e merged is
uncertain; but among the Gnostics, who had much in common with the
Orphic _mystae_, the formula, "I am thou, and thou art I," was common
(_Pistis Sophia_; formulae of the Marcosians; also in an invocation of
Hermes: [Greek: to son onoma emon kai to emon son. ego gar eimi to
eidolon son]. Rohde, _Psyche_, vol. ii. p. 61). A foretaste of this
deliverance was given by initiation, which conducts the mystic to
_ecstasy_, an [Greek: oligochronios mania] (Galen), in which "animus
ita solutus est et vacuus ut ei plane nihil sit cum corpore" (Cic. _De
Divin._ i. I. 113); which was otherwise conceived as [Greek:
enthousiasmos] ([Greek: enthousioses kai ouketi ouses en eaute dianoias],
Philo).

(c) The imperishable Divine nature is infused by mechanical means.
Sacraments and the like have a magical or miraculous potency. The
Homeric hymn to Demeter insists only on _ritual_ purity as the
condition of salvation, and we hear that people trusted to the mystic
baptism to wash out all their previous sins. Similarly the baptism of
blood, the _taurobolium_, was supposed to secure eternal happiness,
at any rate if death occurred within twenty years after the ceremony;
when that interval had elapsed, it was common to renew the rite. (We
find on inscriptions such phrases as "arcanis perfusionibus in
aeternum renatus.") So mechanical was the operation of the Mysteries
supposed to be, that rites were performed for the dead (Plat. _Rep._
364. St. Paul seems to refer to a similar custom in 1 Cor. xv. 29),
and infants were appointed "priests," and thoroughly initiated, that
they might be clean from their "original sin." Among the Gnostics, a
favourite phrase was that initiation releases men "from the fetters of
fate and necessity"; the gods of the intelligible world ([Greek:
theoi noetoi]) with whom we hold communion in the Mysteries being
above "fate."

(d) Salvation consists of moral regeneration. The efficacy of
initiation without moral reformation naturally appeared doubtful to
serious thinkers. Diogenes is reported to have asked, "What say you?
Will Pataecion the thief be happier in the next world than
Epaminondas, because he has been initiated?" And Philo says, "It often
happens that good men are not initiated, but that robbers, and
murderers, and lewd women are, if they pay money to the initiators and
hierophants." Ovid protests against the immoral doctrine of mechanical
purgation with more than his usual earnestness (_Fasti