The Mystai are not intended to learn anything, but to suffer something and thus be made worthy. Preserved in Synesius Dion , c. 7.
For the initiates are not supposed to learn anything, but to receive impressions and to be put into a certain frame of mind. (Aristotle, as quoted in Synesius’s *Dio*, Section 113c (Heinrich Volume II, p. 54)
The temple at Eleusis should be under the supervision of the Eumolpidae and the Kerykes, according to ancestral custom. (Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, Chapter 39, Section 2, in the Loeb Classical Library edition, translated by H. Rackham.)
He also supervises the sacred processions, both that in honor of Asclepius, when the initiates keep house, and that of the Great Dionysia. (Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, Chapter 56, Section 4, Loeb Classical Library.)
The King Archon in the first place supervises the Mysteries, in conjunction with the Superintendents of the Mysteries. (Aristotle, Athenian Constitution, Chapter 57, Section 1, Loeb Classical Library.)
But of what he is doing a man might be ignorant—for instance, people say ‘It slipped out as they were speaking,’ or ‘They did not know it was a secret,’ as Aeschylus did about the Mysteries. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book III, Chapter 1, 1110a23-25, in the Loeb Classical Library edition, translated by H. Rackham)
All who use such rites experience relief mixed with pleasure. (Aristotle, Poetics, Chapter 17, 1455a, in the Loeb Classical Library edition, translated by Stephen Halliwell.)
