The ceremonies of Baptism and the Holy Supper have been provided by the Lord for the New Churchman as the most profound and efficacious symbolic means for communion with Him from whom all blessings flow. Today there is an almost desperate attempt to receive these blessings of peace, tranquility, and motive power through other means such as transcendental meditation, yoga, and other more mechanical techniques. This essay is not an attempt to denigrate these other modes, many of which are powerful and useful with undoubted roots in the truths of the Ancient Church; nor is it in any way a recommendation that we replace doctrinal with cultural studies. True depth will come only from revealed doctrine. There is simply the suggestion that we may be able to enter with fuller and broader understanding into the mysteries of our faith if we learn more about the cultural and human components of our central ceremonies.

        In order to trace the cultural antecedents of Baptism and Holy Supper ceremonies, it is necessary to identify the components, the correspondential elements which the Lord preserved from the myriads of rites and rituals of the Ancient Church. Essential elements are contained in the two great Sacraments which appear and disappear like ships on two powerful currents running through many "mysteries" and "passions" from ancient times.

        W. F. Pendleton identifies the basic themes of the Sacraments in his Notes on Ritual:

        Baptism has relation to all the forms in ritual expressive of repentance, temptation, humiliation; the Holy Supper to those of praise, adoration, glorification. The one looks to the life and the other to the Lord. All things in ritual, or in liturgical service, have regard to these two as their end and power.¹ '

        The Writings give us the correspon dential key for unlocking the significance of religious rites. Recent psychological studies of myth and mystery help us to translate the significance into twentieth-century terms and relate them to our personal experiences.  How can specific ideas and fleeting per ceptions, coming sometimes in the midst of a flat life, give us a sudden influx of deep pathos, courage, a sense of youthful vitality?  Glorious combinations of positive feelings have been described and experienced under certain conditions, triggered by the calculated use of external symbols and ceremonies. In ancient times these situation were alluded to in breathless awe as the great "mysteries."

        Some of the separate elements, com-bined and recombined in ceremonies throughout the ages and present in the New Church Sacraments are water, wine, the cup| the altar, candles, bread, naming, blessings, and processions. The water of baptism is! certainly related to the ancient ceremonies of cleansing by water and cleansing by blood. In the height of the Ancient Church, men] understood the true significance of these things, together with the correspondences of flesh and blood, feasting and fasting. Ceremonies intelligently using these elements involving the highest significance were accompanied by the deepest, most moving religious experiences. In time, when the Ancient Church deteriorated and the true relationships of the correspondences were lost, the remnant ceremonies -- fragmented, confused, and ocasionally grotesque though they were -- still had power to move; the power of ultimates still motivated the faith fill, although they were deprived of the rational understanding of their dramas. The [ceremonies became mysteries of faith.

Ancient Mysteries
Associated with the Death of Osiris,
Adonis, Tammuz, and Attis

        Most ancient of the ancient mysteries fire those associated with the death of Osiris (or Tammuz, Adonis, or Attis). Sir James Frazer devotes much of his classic, multi-volume work, The Golden Bough, to descriptions of these ceremonies. "In name and detail," he says, "the rites varied from place to place; in substance they were the same."² Frazer, and indeed most other mythologists, would see the origin of these rites in the annual observations by primitive animists of the changes of season, in the death and rebirth of vegetation. We suggest a possible origin of the myth in the rituals of the living Ancient Church in which the correspondential relation of spirit to nature was understood.

        Frazer finds in the religious literature of Babylon the pathetic story of the youthful Tammuz, spouse of the great Mother Goddess, Ishtar. Every year Tammuz dies, leaving the sunshine of earth life for the gloomy subterranean world. Every year, in turn, Mother Ishtar descends to the underworld to search for him, neglecting the earth where all living things forget to reproduce their kind. The great god Ea dispatches a messenger to help rescue the goddess from the underworld. The Queen of the Underworld reluctantly allows Ishtar to be sprinkled with the Water of Life and to depart for the upper world in the company of Tammuz, in order to restore life to the world.

