The Druids
And the Great Mysteries of the Phoenician navigators.
“Symbolism is the language of the Mysteries, in fact, it is the language not only of mysticism, and philosophy, but of all Nature, for every law and power active in universal procedure is manifested to the limited sense perceptions of man through the medium of symbols.”1 – Manly P. Hall.
Among most of the ancient nations there was, in addition to their public worship, a private one termed the Mysteries – to which were admitted only those who had been prepared by certain ceremonies called initiations.2 Those of the British Isles were known as the Druidical Mysteries.
These Druidic Mysteries closely resembled the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece or the Egyptian rites of Isis and Osiris.3 Where the Mysteries originated is not known, although it is supposed that they came from India, via Chaldea, into Egypt, and then carried into Greece.
Initial intercourse between Eastern and Western civilisations was established by Phoenician merchants at a remote date: “It was Phoenician trade that helped facilitate the exchange of cultures, ideas, and knowledge between major cradles of civilisation such as Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia.”4
The Phoenicians were not only mariners, merchants, architects, priests and astronomers but also the keepers of profound knowledge.
