Mystery Cults, Part 2

experiences of secretive mystic rights revealed only to the cult's initiates. Now, in part one of the series, we talked mainly about the historical context of these rights and some about how they overlapped with and differed from the most common religious practices of Greek and Roman polytheism. We also talked about a book that is going to be one of our major background sources in these episodes. That is a book called Mystery Cults in the Ancient World by Hugh Bowden,

who is an ancient historian at King's College, London. This book was published by Thamson Hudson. The edition both Rob and I were reading is the one from twenty twenty three. There was an older edition before that, and today we wanted to come back and get a little bit deeper into the mysteries by going beyond the general and looking at a couple of specific examples.

at least to some degree. But also these guys were just really good at keeping their mysteries intact in some cases, and what went on behind closed doors remained behind closed doors, and we just have to speculate regarding that details of what say, initiation rights consisted of and what they meant, both in terms of like personal meaning to the initiate, but also within like the sort of the larger like worldview of the particular cult.

had very elements that we could absolutely call mysterious. There were secret rights, there were secret sacred objects that were hidden from view, and all you know, you could only

see what they were if you were initiated. But the main goal of these religions was, especially as argued by Bowden in this book, we've been talking about, not primarily to solve an information puzzle and like learn the secret, but instead it was to have a profound experience to take part in these mystic rights, these secret rights that would cause some kind of experience or encounter directly with the power of the gods.

our episodes on Whistling. As I mentioned then, fans of the Ridley Scott produced sci fi series Raised by Wolves, which ran twenty twenty through twenty twenty two, we'll also remember the name as in the fictional future of this series, it is the predominant religion that is practiced by one

of the key factions in that show. So sort of like an alternate future where instead of perhaps Christianity taking off as this influential human religion, what if Mithraism is the religion that took off and ended up defining a civilization.

treatment of cults. Now, this was this was widely practiced during this time period again, first through fourth century CE, and it was wildly popular, especially in the Roman army. H And wherever the Roman army went, so too traveled the mystery cult of Mithra, with its temples popping up just throughout the Roman Empire of the time, as far

north as the British Isles. And we have a surviving archaeological evidence all these special temples, which we'll get back to in a bit, and we can piece together some of what went on. Now. One of the interesting things here that we're going to dig into here is, of course, the idea that we have a religion, a cult an organization here, and its ideas are based on pre existing

religious ideas. And for a while, the way historians interpreted it was to go back to some of the myths that informed Roman mythraism and use that to try and piece together what Roman mythraism was all about. So I want you to keep that in mind as I read

a quote here from an older source. This is from will Durant Caesar and Christ from nineteen forty four, in which he writes that during the period of roughly thirty CE through ninety six CE, one sees a great influx of foreign faiths and to Rome and Roman life, and these faiths, he writes, enter into Rome via returning soldiers, war captives, and also merchants. A lot of people are coming in and out of Rome. People brought their traditional

gods with them, and he writes that quote. The Roman government treated these alien faiths for the most part with toleration. Since it would not permit foreigners to its own worship, it preferred that they should practice their imported rights rather than have no religion at all. In return, it required that each new faith should exercise a similar tolerance towards other creeds, and should include in its ritual sum obsessence to the Emperor's genius and the goddess Roma as an

expression of loyalty to the state. So we touched on this before that. Generally the Romans were like, fine, you practice whatever faith you already had or have or have brought with you. Just make sure that it's you know, checking off the right boxes and you know, not messing up anything we have going on at the top.

of the book by Durant, he does mention Mithra. In Mithraism, he writes, from hostile Parthia came the cult of another sudden god, Mithras. Its devotees were enlisted as soldiers in the great cosmic war of light against darkness, of good against evil. It was a virile faith that won men rather than women, and pleased the Roman legions stationed on distant frontiers where they could hardly hear the voices of their native gods. So already that's a lot to unpack.

