Mysteries (Gr. from muō, 'I close the lips or eyes'), also called Teletai, Orgia, or, in Latin, Initia, designates certain rites and ceremonies in ancient, chiefly Greek and Roman, religions, only known to, and practised by, congregations of certain initiated men and women, at appointed seasons, and in strict seclusion. The origin, as well as the real purport of these mysteries, which take no unimportant place among the religious festivals of the classical period, and which, in their ever-changing nature, designate various phases of religious development in the antique world, is all but unknown. It does seem, indeed, as if the vague speculations of modern times on the subject were an echo of the manifold interpretations of the various acts of the mysteries given by the priests to the inquiring disciple—according to the lights of the former or the latter. Some investigators, themselves not entirely free from certain mystic influences (like Creuzer and others), have held them to have been a kind of misty orb around a kernel of pure light, the bright rays of which were too strong for the eyes of the multitude; that, in fact, they hid under an outward garb of mumery a certain portion of the real and eternal truth of religion, the knowledge of which had been derived from some primeval or, perhaps, the Mosaic revelation; if it could not be traced to certain (or uncertain) Egyptian, Indian, or generally eastern sources. To this kind of hazy talk, however (which we only mention because it is still repeated every now and then), the real and thorough investigations begun by Lobeck, and still pursued by many competent scholars in our own day, have, or ought to have, put an end. There cannot be anything more alien to the whole spirit of Greek and Roman antiquity than a hiding of abstract truths and occult wisdom under rites and formulas, songs and dances; and, in fact, the mysteries were anything but exclusive, either with respect to sex, age, or rank, in point of initiation. It was only the speculative tendency of later times, when Polytheism was on the wane, that tried to symbolise and allegorise these obscure ceremonies. The very fact of their having to be put down in later days as public nuisances in Rome herself speaks volumes against the occult wisdom inculcated in secret assemblies of men and women.
How it was that in the best times of Greece these mysteries had such a hold on such large numbers of people is a point about which there need be no mystery. It is perfectly plain. God has at no time left himself without a witness. The Greeks were men; and being men found it impossible to believe that with the death of the body man's life was at an end, or that the sufferings of the innocent met with no reward, the triumph of the wicked with no requital. But the Greeks had no revealed religion, no authoritative teaching on this point. Yet the religious sentiment required some external support for this aspiration, craved some confirmation of this hope. And at the celebration of the mysteries the man or woman whose thoughts were fixed upon the next world found his or her faltering hope strengthened by the sympathy of thousands who were present from the same motives and in the same faith. That this is the secret of the mysteries is indicated partly by the fact that it was the resurrection of various gods which was most prominently set before the eyes of the initiated; and still more by such expressions as that of Pindar (fr. 137), 'Blessed is he who has seen them before he goes below ground;' or of Sophocles (fr. 719), 'Thrice happy they who have been initiated before they die, for theirs is the lot of life, and evil is it with the others;' or of the chorus of the initiated in Aristophanes (Ran. 455), 'We alone enjoy the holy light, we, who were initiated and led a life of godliness toward both kin and stranger;' or of the stone record (Ephe. arch. 1883), 'To the initiated death is not an evil: it is a gain.'
The mysteries, as such, consisted of purifications, sacrificial offerings, processions, songs, dances, dramatic performances, and the like. The mystic formulas (Deiknumena, Dromena, Legomena, the latter including the Liturgies, &c.) were held deep secrets, and could only be communicated to those who had passed the last stage of preparation at the mystagogue's hand. The hold which the nightly secrecy of these meetings, together with their extraordinary worship, must naturally have taken upon minds more fresh and childlike than our advanced ages can boast of was increased by all the mechanical contrivances of the effects of light and sound which the priests could command. Mysterious voices were heard singing, whispering, and sighing all around, lights gleamed in manifold colours from above and below, figures appeared and disappeared; the mimic, the tonic, the plastic—all the arts, in fact, were taxed to their very utmost to make these performances (the nearest approach to which, in this country, is furnished by transformation-scenes, or sensation-dramas in general) as attractive and profitable (to the priests) as could be. As far as we have any knowledge of the plots of these Mysteries as scenic representations, they generally brought the stories of the special gods or goddesses before the spectator—their births, sufferings, deaths, and specially their resurrections. Many were the outward symbols used, of which such as the Phallus, the Thyrus, Flower Baskets, Mystic Boxes, in connection with special deities, told more or less their own tale, although the meanings supplied by later ages, from the Neoplatonists to our own day, are various, and often very amazing. The most important Mysteries were, in historical times, those of Eleusis and the Thesmophorian, both representing—each from a different point of view—the rape of Proserpina, and Ceres' search for her: the Thesmophorian mysteries being also in a manner connected with the Dionysian worship. There were further those of Zeus of Crete (derived from a very remote period), of Bacchus himself, of Cybele, and Aphrodite—the two latter with reference to the Mystery of Procreation, but celebrated in diametrically opposed ways, the former culminating in the self-mutilation of the worshipper, the latter in prostitution. Further, there were the Mysteries of Orpheus, who in a certain degree was considered the founder of all mysteries. Nor were the other gods and goddesses forgotten: Hera, Minerva, Diana, Hecate, nay, foreign gods like Mithras (q.v.) and the like, had their due secret solemnities all over the classical soil, and whithersoever Greek (and partly Roman) colonists took their Lares and Penates all over the antique world. The Eleusinian mysteries can be traced back to the 7th century B.C. (cf. Homeric Hymn to Demeter, l. 473 ff.) In the time of Herodotus as many as 30,000 people attended them (viii. 65); and between 480–430 B.C., the period of Athens' highest power and of the Eleusinian mysteries' greatest fame, the number must have been much greater. When, towards the end of the classical periods, the mysteries were no longer secret, but public orgies of the most shameless kind, their days were numbered. The most subtle metaphysicians, allegorise and symbolise as they might, failed in reviving them, and in restoring them to whatever primeval dignity there might have once been inherent in them.
See Lobeck, Aglaophamus (1829); Preller, in Pauly's Encyc. s. v.; Chr. Petersen, Der geheime Gottesdienst (1848); Lehrs, Populäre Aufsätze; Baumeister, Denkmäler, s. v. Eleusinia; and P. Stengel, in Müller's Handbuch der Klassischen Altertums-wissenschaft, vol. v. pt. 3.