Celsus on Initiation
MYSTERY
CULTS AND INITIATION
"That I do not, however, accuse the
Christians more bitterly than truth compels, may be conjectured from hence,
that the cryers who call men to other mysteries proclaim as follows: 'Let him
approach whose hands are pure, and whose words are wise.' And again, others
proclaim: 'Let him approach who is pure from all wickedness, whose soul is not
conscious of any evil, and who leads a just and upright life.' And these things
are proclaimed by those who promise a purification from error. Let us now hear
who those are that are called to the Christian mysteries: Whoever is a sinner,
whoever is unwise, whoever is a fool, and whoever, in short, is miserable, him
the kingdom of God will receive. Do you not, therefore, call a sinner, an
unjust man, a thief, a housebreaker, a wizard, one who is sacrilegious, and a
robber of sepulchres? What other persons would the cryer nominate, who should call
robbers together?”
-Celsus
The
mysteries to which Celsus refers to are
the Mystery Cults that flourished in
his time. Mystery Cults, generally, facilitated a connection to the divine by zeroing
in on a specific god or myth and then conveying a secret meaning of that theme.
But first, anyone wishing to join had to be initiated.
Initiation usually began with a kind of probationary period. You had to set yourself in good order before you approached the divine. No god was
going to do it for you. In his view, the lack of initiatory rites within
Christianity means that any yahoo can show up at a church and expect to
accepted as a full member. A Christian might retort that it is Celsus who is
missing the point. If the divinity is freely accessible to all, the initiatory
process becomes superfluous. The problem is, Saint Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians seem to confirm some of the
objections of Celsus. The epistle contains a number of rebukes to early
churches in Corinth after their members lapsed in conduct. It appears a number
of Paul’s coreligionists decided that they had already been saved and could
therefore take certain liberties with their behaviors.
REVENGE
OF THE INITIATIC
Mystery
cults were gradually extinguished as the Roman Empire became more decidedly
Christian. But the initiatic ideal gradually worked its way back into Western
social systems in a number of ways: chivalric codes, guilds, priestly orders,
etc. Not that this should be read as those groups being themselves
resurrections of pagan societies. Perhaps they influenced them, perhaps not—it
doesn’t really matter. Nor does it matter if it was the unique agent of the
Christin faith itself that dissolved them. The point is, forming these kinds of
initiatic societies seem to be pretty sternly embedded in human behavior. Even
their secretive quality came back with a vengeance and the world has been
dealing with lizard people conspiracies ever since.
It
seems like most people could use something like a mystery school in their
lives. If not to facilitate some kind of growth, then to least have some method
of studying the world others than by whatever politics are popular at the
moment. But therein lays the rub, modernity reveres knowledge only when it infers
power and exclusivity breeds the neuroticisms of being within the group as well
as the suspicions of being without.
Related
to this is a recurrent criticism of contemporary spiritual movements, that they
lack conviction. Or, when they try to make up for this with an excess of
discipline, they become the kinds of orders that become overtaken with sadism.
Some might say it would be better to do away these kinds of groups as a whole.
The initiate would declare that very attitude to be the problem. The cults
don’t warp people, they just highlight the deficiencies already present. The
same time bombs remain out there.
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