        Several Babylonian hymns contain laments for the death of the youthful Tammuz, great mourning, dirges played on flutes, a procession carrying the effigy of the dead youth, washing of the effigy with pure water, anointing with oil, wrapping in red robes, and the burning of incense.

        The Greek legends are similar, telling of the love of Aphrodite with the youthful Adonis. One version tells of a decree by Zeus of six months in the underworld for Adonis when Aphrodite allows no love to flourish, and six months above when love abounds. Another version tells of the killing of Adonis by a wound in the thigh and the subsequent lamenting and deprivation of love as he goes to the underworld.

        Greek writers tell of the festivals of Adonis celebrated in Byblos in Syria and on the island of Cyprus involving bitter wailing of women and shrill sounds of the flute while corpse-like images of Adonis were thrown into the sea. Some shaved their heads as the Egyptians had in honor of the death of the Apis bull. Many references are made to the color red in connection with the shed blood of Adonis. The sea turned blood red; the scarlet anemone and the red rose were colored by his blood.

        Adonis and Tammuz. are also associated with the Corn Spirit. The Syrians of Haran have a festival of the "weeping women" at which they eat nothing that has been ground in a mill because they believe the god was cruelly slain and his bones ground in a mill. Frazer notes that the "Syrians were here celebrating the violent destruction of the corn by man who cuts it down on the field, stamps it to pieces on the threshing floor and grinds it to powder in the mill.^"4 One writer even suggests that the anguish comes from the hunger experienced when the vegetation dies! We think it more likely the ancients used these experiences to illustrate the pain and suffering of violent death, especially the foreknowledge from ancient prophecy of the death and resurrection of the Lord.

        In Phrygia, a Spring festival was held on the 22nd of March. A pine tree was cut in the woods and brought into the sanctuary of Cybele, where it was treated as a great divinity. It was swathed like a corpse. An effigy of a young man was tied to the tree.   On the next day trumpets were blown. The third day was the day of blood when cymbals clashed, horns droned, priests danced in a frenzy, mutilated themselved, and spattered the blood on the sacred tree. Horrible weeping followed as they became conscious of the permanent injury done. And Frazer then adds:

        But when night had fallen, the sorrow of the worshippers was turned to joy. For suddenly a light shone in the darkness, the tomb was opened: the god had arisen from the dead; and as the priest touched the lips of the weeping mourners with balm, he softly whispered in their ears the glad tidings of salvation. The resurrection of the god was hailed by his disciples as a promise that they too would issue triumphant from the corruption of the grave. ⁵

        Some secret ceremonies in celebration of the resurrection of Attis involved a sacramental meal and a baptism of blood. Fasting preceded the sacrament so as not to defile the sacred elements; later the communicant bathed in the blood of the recently stabbed bull.

        The ceremony of the death of Osiris at Sais was described by Herodotus. The god's suffering was displayed as a mystery by a lake at night. A golden cow with a solar disc between her horns was carried out; the cow probably represented Isis searching the world over for the slain Osiris. One dramatic feature of the festival was that rows of oil lamps were fastened to the houses and burned all night. Plutarch says the sun was in the sign of Scorpio, the Nile was sinking, the nights growing longer, and that it was the month of sowing. Frazer compares the description of events with that of All Soul's night in Northern Europe where lanterns were set out to show the way of all souls from their graves to their former homes. Here they would find bowls of nuts and fruits for their nourishment. The Catholic Church tried to turn this pagan festival into All Saints Night, but the common folk cheerfully complied by adding All Saints Night to their festival calendar and retaining the persistent old festival as an additional celebration -- hence Hallow-e'en, involving several days of celebration.⁶ Possibly it is the remnant truth from the Ancient Church celebration of death and resurrection which persistently defies the attempts of some New Churchmen to do away with Halloween.

