On The Mysteries
by Estéban Trujillo de Gutiérrez
The secret of the Mysteries of Eleusis endures to this day. We do not remember, precisely, what they were. The secrecy that covered them remains inviolate, to this day, though it is likely that we know them but we know them under another name, a different complex of concepts. We do not realize that these memories that are indistinguishable from our patterns of thinking were once codified and celebrated in liturgies. We have forgotten their names, and this in a sense means that we have lost the ability to create them, because what is a name but an act of creation?
I say to you that the memories endure. They may be attenuated, confused, diluted, mixed with other sacred secrets, but we carry them with us always as part of our human heritage. What man has not at times looked up to the night sky in wonder and resignation at the demonstrable, visible infinitude of existence arrayed as a panoply of stars? How is that man different from an ape, who sees the same stars, and feels the same wonder and resignation? Perhaps what makes us human is that we reject the resignation, we reject the immensity of the universe, and we stand as sovereign, aware entities that have self-knowledge.
How can this be different from anything preserved in forgotten Mysteries? There are no Mysteries. Everything is a Mystery.
Samizdat 