50 



DISCOVERY 



which cause sickness or other evils at dusk in a hut 

 lighted by a fii-e only. After a violent attack of nervous 

 hiccoughs, which makes his whole body shake, the 

 shaman falls into a species of coma while gazing into 

 the fii-e. He then starts up and performs a violent 

 dance, leaping in the air and beating his drum under 

 the influence of the spirits. The spirits may take 

 possession of him with such violence that he falls flat 

 on the ground. The conditions of life among these 

 tribes are such as to produce a peculiarly susceptible 

 mentalit}- among all the people, but the shamans, 

 who may be women as well as men, in particular exhibit 

 markedly abnormal physical and mental characters. 

 Congenital defects, such as an epileptic tendency or 

 a peculiarly neurotic temperament, are fostered and 

 aggravated by the prolonged course of training, lasting 

 over a number of years and involving prolonged 

 periods of fasting and solitary isolation to which every 

 aspirant to the shaman's profession must submit. In 

 these cases se^'eral factors are clearly involved — an 

 abnormal individuality, malnutrition, environment, and 

 possibly a racial peculiarity. The subject is of the 

 greatest interest to anthropologists, andrequires further 

 careful investigation by competent observers. . 



Belief in After Life 



Amongst the Greeks and 



Romans — IJ 



By W. R. Halliday, B.A., B.Litt. 



Professor of Ancient Ilisfurij in Ihc Universitij of Liuerpaol 



{Continued from ihc January No., p. ii) 



The most notable revolution which took place in 

 Greek religion in the period following the composition 

 of the Homeric poems was the introduction of the 

 worship of Dionysus, the god of wine. In spite of 

 local opposition, which has left its traces in religious 

 legends, the cult was rapidly victorious, spread into 

 every part of the Greek world, and even wrested from 

 that of Apollo a share in the control of Delphi, the 

 religious centre of the Greek world. It may well be 

 that its progress was facilitated by the survival in 

 some parts of Greece of vestiges of a fertility religion 

 of similar general characteristics, which had flourished 

 in the Bronze Age. 



The Dionysiac Cult and the Idea of Elysium 



The home of this conquering divinity was Thrace, 

 where, as Herodotus tells us, the natives regarded this 



lift- as an unpleasant interlude in an immortal exist- 

 ence, heralded a birth with lamentation, and cele- 

 brated death with congratulatory festivities. Im- 

 mortality at any rate was a fundamental assumption 

 of the Dionysiac cult. Its members, intoxicated by 

 wine and the dance, worked themselves into a frenzy 

 in which live animals representing the god himself 

 were torn in pieces and sacramentally devoured. 

 Temporarily the ecstatic worshipper was identified 

 with the god, and in a mystical frenzy realised parti- 

 ally and imperfectly the complete identification with 

 the divine which might be his after death. 



Now an important feature of this cult was its 

 universality, for its clientele was not restricted to the 

 members of anv particular tribe, state, or sex. It 

 was, therefore, a force working in the direction of 

 uiiiversalism across the corporate exclusiveness and 

 particularism of the city-state-ieligion. Universal, 

 too, was the appeal of the Mysteries, and as early 

 as the seventh century B.C. the Homeric Hymn to 

 Demeter welcomes candidates for initiation into her 

 Mysteries at Eleusis from any part of Greece. Alike 

 in the mystery cults and in the Dionysiac sacra- 

 ment the purpose of the ritual acts was directed 

 towards a future life ; the initiated was thought to 

 pass at death to the pleasures of Elysium, while those 

 who had not been initiated wallowed in bottomless 

 slime. In its more popular form any religion which 

 lays stress upon posthumous reward and punishment 

 is liable to present unworthy features, and Plato pours 

 his scorn upon the vulgar prophets of Orphism with 

 their quack ritual prescriptions for attaining eternal 

 happiness. But, though liable to abuse, such doctrines 

 are capable of great ethical development as ritual 

 qualification comes to be interpreted in terms of 

 spiritual preparation. In fact, from Pindar onwards 

 all the great religious thinkers of Greece, including 

 Plato himself, are strongly influenced by the idea, 

 which they owed in great measure to the Orphics, 

 that this life is a preparation for immortalitv. 



The Orphic Doctrine of Individual Survival 

 after Death 



The Orphic societies, to which we have thus made 

 allusion, were the product of the Dionysiac move- 

 ment, and took their name from the musician-prophet 

 Orpheus, a figure belonging to Dionysiac legend. 

 They were private mystical religious associations, 

 membership of which was not restricted by any 

 political grouping. Cardinal to their doctrine was the 

 reality of the soul as opposed to the mortal and 

 corruptible body, and their favourite catchword was 

 soma sema, i.e. "body is tomb" (of the soul). Their 

 ritual aimed at supplying individuals with the means 



