From Eleusis to Florence: The transmission of a secret knowledge: Vol. 1 - Part A: The Origin of the Mysteries

Τεληστήριον

NICOLA BIZZI

FROM ELEUS TO FLORENCE

THE TRANSMISSION OF A SECRET KNOWLEDGE

VOLUME I:

FROM THE AEGEAN-MINOAN ERA TO THE ENTRANCE

OF THE ELUSINIANS IN CLANDESTINITY

PART A: THE ORIGIN OF THE MYSTERIES

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Title: From Eleusis to Florence:

the transmission of a secret knowledge

Volume I: From the Aegean-Minoan Era

to the entrance of the Eleusinians in clandestinity

Part A: The Origin of the Mysteries

Author: Nicola Bizzi

Publishing series: Telestèrion

Editing and illustrations by Nicola Bizzi

ISBN e-book edition: 978-88-98635-51-1

Edizioni Aurora Boreale

© 2019 Edizioni Aurora Boreale

Via del Fiordaliso 14 - 59100 Prato - Italia

edizioniauroraboreale@gmail.com

www.auroraboreale-edizioni.com

All rights reserved

To my daughter Demetra,

dream and hope.

INTRODUCTION TO FIRST ITALIAN EDITION

By Nicola Bizzi

This manuscript is not meant to be a study about the sacred mysteries of antiquity or a manual of History of Religions. It is not even a specific and articulated report (which would require much more time than that foreseen for the present work) about the utmost and undisputed expression of religiosity and Mediterranean spirituality: the Eleusinian Mysteries.

For those who, entering the vast repertoire of nonfiction, want to get a fairly clear and objective idea on this subject, only focusing on a comparative analysis of historical and literary sources, I would recommend reading a great essay such as Les mystères d’Eleusis. Leurs origines. Le rituel de leurs initiations by Victor Magnien¹. Or, for those who intend to read some-thing that has a much more historical and archaeological approach, I would recommend Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries by the famous Greek archaeologist Georgios Milonas², or Mysteria: Archeologia e culto del santuario di Demetra a Eleusi by Enzo Lippolis³.

I would also advise you to avoid reading the essays published by historians of religions such as Walter Burkert or Károly Kerényi since (even though they are very widespread in the universities), in my opinion, they are too much based on too many personal interpretations.

Among the various mystery religions of antiquity, none has ever achieved such a fame and diffusion, and at the same time such a secrecy and impenetrability to the eyes of the uninitiated, like the Eleusinian Mysteries. So much so that, not unreasonably, it has been affirmed by the most authoritative scholars that the very foundations of the Western culture and Tradition are based upon them. On this subject, a lot has been written and theorized, and there is a vast amount of studies and essays published by the most accredited mythologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians of religions. But, as I will highlight in this book, the guidelines of most of these works, especially those written in the twentieth century, are affected by substantial limitations – which I will carefully explain – and, not to be put in second place, by an absolute lack of an esoteric perspective.

Considering these limitations, the lack or total absence of certain interpretive perspectives, big mistakes, and many misrepresentations that characterize the nonfiction works about this fundamental reality, I decided to write this book, which is the result of decades of studies and of a particular personal journey. In fact, the writer is an historian and belongs, by family tradition, to the mystery tradition of the Eleusinians Mother.

Generally speaking, all the nonfiction works on this subject, even the most specialized ones, speak about Eleusinian Mysteries in a generic sense. They refer to a mere local cult or to a religious phenomenon circumscribed or disjointed from those that have been its evolutions and branches, without taking into account the fact that it was a universal phenomenon, which came to embrace the areas of the Mediterranean Sea, continental Europe, North Africa, and Near East. And its schools of thoughts or derivations are absurdly classified and interpreted, in turn, as separate phenomena. In fact, we often hear people talking about Orphism and Pythagoreanism without clarifying or specifying that behind these terms there is a common origin, deriving from the same Tradition. Obliviously, some of these branches have, over the centuries, deviated from the original channel of the Mysteries, conditioned by other schools and traditions, such as Gnosticism and Hermeticism, but this is another matter. Along the text, I will deal with these aspects in depth.

It is correct to say Eleusinian Mysteries, but one should – in a broader sense – speak about Eleusinity as well.

