Nostr

“[A]mong the many exceptional and divine things your Athens has produced and contributed to human life, nothing is better than those [Eleusinian] Mysteries. For by means of them we have been transformed from a rough and savage way of life to the state of humanity, and have been civilized. Just as they are called initiations, so in actual fact we have learned from them the fundamentals of life, and have grasped the basis not only for living with joy, but also for dying with a better hope.” — Cicero

“In AD 364, the Christian emperor Valentinian abolished all nocturnal celebrations in an effort to shut down the [Eleusinian] Mysteries. The almost two-thousand-year march of pilgrims to Eleusis was in serious jeopardy of screeching to a halt. The Greek historian Zosimus credits Praetextatus with successfully convincing the powerful Valentinian to backtrack, permitting “the entire rite to be performed in the manner inherited from the ancestors.” But it’s what the initiate says to the emperor that, among all the strange things about Eleusis, always struck me as the strangest by far. It’s a prophecy of sorts. Faced with the obliteration of “the most sacred Mysteries,” Praetextatus declares that the shortsighted law “would make the life of the Greeks unlivable.” Having drunk the kukeon and experienced the vision for himself, the priest points to Eleusis as the one place that “hold[s] the whole human race together.” The Greek word for “unlivable” is abiotos (ἀβίοτος) — literally, the absence or opposite of “life” (bios). It’s a rare, evocative word. The eminent Hungarian scholar Carl Kerenyi is fascinated by it in his seminal 1962 book on the Mysteries, written in German, Die Mysterien von Eleusis. Kerenyi concludes that the word was consciously chosen to inform later generations that the Mysteries “were connected not only with Athenian and Greek existence but with human existence in general.”” — Brian C. Muraresku

Murarescu's book is the most important book published in this century, for it speaks the truth about the cornerstone in the foundation of human civilization that has been lost — the great tradition of direct experience of Transcendence. Without this tradition, humanity is doomed, and our modern history clearly illustrates this fact. Either we will bring back into our culture the experience of the divine that is available to everyone, or we will perish.

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