Two Can Keep A Secret...

"Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead." - proverb

Fireworks by Samericnick on Wikipedia

But don't count on it.  Even if one of them is dead, then the living person is STILL going to have to go blab to somebody.  A rock, if nothing else.  And sometimes a secret is just too darned hard to keep. For example, for the last month, I've been keeping the great deep dark secret of a surprise 70th birthday party for my husband, Allan, which was pulled off by Michael and Reina (bless you, guys!).  During this month, I have almost blown the whole damn secret at least five times, because someone unexpected said yes! or because the whole place is being cleaned up (!) or because Allan was wondering what we ought to do for his birthday.  Or the Fourth.  Which is the same thing.  Given more time, I would have cracked. Someone would have cracked.  Whew.  Thank God we made it...

This is why I don't believe in conspiracy theories that require absolute total silence on the part of everyone involved.  At least not without death threats that will actually be carried out.  (I understand the Mafia has managed to pull this off at times.)  This means that anything involving aliens, fake moon landings, "false flag" shootings/bombings/etc., Batboy, the Illuminati, UN internment camps, Jesus as a psychedelic mushroom, and any end of the world scenarios involving secret knowledge passed down ancient astronauts / gods (especially aquatic aliens who teach humanity how to grow land crops) are all off the table, at least as far as I'm concerned.

And especially in this day and age.  I grew up in a world where we all knew that J. Edgar Hoover KNEW ALL, Nixon had an enemies list (Hunter S. Thompson, upon finding out that he wasn't on it, said, "Next time, I'll BE there."), and the FBI was everywhere.  And that was before the Patriot Act and the NSA.  (BTW, if you're Instagramming your food in between selfie-ing your every breath, and letting everyone know your constant whereabouts on Facebook, don't tell me you're worried about your privacy.)  Privacy?  Secrets? Don't make me laugh.

On the other hand, the ancient world was pretty good at it.

Back in the ancient world, the Eleusinian Mysteries were initiation and religious rites that lasted over two thousand years - from at least 1500 BCE to 396 CE. And no one still knows exactly what happened at them. The initiates were sworn to secrecy, and they apparently kept it.  (For one thing - I told you! - the penalty for revealing the mysteries was death, and people really were executed:  In the 5th century BCE a man named Diagoras "the atheist" had to flee for his life for revealing too much of the mysteries.)  Little hints got out here and there, but not a lot.  Not the big stuff.

Ninnion Tablet, Wikipedia,
copyright by Marsyas

We have no idea how many people were initiates, but everyone who was anyone was, including Socrates, Plato, Xenophon, Pisistratus, etc.  We also know that the mysteries centered around the worship of Demeter, the Goddess of Harvest and Agriculture, and Persephone, Demeter's daughter by Zeus, who was stolen by the Hades, the God of Death.  In Greek mythology, that theft/rape brought winter and death to the world as a whole:  but the Eleusinian Mysteries defied death and brought new life to the world.  According to Joshua K. Mark (Eleusinian Mysteries) "The mysteries celebrated the story of Demeter and Persephone but, as the initiated were sworn to secrecy on pain of death as to the details of the ritual, we do not know what form this celebration took. We do know, though, that those who participated in the mysteries were forever changed for the better and that they no longer feared death."

Plato (4th century BCE) wrote, "our mysteries had a very real meaning: he that has been purified and initiated shall dwell with the gods" (69:d, F.J. Church trans).

BTW, Plato was the first who argued that everyone had an immortal soul.  In case no one ever told you, a great deal of Christian theology about the soul and the afterlife is actually based on Plato, especially Phaedo.  In the same way, many of our ideas about true love are based on Plato's Symposium.  If you haven't read either before, check them out sometime.  

Cicero the Roman wrote around the mid-1st century BCE, "Nothing is higher than these mysteries...they have not only shown us how to live joyfully but they have taught us how to die with a better hope."

And Plutarch, writing around 100 CE, said "because of those sacred and faithful promises given in the mysteries...we hold it firmly for an undoubted truth that our soul is incorruptible and immortal. Let us behave ourselves accordingly... When a man dies he is like those who are initiated into the mysteries. Our whole life is a journey by tortuous ways without outlet. At the moment of qutting it come terrors, shuddering fear, amazement. Then a light that moves to meet you, pure meadows that receive you, songs and dances and holy apparitions" (Hamilton, 179).

Demeter receiving an offering from
Metanira, Queen of Eleusis

So what did they actually do in these mysteries?  Well, we really don't know.  Do not be fooled by websites who claim to have the truth:  THEY DON'T.

What we do know is that there were the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater Mysteries.  The Lesser Mysteries took place around the January or February full moon and involved purification and sacrifice.

