From the Vault: Mystery Cults, Part 4

talking about mystery, cults and religion. Well, we talk about a lot of things here on Stuff to Blow your Mind. We consider ourselves a science and culture podcast, with science being the underlying bedrock, but we do explore topics that veer into historical, philosophical, mythic, and folkloric areas as well. And if you are new to the show, that's just happens to be where you're coming in. We should also let you know this is part four of a four part series, so there's that as well.

the gods would give them blessings in return. I do sacrifices and rituals for you. You give me blessings for the you know, for outcomes in war, for outcomes in health, for the harvest, and so forth. And by contrast, the mystery cults seem to be driven by the need to

create intense, emotionally powerful religious experiences. Experience is brought on by participation in these occult initiation rituals, which are all the more fascinating to us, certainly as consumers across the divide of history, but also fascinating to people even at the time, to outsiders of the time, because these rights

were kept secret from non initiates. So in some cases historians have some strong guesses about what went on in the mysteries, and in other cases we really don't know much at all, and that just makes it all the more fascinating now and back then as well. So in part one of this series we primarily talked about the social and religious context in which the mystery cults existed, and many of the features of the public cults of Greek and Roman polytheism, and how these public cults differed

in general from the features of mystery religions. In parts two and three we talked in detail about a couple of specific mystery cults, and we talked first about Mythraism, which flourished in the Roman Empire from the first to the fourth century CE, and then also we talked about the Elusinian mysteries based out of the Sanctuary of Demeter and Corey. At illusis a place just west of the

city of Athens. Now. One of the best sources we have found on the subject, which we've referred to throughout the series, is a book by a historian named Hugh Boden called Mystery Cults in the Ancient World and Huge Apologies. I think I've been mispronouncing his last name in the previous episodes, I was calling him Hugh Bowden, but I listened to part of the audio book and the reader there calls him Boden, So apologies, Hugh Boden.

the Great Mother or the Mother of the Gods, and there are just so many things. One thing that I found really interesting in the book was there's a chapter on what Boden calls the private initiator. Is these sort of religious professionals who would be it would be different than say the example of the cult of ill usis where there is a cult of these secret rights that has a sort of specific home base and people come

to the temple to take part in the mysteries. This instead would be versions of mystery cults that are sort of purveyed by a person who goes around claiming to be a religious expert who can teach you the secrets or can initiate you, and this figure being treated by some authors as a kind of con artist of the ancient world, someone of ill repute who prayed on the gullible.

So yeah, they're going they're going door to door, they'reknocking on the right doors and saying, hey, you interested in that whole mystery cult thing, because I have it here with me, and we can get you where you need to go. Or at least that's my interpretation of the allegations that are made here.

of looking at life. But then the more cynical way of looking at it is they're just looking to pay somebody money to make them feel good about themselves.

slightly unserpentine head and face. It's an interesting look, and you also might be familiar with Glicon due to the fact that writer and comics legend Alan Moore has I think maybe partially in ingest sometimes it's kind of hard to tell with more, but he has expressed his devotion to Glyicon as first of all an obvious hoax and secondly being a hoax less likely to become problematic and dangerous in the way of other deities and religions.

secrecy and overstimulating rituals. So it does seem like the sort of cult you could loosely classify as a mystery cult, or, if you're leaning into allegations of fraud here, as a pseudo mystery cult. Yeah, and I think this is all worth thinking about as we reflect on what we've talked about in the previous episodes, Because, as we discussed, theatrical effects were employed in the mystery cult initiations, it would seem.

Imagine you go into a powerful musical experience and you are expecting to meet a god and experience their power. Yeah, and so like, that doesn't even cross a lot of people's minds that like music is a special effect designed to sort of set you up to have a certain kind of emotional vulnerability or openness to an experience, maybe a religion of an experience or secular nature.

were involved, but there's not strong evidence for that. But people are really captivated by this idea. There's a lot less attention seems to be paid to how often music is mentioned, and a lot of these ceremonies as being like a key element. You know, the rights of Dionysus involve ecstatic dancing on the mountain side, out in the wild, with overwhelming loud music, shrieking and flutes and drums and singing. I don't know, that sounds to me like its own kind of hallucinogen in a way.

