From Eleusis to Florence: The transmission of a secret knowledge E-Book

Nicola Bizzi

• Herausgeber: Edizioni Aurora Boreale
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The essay From Eleusis to Florence: The transmission of a secret knowledge 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.
Among the various mystery religions of antiquity, none has ever achieved such a fame and diffusion, and at the same time such a secrecy and impenetrability to the eyes of the uninitiated, like the Eleusinian Mysteries. So much so that, not unreasonably, it has been affirmed by the most authoritative scholars that the very foundations of the Western culture and Tradition are based upon them.
The writer is an historian and belongs, by family tradition, to the mystery tradition of the Eleusinians “Mother”, an ancient initiatory order which descends directly from the Primary Priestly Tribes of Eleusis. A feared and respected initiatory order, which later inspired many mystery and esoteric traditions – such as the Pythagorean Order or the Freemasonry, up to the Bavarian Illuminati. 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. the 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.

Leseprobe

Τεληστήριον

NICOLA BIZZI

FROM ELEUS TO FLORENCE

THE TRANSMISSION OF A SECRET KNOWLEDGE

VOLUME I:

FROM THE AEGEAN-MINOAN ERATO THE ENTRANCE

OF THE ELUSINIANS IN CLANDESTINITY

PART A: THE ORIGIN OF THE MYSTERIES

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Title: From Eleusis to Florence:

the transmission of a secret knowledge

Volume I: From the Aegean-Minoan Era

to the entrance of the Eleusinians in clandestinity

Part A: The Origin of the Mysteries

Author: Nicola Bizzi

Publishing series: Telestèrion

Editing and illustrations by Nicola Bizzi

ISBN e-book edition: 978-88-98635-51-1

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

© 2019 Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Via del Fiordaliso 14 - 59100 Prato - Italia

[email protected]

www.auroraboreale-edizioni.com

All rights reserved

To my daughter Demetra,

dream and hope.

INTRODUCTION TO FIRST ITALIAN EDITION

By Nicola Bizzi

This manuscript is not meant to be a study about the sacred mysteries of antiquity or a manual of History of Religions. It is not even a specific and articulated report (which would require much more time than that foreseen for the present work) about the utmost and undisputed expression of religiosity and Mediterranean spirituality: the Eleusinian Mysteries.

For those who, entering the vast repertoire of nonfiction, want to get a fairly clear and objective idea on this subject, only focusing on a comparative analysis of historical and literary sources, I would recommend reading a great essay such as Les mystères d’Eleusis. Leurs origines. Le rituel de leurs initiations by Victor Magnien1. Or, for those who intend to read some-thing that has a much more historical and archaeological approach, I would recommend Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries by the famous Greek archaeologist Georgios Milonas2, or Mysteria: Archeologia e culto del santuario di Demetra a Eleusi by Enzo Lippolis3.

I would also advise you to avoid reading the essays published by historians of religions such as Walter Burkert or Károly Kerényi since (even though they are very widespread in the universities), in my opinion, they are too much based on too many personal interpretations.

Among the various mystery religions of antiquity, none has ever achieved such a fame and diffusion, and at the same time such a secrecy and impenetrability to the eyes of the uninitiated, like the Eleusinian Mysteries. So much so that, not unreasonably, it has been affirmed by the most authoritative scholars that the very foundations of the Western culture and Tradition are based upon them. On this subject, a lot has been written and theorized, and there is a vast amount of studies and essays published by the most accredited mythologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians of religions. But, as I will highlight in this book, the guidelines of most of these works, especially those written in the twentieth century, are affected by substantial limitations – which I will carefully explain – and, not to be put in second place, by an absolute lack of an esoteric perspective.

Considering these limitations, the lack or total absence of certain interpretive perspectives, big mistakes, and many misrepresentations that characterize the nonfiction works about this fundamental reality, I decided to write this book, which is the result of decades of studies and of a particular personal journey. In fact, the writer is an historian and belongs, by family tradition, to the mystery tradition of the Eleusinians “Mother”.