Eleusinian Mysteries

        Perhaps the most famous of ancient mysteries were those held at Eleusis, near Athens, in honor of Demeter and Persephone. Let the ancients themselves testify to the importance of the Eleusinian mysteries:

        Blessed is he among men on earth who has beheld this. Never will he who has not been initiated into these ceremonies, who has no part in them, share in such things. He will be as a dead man in sultry darkness.

        We have been given a reason not only to live in joy but also to die with better hope. (Cicero)

        Those who take part in them possess better hopes in regard to the end of life , and in regard to the whole aion. ⁷

        The Homeric Hymns tell us that Demeter taught the ancient kings "who deal justice" how to conduct her rites, "awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter, for deep awe of the gods checks the voice." ⁸

        Divulging the secrets of these mysteries seems to have been one of the most serious crimes of antiquity. Several Greek plays testify to this. Aeschuylus almost lost his life because people thought he was divulging some of the secrets. George Mylonos notes that when Pausanias wrote his famous travelog in the second century A.D., he felt he was not even allowed to describe the buildings in which the mysteries took place!

        "My dreams forbade me to describe what is within the sanctuary; and surely it is clear that the uninitiated may not lawfully hear of that from the sight of which they are debarred.

        I purposed to pursue the subject and describe all the objects that admit of description in the sanctuary at Athens called the Eleusinian, but I was prevented from so doing by a vision in a dream. I will therefore turn to what may be lawfully told to anyone." ⁹

        According to Mylonos, Livy reports two youths being condemned to death for wandering into the sanctuary accidentally. Horace tells of an incident in which he refused to travel in the same ship with one who had divulged the secret, "for fear of the Goddess." ¹⁰

        The essentials of these awesome rites have been kept secret for 2,000 years! Even vase paintings cannot be considered clues as to what went on in the inner sanctum because the artists would have been restricted just as were the writers. However, "outside" bits of evidence have trickled down to us. Those who subscribe to the Myth and Ritual School would say that the myth telling of the abduction of Persephone by Hades, the searching and mourning by Demeter, and the subsequent sharing of Persephone above and below ground for six months each, originated in the festival or ritual celebrated at Eleusis.

        The first parts of the ceremonies were held in public and were described in Aristophanes' Frogs. Another clue was Aristotle's statement that the initiates suffered rather than learned. The High Priest was called Hierophant and was supported by public money. He it was who sent messengers to invite the whole Greek world to attend the festival. His personal name could not be spoken: "He was Hieronymous and his Sanctity paramount." He alone could enter the Anaktoron where the Hiera, the holy objects, were kept. Plutarch mentions a brilliant light, in the midst of which the Hierophant appeared when the Anaktoron was opened. There were priestesses and other minor priests connected with the ceremonies. ¹¹

        The "Lesser Mysteries," in honor of Persephone, were held once a year in the early Spring during the "month of flowers." It probably involved preliminary initiation. The candidates took part in individual ceremonies of purification and cleansing in order to prepare for the greater mysteries. There was fasting, cleansing, bathing, singing and dancing, and the bearing of the sacred vessel, kemos. Indications are that this was like the first fruits ceremonies known throughout the ancient world.

        The "Greater Mysteries" were held once a year in the Fall during the month of Boediomion (September and early October). On the 14th day of that month, the Hiera of Demeter were removed from their place in the Anaktoron and taken in state to Athens. The first few days involved cleansing, a rush to the sea to bathe, and sacrifices of pigs. The fifth day seems to be the culmination of the ceremonies in Athens, the great procession to Eleusis arriving at the Sanctuary at night with torches lit and amidst dancing and singing.

        The sixth day was spent in resting, fasting, purification, and sacrifice. The fast was probably in honor of Demeter's fast when Kore (Persephone) was abducted. At the end of the day they drank the special potion of the Eleusinian mysteries, the kykeon.

