Note 397 — Chapter IV · PRE-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE ORPHICI

The earlier idea espoused by Creuzer and others (see Guigniaut, Religions de l’Antiquité, vol. III. passim, and especially pp. 1207, 1208) that the Chthonian gods were worshipped as the symbols of generation and death seems a good deal nearer the truth than the “Corn-spirit” theory set on foot by the Golden Bough that they were the gods of agriculture and vegetation. Of course both explanations can be read into what we know of the Mysteries. Why these last should have been kept secret even before the rise of Orphism is hard to see. M. Paul Foucart’s view that they came originally from a foreign country (according to him from Egypt) offers one explanation of this; but see n. 2 p. 139, infra.