After that, the initiate was deemed worthy to attend the Greater Mysteries in September/ October (again, depending on the moon).  The ten days of ritual began publicly:  a procession from the Athenian cemetery (no symbology there...) to Eleusis, complete with branches, chanting, and, at one point, ritual dirty jokes because (according to the original myth) an old woman named Baubo [or Iambe, and don't ask me why] cracked jokes and made Demeter smile even with her daughter in Hades.

Then came an all-night vigil, where everyone drank a certain potion - kykeon - that may or may not have contained psychotropic herbs.  Then into the Great Hall, where the Mysteries were unfolded. After that, we don't know.  There were dromena ("things done"), deiknumena ("things shown"), and legomena ("things said").  But what were those things?  There was a sacred casket.  There was a "triune" wheat sheaf.  There was a presentation.  Everything revolved around the Demeter/ Persephone/ Hades myth, which basically revolved around the changing seasons. But that's really all we know.  The secrets were kept.  Seriously.

Afterwards - one hell of an all-night feast, with dancing, merriment, undoubtedly more alcohol, perhaps more potions, a bull sacrifice, and some time the next day an exhausted, satisfied, perhaps hung-over but happy crew, revitalized and resworn, went home.

For two thousand years, this ritual was reenacted and the secret was kept.  We could probably learn something from that.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, Allan was totally surprised at his birthday party, and a great time was had by all!  Whew.

Dirty Words

by David Edgerley Gates

Back in August, Leigh Lundin posted a piece about PINs and passwords that I found very instructive. Birthdates, for example, are too commonly used, and easily penetrated. In fact, I just got a phishing e-mail, purportedly from my cousin G, stranded and broke in the Philippines, urgently in need of money, which is almost certainly the result of a password compromise.

But that's not the point I want to take up here. Leigh also mentioned that people often choose catchphrases, for example F**KU2. Leigh didn't used asterisks. It's not in my nature to censor myself, either, but I'm doing it this time so as not to scare the children, and because one of Leigh's readers took offense, and told him he should clean the column up, and bleep out the foul language. My first reaction was, sheesh, what an uptight prude, but on further reflection, I realized the guy had a point.

Language is extraordinarily powerful, and poisonous. If you use derogatory slang, for instance, to describe gay men, or black people, or Jews, to name a few obvious ones, you perpetuate stereotypes. You can argue, of course, that this is how people talk, which is true enough, and political correctness leads to a kind of homogenization, or Socialist Realism, but I'm a straight white guy, raised as an Episcopalian, so I can't claim to have a dog in the fight. I had a running argument for years with Cathleen Jordan, my editor at HITCHCOCK, who held the line resolutely against graphic violence and colorful profanity. I'd say it was realistic. She'd say, not on my watch. I once heard a cop use a phrase to describe lowered physical requirements for police recruits, the result of Affirmative Action, to bring in more women and minorities, that the applicant pool was all "runts and c**nts." I knew I'd never slip that one past Cathleen, and it took me days, literally, to come up with something. (I finally settled on "midgets and Gidgets," which doesn't have quite the same flavor, or shock value, but any woman will tell you they deeply resent being characterized, or dismissed, as no more than a fold of flesh.)

There's a fascinating conversation in Mary Renault's THE MASK OF APOLLO—fascinating to me, anyway—that takes place between the first-person narrator, an actor, and another dinner guest, who turns out to be the philosopher Plato. (The story takes place in classical Greece, the 3rd century B.C.) They're talking about theater, naturally enough. Nico, the narrator, has just performed Aeschylus' THE MYRMIDONS. After a while, they get around to Euripides, and it turns out Plato doesn't approve of him. He thinks Euripides mocks the Gods. Nico answers, he's the first to show men and women as they really are. Plato say, why not show them what they can be? Nico can only think to tell him, "But it's such marvelous theater." This produces, of course, a deafening silence.

You can see where both of them are coming from. Nico is, after all, a working actor, who goes where his trade takes him, and wants a good play. Plato believes men are base, but can be taught to turn from evil. He sees in his mind's eye a city, a body politic, that rises above itself, and aspires to the ideal (for which there's his REPUBLIC). The dialogue, in effect, turns on the purpose of art, drama in particular, because it's a popular, accessible form, but Renault's novel itself becomes a sort of meta-fiction, both an illustration of seeking the ideal, and also marvelous theater. There is, perhaps, a balance. The audience delivered from outer darkness by sleight of hand.

Where does this leave us? I have to say I lean toward the theatrical, not to say sensational. Those dirty words, and ugly epithets, are part of my vocabulary, and I'll keep them in my toolbox, along with fear, and violence, betrayal and despair. They describe the human condition. Not that we shouldn't seek the ideal, or honor, or heroics---or that we can't rise above ourselves. The trick is in the doing.