        Here are some clues as to the tremendous experiences of the seventh day. Foucart, a great student of the Eleusinian mysteries quotes Themistios' essay "On the Soul":

        "The Soul at the point of death has the same experiences as those who are being initiated into great mysteries."¹²

        Descriptions follow of wandering and hurrying to and fro, suspicious journeys through the dark, terrors, shuddering, trembling, sweating, fright; then one is struck with a marvelous light, is received into pure regions and meadows, with voices and dances and the majesty of holy sounds and shapes. It is not known what parts of this description apply to the journey of the soul and which to the Mysteries, but at least the great light could not be hidden from outsiders as it shone suddenly over the bay, accompanied by a great shout. Also, it is known that the great climax involved the objects shown, the Hiera of Demeter.

        One of the greatest mysteries of the Great Mysteries is the nature of the holy objects shown to the initiates. Hippolytes in the third century A.D. in Rome says:

        "The Athenians initiating people at the Eleusinia and showing to the Epoptai that great and marvelous majesty of perfect revelation, in solemn silence, cut wheat."¹³

        He began his statement by saying that the Phrygians considered cut wheat as a "mystery" and afterwards the Athenians. If this was one of the objects shown at Eleusis, what a dramatic use of correspondences! The Writings say that wheat represents the goods of love and charity, celestial good, good received, and finally the Divine Good. Imagine the impact of this knowledge when, after days of cleansing, fasting, repenting, and wandering in the dark, a great light is flashed with shouts as the High Priest holds up a sheaf of wheat!

Grail Legends

        Investigation of many mysteries of the ancient world would yield such symbolic treasures. The Delphic Mysteries of Apollo, where there is re-enactment of the slaying of the Python, the purificatory bathing in the dragon's blood, link these mysteries surely with the essential elements we are tracing from ancient ceremonies to New Church sacraments. But if we must focus on only a few experiences reported to transform men's lives, one closest to the core of European culture has been the experience involved with the knights' vision of the Holy Grail.

        The legends, appearing in several; versions around the end of the twelfth century in Northwestern Europe, have to do with a knight's search for the Holy Grail, a nourishing or healing vessel or stone. The exalted, thrilling experience of catching a fleeting glimpse of the Grail and witnessing through a veil the moving Grail ceremony are the substance of the legends.

        The sudden appearance of the various versions was described by van Franz "as if a subterranean watercourse had been tapped at the end of the 12th Century."¹⁵ The re-markable characteristics of the legends are the deep and moving descriptions of the exaltation, the trancelike feelings, ex-perienced by the knights. The stories themselves are fragmentary and give the! impression of disconnected retellings of a lost primary source. The connection with King Arthur and his knights links it to Celtic] legends on the one hand, while the legends of Joseph of Arimathea catching the Lord's blood in the cup of the Last Supper indicate a link with Christian Eucharist traditions; but these links seem almost superficial when the more internal evidence of mood and symbol .are considered.

        Most versions tell of a young knight leaving his widowed mother in her simple woodland home. As he pursues the famous "quest" pattern, his fortune involves the mystic vision of the Grail Castle on a rocky cliff by the sea where the old Grail king lies dying. The youth watches through a veil the procession of weeping women carrying candles, a table spread with food, drink, and silver knives. The elements of the different versions shift and change as if seen through a kaleidoscope; sometimes the king is already dead, sometimes the Grail itself is being carried by the Grail Keeper. At other times the "Maimed King" is being carried on a bier. Usually there is mysterious music and weeping women. But the main impression is that the experience has been life-shaking and that the knight will spend the rest of his life trying to relive it, to find the Holy Grail again.

        Scholars have linked some elements -- the procession, the cup, the bread and wine and table -- with early Eucharist traditions, together with the legend of the lost cup of the Lord's supper. The gloomy castle by the sea together with the eerie and supernatural mood, the faerie quality of the Grail maidens and the Fisher King identify it with Celtic legend where we find much interest in the supernatural and in great cauldrons which magically provide new life for pure heroes.