The deepest roots of Eleusinity lie in the culture and civilization of the ancient Pre-Greek peoples who inhabited the Aegean lands; ethnically, they were very similar populations, with black hair and olive complexion, and since the most remote times, they had inhabited the Cycladic islands, Cre-te, mainland Greece, and the coasts of Asia Minor. They were part of the Cretan Empire of Minos and had two elements in common: the cult of the ancient Titans (who were defeated, according to the Hellenic tradition, by Zeus and the other Olympic Gods during the so-called Titanomachy) and the designation of their progeny by female line (matriarchy). Another fundamental idea of their culture was the common identification with the same sacral lineage, they were the heirs of a great civilization. These were the peoples who, in what has passed into history as the Trojan War, struggled desperately against the Achaeans and other invading enemies, bearers of a cultural model opposed to the Aegean one, to defend their world.

Another important matter that is poorly analyzed in the historical context is the fact that the conflict narrated by Homer in the Iliad was a war of religion – a deadly clash between two models of opposite societies – rather than a trade war: on one side there was a vast confederation of peoples of Aegean lineage, direct heirs of the Cretan Minoan Empire and characterized, as we have said, by a social model based on matriarchy and the cult of the ancient Titan Gods; on the other side, there was a heterogeneous alliance of peoples who had not Mediterranean origins, who had descended into Greece during several migratory flows, who were belligerent populations with a patriarchal social model, and worshipped the cult of the new usurping Olympian Gods.

If we do not understand the dualism and irreconcilability of the two opposite models that have characterized the dramatic passage from the Bronze Age to the Iron Age during the twelfth century B.C., we cannot comprehend the essence of Eleusinity and its Mysteries.

The fall of Troy, in fact, made Eleusis the last bastion of this Sacral Lineage. The choice of this small town located in the Gulf of Salamis – where, according to the Mystery Tradition, the Goddess Demeter arrived, embodied in a human form, in 1216 B.C. to institutionalize the Mysteries – was not unplanned. Now Greece was largely dominated by those invaders who had joined their forces to fight against Troy, and Eleusis represented, ethnically and culturally, a sort of enclave of the Aegean culture. As the archaeological excavations have proved, here the cult of the Two Goddesses, the Mother and the Daughter, had already been attested at least since the fifteenth century B.C. With the fall of the Trojan city, some secret documents and sacred objects that were preserved there were carried in secret to Eleusis. In this way they did not fall into the hands of the enemies, allowing the heirs of the Trojan people to perpetuate, initiating a thread that would no longer be broken, the "Sole and True Doctrine".

I will talk in depth about this unbroken thread in this work, which will co-me out in at least three volumes.

After examining the main characteristics of the Eleusinity – starting from the most remote origins of the cult and its roots in the Aegean-Minoan culture, after having unraveled a whole series of misunderstandings, misrepresentations, suppositions, and omissions present in many texts on the subject; and after dwelling, in the third part of the first volume, on purely theological and doctrinal matters (such as the origin of the Gods and the Universe according to the Eleusinian Tradition, the nature and features of the Titan Gods, the birth of human race, the grades and the path of the Eleusinity Mother, the history of the Primary Cohorts and the Eleusis Tribes, the nature and features of the Hiera (sacred objects), real relics and objects of power, and the relationship between Philosophy and Mysteries) – and of its branches (Mysteries of Samothrace, Orphism), we will face what is perhaps the most mysterious and enigmatic aspect, and at the same time the more ignored, of the whole question. I am referring to the survival of the Mysteries and the Eleusinian Tradition in the phase after 380 A.D., date of the formal closing of the Sanctuary of Eleusis. And we will come to this passage after examining and revealing the causes and the background of the birth and the construction of Christianity, showing how it represented a link in the chain of a much more ancient, ample, and dangerous project. The roots of this project of oppression and enslavement of mankind are to be found in the Hyksos culture, in the monotheistic madness of Amenhotep IV – better known as Akhenaten – as well as in the monotheism of the primary Jewish tribes; a project carried on since ancient times, we could say since the overthrow of the ancient Titans defeated by the new Olympic Deities; a project operated by some priestly bloodlines that still today hold the reins of politics, religion, finance, and economy. A project that Eleusinity has always opposed to and of which it has always been the main adversary.

We will see, in the second volume, how that same Tradition that had tenaciously survived the disappearance of the Minoan Empire and, about three centuries later, the fall of Troy, – and that from a primary status had become a mystery religion to protect itself after the transmission to Eleusis – survived the ruthless Christian persecutions, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Modern Age, to arrive almost intact to the present days.

We will see how it has re-emerged several times during our history, influencing in a decisive way, through the secret work of its Unknown Superiors, the main events of our past, from the advent of Humanism to the Renaissance, from the great achievements of science and astronomy to the discovery of America. And, through the work of its Pythagorean stream, influencing in a direct way the birth of many secret societies of the eighteenth century, from the Illuminati of Bavaria by Adam Waishaupt to the Illuminati of Berlin and of Avignon by Dom Pernety, up to get to the Egyptian Freemasonry of Raimondo Di Sangro and Cagliostro or to the Templar Strict Observance by Karl Gotthelf Von Hund. And we will see, in the third volume, how these mysteries have not been completely peripherical to important events such as the French Revolution, the American Revolution, or the advent of Fascism in Italy.

