goddess, Hera, becomes jealous at the birth of the divine out of the
higher consciousness. It arouses the lower nature of man (the Titans).
The still immature divine child is torn in pieces. Thus the divine
child is present in man as intellectual science broken up. But if
there be enough of the higher wisdom (Zeus) in man to be active, it
nurses and cherishes the immature child, which is then born again as a
second son of God (Dionysos). Thus from science, which is the
fragmentary divine force in man, is born undivided wisdom, which is
the Logos, the son of God and of a mortal mother, of the perishable
human soul, which unconsciously aspires after the divine. As long as
we see in all this merely a process in the soul and look upon it as a
picture of this process, we are a long way from the spiritual reality
which is enacted in it. In this spiritual reality the soul is not
merely experiencing something in itself, but it has been released from
itself and is taking part in a cosmic event, which is not enacted
within the soul, in reality, but outside it.

Platonic wisdom and Greek myths are closely linked together, so too
are the myths and the wisdom of the Mysteries. The created gods were
the object of popular religion, the history of their origin was the
secret of the Mysteries. No wonder that it was held to be dangerous to
"betray" the Mysteries, for thereby the origin of the gods of the
people was "betrayed." And a right understanding of that origin is
salutary, a misunderstanding is injurious.

V

THE WISDOM OF THE MYSTERIES AND THE MYTH

The Mystic sought forces and beings within himself which are unknown
to man as long as he remains in the ordinary attitude towards life.
The Mystic puts the great question about his own spiritual forces and
the laws which transcend the lower nature. A man of ordinary views of
life, bounded by the senses and logic, creates gods for himself, or
when he gets to the point of seeing that he has made them, he
disclaims them. The Mystic knows that he creates gods, he knows why he
creates them, he sees, so to say, behind the natural law which makes
man create them. It is as though a plant suddenly became conscious,
and learned the laws of its growth and development. As it is, it
develops in lovely unconsciousness. If it knew about the laws of its
own being, its relation to itself would be completely changed. What
the lyric poet feels when he sings about a plant, what the botanist