mystery cults, especially gl I couldn't hear. We also have to reflect on some of the things that Boden points out regarding critics of mystery cults who would often dwell on alleged spoilers regarding sacred items that are part of the initiation, such as you know, revealing, oh it's a grain of wheat or whatnot, you know, letting you know what's in the secret box, and by removing the spoiler from the context of the initiation, you know, attempting to

sort of gut punch it a little bit and say, look, this religion is about nothing because this is what is in the box.

eating the apple or something. So, yeah, they're not a fan of these rival religions and they're revealing the secrets in order to lampoon them in a way.

enhance the initiation rights of the mystery, you know. And because in this particular case, the cult of Glican it was likely a spin on already established snake cults in the region, and it seems to have survived in some form or re emerged after its creator's death. It's also possible that Alexander, the creator, alleged creator of the religion was not that different from other mystics of the time.

We just happened to have strong surviving criticism of him, whereas we might not have that regarding other particular mystery cults. On the other hand, if Alexander really was, as Lucian charges involved in murder plots against his critics, well, then perhaps there was something kind of singular about him, and he really was a heel. I was reading a bit more about this in an article titled Narcissistic Fraud in

the Ancient World by Stephen A. Kent. This was published in Ancient Narrative back in two thousand and seven, and he contends that based on what we know about Alexander from these writings, he may well have been the sort of person that we'd now classify as a malignant narcissist.

very clear and pleasant. And he goes on to talk about various other positive attributes that this guy had, and talking about how when you met him, you believe that this guy you know, believe you know this guy, believe everything he's telling you is very sincere and he had all of these gifts, but quote he used them for the worst purposes, and equipped with noble instruments, he lost no time in becoming the most accomplished of those who

have been notorious for wickedness. And he goes on to accuse him of being quote a quack, the type who offered magic spells and marvelous incantation, charms for love affairs, afflictions for your enemies, discoveries of buried treasure, and inheritances

to estates. He also goes into detail about You're going to be tired of winning, and then he also goes in it goes on to discuss a little bit about the glycon puppet in question, about first of all, Alexander would he alleges that he would do some sort of an act where he would chew on soap wort that would cause him to foam at the mouth so that he could fake some sort of a fit of madness, and then also that the act of producing glycin involved

quote a snake's head made of linen. It had a slightly human look to it and was painted to look completely lifelike. Its mouth opened and closed by means of horse hairs, and the tongue black and forked like a snake's would shoot out, also controlled by hairs.

historic individual. It is being criticized here. Yeah, I'm to understand the stronger criticism here is that he's a scoundrel, But I mean, he's also accused of being a quack, So the fakeness of what he is doing, the theatrical effects are also being criticized here, And it seems like one interpretation could be that those particular criticisms are perhaps maybe a little unfair compared to what is probably going

on with other mystery religions of the time. However, again, if Alexander It really is as deceptive and awful as he is accused of being here, then we definitely have to take that into account too, and maybe that's what pushes it over the.

But I wonder also could it be that a criticism like this could be aimed at such a puppet being in bad taste like ye, to the people of the time, you'd have a certain kind of sensibility about what is accept what are the acceptable special effects within a religious context, and what are the not acceptable special effects the same way that people would now, Like there are certain types of things that people think, oh, yeah, that fits right in at a church. Music, it fits in in most

churches in some form. That's a powerful special effect. But there are other things that if you did them in a church, people in our culture would probably say, like, that's really gaudy, that's that's not the appropriate tone.

So yeah, it's I'm unsure exactly where to parse all of the Glycin situation here. But again, the cult of Glycon did deal in theatrics and secrets, and what Lucian here is doing is definitely spilling some tea about the secrets.

to have an experience. And then Aristotle says, and thus by having the experience to become fit or deserving. I interpret that as deserving of a certain kind of relationship or intimacy with the gods. But this really goes against our normal idea of a secret, doesn't it. Like when we talk about secrets, a secret is almost always understood to mean information kept hidden from someone. So by becoming an initiate and going through the mystic rights, you gain

access to the secrets. What is hidden from others is revealed to you. But it's emphasized over and over by all these sources we've been talking about that the point is not to gain information. The initiate is not expected to learn any informational content. So why the secrecy? What is it doing? What's the point of it? And I guess when you ask why about something like secrecy, you could mean that question in different ways. So in one sense, you might be asking why did the people who first

