Mystery Cults, Part 3

ancient Mediterranean. Mystery cults are religions that are differentiated from the mainstream public cults of the Greco Roman world because, instead of focusing on the regular transactional tending to the needs of the gods through ritual and sacrifice, mystery cults were centered around the performance of secret mystic rites, which were usually revealed only to the cult's initiates, and which were often described as intense sensory experiences involving direct contact

with the power of the gods. In Part one of this series, we talked mainly about the historical context of the mysteries and how they differed from the most common religious practices of Greek and Roman polytheism, and then in Part two we looked at a couple of specific examples.

We looked at Mythraism, a mystery cult that flourished in the Roman Empire, especially among members of the Roman army, from roughly the first through the fourth century CE, and then also we started talking about what was the most famous and probably the most revered mystery cult for hundreds of years among the Greeks and Romans, which was the festival of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Secret Rites, which took place in Eleusis, which was about twenty three kilometers west

of the center of ancient Athens. And we are back today to talk.

and I'll do a brief summary to refresh. In this story, Demeter's daughter Demeter is the goddess of course of grain and agriculture. Demeter's daughter Persephone, called Cory meaning maiden in inscriptions associated with Eleusis is kidnapped to the underworld by Hades, the god of the dead, and the grief stricken Demeter

searches for her around the world in vain. Along the way, she has interactions with the royal family of Eleusis, including a thwarted attempt to transform a baby prince named Demophoon into an immortal, after which Demeter demands that the people of that place build her a temple and perform special rites for her, which they are not allowed to depart from,

ask questions about, or broadcast to the uninitiated. Eventually, in the story the Daughter Corey or again that's the same character as Persephone and other tellings, Corey is permitted to leave the underworld, but because she has eaten of the fruit of Hades, she cannot leave forever and must spend part of every year back in the realm of the dead. And this myth is often tied to seasonal cycles of growth and harvest.

attract negative attention down there. And then in Keto just does it all wrong and he gets stuck. I don't know what the other rules for persephone would have been, apart from donate a pomegranate seed, but presumably there are other rules as well. But anyway, we also talked last time, not just about the myth itself, but about some things ancient writers said about the effect of taking part in

the rights of ilusis. Many writers are, of course, reluctant to share anything about the secret rituals themselves lest they profane them. You don't talk about the mysteries. That's part of what Demeter said, no talking about this, but they do mention that the effect on the person who takes

part is a profound one and a positive one. To illustrate that, I found the following passage from a dialogue of Cis called on the Laws, where a character in this dialogue is talking about the mysteries and says as follows, much that is excellent and divine does Athens seem to me to have produced and added to our life, But nothing better than those mysteries by which we are formed and molded from a rude and savage state of humanity.

And indeed, in the mysteries we perceive the real principles of life and learn not only to live happily, but to die with a fairer hope. So what does taking part in the mysteries do for us? It seems that it causes us to ascend from a rough, crude state of existence, maybe an animalistic state of existence, into a more refined type of being. Maybe it civilizes us in

some way. And this connects to something I've seen in a few other sources having to do with the grain and agriculture significance of the myth, that there's something about the mysteries which is tied to the gift of agriculture, of growing grain and the fruits of the harvest to humans from the gods, and thus it's sort of like perceived that that is the thing which separates us from the animals. But beyond that, the mysteries also show us what life is really about, or sort of the originating

principles of life. It makes us happier in this life, and it makes us hope for better things after death. And the last point has an interesting resonance. I don't know if we alluded to this when we were talking about the myth in full, but of course Persephone known as Corey in the inscriptions at ilusis she is the queen of the underworld, you know, so she's going to be down there at least part of the year in

the nether world. I wonder if that has something to do with the relationship between the mysteries and the fate of the dead.

to Greek Religion edited by Daniel Ogden. The chapter is called the Mysteries of Demeter and Corey, and it is by Kevin Clinton, who is a professor emeritus of Classics at Cornell. Both very good resources on the Elusinian mysteries, and I'll refer back to both authors several more times. Now, moving beyond what we've already talked about the myth and the effect on people, what do we actually know and what can we reasonably guess about the form the mysteries took?

What were these powerful rites? Well, there are some things, the sort of public elements of the festival, the associated festival, that we do know with a good bit of certainty, and we'll we'll move from what we know more about what we know less about. The Eleusinian mysteries were celebrated in stages that took place at different times of the year.

