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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 04, No. 23, September, 1859 by Various
page 63 of 285 (22%)
beginning by lustration and sacrifices we conciliated the favor of the
gods, so now by libation we finally commend ourselves to their care.
Thus did the Greeks begin all things with lustration and end with
libation, each day, each feast,--all their solemn treaties, their
ceremonies, and sacred festivals. But, like all else Eleusinian, this
libation must be _sui generis_, emptied from two bowls,--the one toward
the East, the other toward the West. Thus is finished this Epos, or, as
Clemens Alexandrinus calls it, the "mystical drama" of the Eleusinia.

Now, reader, you have seen the Mysteries. And what do they mean? Let us
take care lest we deceive ourselves, as many before us have done, by
merely _looking_ at the Eleusinia.

Oh, this everlasting staring! This it is that leads us astray. That old
stargazer, with whom Aesop has made us acquainted, deserved, indeed, to
fall into the well, no less for his profanity than his stupidity. Yet
this same star-gazing it is that we miscall reflection. Thus, in our
blank wonder at Nature, in our naked analysis of her life, expressed
through long lists of genera and species and mathematical calculations,
as if we were calling off the roll of creation, or as if her depth of
meaning rested in her vast orbs and incalculable velocities,--in all
this we fail of her real mystery.

To mere external seeming, the Eleusinia point to Demeter for their
interpretation. To _her_ are they consecrated,--of her grief are they
commemorative; out of reverence to her do the _mystæ_ purify themselves
by lustration and by the sacrifice that may not be tasted; she it is who
is symbolized, in the procession of the basket, as our Great Mother,
through the salt, wool, and sesame, which point to her bountiful
gifts,--while by the poppies and pomegranates it is hinted that she
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