Personal Character of the Mysteries

...can. The Isis community includes "associates" original: Zugewandte of various degrees, believers or proselytes, newcomers original Latin: advenae, as they are also called here. They take part in the worship services and enter the temple; they are even permitted to take up residence within the sacred precinct itself. Nevertheless, they are distinct from those who have betrothed themselves to the deity and surrendered their lives to her—the initiates original: Mysten; referring to those who have undergone full ritual initiation—even if these individuals live out in the world. These have "taken the yoke upon themselves" and, as it is phrased here and in other mysteries (to which Livy Titus Livius, a Roman historian who documented the suppression of the Bacchanalia already refers) and in the cult of Mithras, have reported for "holy military service."⁸ An oath of service, a sacrament original Latin: sacramentum; in a Roman context, this was specifically the oath of allegiance taken by soldiers, binds them for a lifetime.

The service is difficult; a strict asceticism is associated with it, and many shrink back from it. For as open-hearted as the cult of Isis is toward proselytes, it is equally strict in demanding that the initiates follow—even in external matters—the ritual regulations that apply to the priests in the homeland Referring to Egypt, the origin of the Isis cult. This alone could lead to an understanding of the Isis mysteries described through hints by Apuleius A 2nd-century North African writer whose novel The Golden Ass provides the most detailed surviving account of initiation into the mysteries of Isis. Years ago, I was able to prove these rituals to be an imitation of the sacred ceremony that makes the Pharaoh a god upon his accession to the throne. By processing around the temple and greeting the gods, he symbolically performs the heavenly journey through the twelve hours of the night, through which the deceased becomes God or is born from God.⁹

Since the priest also possesses divine power and is God—at least insofar as he acts as the representative of the Pharaoh—it is quite possible that even the national cult [of Egypt] already knew a corresponding priestly ordination, at least for the higher levels. These levels, at least according to later views, also open the access to secret knowledge original: geheimem Wissen.