Fable is Love's World – Poem by Schiller — 13Introduction to the Third Edition — 15SECTION I. The Eleusinian Mysteries — 31SECTION II. The Bacchic Mysteries — 125Hymn to Minerva — 149Appendix — 157Orphic Hymns — 165Hymn of Cleanthes — 167Glossary — 171Post ScriptumThe Eleusian and Bacchic Mysteries focus on life, death and rebirth in a living nature (the present), while this nature was regarded as the converging of past and future. Taylor describes a series of lost secret rites. These rites were once the appointed means for regeneration through an inner union with the Divine Essence, despite their wild and sexual aspect.The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries explain a lost fundament, on which an important part of the ancient pagan and occult tradition in Europe was built. These mysteries once represented the spiritual life of Greece, and were considered for two thousand years and more, the appointed means for regeneration through an interior union with the Divine Essence. However absurd, or even offensive or obscene, they may seem to modern spirituality, we should be careful not to condemn what the ancient Greek – and Romans – have esteemed holy. The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries focus on life, death and rebirth in the present, identical with the living nature, which was regarded as the converging of past and future. In this context the mystae, or initiates, learned the aporrheta, or secret meaning of the rites, and were thenceforth denominated ephori, or epoptæ (seers). Sacred orgies were celebrated on every fifth year; and began on the 15th of the month Boëdromian or September. This work offers a thrilling and invaluable body of reference and insight to the student of the occult, as well as to academics and micro-historians focused on the deeper layers of Greek religion.