decided these rights should be kept secret decide that? Like, what motivation did they have in their minds to establish a tradition of secrecy. It seems there's probably no way to answer that question with any content evil. All you could do is speculate, and then in a very different sense, you could ask why the secrecy, to mean, why were cults with secret initiation rights successful and appealing? In other words,

why do secrets work in a religious context? Why does a cult with secrets make people want to come join it? And so this got me thinking about the psychology of secrets, which we have covered to some extent on the show before. I think years ago, we did a at least one episode, maybe a couple of parts about the psychological effects of having secrets. There's definitely research about how, like having a shameful secret, or one you perceive as shameful, causes psychological distress.

This shouldn't come as any surprise. It tends to lead to feelings of isolation, to anxiety and so forth, especially if depending on the nature and nature of the secret, and like how it applies to say, relationships, and if you are forced to think about the secret a lot and stuff like that, and a lot of the psychological

studies on secrets have this kind of focus. Essentially, they're about the effects of thinking about concealed personal information which people believe would be harmful to them if discovered by others. The classic example is the fact that you did something morally bad or something embarrassing you hope no one ever finds out, So now it's your secret. But when you think about it that way, that's actually a very different kind of secret than we're talking about with the mystery cults.

If I am an initiate of a mystery cults, I am an apoptase of the Elusinian mystery. So I've gone through initiation the second time with open eyes. I've seen all the mystic rites of Demeter. I've witnessed something that is kept secret to outsiders, and I'm not allowed to talk about it or share it under pain of great penalty, possibly under pain of death. I will be in a state where I have to carry this secret with me

and I can't tell people. But there's no evidence that there is any any feeling of shame associated with this secret. It's not bad or damaging information, certainly not about me, probably not about anyone. And in fact, there's not really much evidence that these secrets were perceived as a burden

in any way. Also, the thing that is being kept secret is, as best I can tell, probably not a piece of discrete information that can easily be put into words, like you know, one thing like that would be the kinds of secrets that we trade in in regular, regular gossip. So those kind of secrets might be like a fact about something that somebody did you know, so and so cheated on their spouse, or so and so lied about something. Things like that, They're not really discrete things that you

can put into words. Instead, it seems like these secrets were probably a kind of baffling, overwhelming emotional experience of sites, sounds, strange words, strange objects and rituals that you took part in yourself. So it would almost be as if like the secret were not information encoded in words, but like the experience of going to a concert or a great play like we've been talking about.

and indeed there have been some experiments on this. One study I wanted to mention was by Michael Sleepian, Catherine Greenaway, Nicholas camp and Adam Galinsky called The bright Side of Secrecy The Energizing Effect of Positive Secrets in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology twenty twenty three. Now, the author's here is start off by saying, like, yes, we do often associate secrets with burdens and distress, but this is in the scientific context. This is mainly because secrets

have been studied in cases of adverse secrets. It's stuff we don't want people to find out about. What about when people have information that they are not sharing with other people, but it's information they feel good about.

That's what she that's her interpretation. But on the other hand, I also kind of understand what they're getting at, like the idea of having some sort of a secret that is not an negative secret but positive that you know you're keeping it secret so you're not just expressing it everywhere. But perhaps the light of that secret is shining through you.

not be surprising. But yes, positive secrets are more energizing than negative secrets the author's right. Importantly, these energizing effects of positive secrets were independent of positive affect We further found that positive secrets are energizing because, compared to other kinds of secrets, people keep them for more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated reasons. That is, these secrets are more freely chosen, more consistent with personal values, and more motivated by internal

desires than by external pressures. Using both measures and manipulations of these motivations, we found that a motivational mechanism helps explain the energizing effect of positive secrets. The present results offer new insights into secrecy, how people respond to positive life events, and the subjective experiences of vitality and energy.