        The conviction of some modern psychiatrists that there is a deep rooted psychic process which has kept the legend alive through the ages causes us to take a new look at these legends and conclude, with Jessie Weston, an eminent authority on the legends, that the origins of the Grail legends go much deeper than the Christian religion and the Celtic mythology.

        Because of the evidence of deep emotional and spiritual involvement underlying the other elements of the Grail legends, Weston searches back to the ancient ceremonies of the Middle East for the source of the "subterranean stream." Whence
comes the creative inspiration to tell and retell the Grail legends? She feels that there was once a unified, active drama underlying the fragmentary medieval elements. Gradually emerging out of the misty legends of the Ancient Near East -- a vision of a Maimed King being carried on a bier, near the sea, the procession of weeping women, the knives, altar, candles -- are the ceremonies in honor of the death of Adonis, Osiris; effigies carried and tossed into the sea; maimed priests, wailing women; then the final triumph at Eleusis, the cleansing in the sea, the final triumph with bread and wine and the sense of being reborn.

        Jessie Weston concludes:

The Grail story is not the product of imagination, literary or popular. At its root lies the record, more or less distorted, of an ancient Ritual, having for its ultimate object the initiation into the Secret of Life, physical and spiritual.¹⁶

As to the force and durability of the legend she concludes:

The Grail is a living force, it will never die, it may indeed sink our of sight, and for centuries even, disappear from the field of literature, but it will rise to the surface again, and become once more a theme of vital inspiration even, as, after slumbering from the days of Malory, it woke to new life in the Nineteenth Century, making its fresh appeal through the genius of Tennyson and Wagner.¹⁷

        Why is the Grail a living force? Where lies the tremendous potency? We believe that the Myth and Ritual School has successfully linked the Grail legends to the very ancient ceremonies of honor to the vegetation gods. We also believe it should not be difficult' for future New Church scholars to link the Grail legends with genuine Ancient Church ceremonies. A comparison of a few numbers from the Writings with some of the basic elements of the Grail legends should spur us on to more study.

        In all of the early versions of the Grail legends, the theme of weeping women, usually in procession, is found; this is inexplicable to scholars who find this element present in some versions where there is given a reason, i.e., the dead or dying king; but also in other versions where there is no obvious reason, suggesting that these are fragments of an earlier, complete episode, retaining the powerful feelings, but missing some important components. Miss Weston and the Writings have this to offer:

No unprejudiced critic of the Grail literature can avoid the conclusion that in the weeping women of the texts we have a feature the true meaning of which was no longer understood by those who recorded it.¹⁸

Wailing and weeping over the dead was a representation external in the Ancient Church by which was signified interior mourning. (AC 4786)

Weeping represents lamentation because truth is destroyed. Wailing represents lamentation because good is destroyed. (E 617:26)

To weep between the court and the altar represents lamentation over the vastation of Divine Good in the Church. (E 630:14)

        Scholars are also baffled by persistent references to Perceval, the hero in many versions, as "the Widow's Son"; sometimes he is not named, but is only referred to as the "Widow's Son."

        "A widow," we are told, "also signifies the truth of the church without its good.... In the Ancient Church such persons were understood in the good sense by widows, whether they were men or women. For the Ancient Church distinguished the neighbor toward whom they were to exercise charity into a number of classes.... And consequently when they spoke of widows they had in mind no other than such as were in truth without good and yet desired to be led by good." (AC 4844:23)

        Many other numbers relate knives, bloodshed, sacrificial stoves, lamp stands, tables laid with bread and wine with Ancient Church ceremonies (associated with circumcision ceremonies in the Israelitish Church). These objects related with the mood of mourning and suffering, and the fact that the Beautiful Old Grail King has been wounded in the thigh (as was Adonis and Osiris) and is dying, leaves nothing to the imagination of the New Churchman:

