starting from the fourteenth century. On the Italian territory the Kerykes took root mainly in Umbria and in the Marche region, thanks to the work of important families, such as the Fortebracci and the Mariani. With them Camerino, then under the enlightened Lordship of the Da Varano, became their main initiatory center. Few people know, other than those belonging to a restricted initiatory context, that a great man called Andrea Fortebracci, Count of Montone and Lord of Perugia, better known as Braccio da Montone (1368-1424), beyond his strategic and military talent, was – as indeed many of his predecessors and successors for bloodline – a great Initiate and a Hierophant of Eleusinian Mother Rite.
Starting from Central Italy, restricted groups of families assumed, starting from the end of the fourteenth century, the honor and burden of transmitting, in a thread never interrupted until today, what had been possible to save of the initiatory Knowledge and of the Eleusinian heritage. And the main Mystery Traditions of antiquity that had succeeded, like the Eleusinians, to survive, re-met (and sometimes also fiercely clashed) and settled in Florence in the fifteenth century. They were led by the Medici family, an initiatory family belonging to the Orphic Rite. In that same city that had already been considered sacred by the Templars and in which a part of the Order of the Temple, with Dante Alighieri and Giovanni Boccaccio, had survived the persecutions, they succeeded to transmit to an elite of initiated their most secret knowledge. But why Florence? Nicola Bizzi tries to answer this and many other questions.
Boris Yousef
Moscow, April 7 2019.
[1] Arturo Reghini: Le parole sacre di passo dei primi tre Gradi e il Massimo Mistero Massonico. Ed. Atanòr, Rome 1922.
[2] Ibidem.
[3] Ibidem.
[4] Ibidem.
[5] Ibidem.
[6] Vittorio Macchioro: Orfismo e Paolinismo: studi e polemiche. Ed. Cultura Moderna, Montevarchi 1922.
[7] Herodotus: Histories, II, 170.
[8] Walter Burkert: Antichi culti misterici. Ed. Laterza, Bari 1991.
[9] Ibidem.
[10] Ibidem.
[11] Robert Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann e Carl Ruck: The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Editions, 1978, San Diego, California.
[12] Arturo Reghini: Le parole sacre di passo dei primi tre Gradi e il Massimo Mistero Massonico. Cit.
[13] Cicero: De Lege, I, 14.
[14] Jean Marie Ragon: Notice historique sur le Pednosphes (Enfants de la Sagesse) et sur la Tabaccologie, dernier voile de la doctrine pytagoricienne. Article on Monde Maçonnique n. 12 – 1859.
[15] Roberto Sestito: Storia del Rito Filosofico Italiano e dell’Ordine Orientale Antico e Primitivo di Memphis e Mizraìm. Ed. Libreria Chiari, Florence 2003.
[16] Roberto Sestito: Above-mentioned work.
[17] Ibidem.
[18] Giustiniano Lebano: Il senato Occulto di Roma, in Ignis, Year V°, n. 2, December 1992.
[19] Roberto Sestito: Above-mentioned work.