Generally speaking, all the nonfiction works on this subject, even the most specialized ones, speak about “Eleusinian Mysteries” in a generic sense. They refer to a mere local cult or to a religious phenomenon circumscribed or disjointed from those that have been its evolutions and branches, without taking into account the fact that it was a universal phenomenon, which came to embrace the areas of the Mediterranean Sea, continental Europe, North Africa, and Near East. And its “schools of thoughts” or “derivations” are absurdly classified and interpreted, in turn, as separate phenomena. In fact, we often hear people talking about “Orphism” and “Pythagoreanism” without clarifying or specifying that behind these terms there is a common origin, deriving from the same Tradition. Obliviously, some of these branches have, over the centuries, deviated from the original channel of the Mysteries, conditioned by other schools and traditions, such as Gnosticism and Hermeticism, but this is another matter. Along the text, I will deal with these aspects in depth.

It is correct to say Eleusinian Mysteries, but one should – in a broader sense – speak about Eleusinity as well.

The deepest roots of Eleusinity lie in the culture and civilization of the ancient Pre-Greek peoples who inhabited the Aegean lands; ethnically, they were very similar populations, with black hair and olive complexion, and since the most remote times, they had inhabited the Cycladic islands, Cre-te, mainland Greece, and the coasts of Asia Minor. They were part of the Cretan Empire of Minos and had two elements in common: the cult of the ancient Titans (who were defeated, according to the Hellenic tradition, by Zeus and the other Olympic Gods during the so-called Titanomachy) and the designation of their progeny by female line (matriarchy). Another fundamental idea of their culture was the common identification with the same sacral lineage, they were the heirs of a great civilization. These were the peoples who, in what has passed into history as the Trojan War, struggled desperately against the Achaeans and other invading enemies, bearers of a cultural model opposed to the Aegean one, to defend their world.

Another important matter that is poorly analyzed in the historical context is the fact that the conflict narrated by Homer in the Iliad was a war of religion – a deadly clash between two models of opposite societies – rather than a trade war: on one side there was a vast confederation of peoples of Aegean lineage, direct heirs of the Cretan Minoan Empire and characterized, as we have said, by a social model based on matriarchy and the cult of the ancient Titan Gods; on the other side, there was a heterogeneous alliance of peoples who had not Mediterranean origins, who had descended into Greece during several migratory flows, who were belligerent populations with a patriarchal social model, and worshipped the cult of the new usurping Olympian Gods.

If we do not understand the dualism and irreconcilability of the two opposite models that have characterized the dramatic passage from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age during the twelfth century B.C., we cannot comprehend the essence of Eleusinity and its Mysteries.

The fall of Troy, in fact, made Eleusis the last bastion of this Sacral Lineage. The choice of this small town located in the Gulf of Salamis – where, according to the Mystery Tradition, the Goddess Demeter arrived, embodied in a human form, in 1216 B.C. to institutionalize the Mysteries – was not unplanned. Now Greece was largely dominated by those invaders who had joined their forces to fight against Troy, and Eleusis represented, ethnically and culturally, a sort of enclave of the Aegean culture. As the archaeological excavations have proved, here the cult of the Two Goddesses, the Mother and the Daughter, had already been attested at least since the fifteenth century B.C. With the fall of the Trojan city, some secret documents and sacred objects that were preserved there were carried in secret to Eleusis. In this way they did not fall into the hands of the enemies, allowing the heirs of the Trojan people to perpetuate, initiating a thread that would no longer be broken, the “Sole and True Doctrine”.

I will talk in depth about this unbroken thread in this work, which will co-me out in at least three volumes.

After examining the main characteristics of the Eleusinity – starting from the most remote origins of the cult and its roots in the Aegean-Minoan culture, after having unraveled a whole series of misunderstandings, misrepresentations, suppositions, and omissions present in many texts on the subject; and after dwelling, in the third part of the first volume, on purely theological and doctrinal matters (such as the origin of the Gods and the Universe according to the Eleusinian Tradition, the nature and features of the Titan Gods, the birth of human race, the grades and the path of the Eleusinity “Mother”, the history of the Primary Cohorts and the Eleusis Tribes, the nature and features of the Hiera (sacred objects), real relics and objects of power, and the relationship between Philosophy and Mysteries) – and of its branches (Mysteries of Samothrace, Orphism), we will face what is perhaps the most mysterious and enigmatic aspect, and at the same time the more ignored, of the whole question. I am referring to the survival of the Mysteries and the Eleusinian Tradition in the phase after 380 A.D., date of the formal closing of the Sanctuary of Eleusis. And we will come to this passage after examining and revealing the causes and the background of the birth and the “construction” of Christianity, showing how it represented a link in the chain of a much more ancient, ample, and dangerous project. The roots of this project of oppression and enslavement of mankind are to be found in the Hyksos culture, in the monotheistic madness of Amenhotep IV – better known as Akhenaten – as well as in the monotheism of the primary Jewish tribes; a project carried on since ancient times, we could say since the overthrow of the ancient Titans defeated by the new Olympic “Deities”; a project operated by some priestly bloodlines that still today hold the reins of politics, religion, finance, and economy. A project that Eleusinity has always opposed to and of which it has always been the main adversary.

