In the mystery centers of the ancient world one can glean that the lives of initiates follow, in some measure, a standard progression into the spiritual world. this was the work of these mystery centers , to facilitate the "higher man" who upon entry into the world of the spirit and brought forth comprehensions to which total cultures would follow in thought and deed. The mystery centers were the religious,cultural, and scientific centers of the ancient peoples.
It would be wrong to cast the words Horus, Osiris, or Isis as personages in an historical sense such as Napoleon or George Washington. They were more like cloaks to which the initiand traveled through spiritually until in the case of the Egyptians he became an "Osiris" or one who gained experience in the higher regions of humanity, the spiritual world. Horus can be seen as the initiate who carries the "sun power" within and Isis as the "soul love" manifest in order to facilitate the movement of Horus into an "Osiris" .
In the mystery centers of antiquity the initiand was placed into a "trance state" by the hierophants and experienced the higher regions of the spirit in "image form". The story of Aeschylus being tried in mystery court for betraying the mysteries is telling. The works within the mysteries were not to be betrayed at risk of death or worse for to disseminate the same would bring perversion to the mystery process. Aesychlus proved that he did not betray the mysteries for he had never been initiated; all that he created was without the aid of those centers.
If one wonders as to why Jesus of Nazareth , the carrier of the Christ Being" or "Christ Light" was accused and sentenced to death consider the Hebrew Mysteries. The Pharisees were a mystery center and they saw this man as betraying the mysteries for his entire life from the Baptism of John until the Crucifixion displayed a initiate progression for the whole world to see. This was so.
Whereas the initiate progression was kept in the secret mystery centers the life of Christ Jesus was the displaying of this very process on the world stage. the gospels are not historical accounts of Christ Jesus but "initiate walks" from different mystery centers looked at through the eyes of their particular mystery initiations.
What was in the mystery center was now gone through on the world stage . The "trance state" no longer applied as we now have the "Death" and "Resurrection" of Christ Jesus for all to see. What was for a select few in the mystery centers was now the ownership of all mankind , the progression of man into the world of the spirit as a spiritual being, the Community of Christ, all in time.
Chapter 5 of "Christianity as a Mystical Fact" by Rudolph Steiner which has an excellent rendering of the Egyptian Mysteries and speaks to the initiate comparison of Buddha and Christ Jesus.
http://wn.rsarchive.org/Books/GA008/...GA008_c06.html