Precisely, the Italian Renaissance was the main and most evident proof of strength of this tenacious Mystery Tradition. The Renaissance, in fact, radiates Eleusinity from all its pores, which means all its forms that characterized it: from art to literature, from philosophy to architecture to science – from the paintings by Piero Della Francesca, Raffaello Sanzio, Masolino da Panicale, to the great architectural achievements operated by Leon Battista Alberti (just think about the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini); from the treaties of Giorgio Gemisto Pletone, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Matteo Palmieri, Tommaso Campanella and Giordano Bruno, to the poems and works by Michele Marullo, Torquato Tasso, Celio Calcagnini and Ludovico Ariosto; from the universal genius of Leonardo Da Vinci to the revolutionary science of Galileo Galilei.

We will see that behind all this there was not a simple randomness, nor the blind hand of fate, but a tireless work perpetuated by the great Initiates who decided that the moment was right to get out of the shadows and that humanity needed, after centuries of forced obscurantism, a new evolutionary guidance under the sign of the Immortal Gods.

Making their way back to Italy, during the fifteenth century, the two main flows of Eleusinity – that of the Mother Rite and that (schismatic) of the Pythagorean Rite, and reuniting with other branches of the Tradition that survived independently in various localities of the peninsula – gave life to a movement that determined, in open challenge with the Church, a rebirth of the Arts, Sciences and Consciousness during the Renaissance, that have influenced all the centuries to come.

And more than Rome, – once a city dear to the Gods, as the Emperor Flavius Claudius Julian used to define it, was now considered too compromised by the subtle and energetic point of view with the Chair of Peter – it will be Florence, together with Ferrara, Milan, Venice and other important Signorie, to represent for many years the fulcrum of this pagan renaissance.

I deliberately put this term between quotation marks because it is not a definition I like, nor I am willing to use. In fact, in this book, it will no longer appear. I do not like it because it was used, by the Christians, with an offensive intent meant to denigrate a whole religious world – and an ensemble of mystery and spiritual religions – that they tried, with intolerance and violence (which were totally unrelated to the ancient system of values of the Mediterranean area), to destroy and eradicate.

Therefore, the Eleusinians, like the exponents and the Initiated of other mystery traditions, have never defined themselves, nor will ever call themselves pagans.

As Arturo Reghini, who used this word, but only to make his works more understandable, wrote in 1928, –

«The concealment of its very existence for a pagan tradition must have appeared, to say the least, suitable. Simply think about the deep and inveterate hatred of the dominant religion in the West against paganism. Even when they attack each other, the various Christian branches are accused of paganism; one would say that according to their mentality, there is no graver accusation. Protestants to affirm the excellence and genuineness of their Christianity accuse the Catholics of paganism, and even recently the Catholic Church has condemned the movement called Action Française of basing upon a pagan charisma.

This anti-pagan obsession, if on one hand indicates, by their own confession, that it is not true that, despite everything, the Christians have succeeded in making tabula rasa of paganism, on the other hand demonstrates how violent and aggressive the dominant religion is regarding paganisms; and we will agree that this widespread and tenacious hatred determines a condition which is not precisely the most favorable and alluring for an opportune and profound affirmation of existence and manifestation of a pagan initiatory center. Therefore, even when there was absolute silence, it could be that it was a hermetic or Pythagorean silence, and there is no proof that it was necessarily a dead silence»⁴.

And Reghini, having been a respectable Initiated and a prominent exponent of the Pythagorean Tradition, knew very well how and how much – and especially in his Florence – during the Renaissance that silence had been broken, and how the voice of the Ancient Western Tradition had grown louder than ever to show its strength.

Precisely in Florence, thanks to the work of the Medici family – who, other than being patrons of the arts and enlightened governors, were also important Initiated - we will see that one of the principal branch of Eleusinity, the Pythagorean one, was established in Italy. From the beautiful Tuscan city, this Tradition spread out into other Italian cities, protected and defended by other Lords of the time, who belonged to initiatory circles that were anything but Christian. And a similar path was also undertaken by the Eleusinity of the Mother Rite, that was present in Italy in the fifteenth century in many Signorie of central and northern Italy (Camerino and Ferrara for example). It was present in Florence as well, where it is still existing with its own institutions and its rituals.