We have this again, this the nineteen forty four text. But the interpretation that Durant here seems to be making is that of a foreign mystery cult taken up almost exclusively by male Roman soldiers, and worshiped in every far flung corner of the Roman controlled territory. Perhaps some deity and faith that cast the role of the enlisted not as mere protectors of Rome, but perhaps his warriors and some sort of epic struggle against the darkness. All right,

So that was nineteen forty four's interpretation. But where are we at now, So into Hugh Bowden's mystery Cults in the Ancient World, which we've been looking at here, the author does have a lot to say about Mithraism, but as is often the case with some of these mystery cults, there's a lot we don't know and we'll never know

concerning the details of the faith. And it seems like the trend he says, for a while was to try and use information regarding ancient worship of Mithra in ancient Iran in the interpretations of this Indo Iranian faith as a way to try and figure out what Roman Mythraism was about. Because, to be clear, there was worship of a deity known as Mithra in ancient Iran and accounts

date back to at least fourteen hundred bcee. And then eventually Mithra becomes the central figure of these Roman mystery cults of Mithraism, the details of which again are not all that forthcoming, but we do have some literary references, we have archaeological evidence, some of it fairly recent, you know, and we also have some artistic imagery that has survived, and from this a fair number of conclusions can be drawn.

But the current predominant interpretation, according to Bowden, is that the cult of Mithra in the Roman Empire was something mostly new. It was for the most part for Romans and by Romans, despite these Persian motifs that were applied to it. So in previous decades, again, it was common for historians to try and piece together the details of Mithraism, based in part on aspects of the ancient Indo Iranian religion centered around Mithra, but current trends tend to dismiss this.

So in Bowden's chapter on Mithraism, he doesn't mention anything about soldiers of light against darkness. I'm to assume that perhaps that's something that previously historians drug in from the more ancient model of Mithra's worship.

about Greek myths. We're trying to find, like, what's the earliest written version of this so that we can know what the real version of the myth is, you know, but that's not actually the real version of the myth. And finding maybe the earliest version that was written down that we still have access to and does not tell you how people hundreds of years later, in a different time in place understood the story or what it meant.

It just you know that, I mean, it is worth knowing that tells you one thing, but it doesn't necessarily tell you that thing. And so searching out what myth, what a god or a religious figure mint in one time and place, even though it came earlier, that doesn't necessarily tell you what it meant to people in a different time in a different place. And I think this

is still true today. I think actually, say, if you just went to the New Testament and read the Gospels and then tried to read from those and predict what form Christianity would take as practiced, say in the United States in the twenty first century, you'd be so far off. You have no idea what to predict from that.

be made there, But Dracula. Dracula movies are all built around the central figure of Dracula, but the textual Dracula in brim Stoker's original novel might not prove all that useful and understanding. Some depictions of Dracula in other media, including Bella Lugosi's Dracula, which we discussed in Weird Hoalse Cinema recently, or say Marvel Comics Dracula, The Dracula and

Dracula three thousand, or whatever Dracula update you're looking at. Sometimes, you know, a Dracula movie may just take Dracula out of it and they're just ignoring everything else thematically, plot wise, time period and so forth. Like the Dracula in Monster Squad is only loosely related to the original novel.

of Dracula three thousand. We didn't have the movie, and we were trying to figure out what was still in there. Going back to the novel Dracula would not tell us.

though it's based on the book. And in the case of Roman mythraism, I'm not it's my understanding that we're not really dealing with any kind of like central texts that would have been the authority. The main authority would have been perhaps some collection of myths, but also a

modern understanding of astrology. And so it really sounds like it takes mithra It takes this Indo Iranian deity and then creates a new form out of it, you know, almost kind of like propping up some astrological ideas with the appeal of this foreign deity and again creating something new that is by Romans for Romans, likely with its origin according to Bowden, in Italy, if not in Rome itself, rather than the frontiers. It was then carried out to the frontiers by Roman soldiers.

These were called mithraeum. They were long, windowless rectangles with chairs or seating down the long walls of the chamber and so again no windows, so you just had to depend on torches and or candles, and these would have illuminated a strongly astrological decor so based on archaeological evidence, the exclusively male devotees of Mithraism would often join together, apparently in feasts that included a lot of meat, some wine. And I have to note that I'm already getting like

a very strong Elks club vibe here. You know, it sounds just like a men's club where they're all getting together to drink and eat meat and maybe observe some rights.

the universe. And Balden argues that in the absence of any key surviving text and only a few myths of Mithra and his adventures slash live slash mythic existence, modern understanding of astrology again like this would have been first through third century understanding of the stars and then the astrological model of how these stars and planets are impacting our lives. This would have likely served as the unifying factor of the religion across you know, its various far

flung forms. You'd see some changes in the way things were depicted, but in the absence of any kind of like top down doctrine, this is what you had, And so a mithraem Again the temple where the Mithra worshipers

held their ceremonies and their feasts. It likely the building itself likely served as a model, perhaps for further indoctrinization into the astrological secrets of Mithraism, but also as a model of the universe and the initiates place in it, which I think that alone is kind of interesting to think of in terms of soldiers in the Roman army, you know, perhaps very close, if not on the frontiers of this, you know, this vast region, and perhaps feeling

