In all countries these details are said to have been revealed by men or women who died, but did not (like Persephone) taste the food of the dead; and so were enabled to return to earth.  The initiate, at Eleusis, were guided along a theatrically arranged pathway of the dead, into a theatrical Elysium. {89b} Now as such ideas as these occur among races utterly removed from contact with Egypt, as they are part of the European folk-lore of the visits of mortals to fairyland (in which it is fatal to taste fairy food), I do not see that Eleusis need have borrowed such common elements of early belief from the Egyptians in the seventh century B.C. {90} One might as well attribute to Egypt the Finnish legend of the descent of Wainamoinen into Tuonela; or the experience of the aunt of Montezuma just before the arrival of Cortes; or the expedition to fairyland of Thomas the Rhymer.  It is not pretended by M. Foucart that the details of the “Book of the Dead” were copied in Greek ritual; and the general idea of a river to cross, of dangerous monsters to avoid, of perils to encounter, of precautions to be taken by the wandering soul, is nearly universal, where it must be unborrowed from Egypt, in Polynesian and Red Indian belief.  As at Eleusis, in these remote tribes formulas of a preservative character are inculcated.

The “Book of the Dead” was a guidebook of the itinerary of Egyptian souls.  Very probably similar instruction was given to the initiate at Eleusis.  But the Fijians also have a regular theory of what is to be done and avoided on “The Path of the Shades.”  The shade is ferried by Ceba (Charon) over Wainiyalo (Lethe); he reaches the mystic pandanus tree (here occurs a rite); he meets, and dodges, Drodroyalo and the two devouring Goddesses; he comes to a spring, and drinks, and forgets sorrow at Wai-na-dula, the “Water of Solace.”  After half-a-dozen other probations and terrors, he reaches the Gods, “the dancing-ground and the white quicksand; and then the young Gods dance before them and sing. . . . " {91a}

Now turn to Plutarch. {91b} Plutarch compares the soul’s mortal experience with that of the initiate in the Mysteries.  “There are wanderings, darkness, fear, trembling, shuddering, horror, then a marvellous light:  pure places and meadows, dances, songs, and holy apparitions.”  Plutarch might be summarising the Fijian belief.  Again, take the mystic golden scroll, found in a Greek grave at Petilia.  It describes in hexameters the Path of the Shade:  the spring and the white cypress on the left:  “Do not approach it.  Go to the other stream from the Lake of Memory; tell the Guardians that you are the child of Earth and of the starry sky, but that yours is a heavenly lineage; and they will give you to drink of that water, and you shall reign with the other heroes.”