The thighs themselves together with the loins, correspond to conjugial love. These things were well known to the ' men of most ancient times; and therefore they had a number of rites based on this correspondence. (AC 3021)

Knees and thighs, things pertaining to . conjugial love, thus things that belong to the conjunction of truth and faith and the good of charity. (AC 3915)

Where they were in pain. That this signifies cupidities is evident from the signification of the 'pain' after circumcision, as being cupidity. The reason why this pain signifies cupidity is that circumcising signifies purification from the love of self and of the world as is the case when he is being regenerated, he is in pain and anxiety, and it is the cupidities then removed which are in pain and anguish. When any mystery is being represented by a ritual, each particular of the rite, until it is com-pleted, enfolds something of mystery. Such is the case with lancets or knives with which the cir-cumcision was performed, in that they were of stone; with the blood shed at the time; with the manner of the operation, and consequently with the state. This may be seen further from the processes of cleansings, inaugurations, and sane-tifications, and all other ceremonies. (AC 4496)

        It is not difficult to believe that we have the Grail legends and the ancient vegetation and mystery rites remnants of Ancient Church ceremonies reenacting death and resurrection on three planes: the death and resurrection of the Lord; the repen-tance, reformation, and regeneration of man; and the death and rebirth of natural vegetation. Scholars such as Jessie Weston admit to a natural and spiritual level:

The ancient higher mystery institition two main grades; in the lower were shown the mysteries of generation, or physical birth and death...

and in the higher the mystery of regen-eration, "or of spiritual birth and life."¹⁹

Theory of the Archetype

        We now become more intrigued with the work of the modern psychoanalysts when they say there is a deep-seated psychic process which has kept such legends as that of the Grail alive through the centuries. A whole new world opens up when we invtstigate the work of the famous psychiatrist, Carl G. Jung, and his school, especially in their studies of archetypal
 myths.

        The . concept of the archetype, as developed by Jung and his followers, will, I believe, be one of the most important areas for, New Churchmen to direct their scholarship. Not only do the Jungians throw brilliant spotlights on our entire cultural heritage but on the most intriguing of New Church studies, the science of correspon-dences.

        In explaining his concept of the ar-chetype, Jung goes to great lengths to describe the history of the word. It was used before the 3rd Century and the time of St. Augustine. At that time it was used similarly to Plato's "idea" -- simply defined as idea or entity pre-existing in an ideal upper world before its counterpart can exist in this world. From time to time the term archetype has been used through the centuries in much the same way as Plato used "idea." But Jung gives us a living, perceptive idea of archetype which turns the super-ideal world with its cold, sterile one-for-one mechanical concept into a vibrant, dynamic world of inspiration and perpetual creation.

        First of all, Jung tells us that the archetype cannot be defined or seen; it belongs primarily to the unconscious mind, and the minute we try to draw it into the conscious mind and try to make a conscious idea of it, it disappears. He compares his archetype with what are called "patterns of behavior" and symbolic formulae -- human patterns. In myth we might relate them to motifs. In reference to the grand durability of such themes as those in the great tragedies, "Hamlet" and "Orestes," Gilbert Murray refers to themes strange to us yet "deeply implanted in the memory of the race, stamped as it were upon our physical organism, themes strange to us.... Yet there is that within us which leaps at the sight of them, a cry of the blood which tells us we have known them always."²⁰

        Jung says that archetypes are among the highest human values:

Archetypes are among the inalienable assets of every psyche. They form the treasure in the realm of shadowy thoughts of which Kant spoke, and of which we have ample evidence in the countless treasure motifs of mythology. In themselves archetypal images are among the highest values in the human psyche.²¹