far from home and having some you know, maybe more specific thoughts and questions about where I am in time and space, but perhaps those are echoing you greater questions, and maybe that's where Mithraism comes into their lives with meaning. Now again, we have a lot of evidence, archaeological evidence about what may have gone on at some of the feasts that they had. There's at least one side and what is now Belgium from the third century that suggests

ritual destruction of wine vessels as well as feasting. I think they said that perhaps feasting exclusively on male animals, but also some eels. That Bouten points out they might not have been able to sex the eels. Maybe they meant it meat eat only male eels as well, but at any rate, they ate a lot of meat, they

drank and or ritually destroyed wine vessels. And then he also says that there's evidence at this one side and no other side of a wine vessel with a snake motif that, when heated, would have resulted in steam escaping from the serpent's mouth. Oh cool, Yeah, pretty cool. But we don't know what that may or may not mean. Maybe it was just cool.

where you would have a more intimate gathering. And if there were, and you might have like more than one mithraeum in a given area so that you could keep the number small, so that that might also stack up with some of how we're interpreting what the these spaces and these meetings could have meant to these individuals. You know, it would have perhaps been a smaller, comfortable meeting and not necessarily like a grand feast, all right, so about see.

But obviously it can't all be cozy feasts, right because as we've been discussing, mystery cults also involved at times harrowing rights of initiation, sites and sounds that were unique in life that gave you some insight into the inner workings of the universe or the afterlife or what have you. And as Bowden points out, there were apparently some rights involved here. So there were like seven grades of mythraism, and it's likely that each initiate that each grade of

mythraism involved a different ritual. But we do know a little bit about the rituals that were involved, most notably one that involves a sword and crown. For instance, Christian writer Tertullian, who lived roughly one through two twenty ce mentions a mithra in right by which the initiatet is

taken into a dark space. Obviously, the mithram and offered a crown at sword point, and then he is expected to strike the crown from their own head onto their own shoulders and proclaim that no Mithra is my crown.

I do not need any other crown but Mithra. And based on surviving frescoes and some evidence from some pottery, we also have some vague ideas that the initiate would have been brought into this ritual space bound and naked, or at least blindfolded and naked, and then made kneel for the placement of the crown, and then eventually made to lay upon the ground or the floor of the mithram, perhaps held down even And the general interpretation is indeed

that this, at least this grades initial would have been rather terrifying. You know, you're at sword point, You're naked, brought in blindfolded again, into a space that is either a cave or partially a cave, or at least designed to be as lightless as a cave and lit only by torches, with also these added astrological signs around you.

initiation processes. And we'll talk about that more as we go on and discuss some of these other mystery religions. But it seems like not an accident to me, Like there's a kind of psychological triggering mechanism involved where when you've been through some kind of pain and suffering, it for some reason triggers you to commit more deeply.

of an egg. I think a little unsure in some of these depictions, like if Mithra is supposed to be emerging from an egg or maybe it's the sun. And then Mithra rises to chase the lunar bull with a sword and eventually slay it, and that's where we get to that symbol.

a snake are drinking blood from the sword wound. Okay, all while a sun watches on a moon watches on. There are also two figures that are present that each have a torch, and they're sometimes part of this is two One is holding the torch high, one holding the torch low. Everything is very astrologically charged here, with these

different symbols having zodiac references entailed. The central idea here, though, which may not have been revealed or apparent to all adherents to Mithraism, is that it has to do with the position of the sun and the constellation Taurus during the hottest months of the year late July till late August.

So Baldn contends that some elements of this faith may have originally originated in Eastern Anatolia, but the cult of Mithraism is again likely originated itself largely in Italy and likely within Rome, and was then taken out to the

far flung frontiers by Roman soldiers. So and it's also telling that apparently, despite its foreign elements and inspirations quite clear inspirations, it was likely considered a very Roman thing to do, and ultimately it backs up and acknowledges Roman ideals, and so it likely attracted initiates who wanted to be more Roman, including foreigners in Rome, which is interesting to

think of. It may have offered some degree of social upward mobility, but it also doesn't seem to have offered any notion of privileged status in the afterlife, but instead likely leaned heavily on an astrology fueled understanding of where one stood in the world and maybe in the universe

in the larger sense. I mean, but this is just me spitballing here, but it does like all these elements they do they do sound like the things that might be created by people who are having a certain crisis about like who they are and where they belong in the world. That might you know, fit in in an empire that is expanding at the same time absorbing different elements, you know. And then this this structure of this cult is built out to sort of give you some level

of assurance and say, no, no, no, don't worry. We know a lot about the movements of the stars and the planets, and no matter how you know crazy, everything else is getting out there, like this can tell you exactly where you are and who you are in the grand scheme of things.