So scholars think there was a primary stage of celebration known as the Lesser Mysteries, which were held at a place called Agrai within the city of Athens around the end of the winter beginning of spring, so our February March season, and that was a different, separate thing, but people usually did this before the main thing, which was the Greater Mysteries, which took place between Athens and Eleusis

during the autumn around our months of September October. Clues from the literature of the time indicate that people generally participated in the lesser Mysteries before doing the Greater Mysteries, and the total festival of the Greater Mysteries lasted eight days and began with public events. So when we talk about the secret rights, it's not like the whole thing of the Eleusinian Mysteries were secret rights. It was just like one sort of climactic part of the festival. It

was made up of the secret rights. You had lots of public events that included sacrifices to various gods. There was a process of preparation and purification of the initiates, the people who wanted to be initiated into the cult, there was a solemn march from the center of Athens to Eleusis, and then finally you would get to the secret rights inside a closed hall of initiation called the Telesterion, which was the sort of big central building inside the

sanctuary of Demeter and Corey in Ilusis. It's hard to say exactly when these festivals began and when they ended in history, but we know a couple of things to

sort of set the maximal boundaries in time. While the archaeological record in the area directly around the sanctuary goes all the way back to the Bronze Age, it appears to have been abandoned for some time around twelve hundred BCE, and then the site was continuously occupied beginning sometime in the eighth century BCE for hundreds of years after that, and then we know that the rites probably continued no later than the end of the fourth century CE, when

Illusis was destroyed by the Goths, and after this there appears to have been no attempt to rebuild the sanctuary. By this time, the Roman Empire would have been largely Christian anyway, and you know that would have produced some severe friction for the cult of Iluses.

itself kind of highlights a curious fact. While the core rights themselves, the mysteries were secret and you couldn't share them with outsiders, people would come from all over to be initiated, so it seems that the secret rituals were in a way more kind of open, more kind of globally open to participation than many of the public the so called public cults of the Greco Roman world would be,

which many of which were quite locally focused. So for most of the time the mysteries existed, it seems that anyone from anywhere was allowed to come and be initiated as long as they met a couple of criteria. They had to speak Greek or be a Roman later on under the Roman Empire, and they had to have not committed murder, and if you met those criteria, you could you could be initiated, you could learn the you could learn the secrets, you could take part in the mysteries.

So a kind of period of sanctuary on travel around the area. We also know something about the rights involving specific sacred objects called heira or hyra. I'm sorry I did not look up which way to say that it's hi era. I'm going to say hira for now. These were carried in enclosed vessels tied with a red ribbon, and they were carried in a ceremonial procession by the priests of Eleusis, first two Athens at the beginning of the festival, and then back to Iluses for the end.

So what were these sacred hidden objects? That was one of the secrets you don't get to know. Inside the telesterion. The objects would probably be shown and interacted with in some way by the initiates, but writers sympathetic to the mysteries do not tell us what these sacred objects were. Bowden argues that the hira were probably not stacked choose of Demeter and Corey like you might get with other cults.

I mean, it would be very common for other public cults in the Greco Roman world to have a cult statue that you might even in some cases if it was small enough like take out and carry in a parade. That doesn't seem to be the case here. Instead, the priests were probably bearing some collection of small sacred objects which represented the goddesses in some way. One Christian writer from the ancient world writing against so called heresies, claims that the main secret object was an ear of grain.

So we don't know if this is correct or not, but that would not be weird for grain imagery to be used in these rituals, given the role of demeter. It seems plausible.

the lesser mysteries at Agri first. Agra is another place nearby, sort of within the city of Athens, and people seemingly did these other things before they went to the greater mysteries. But it is hard to say for sure. There's a lot we don't know about the lesser mysteries. They're kind

of passing references to them. This is one thing I brought up in the last episode, where like in a dialogue of Plato, Socrates just says to somebody by point of comparison that like they figured out something big before they figured out something small. They say, oh, you know, you've been initiated to the greater mysteries before the lesser mysteries. I didn't know you could do that.

fake specimens of imaginary creatures. And it seems like you could at least compare this a little bit to the idea of lesser and greater mysteries. You go through one, then you go through the other, And there are variations of this in other elements of entertainment. We kept talking about haunted attractions or haunted houses, and one of the big ones we have in the Atlanta area has almost

always two houses. There's the one larger house, and then there's a smaller secondary house, which is generally like a little harder in its horror, a lot more chainsaws and blood and stuff. So you know, you have one set of sensational experiences you might have, and then there's like another the next level you go to if you dare that's right.

