Initiation in the Ancient World: Pagan Survival & the Hermetic Tradition, Part 1

by guest blogger

Dianus del Bosco Sacro

Grand Conservator of the Pagan Faith and Tradition

of the Sacred Forest of Nemi

Translated and Introduced by Golden Dawn Imperator

David Griffin

In the ancient world it was believed that the Isiac, luminous, sapiential and transforming appearance was potentially present in every woman, but it had to be awakened through initiation to the Mysteries. Furthermore, as we will see, initiation to the Mysteries put Neophytes in contact with the powers of fertility and regeneration by passing through death and the underworld.

Initiation to the Mysteries played a fundamental role in the existence of whoever approached it and the fact that, during all those centuries of initiations (from Eleusis, to the Mysteries of Dionysus to those of Isis, to the Mysteries of Cybele and Mithras), no one ever broke the oath of secrecy formulated during the act of acceptance of initiation testifies how sacred [initiation] was considered. (Translator’s note: Contrast this with today’s Golden Dawn community, where certain misguided Golden Dawn “leaders” instead rush to have their name to be the first one attached to any document still remaining secret and unprofaned).

Initiation in the Ancient World

Aristotle, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles and Euripides, to cite the most well known, tell us that whoever received initiation was destined, after death, to a luminous fate, completely different from that of common mortals. Moreover, numerous testimonies of people initiated to the Mysteries report an “indescribable experience, miraculous in nature, which would transform in an irreversible way whoever took part in it”.