to factor all these different ideas into it. But it does sound like the initiation rituals could be very terrifying, at least based on the way that I am interpreting it, And it seems like Bowden and others have interpreted maybe it was played just for giggles, but I doubt it based on so based on the comparisons we have in other mystery cults.

probably the most famous mystery cult of the Greek world. Now, we know about the Eleusinian Mysteries from a number of sources of information, primarily from what ancient authors wrote about them, including from literature that that attempts to describe things about them directly, but then also from literature that makes oblique or incidental reference to them. And it turns out there's

a lot of the latter. I mean, there will just there will just be little dialogues of Plato where you know, Socrates says something that implies a certain understanding of what the Elusinian mysteries meant, but is not meaning to talk about them directly, not like here, let's have a discourse about them.

look at this marble relief. It shows the goddess's Demeter and Persephone standing on either side of a nude young man, and they are just towering over the guy. They're much bigger than he is. The youth is thought to probably be a figure named Triptolemus, who is a figure in mythology sent by Demeter to teach agriculture to the people, sort of a kind of an intermediary Prometheus of grain

in a way. And one interesting thing about this marble relief you're looking at, rob is that the Demeter and Persephone here are they're like holding their hands out as if they're each holding something out to this naked man, and their marble fingers probably originally held some kind of object, but that object or those objects are gone.

of the story of Demeter and Persephone. Now, as with most of the big Greek myths, there are multiple versions of this story in circulation, with lots of differences in the narrative. So I am specifically going to be talking about the version of the story found in the Greek hymn or poem known as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which was written in dactylic Hexameter, probably sometime between six fifty and five fifty BCE, and this is the take on the story that seems to directly implicate the city

of Eleusis. So in this myth, Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture in the harvest, has a daughter with the god Zeus, and in a lot of versions of the story the daughter is named Persephone, but in the version of the story told at Eleusis, the daughter is referred to only as Corey, Corey or Corey Kri, meaning maiden. So core and Persephone are basically the same character, but I'm going to use core in my telling here because

of the Eleusinian connection. So the trouble begins in the story when Zeus, without the consent of Demeter, allows his brother Hades, the god of the underworld and the king of the Dead, to kidnap Demeter's daughter, Corey while she is out gathering flowers upon a plane, and Hades takes her away to his subterranean kingdom of the Dead. When Demeter finds out that her daughter is missing, she spends nine days scouring the earth, scouring the face of the

earth in grief, searching for her daughter by torchlight. It's mentioned that she carries a torch and eventually a couple of other gods, Hecate and Helios, tell Demeter what happened, and so here we get to the part involving the

city of Eleusis. Demeter, disgusted with Zeus and with the gods for allowing this to happen to her daughter, she leaves Mount Olympus disguises herself as a human and then walks all over the world, and eventually she ends up in the city of Eleusis, where she meets the family of a king named King Celius, and she is hired

to work for the king's family as a nurse. Now, in Bowden's retelling of this myth, there are a number of great details here that are very cryptic to the modern reader and sort of fascinating.

it pronounced as kukion, so I'm gonna say kukon. It is made of water grain and herbs. Bowden specifies that the grain is barley, and the herb is mint. So think of a kind of beverage or gruel made with with barley, water and mint.

there's a reason for this. This is a process she's doing to make the boy eventually immortal, so she's sort of transforming this baby into a god. However, it doesn't work because one night, Demeter in disguise gets caught. She gets caught in the middle of doing this by medanaira Demophoan's mother, who screams in terror, which you can understand why that would happen, but Demeter, Demeter is not happy about this, She explains what she was doing, and she says,

you know now that the spell is broken. Now that you've caught me, Demophoon cannot become immortal. And Demeter is very angry by this reversal, and she says, Okay, what you've got to do now to appease me is build me a temple. Build a temple to me in elyusis, and I will teach you sacred rights that you need to do in my honor in order to keep me from getting really mad. Next, and I mentioned this in the last episode, Demeter says, all grain on Earth is