We will see, in the second volume, how that same Tradition that had tenaciously survived the disappearance of the Minoan Empire and, about three centuries later, the fall of Troy, – and that from a primary status had become a mystery religion to protect itself after the transmission to Eleusis – survived the ruthless Christian persecutions, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Modern Age, to arrive almost intact to the present days.

We will see how it has re-emerged several times during our history, influencing in a decisive way, through the secret work of its Unknown Superiors, the main events of our past, from the advent of Humanism to the Renaissance, from the great achievements of science and astronomy to the discovery of America. And, through the work of its “Pythagorean” stream, influencing in a direct way the birth of many secret societies of the eighteenth century, from the Illuminati of Bavaria by Adam Waishaupt to the Illuminati of Berlin and of Avignon by Dom Pernety, up to get to the “Egyptian” Freemasonry of Raimondo Di Sangro and Cagliostro or to the Templar Strict Observance by Karl Gotthelf Von Hund. And we will see, in the third volume, how these mysteries have not been completely peripherical to important events such as the French Revolution, the American Revolution, or the advent of Fascism in Italy.

Precisely, the Italian Renaissance was the main and most evident proof of strength of this tenacious Mystery Tradition. The Renaissance, in fact, radiates Eleusinity from all its pores, which means all its forms that characterized it: from art to literature, from philosophy to architecture to science – from the paintings by Piero Della Francesca, Raffaello Sanzio, Masolino da Panicale, to the great architectural achievements operated by Leon Battista Alberti (just think about the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini); from the treaties of Giorgio Gemisto Pletone, 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.

We will see that behind all this there was not a simple randomness, nor the blind hand of fate, but a tireless work perpetuated by the great Initiates who decided that the moment was right to get out of the shadows and that humanity needed, after centuries of forced obscurantism, a new evolutionary guidance under the sign of the Immortal Gods.

Making their way back to Italy, during the fifteenth century, the two main flows of Eleusinity – that of the Mother Rite and that (schismatic) of the Pythagorean Rite, and reuniting with other branches of the Tradition that survived independently in various localities of the peninsula – gave life to a movement that determined, in open challenge with the Church, a rebirth of the Arts, Sciences and Consciousness during the Renaissance, that have influenced all the centuries to come.

And more than Rome, – once a “city dear to the Gods”, as the Emperor Flavius Claudius Julian used to define it, was now considered too compromised by the subtle and energetic point of view with the Chair of Peter – it will be Florence, together with Ferrara, Milan, Venice and other important Signorie, to represent for many years the fulcrum of this “pagan” renaissance.

I deliberately put this term between quotation marks because it is not a definition I like, nor I am willing to use. In fact, in this book, it will no longer appear. I do not like it because it was used, by the Christians, with an offensive intent meant to denigrate a whole religious world – and an ensemble of mystery and spiritual religions – that they tried, with intolerance and violence (which were totally unrelated to the ancient system of values of the Mediterranean area), to destroy and eradicate.

Therefore, the Eleusinians, like the exponents and the Initiated of other mystery traditions, have never defined themselves, nor will ever call themselves “pagans”.

As Arturo Reghini, who used this word, but only to make his works more understandable, wrote in 1928, –

«The concealment of its very existence for a pagan tradition must have appeared, to say the least, suitable. Simply think about the deep and inveterate hatred of the dominant religion in the West against paganism. Even when they attack each other, the various Christian branches are accused of paganism; one would say that according to their mentality, there is no graver accusation. Protestants to affirm the excellence and genuineness of their Christianity accuse the Catholics of paganism, and even recently the Catholic Church has condemned the movement called Action Française of basing upon a pagan charisma.

