moral qualities, and distinguishable as malignant or benevolent to man.
It is this uniform attribution of fixed moral qualities to the
supernatural agents of eastern mythology that particularly separates
them from the divinities of old Greece.

Yet it is not altogether improbable that in the Samothracian or Cabeiric
mysteries the link between the Asiatic and Greek popular schemes of
mythology lay concealed. Of these mysteries there are conflicting
accounts, and, perhaps, there were variations of doctrine in the lapse
of ages and intercourse with other systems. But, upon a review of all
that is left to us on this subject in the writings of the ancients, we
may, I think, make out thus much of an interesting fact,--that
'Cabiri', impliedly at least, meant 'socii, complices,' having
a hypostatic or fundamental union with, or relation to, each other; that
these mysterious divinities were, ultimately at least, divided into a
higher and lower triad; that the lower triad, 'primi quia infimi,'
consisted of the old Titanic deities or powers of nature, under the
obscure names of 'Axieros, Axiokersos,' and 'Axiokersa,'
representing symbolically different modifications of animal desire or
material action, such as hunger, thirst, and fire, without
consciousness; that the higher triad, 'ultimi quia superiores,'
consisted of Jupiter, (Pallas, or Apollo, or Bacchus, or Mercury,
mystically called 'Cadmilos') and Venus, representing, as before,
the [Greek (transliterated): nous] or reason, the [Greek: logos] or word or
communicative power, and the [Greek: eros] or love;-that the
'Cadmilos' or Mercury, the manifested, communicated, or sent,
appeared not only in his proper person as second of the higher triad,
but also as a mediator between the higher and lower triad, and so there
were seven divinities; and, indeed, according to some authorities, it
might seem that the 'Cadmilos' acted once as a mediator of the