This is why, for this and other reasons that we will deepen, I have decided to name this essay From Eleusis to Florence: the transmission of a secret knowledge, wanting to highlight a link, invisible to most, but at the same time strong and indissoluble, between the city of Attica where the Goddess Demeter established the Sacred Mysteries and the city of Dante Alighieri and Lorenzo de’ Medici.

Above all, the aim of this book is to clarify, together with the analyses of meticulous historical sources, the role of that esoteric and initiatory perspective that unfortunately (and certainly not because of the authors) is missing in many qualified books on this subject.

However, we should not expect blatant revelations about the contents of the Initiation and its Rites, issues upon which many have, in the past, pontificated in a misleading and erroneous manner. I am talking about people like St. Epiphanius of Salamis and the apostate Lactantius, or Clement of Alexandria. Still today many historians of the religions debate on this matter.

Ancient authors, such as Herodotus, Pausanias, Plutarch, Diodorus Siculus, and Polybius, while facing the interpretation of myths and religious doctrines, when they talk about mystery religions they do never narrate the details. And if, sporadically, they do, they still maintain an aura of sacredness and confidentiality that, to the eyes of the contemporaries, could appear reticent. Instead, it is an obvious act of respect, since they were part of that mystery religion and had made a vow of silence. In fact, many authors had personally received a Mystery Initiation (and in some cases more than one), and they knew that there was a limit that they could not cross when writing about the Gods.

«I could say more about this – writes Herodotus - for I know the truth, but let me preserve a discreet silence»⁵. Other authors, such as Plato, Plotinus, Proclus, Iamblichus, Virgil, and the same Emperor Julian, when dealing with religious topics, they addressed to other Initiates. This is why they used a deliberately enigmatic and obscure language, full of symbols and metaphors. A language that was perfectly understandable for their interlocutors, who held the correct reading keys. A letter by Plato states: «Now I must expound it to you in a riddling way in order that, should the tablet come to any harm in folds of ocean or of earth, he that readeth may not understand»⁶.

Indeed, as confirmed by Soranus of Ephesus, «Sacred things are revealed to consecrated men. The profane man cannot deal with it, before being initiated into the Sacred Rites»⁷.

The esoteric knowledge is by its nature secret, but – as Massimo Frana points out in the introduction to one of his essays⁸ – secrecy is not intended to merely preserve something from the uninitiated. It is also aimed at preserving the same uninitiated (those who have not been initiated and who do not, therefore, possess the correct keys to have access to the teachings and their truths) from two fundamental dangers: insanity and death. Indeed, anyone who approaches the Sacred Mysteries without being ready could run into these two dangers. Precisely for this reason, as the great Virgil – an Initiate as well – tells us in the Aeneid⁹, the Priests of the Sacred Wood (a place where the doors leading to the Underworld stand), shouted at the uninitiated who were trying to approach Proserpina: «Procul este, profane!» («Move away, uninitiated!»).

As no one, who is not a true Initiate, can survive the approach of a Deity, no one among the uninitiated could maintain their mental lucidity in front of it. They could risk slipping into the abyss of madness by becoming aware of certain truths that would upset their own forma mentis, as well as their own uninitiated conception of the world.

Like Plato, Socrates, Pausanias, Amphimachus of Abydos, Cicero, Proclus and others before me, even the writer belongs, by bloodline, to the mystery tradition of the Eleusinians Mother. And I, like others before me, receiving in Eleusis the salt of life during my first Initiation (which took place twenty-two years ago), I solemnly swore an oath and an explicit vow of silence. Thus, try to understand me if I could not say everything in this essay. But, believe me, in many chapters I have pushed myself, at my own risk and danger, beyond the limits.

Finally, I ask the most meticulous readers to forgive me, if they find some repetitions in the text; I have identified many of them during the writing. I have removed several of them, but I have decided to leave some: I guess that the Latin motto Repetita iuvant could be suitable for such a work. A work that is not complete, because, as Daphne Varenya Eleusinia writes in her essay Demeter: historical notes and cult, «There cannot be any claim of completeness in a writing concerning the Divine Reality»¹⁰. But this essay does not want to be just a book related to the Divine Reality, it combines the latter (as far as possible and allowed) with a rigorous historical analysis.

There are some repetitions also because when I started writing this work it was around the mid-nineties. Thus, many chapters of this book were originally designed as separate articles, at the time published on various magazines, and only later expanded to fit into this new context.