This anti-pagan obsession, if on one hand indicates, by their own confession, that it is not true that, despite everything, the Christians have succeeded in making tabula rasa of paganism, on the other hand demonstrates how violent and aggressive the dominant religion is regarding paganisms; and we will agree that this widespread and tenacious hatred determines a condition which is not precisely the most favorable and alluring for an opportune and profound affirmation of existence and manifestation of a pagan initiatory center. Therefore, even when there was absolute silence, it could be that it was a hermetic or Pythagorean silence, and there is no proof that it was necessarily a dead silence»4.

And Reghini, having been a respectable Initiated and a prominent exponent of the Pythagorean Tradition, knew very well how and how much – and especially in his Florence – during the Renaissance that silence had been broken, and how the voice of the Ancient Western Tradition had grown louder than ever to show its strength.

Precisely in Florence, thanks to the work of the Medici family – who, other than being patrons of the arts and enlightened governors, were also important Initiated - we will see that one of the principal branch of Eleusinity, the Pythagorean one, was established in Italy. From the beautiful Tuscan city, this Tradition spread out into other Italian cities, protected and defended by other Lords of the time, who belonged to initiatory circles that were anything but Christian. And a similar path was also undertaken by the Eleusinity of the Mother Rite, that was present in Italy in the fifteenth century in many Signorie of central and northern Italy (Camerino and Ferrara for example). It was present in Florence as well, where it is still existing with its own institutions and its rituals.

This is why, for this and other reasons that we will deepen, I have decided to name this essay From Eleusis to Florence: the transmission of a secret knowledge, wanting to highlight a link, invisible to most, but at the same time strong and indissoluble, between the city of Attica where the Goddess Demeter established the Sacred Mysteries and the city of Dante Alighieri and Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Above all, the aim of this book is to clarify, together with the analyses of meticulous historical sources, the role of that esoteric and initiatory perspective that unfortunately (and certainly not because of the authors) is missing in many qualified books on this subject.

However, we should not expect blatant revelations about the contents of the Initiation and its Rites, issues upon which many have, in the past, pontificated in a misleading and erroneous manner. I am talking about people like St. Epiphanius of Salamis and the apostate Lactantius, or Clement of Alexandria. Still today many historians of the religions debate on this matter.

Ancient authors, such as Herodotus, Pausanias, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, and Polybius, while facing the interpretation of myths and religious doctrines, when they talk about mystery religions they do never narrate the details. And if, sporadically, they do, they still maintain an aura of sacredness and confidentiality that, to the eyes of the contemporaries, could appear “reticent”. Instead, it is an obvious act of respect, since they were part of that mystery religion and had made a vow of silence. In fact, many authors had personally received a Mystery Initiation (and in some cases more than one), and they knew that there was a limit that they could not cross when writing about the Gods.

«I could say more about this – writes Herodotus - for I know the truth, but let me preserve a discreet silence»5. Other authors, such as Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Iamblichus, Virgil, and the same Emperor Julian, when dealing with religious topics, they addressed to other Initiates. This is why they used a deliberately enigmatic and obscure language, full of symbols and metaphors. A language that was perfectly understandable for their interlocutors, who held the correct reading keys. A letter by Plato states: «Now I must expound it to you in a riddling way in order that, should the tablet come to any harm “in folds of ocean or of earth,” he that readeth may not understand»6.

Indeed, as confirmed by Soranus of Ephesus, «Sacred things are revealed to consecrated men. The profane man cannot deal with it, before being initiated into the Sacred Rites»7.

The esoteric knowledge is by its nature secret, but – as Massimo Frana points out in the introduction to one of his essays8 – secrecy is not intended to merely preserve something from the uninitiated. It is also aimed at preserving the same uninitiated (those who have not been initiated and who do not, therefore, possess the correct keys to have access to the teachings and their truths) from two fundamental dangers: insanity and death. Indeed, anyone who approaches the Sacred Mysteries without being ready could run into these two dangers. Precisely for this reason, as the great Virgil – an Initiate as well – tells us in the Aeneid9, the Priests of the Sacred Wood (a place where the doors leading to the Underworld stand), shouted at the uninitiated who were trying to approach Proserpina: «Procul este, profane!» («Move away, uninitiated!»).

