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The order is not hereditary we know just enough of biology and the uncertainties of inheritance to know how silly that would be and it does not require an early consecration or novitiate or ceremonies and initiations of that sort. The Samurai are, in fact, volunteers.
And not far from the mounds of the Horatii and Curiatii there is a monument, probably of the age of Trajan, with a bas-relief portrait, dedicated to the memory of one Usia Prima, a priestess of Isis; this worship, with its painful initiations and splendid ritual, being imported from Egypt in the second century.
CIRCULAR TEMPLES. These were used in the initiations of the religion of Zoroaster. Like the square temples of Masonry, and the other Mysteries, they were symbolic of the world, and the symbol was completed by making the circumference of the circle a representation of the zodiac.
They arrived hilarious, anticipating pleasurable excitements in the way of "fraternity" pledgings and initiations, encounters with sophomores, class meetings, and elections; and, also, they were not absolutely without interest in the matter of Girls, for the state university was co-educational, and it was but natural to expect in so broad a field, all new to them, a possible vision of something rather thrilling.
"And it almost seems," says he, "as though those who have appointed the initiations for us are not at all ordinary people, but that for a long time they have been enjoining upon us that any one who reaches Hades without being initiated and sanctified falls into the mire; but that he who is purified and consecrated when he arrives, dwells with the gods.
We needn't be strenuous about them unless we particularly want to, and are glad to remember in season all that this would imply of the strenuous about our own origines, our muddled initiations.
We in the North, where the Faith lived uninterruptedly and, after the ninth century, with no great struggle, dwindled this feature and extended the open and popular space, keeping only the rood-screen as a hint of what had once been the Secret Mysteries and the Initiations of our origins.
Greek religion, Greek myth, are vast conglomerates. We find a savage origin for Apollo, and savage origins for many of the Mysteries. But the cruelty of savage initiations has been purified away. On the other hand, we find a barbaric origin for departmental gods, such as Aphrodite, and for Greek human sacrifices, unknown to the lowest savagery.
Can we doubt that the Australian medicine-man, standing at the graveside of the re-arisen old black-fellow, pointed the same moral to the young initiates as the priest does to-day to those assembled before him in church for indeed we know that among savage tribes initiations have always been before all things the occasions of moral and social teaching?
You taught letters; I attended school. You conducted initiations; I was initiated. You were a clerk; I a member of the Assembly: you, a third-rate actor, I a spectator of the play. You used to be driven from the stage, while I hissed. Your political life has all been lived for the good of our enemies, mine for the good of my country.
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