I do not hide that when the idea of this book came to my mind I did not even have a personal computer. I used to go to many libraries, with my notebooks and my faithful typewriter in my bag; I was just a student of Classics and, starting from the beginning, a simple Epopt, I did not have all the cognitive elements I needed to complete such a work. But an invisible hand, I would dare say a divine hand guided me in my many travels in Greece, in the East, and around other parts of the world, to find those elements that I have jealously gathered along the way, even if I did not immediately understand their meanings; elements that would later prove to be fundamental to continue this work properly. The same invisible hand that, in more recent times, made me find – sometimes in an enigmatic and totally unexpected way – many of the pieces that I did not have yet. The same hand that still today, every day, continues to let me find them according to an arcane design of fate, even though I am well aware that I have not them all in the right place yet. And many other pieces – if the Gods wish so, and if they will grant me the necessary time and their benevolence – I will find them in the future, and surely this book will require new editions, it will be revised and expanded.

I would like to thank all those who have contributed to the realization of this book, with their criticism, but most of the time with their advice that proved to be much more important than they could have imagined. Among them, I want to thank especially Brother Luca Monti, Master of the Templar Strict Observance and Brother Moreno Neri of the Italian Symbolic Rite of the Grand Orient of Italy, the major expert of the works of Giorgio Gemisto Pletone, then Paola Maresca and Costanza Riva of the Archaeosophical Association for their studies on the esoteric, mysterious, and hermetic aspects of Renaissance in Florence, and Brother in Eleusis Enrico Savelli of the Eleusinian Mother School of Florence.

Special thanks go to my grandfather, Commander Ugolino Ugolini, a great Florentine scholar, a true lord, who had been able to transmit me, since I was a child, the love for history and traditions. I am sure that from the Elysian Fields of the Occident Blue of the Ancients where he is, he will appreciate this dedication.

Finally, special thanks to Guido Maria St. Mariani di Costa Sancti Severi, Hatnat of the Goddess Leto and 73rd Pritan of the Hierophants on Eleusinians Mother, without whose precious teachings and advice this book would never have seen the light.

Nicola Bizzi

Florence, September 2017

Year 3233 of the Eleusinian Era

Johan Tobias Sergel: The Goddess Ceres holding torches searching for her daughter

Proserpina in the underworld, 1780 (Stockholm, National Museum)

THE TRANSMISSION OF A SECRET KNOWLEDGE

By Boris Yousef

The essay From Eleusis to Florence: the transmission of a secret know-ledge by Nicola Bizzi is the largest and most complete study ever carried out on the Eleusinian Mystery Tradition, its origins, its history and life through the centuries, from the persecutions perpetuated by the Christians up to the Middle Ages, as well as from the Renaissance to our days.

A lot has been written about the Mysteries, even by respected professors and authoritative historians of religions, but few – actually very few – have truly understood the meaning of this extraordinary religious mysterical tradition, as the author clearly points out in the first volume of this huge editorial work. But the main news of this work by Nicola Bizzi, whose first volume was released in Italy in November 2017 and quickly became a bestseller, consists in the fact that for the first time in history a monumental work on the Eleusinian Mysteries has been written by one of its Initiate. And it was all fully authorized by the leaders of this institution. The author, in fact, is not only an appreciated historian but he also belongs, by family tradition and for more than thirty years of initiatory experience and path, to the Mystery Tradition of the Eleusinians Mother. The Eleusinians Mo-ther are an ancient initiatory order which descends directly from the Primary Priestly Tribes of Eleusis. A feared and respected initiatory order, which later inspired many mysterical and esoteric traditions – such as the Pythagorean Order or the Freemasonry, up to the Illuminati of Bavaria. However, it has always remained strictly inaccessible and unreachable for the profane world. They have always been the purest and most authentic custodians and defenders of Eleusinian Orthodoxy. Defenders of a secret history and of the initiatory message of the Two Goddesses, the Mother and the Daughter (Demeter and Kore-Persephone). They have allowed this ancient Tradition to survive as it was, with its own rituals and its own secret knowledge. Indeed, only recently the Eleusinians Mother have decided to reveal themselves to the world, believing that this is the right time to make such a move.

The essay From Eleusis to Florence: the transmission of a secret know-ledge (the Italian edition consists of three large volumes about almost 1000 pages each) combines historical accuracy and the revelation, for the first time ever, of several pages of hidden history and unpublished secret documents.

Without encroaching into the revelation of secrets that are and must be known only to the Initiates, Nicola Bizzi clearly explains the truth about the authentic origins of the Eleusinian Mystery Tradition, its symbology, its initiatory degrees, and its most truthful meanings. But above all, he retraces the entire history, from its most ancient origins – which date back to the Minoan civilization of Crete – up to its development in ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. He explains that many of the greatest philosophers, writers, and scientists of antiquity (but also kings and emperors) were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.