Observations placeholder
W.Y. Evans-Wentz - The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries - Rebirth
Identifier
014078
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries, by W.Y. Evans-Wentz, [1911]
These mysteries vary from tribe to tribe, though in almost all of them there is what corresponds to the Death Rite in Freemasonry; that is to say, there is either a symbolical presentation of death in a sacred drama--as there was among the Greeks in their complete initiatory rites--or a state of actual trance imposed upon each neophyte by the priestly initiators.
The sanctum sanctorum of these primitive mysteries is sometimes in a natural or artificial cavern (as was the rule with respect to the Ancient Mysteries); sometimes in a structure specially prepared to exclude the light; or else the neophytes are symbolically or literally buried in an underground place to be resurrected greatly purified and strengthened.
And the mystic purification at the sea-shore and spiritual re-birth sought in the cave at Eleusis by the highly cultured Athenians and their fellow Greeks, or among other cultured and uncultured ancient and modern peoples through some corresponding initiation ceremony, find their parallel in the purification and spiritual re-birth still sought in the Christian Purgatory, now 'Prison Chapel', and in the lake waters, amid the solitude of sacred Lough Derg, Ireland, by thousands of earnest pilgrims from all parts of the world.