As no one, who is not a true Initiate, can survive the approach of a Deity, no one among the uninitiated could maintain their mental lucidity in front of it. They could risk slipping into the abyss of madness by becoming aware of certain truths that would upset their own forma mentis, as well as their own uninitiated conception of the world.

Like Plato, Socrates, Pausanias, Amphimachus of Abydos, Cicero, Proclus and others before me, even the writer belongs, by bloodline, to the mystery tradition of the Eleusinians “Mother”. And I, like others before me, receiving in Eleusis the salt of life during my first Initiation (which took place twenty-two years ago), I solemnly swore an oath and an explicit vow of silence. Thus, try to understand me if I could not say everything in this essay. But, believe me, in many chapters I have pushed myself, at my own risk and danger, beyond the limits.

Finally, I ask the most meticulous readers to forgive me, if they find some repetitions in the text; I have identified many of them during the writing. I have removed several of them, but I have decided to leave some: I guess that the Latin motto Repetita iuvant could be suitable for such a work. A work that is not complete, because, as Daphne Varenya Eleusinia writes in her essay Demeter: historical notes and cult, «There cannot be any claim of completeness in a writing concerning the Divine Reality»10. But this essay does not want to be just a book related to the Divine Reality, it combines the latter (as far as possible and allowed) with a rigorous historical analysis.

There are some repetitions also because when I started writing this work it was around the mid-nineties. Thus, many chapters of this book were originally designed as separate articles, at the time published on various magazines, and only later expanded to fit into this new context.

I do not hide that when the idea of this book came to my mind I did not even have a personal computer. I used to go to many libraries, with my notebooks and my faithful typewriter in my bag; I was just a student of Classics and, starting from the beginning, a simple Epopt, I did not have all the cognitive elements I needed to complete such a work. But an invisible hand, I would dare say a “divine” hand guided me in my many travels in Greece, in the East, and around other parts of the world, to find those elements that I have jealously gathered along the way, even if I did not immediately understand their meanings; elements that would later prove to be fundamental to continue this work properly. The same invisible hand that, in more recent times, made me find – sometimes in an enigmatic and totally unexpected way – many of the pieces that I did not have yet. The same hand that still today, every day, continues to let me find them according to an arcane design of fate, even though I am well aware that I have not them all in the right place yet. And many other pieces – if the Gods wish so, and if they will grant me the necessary time and their benevolence – I will find them in the future, and surely this book will require new editions, it will be revised and expanded.

I would like to thank all those who have contributed to the realization of this book, with their criticism, but most of the time with their advice that proved to be much more important than they could have imagined. Among them, I want to thank especially Brother Luca Monti, Master of the Templar Strict Observance and Brother Moreno Neri of the Italian Symbolic Rite of the Grand Orient of Italy, the major expert of the works of Giorgio Gemisto Pletone, then Paola Maresca and Costanza Riva of the Archaeosophical Association for their studies on the esoteric, mysterious, and hermetic aspects of Renaissance in Florence, and Brother in Eleusis Enrico Savelli of the Eleusinian Mother School of Florence.

Special thanks go to my grandfather, Commander Ugolino Ugolini, a great Florentine scholar, a true lord, who had been able to transmit me, since I was a child, the love for history and traditions. I am sure that from the Elysian Fields of the Occident Blue of the Ancients where he is, he will appreciate this dedication.

Finally, special thanks to Guido Maria St. Mariani di Costa Sancti Severi, Hatnat of the Goddess Leto and 73rd Pritan of the Hierophants on Eleusinians Mother, without whose precious teachings and advice this book would never have seen the light.

Nicola Bizzi

Florence, September 2017

Year 3233 of the Eleusinian Era

Johan Tobias Sergel: The Goddess Ceres holding torches searching for her daughter

Proserpina in the underworld, 1780 (Stockholm, National Museum)

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)11dedicates 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, orto 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»12.

«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»13.

And, with even more accuracy, Reghini states that «Clearly, the almost complete 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»14.

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»15.

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 one16.

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»17. 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 Reghini), 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»18. 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»19.

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»20.

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 Ruck21. 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»22.

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»23. 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.