Taylor - Eleusianian and Bacchic Mysteries.pdf - Platonic Philosophy

Bacchic Mysteries. Illsive, womanish, and corporeal life throughwhich the soul becomes united with thisearthly body, and through which, beingfirst ensnared, it descended, and, as it were,was born into the world of generation, passing, by this means, from mature perfection,splendor and reality, into infancy, darkness,and error. Ceres, therefore, or the intellectual soul, in the course of her wanderings,that is, of her evolutions and goings-f orth intomatter, is at length captivated with the artsof Baubo, or a corporeal life, and forgets hersorrows, that is, imbibes oblivion of herwretched state in the mingled potion whichshe prepares : the mingled liquor being anobvious symbol of such a life, mixed and impure, and, on this account,atliable to corruption and death since ; every thing pureand unmixed is incorruptible and divine.And here it is necessary to caution thereader from imagining, that because, according to the fable, the wanderings of Cerescommence after the rape of Proserpina,hence the intuitive intellect descends subsequently to the soul, and separate from it.