going to stop growing right now. This is bad for humans obviously because we need that to eat, but it's also bad for the gods because they need to receive grain as sacrifices from humans. So it seems like this finally gets Zeus to do something about the problem that he created. He's like, Demeter, what can I do to make you happy? And Demeter says, give me my daughter back,

and so Zeus agrees. He sends the messenger god Hermes to Hades to the underworld to tell him that Corey the Maiden must be allowed to return to the world above. But Hades has a trick up his sleeve. Before Corey leaves, he gives her pomegranate seed, a pomegranate seed from the underworld, and she eats it, and now having eaten the food of the underworld, she is ensnared. She cannot permanently leave, and while she's free to spend two thirds of the year up above, she has to return to the land

of the dead for one third of each year. And this myth is often linked to seasonal cycles of growth in agriculture, though not necessarily with the seasons you're thinking of. I think the natural way that most people would interpret it is okay, so the you know, the daughter of the grain goddess, she can come up to the upper world during the you know, the spring, in the summer the warm months, and then in the winter when the when the plants die after the harvest, she disappears.

however it actually lines up with the seasonal timeline. It's clear to understand why this myth has agricultural significance.

Blessed is he of men on earth who has beheld them, whereas he that is uninitiated in the rights, or he that has no part in them, never enjoys a similar lot down in the musty dark when he is dead.

to be better for you. Now to explore that a little more, this last part about the effect of initiation to the mystic rights on a person's lot in the afterlife. That is a major part of how mystery cults have been understood by later scholars. Was, I think once widely held that the mystery cults of the reco Roman world were mainly about improving a person's lot in the afterlife.

But Bowden argues that, at least in some cases, the evidence is this was not a major focus of the rights, and that any belief that you would have a better afterlife by having been initiated was more of a side effect of having achieved a special closeness or direct encounter with the gods through the mysteries. It was not the primary goal or function of the mysteries, so we don't have evidence that the goal was like to go to

heaven by doing these rituals. It was just kind of like there were blessings and good things about having this mystic encounter, about going through the rights, and one of the things that came with it in some cases was that it's said that something is better for you after you die.

Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Elliott. Just of course, these are the poems that the musical is based upon. And you might then ask, oh, if I read this, will I have better seats? No, you will not have better seats. Based on reading this, but perhaps you'll understand the musical more or you'll have some deeper connection with the musical, and that will enhance the experience

of it. Something to that effect, as opposed to like, will this secret knowledge actually get me closer to the front or give me more.

kind of be part of a collaborative theatrical experience. But yeah, I think that's a good way of thinking about it, because I want to read another thing that an ancient source that abouten mentions in the book. So you know, many ancient authors, as we talked about last time, are unable or unwilling to profane the cult of the Lusinian

Mysteries by sharing the secrets of its hidden rights. So we don't get you know, many ancient sources where people are like trying to tell us what happened inside the inside the secret chamber, but multiple writers attest to the power of the mysteries and the positive effect they had

on those initiated. One of those passages cited in Bowden is from the Greek anthology by Crnagoras published that was written in the first century BCE, and what Krnagoras says is quote, even if yours has always been a sedentary life, and you have never sailed the sea nor walked the roads of the land, you should nevertheless go to Attica so that you may witness those nights of the festival of Great Demeter. For then your heart may be free of care while you live, and lighter when you go

to the land of the dead. Oh wow, yeah, So whatever happens, it is said by many to be a powerful experience that is perceived as life altering in a good way. For a modern comparison, when you read some of these ancient passages where people talk like this, it's kind of like how some psychedelic evangelists talk about taking LSD for the first time you realize your cares and anxiety are meaningless, you lose your fear of death. Maybe

things like that. It's also kind of the way sometimes people talk about contemplative practices or experiences that they believe are spiritually important, like meditation, though the way the mysteries are described it is a much less regular and more high intensity experience than meditation usually is, I guess, but similar kind of descriptions of like a way of opening

the mind, of changing your relationship to life. Your heart is lighter, and you can be lighter when you go to the land of the dead.

content in them. Generally they were depicting like real life ours and not so much like here now you are witnessing angels, maybe you're witnessing demons, but you know you're not going to see you glory from the other side.

in the door. It's trying to get you into the actually the doctrinal religion, the regular, more low intensity experience of going to this church, whereas with the mysteries, it seems like the point of the mysteries was the experience of the mysteries is like that was what it was about. At least in the case of the Elusinian Mysteries. It wasn't like a persuasive event to try to get you into to show up every week. Instead, it was like, this is why you're here, this is what it's all about.