and then Valentine's Day all on a weekend. Demetrius, by the way, he went all the way. He did another thing called the epoptica, which meant seeing the greater mysteries for a second time. And this is another thing referenced commonly in the ancient world. It seems that you were not fully initiated until you had taken part in the greater mysteries twice, and you had a different role. It seems the second time you were there. I'll talk more

about that in a minute. So at the beginning of the festival you get a big announcement in the Agora of Athens, than people wishing to be initiated would go down to the sea with a young pig, wash it in the water, and then they would sacrifice it. And this was in some cases done by like thousands of initiates at a time, so you can imagine the scene as pretty bananas. At some point, new initiates would be paired with a sort of guide figure called a mystic

goo goos, essentially like a sponsor. This would be somebody who already knew what was going on or was initiated, who would guide the newbie in the coming rights. On the following days, there would be more sacrifices in Athens to the Elusinian goddesses, and then beginning later in the history of the festival, also to a Scleep, the god

of healing and medicine. There was like a tradition here involving a sacred snake, and then after several days of preparation and sacrifices, you'd get the procession going back from Athens to eleusis to the cult center, and this would have one group made of priests transporting the concealed sacred objects the Hira underguard, and then there would be another group that was made up of the initiates to the cult.

And the walk between the cities was pretty long. It was like twenty two or twenty three kilometers, and at one special place near the end of the journey, Bowden mentions that the initiates endured a form of ritual mockery by onlookers called the gepherismas, which I don't know that stuck with me. I want to come back to that in a minute. It's interesting. So it's like it's just

understood as part of it. You're taking part. People are going to mock you, insult you, her whole things at you as you go by.

that animal sacrifices were made on the altar here. The central building was again the one I mentioned earlier, the Telesterion, the Hall of Mysteries, and this was the big square building that was clearly rebuilt and expanded a couple of times in its history. In its largest form, it could hold thousands of people at a time, maybe like three thousand people inside, and had a sort of tiered stadium standing room area so that people further in the back could see, so you can think of it as a

kind of big square theater. And then in side the Telesterion was a smaller building called the Nacteraron, which means palace. So the initiates got a day of rest after they arrived at the sanctuary complex, and during the stay it's not certain what they did, but they may have fasted and possibly also consumed a prepared liquid that we talked about in the last episode called Kukion spelled k y k e n. Now that came up in the last episode because it featured in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

That poem we talked about. The context was Demeter arrives at King Celius's home in disguise and she is offered wine by the Queen Medonaira, but she refuses it and instead she drinks coukion. And that's supposed to be a beverage or maybe a gruel made from grain, water and herbs. Last time I mentioned mint, but I've also seen penny royal indicated here. And there appear to be different versions of kukon described in ancient literature. Sometimes it's just this

grain gruel. Sometimes it was mixed with wine and perhaps cheese. Sometimes it is described as intoxicating in nature. Sometimes it is not described that way. Sometimes it appears to have been a mundane drink consumed by peasants, and other times,

mainly here, it seems to have deep ritual significance. And so kokion has attracted a lot of attention, even from people who are not primarily interested in ancient history, but from people who are interested in questions of speculative religious pharmacology.

and also ethnobotanist and mystic Terrence McKenna. Specifically, I had to bust out my copy of Terrence McKinnon's Food of

the Gods because McKennon gets into this. He points out that the Graves Robert Graves suggested the possibility of the psychedelic mushroom psilocybin being involved and kind of initially champion this idea, while Albert Hoffman and R. Gordon Lawson presented the theory of ergotized beer brewed from a strain of the ergot fungus, those being two of the main sort of theories regarding what this could have been if it

was a psychedelic substance. And there are some problems, especially with the ergotized beer examples we'll get into, and Balbin discusses some of this in the book as well. He points out that, Okay, this is an idea that's never been particularly well received by expert and historians, though it continues to generate a lot of interest in scholarship, and he outlines two primary objections, the first practical in the

second theoretical. So, first of all, the practical objection concerning specific theories that the mysteries in question depended on an ergot derived psychedelic which would have been similar to LSD. So as a reminder, ergot doesn't contain LSD, but contains lysergic acid as well as the precursor to LSD, Ergotyminge.

But the main problem here, the practical objection, is that psychedelic doses of ergot itself would result in just terrible illness and death rather than a temporary experience something that you would then you know that would be this defining moment of your life. Perhaps we did episodes on ergotism for stuff to boil your mind back in twenty fifteen, and yet generally it does not sound like an afternoon of Enlightenment.

