ABSTRACT
The idea that myths are ancient hieroglyphic allegories of material truths some only now being rediscovered by modern science becomes much more significant in The Economy of Vegetation and The Temple of Nature. The main model Erasmus Darwin himself cites for this view is Francis Bacons De Sapientia Veterum or Of the Wisdom of the Ancients. Darwin's take on myths, Egypt, Rosicrucian spirits and Masonry may, then, be weird, but in eighteenth-century context, not all that weird. This chapter discusses the Egyptian theme is continued in the figure of the many-breasted Goddess of Nature. A description of the majestic hundred-breasted goddess Nature placed in the midst of all this leads to an extended account of the ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries. The chapter explains the Temples note on the Mysteries ends with the query: Might not such a dignified pantomime is contrived, even in this age, as might strike the spectators with awe.
