Introduction.

hidden, so that it was absolutely impossible for an uninitiated person to find out the truth for themselves; and the best-intentioned among the initiates, among whom the greatest philosophers of Greece were numbered, were so strictly bound to secrecy regarding these teachings by the priests—whose members they became through initiation—that none of them dared to teach the core of these doctrines publicly. They tested their students for a long time and in many different ways before they revealed the truth to them; the public, however, or all non-initiates, remained focused on the outer shell original: "bey der Schaale stehen," a metaphor meaning to remain at the superficial level of understanding without reaching the inner essence.. The constitution of the government, which was either entirely in the hands of the priests, as in Egypt, or at least largely dependent on them, as in Greece, watched carefully over the maintenance of the mysteries. Everyone who made any claim to status or respect had to undergo initiation; and those who refused to do so, or who taught more freely than was permitted, were despised as blasphemers and sometimes punished with death. Thus, the philosopher Anaxagoras Anaxagoras (c. 500–428 BCE) was a Pre-Socratic philosopher who was charged with impiety for his scientific explanations of celestial phenomena, such as claiming the sun was a red-hot stone rather than a god. was declared an atheist because he denied,