These products are never (or at least very seldom) myths with a definite form, but rather mythological components which, because of their typical nature, we can call "motifs," primordial images, types, or as I have named them, archetypes.²²    The archetypal representations (images and ideas) mediated to us by the unconscious should not be confused with archetypes as such. They are very varied structures which all point to one essentially "unrepresentable" form. The latter is characterized by certain formal elements and by certain fundamental meanings, although these can be grasped only approximately. The archetype as such is a psychoid factor that belongs, as it were, to the invisible, ultraviolet end of the psychic spectrum. It does not appear, in itself, to be capable of reaching consciousness. I venture this hypothesis because everything archetypal which is perceived by consciousness seems to represent a set of variations on a grand theme.²³

        "Variations on a grand theme." What grander theme than the story of the Lord, in His Divine Love and Divine Wisdom, His descent to earth, His temptations, crucifixion, and resurrection? The story of man, created in His image, reliving the same trials and exaltations. This is certainly the Grand Theme which is the subject of all worship of the Ancient Church, the source of all the greatest hero or quest legends, the source of the "subterranean stream," and the Grand Theme of the great Sacraments of the New Church.

Water of Baptism

        From the simple ultimate "variation" of the water of baptism we are carried back through the broad history of man and his efforts to represent his repentance through cleansing: Washing in the Jordon; Achilles dipped in the river Styx, leaving one vulnerable spot, his proprial heal; Sigfried washing in the dragon's blood -- again one vulverable spot; the ancient bathings in the gushing blood of the wounded bull. Osiris and Zenus were identified with the Sacred Bull. "This blood I shed for you unto the remission of sins." This immediately rivets us to that most holy ultimate of worship, the drinking of the wine at the Holy Supper. If Again the currents ripple back through the ages of human culture: the Gundestrup Cauldron; Silver Chalice; the Great Chalice of Antioch; the cup in which Joseph of 1 Arimathea was said to have caught the Lord's blood; the Holy Grail, object of the great Christian quest; the Ancient Word, containant of the Lord's life to the Ancients, object of the great New Church quest.

Sign of the Cross

        The sign of the cross on the initiate's forehead represents another ultimate variation on a grand theme: sign of temptations, trials, suffering, vastation, finition and limitation; armies of Christian penitents, crossed swords. The Palace of Minos, the Labyrinth and Minotaur, totally devastated with the Ancient world on Crete around 1400 B.C. (some say the time of the Exodus and therefore the end of the Ancient Church in Egypt) was sometimes called the Palace of the Double Axe, because of the double axe pattern carved everywhere. Here archeologists find evidence of bull sacrifices, ceremonial washings and labyrinthine underground passages. The Greek word for I double axe is "labrys," a possible origin of 1 the word labyrinth: two edged sword, point of no return, dark tunnel through which initiates at Eleusis experience their last trial before the pleasant meadows. The worship of Mother Earth, the dark tunnel and then rebirth: labyrinthine tunnels, the nexus between two Churches, between natural and spiritual lives.

Naming

        The simple act of naming the child at the time of baptism seems, in this latter of lost symbols, to be a matter of man's own! whim. Not so: "In the name of the Lord" thunders down to us through the ages as one of the most powerful ultimates of all Adam's first act was to name all things. The Most Ancients named all the places in Canaan. To many ancient people the child did not even have a soul until he was named; the name was an entity in itself. It sometime
came from heaven via a dove (symbol of the HolySpirit in Christian art) or a hawk. Loss or a name meant losing one's soul. The most powerful way of gaining control over a man's life in ancient Egypt was for the priest to pervert correspondences, sometimes reversing the name or doing symbolic harm to the name by cutting the hieroglyphs, decapitating the animal symbols and other magical use of the name; hence the loss of the name Jehovah in ancient Egypt so that it could not be perverted, and hence the proliferation of substitute god names. The most important and oldest of Egyptian texts make it clear that the name is the most essential part of a man, being the last and part ultimate and therefore the most powerful embodiment of the divine voice probably what the Writings would call God's own with man."