And for a little more explication of this study, I found a summary written for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology by first author Michael Sleepian here and Sleepy and explains their finding by first of all, by saying a lot of times we don't keep positive news secret. They started with a survey of five hundred people that found when people learn good news, seventy six percent of respondents said that the first thing they would do is

go tell someone. And you can almost kind of feel that in those writings from the ancient world about the mystery cults, where people are like, you know, I can't tell you what the mysteries are, but I want it's like it's really good, it's really good stuff. Like you should go. You know, you talked to those multiple passages where they're just exhorting readers. Go for yourself, check it out.

kinds of good news? What would examples be? A very common one was a self gift. That's what the authors call it. It's when you have bought or otherwise treated yourself to something special. Apparently, this is a common type of secret people have and they feel good about it.

thinking about non secret good news. Thinking about positive secrets was also more energizing than thinking about positive information that has not been shared for other reasons, such as when you intend to share good news with someone cannot talk

to them until later in the day. So I thought that was a very interesting distinction to make there, at least within this sample, given these controls, there's something specially invigorating about having positive information that you specifically intend to keep secret that you have made the choice not to share with people, as opposed to just you haven't had a chance to tell them yet.

But I feel like it's closer than most of the research we look at on secrecy, which is about like something or you believe to be shameful that you're hiding. And I can see how this kind of I know, this bubbling up sense of energy that comes from thinking about the secret that is good news to you, but

you are choosing not to share with others. It seems to be, as the author say, a kind of expression of one's own intrinsic personality, like the fact that you know this thing and others don't becomes a part of your identity. It becomes a way of thinking about who you are. Part of who I am is that I know this thing and I don't express it to other people,

at least unless they're initiated as well. And then maybe that creates a whole second order thing of effects of the kind of bonding you might experience with other initiates, people you could talk to about the secret, and that that creates a whole other sense of bonding and you know their social benefits there as well.

or properly convey it to other people. So that's that's the sort of the negative version of what we're talking about here.

the god Dionysus appears only in disguise. In fact, he is often represented by a mask, and that perhaps what's going on is that when women went out into the wild mountain side to participate in ecstatic music and dance and fulfill the mystic rights of Dionysus, something about that profound experience meant that you would get to see the god unmasked. You would see the true face of Dionysus,

which is always kept in disguise with everyone else. And it struck me that this is another way of thinking about the type of secret that is revealed here, not as information divulged, but as either intimacy attained or true form revealed, and both connect to the idea of seeing someone uncovered, either like unmasked in the sense of true

form revealed, or disrobed in the sense of intimacy. And I think this is often one of the most emotionally powerful types of Hiddennis revealed, of these moments of revelation that we get in storytelling or in religious ritual or whatever you know in storytelling, if you're watching a play or a movie when a masked character is suddenly unmasked, and let's say, this is not like revealing them to be some other character that we already know about. Instead,

we're just seeing somebody's face for the first time. This might not really reveal much that can be encoded into words, except maybe in a loose way by describing the face, but it still feels like a profound type of revelation. It's one of the most potent revelations there is. But it's not really a clue or piece of information. It's an experience of knowing someone. And I wonder if the secrets of mystery cults actually felt a bit more like that.

It's not so much the secret password that you have learned, though there are a few things like that, but a masked face unmasked and is it is the face of a god with unspeakable power over your life.

The broader themes in the Food of the Odds concerned the possible roles that in theogens may have played in human evolution and the development of archaic human cultures with a falling off and gradual descent with the advent of

Western civilization. And mckinna's does specifically point to the end of the Mystery Cults as one possible watershed moment in all of this, one that helped reinforce quote the emergence of the anti visionary dominator style of culture and this beginning to usher in a quote progressively more vacant, more ego dominated world whose energies were coalescing into monotheism, patriarchy, and male domination.

I found this commentary interesting. You know. In fact, many of the mystery cults were centered on mother goddesses and or their consorts Sybil in the Roman Magna Mater clled isis Demeter and Corey, who have talked about, as well as the mother Goddess that we alluded to just several minutes ago. So I think a lot of what he's getting at does coalesce nicely with what we're discussing here.

To bring up another theorist, sort of outside thinker that we've talked about on the show before, I'm not going to go down the complete bicameral bicameral mind rabbit hole. But Julian James refers to this time period as one in which religions that adhere to more estatic or in his writings, possessive rights are falling to quote, a siege of rationalism as Christianity picks up steam and to be clear, changes during this time period to become an increasingly dominant religion,

certainly within the Roman Empire. M Yeah. Now, to be sure, James was discussing all of this in his nineteen seventy six book to support his theory, regarding a gradual change in human consciousness from one of inherently experienced other voices in the mind toward their increasing silence. You can go back and listen to our episodes where we discussed the bicameral mind hypothesis in greater detail whether there is any

truth to it. In the end, I do think James was in part exploring some of the same changes we're discussing here in the Manifestation of religious experiences.

religions and cults was notable. As long as they didn't conflict with Roman authority and didn't stir up trouble with other faiths, then you know, things were generally tolerated.

was one case where they limited certain cults. It might have been ones related to Dionysus that you know, where it was like, you can't have too many people gathering in secret. At the same time.

