PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 83 



accomplished by initiation. To. become a blessed spirit, a man must die. Hence 

 •' the death of the Mysteries," or " Cabeiric death," which was brought about by 

 exhausting ordeals, Ion- tastings, and the UbC ot narcotics, under the etfect ol which 

 the aspirant lost consciousness, and fell into a death-like trance. He was then 

 buried and resurrected, but he returned a blessed spirit. An American Indian who 

 has been initiated indulges in the boast, " I am a spirit." Death thenceforth has no 

 spiritual terrors for him (2). 



This was the Egyptian belief. The deceased worshipper of Csiris, who had 

 been initiated into "the Mysteries oflsis," himself became an Osiris, and, as a 

 •' Blessed Osirian," reigned with the gods. These ideas can be detected in the 

 Apocalypse, a work permeated by the astronomical imagery, the symbolism of 

 numbers, and the allegorical spirit of the venerable Mysteries. Read by the light 

 of primitive cults, the following significant passage becomes a little more intelli- 

 gible than it has hitherto seemed. 



'■ Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection; on such the 

 second death hath no power, but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall 

 reign with Him a thousand years " (Rev. 20 : 6). 



In 1888 I mentioned to Professor Maspero verbally, and afterwards by letter, 

 that the "Osirian cult " still existed in America. Osiris is the Greek form of Hocsari 

 in Ej^yptian, which in Phoenician and in the traditions of southern Morocco and 

 the western Soudan is Isiri. Among the Caribs and the Abipones of South 

 America the name is Hoscheiri, or Ischeiri. and the initiated becomes an Ischeiri 

 after death. 



I shall hereafter bring out these points in a paper on " Vestiges of the Osirian 

 Cult in the New World." 



Shell mounds are to be found from the icy North to the Straits of Magellan. 

 At a suitable time of the year the Indians used to pic-nic for weeks on the seashore. 

 In New England they bequeathed their indigestible but tempting " clambake " to 

 the Pilgrim Fathers and their descendants ; and their memory will bel preserved 

 green as long as " clam-chowder " endures. 



On the shores of the Gulf of Me.xico, where oysters took the place of the ven- 

 erated clam, there are many " shell-islands" where there are enormous deposits of 

 oyster shells. I spent the winter of 1882-3 on one called Tiger-tail Island, where 

 that terrible Seminole Chief, Tiger-tall, was wont to roast and bake oysters, in place 

 of Yankees. 



In the Caribbean Sea the conch took the place of the oyster. I chartered a 

 schooner in 1870 and explored the network of little islands and inlets 'in the British 

 and Foreign Leeward and Virgin Islands, which no one ever visits. As Pere Labat 

 speaks of heaps of shells left by the Caribs at Anegada, I thought I would take 

 a look at them. The island is surrounded by a network of coral reefs .extending 

 ten miles to the seaward, and but few strangers reach it except those that have 

 been washed ashore. I found the people there (about two hundred in number I 

 should think), much disturbed by my visit, and they refused at first to come with 

 me. But the next morning the whole population seemed to turn out toi'aid me. I 

 afterwards learned that on my arrival they had held a meeting, at which it was 

 resolved that, as no man in his senses would think of opening a heap of old conch 



(2) The following passage, from Mr. Lyman Abbott's article in the Outlook (Mar. iSq;), is anplicable to the 

 beliefof prehistoric man: "What is God's way of doing things according to evolution? It is to develop life by 

 successive processes, until a spirit akin to this appears in a bodily organism, akm to that of the lower anmials 

 from which it had been previously evolved. This bodily organism is from birth in a constant state of decay and 

 repair. At length the time comes when, through disease or old age, the repair no longer keeps pace with the 

 decay. Then the body returns to the earth, and the spirit to God who gave it. . . . But every death is a 

 resurrection of the spirit. What we call death, the New Testament calls ' an exodus.' or an emancipation from 

 bondage, an 'unmooring,' or setting the ship free from its imprisonment. The spirit is released from its confine- 

 ment, and the release is death. Death is, in short, not a cessation of existence, not a break in existence : it is 

 simply what Socrates declared it to be, ' the separation of the soul and body; and being dead is the attainment 

 of this. When the soul exists in itself, and is parted from the body, and the body is parted from the soul, that 

 is death.' (See Phccdo, Jowet's Trans,) " 