        To the Kwakiutl Indian the name was capitalized as having weight and mass!²⁴ In Eleusinian mystery ceremonies the candictate was bathed in the sea and emerged from the bath a new man, with a new name, being freed from sin and prepared for the revelation to come. When Perceval watches the Grail ceremony, the procession, the feast spread with bread and wine, he suddenly knows his name.

Bread and the Feminine Principle

        Through the dark tunnel of fear, temptation and suffering, the Eleusinian initiate suddenly knows his name; he has attained a perfect sense of peace and tranquility amid beautiful meadows. The goddess of the Harvest, Demeter, the Mother of Abundance, Isis has spread her table.

        The masculine and feminine principles were sharply delineated in ancient Egypt; wholesale confusion existed as to the characteristics of the many male divinities and the many female divinities amongst their own kind, but never was there a crossover of uses or forms between the masculine and feminine deities. Some would say that the ancient insistence on gender in words is simply an example of primitive animism; but the sophisticated Egyptians and Romans were some of the most insistent, the custom certainly originating in the knowledge of correspondences. For this reason it is interesting to note that Egyptian feminine words were usually identified by a small glyph which scholars say is clearly a loaf of bread. What does a woman have to do with a loaf of bread? No one would deny that there is a connection. Superficially we could link it: mother bakes bread. But our native perceptions tell us that there is much more to it than that. We therefore respond to Emma Jung's suggestion that the longing for the mother, so dear to the hearts of Freudians as a sign of immature desires to return to infantile states, may not be regressive but may represent a desire to be reborn.

The Altar

        How suggestive of the wealth of material in this one area of archetypal studies, the relation of woman to bread! The bread of the Holy Supper altar: "Behold I set my table before you." The archetype which presents itself as a table can be seen in many variant forms since ancient times: the altar of burnt offering, sacrificial tables, the cosmic altar in the form of a bowl represented in Peruvian legend, the Celtic cauldron renewing life to heroes, the food producing pot of folk-lore, Arthur's Round Table, the Sun Table of Orphic mysteries, the perverted witches' cauldron and witches' oven.

        We begin to get a glimpse of why the Grail is sometimes a cup and sometimes a stone; the dearly sought Philosopher's Stone of Alchemy. When our camera lens zooms in on a stone altar in ancient times, on which is the Word, burnt offerings, bread and wine, possible a threshing stone for corn or wheat, we begin to understand what Jung meant by variations on a grand theme. We begin to get from our multi-faceted experiences a comprehension of all the things involved in the reception of the Lord's love.

        The Grail vision is richly related to the Sacraments. The Widow's Son gazes through the veil at the Beautiful Old King, who has once been wounded in the thigh; every delicate sense of awareness is present as beautiful scents, delicate music, the procession of Grail maidens carrying candles, a cup of wine, a plate with bread pass before him. Every symbol is presented as an unending story in itself.

        Feminine receptivity and masculine articulation are not concepts new to readers of the Writings, but it is interesting to hear the duality expressed by a psychiatrist in connection with the knight watching and remembering his name as Grail maidens present their symbols:

        The perception or seeing of inner images requires an attitude of feminine receptivity whereas the ability to grasp and understand what has been seen is made possible by the masculine mind.²⁵

        Bringing to bear the magnificent dual faculties of the human mind on the deep significance of the objects obscured under the lace cloth of the Holy Supper table, all human history seems to come together When the High Priest raises the veil, we can know the delight in following myriad leads ordered by the grand theme of death and resurrection to the source of all energy, peace, and hope. Each time we participate in the great Sacraments we can relive the powerful experiences of all time but with new variations.

One day there appeared to me a magnif-icent temple, of a square form.... in the middle of the temple was the sacrecd recess, before which was a veil, but now removed.... But in the New Church it is reversed; in this it is lawful by the understanding to enter and penetrate into all the secrets of it, and also to confirm it by the Word. Enter hereafter into the mysteries of the Word which has been hitherto closed up; for its truths, one and all, are so many mirrors of the Lord. (TCR 508)

ENDNOTES