But after three thirteen CEE, Christian persecution comes to an end and in the Roman Empire and Christianity begins to receive active support from the Emperor Constantine the Great, and Boden writes that this resulted in more and more converts to Christianity, and baptism began to be seen as a preliminary ritual into this new popular faith, and notably Christian baptism began to also lose its imagistic features in Christian faith. So he gets to this, this is an interesting thing

to think about. So we're at this time where Christianity is gaining in popularity, mystery cults are falling away, but Christianity arguably is losing its mystery cult like attributes as it rises in popularity. So there's a lot of interesting transitions going on here.

arguments may have some weight to them, may not. But one argument about the success of Christianity and the Roman Empire that I find very persuasive is just sort of a mathematical argument that was made, at least in one case by a previous show guest, the historian bart Erman, who's been on our show before. I interviewed him a

few years ago. He's a secular scholar of Christianity and of the Bible and historian of this time period of early Christianity, and he makes the point that really the main thing Christianity had going for it in terms of its success in the Roman Empire is that it was an exclusive cult, whereas when you look at, say, look at the other mystery cults. You will have powerful Roman people who are bragging about how many different mystery cults

they've been initiated to. Oh yeah, I did the Alusini and I'm Demeter, I did this one, I did that one. Look at it. I'm racking them up. I'm becoming so accomplished. And Greek and Roman polytheism was generally of that sort. There was no need to be exclusive with one god or another. You could do some stuff for Apollo, you could do some stuff with Demeter, and and that was

all fine. That Christianity was kind of unique, and that when you converted to Christianity, you you didn't just add that on to the list of gods you had some relationship with. You cut off relations with all the other gods. So every time somebody converted to Christianity and stayed a christian that all of the other cults lost permanently lost and adherent and everybody that you know that flowed downstream

from their household and so forth. So it was the exclusivity of Christianity when paired to these other religions, according to Ermin's argument, which I find pretty convincing.

anti visionary religion as it rises. And one thing that that Boden points out is that you know that a lot of this comes down the scholarly debate often comes down to, you know, the agendas of whoever's making the argument. So Protestant voices might argue, might have argued that early Christianity was corrupted by mystery cult influences and therefore needed correcting.

static religious experience. Its watch, the history of Christianity is sprinkled with Christianistics and you know, no doubt many a squashed heresy that leans more into a static religious experience than is comfortable for the powers that be. And we can also point to various static religious practices from say, later Protestant movements. Snake handling is discussed in the book, but you can also apply this lens too much in the revival and faith healing tradition as well.

but it's also associated with just general ecstatic frenzy. You know, like a lot of these churches will have loud, powerful music to coming back to the music once again, you know, that gets you into a kind of trans and people described the way like they feel like they're leaving their body, or they feel like the Holy Spirit has entered them, they have become another person in these loud, raucous ceremonies where yes, dangerous, deadly things are happening, people are handling

venomous snakes, but it's also just it's it's a wild array of sights and sounds.

frenzy experienced by large groups. Boden does say that these are generally discouraged in the grand arc of Christian history, but they do exist, and you can also point to examples of it of it in other you know, surviving examples in other religions and contemporary faiths.

Like people, there's an idea that heresy emerges from that kind of behavior, and not to label it as heresy or say what doctrine is right or wrong, but I think often new beliefs and new doctrines do come out of that kind of religious behavior.

and we're just like sending people off to make their own sense of it, which, on one hand, you would imagine from from the point of view of somebody trying to control a religious tradition, that seems dangerous for exactly the reasons we've just been talking about. But that seems like probably what was going on there, So I don't know.

Maybe there are other ways in which it's it's empowering in the right ways, like it it creates the right kind of effect that sends more and more people your way every year, and that's a that's a fair trade maybe from some religious hierarchy's point of view.

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