Hoffman theory concerning Elusius. But then he also presents a couple of ideas that we're out there regarding, on one hand, a particular species or erga that might yield less toxicity and higher psychoactive results, as well as the notion presented by Wasson and Hoffman that if you were to properly macerate the argotized grain in water, you might have been

able to separate the water soluble psychoactive alkaloids. But again McKenna stressed that the burden of proof is on those who assert, and no one at that point and sense has sufficiently proven any of this.

balanced than some might expect. Overall, I think Food of the Gods is the scholarship is a lot better than some might think, because I don't want to overstress things, because I think with mckinna, you're dealing with someone who was a visionary, animistic and definitely has some key arguments for the about the trajectory of human civilization, what has gone wrong and what needs to be corrected, a number of opinions that I don't think are really all that

off track. But we also shouldn't like overstate what Food of the Gods is compared to other works of dedicated scholarship. And I mean he does stress that again, there are a number of mysteries in play here, including just you know, what are we talking about here? Was it even something tangible?

He references an example that was presented by Wilson and Hoffman in their thesis and all of this that there's this four fifteen BCE example in which an Athenian noble, a noble that we're going to come back to that is sometimes described as quote a flamboyant Athenian playboy. His name is Alcibiades, and he's recorded as having been fine for bringing the Eleusinian sacrament home for entertainment purposes with friends.

And the argument here is, well, this would seem to suggest that it was not only tangible, but perhaps something entertaining in and of itself. Now, the theoretical objection to psychedelic theories concerning the kokion is referenced by Bowden. The theoretical objection basically blows down to the fact that drugs are not strictly necessary for these rights as we understand them.

The ancient Greeks had plenty other tricks up their sleeves to create the experience, many based in performance and even mechanical theatrical effects, and so he stresses that even say, the nocturnal bachic revels of the Dionysus mystery cults might not have depended on wine. So if wine wasn't needed for the revels of bacchus, then do we really need psychedelic substances for these to work? That being that they

might have had wine. And it's also very possible that the rights were discussing here involve substances of one form or another, either as a whole or at different points

that they were laid out. But I think this is an excellent point about and raise this, and I think one way to think about it is to think about another like the modern version of like the spectacle that we indulge in with other people, that being going to a concert, like think of a big concert you went, or even a small concert, just a noteworthy concert you

went to. If you've been to a concert at all over the past, I don't know, several decades, no doubt you've encountered folks that have imbibed in say alcohol that is generally sold freely at most of these events, or perhaps individuals who've imbibed in some level of illicit drug use, be it you know, simple marijuana or some psychedelic or stimulant. And you know, the question that raises is okay, well, is the resulting mental state from taking any of these

substances going to enhance the experience of the show. Well, certainly a strong a case or a strong case can be made, like even if you're just talking about, Hey, I had a cup of coffee to help keep me awake until the headliner came on. Fair enough, But is any of this strictly necessary for a great time? And I realized that this sounds like a question posed in a dare program from high school for many people. But if we think about it logically, I think it works out.

You know, all the technical, theatrical, social aspects of a concert are in place. They're generally very potent. You've probably bought that ticket and gone out to the show because you already have some invested interest in the spectacle. And as such substances they might be helpful in one regard or another, they might enhance things, but the spectacle is already the spectacle, the lights, the music, the communal energy, and so forth.

Any of you have ever been to one of the modern speakeasies, not like a Prohibition era speakeasy, but if you if you did go to a Prohibition era speakeasy, you know, kudos to you for being up on podcasts and so forth. But you know, it's like there's generally this level of like, oh I had to go through a secret door to get into this bar. You know, it just makes everything all the more exciting.

You know that one may be in the mix still, but at the end of the day, all we can really do is speculate, and again it just adds an additional level of evidence that would be required, evidence that we do not have, but certainly more possible, fewer complications than saying maybe it was aliens by all means.

Once night had fallen, you would get to the big deal, the secret rites inside the closed hall of mysteries, the Telesterion so what was going on there? Well, here's where we know a lot less, because, as we've discussed, those who had not been initiated were not supposed to know, and those who had been initiated were not supposed to tell.

But we have some clues. So there are ancient references to the mysteries inside the Telesterion as quote things, things shown, and things said, which is sort of vague, but that still tells you a bit. It suggests there is a visual display things shown, a physically enacted element, things done, and a recited element things said aloud. The second to third century Christian Church father Clement of Alexandria claims that initiates to the Eleusinian mysteries had to recite a kind

of passphrase which translates too. I fasted, I drank the kookion, I took from the chest, and having worked with the sacred implements, I removed them into the basket and from the basket into the chest. Which that last part sounds like, oh, the kind of activity that would just thrill my toddler right now. Is that a common thing for kids at this age?

profanation of the mysteries. Bowden's book has a good little subsection on this, and you were alluding to it earlier with the idea of that guy Alcibiades, the fifth century BCE Athens based general who he got in trouble because the deal was he was like right about to head off for a naval campaign to Sicily, so they're getting ready to go to launch this expedition, and suddenly he is accused by enemies of having revealed the mysteries of Eleusis to non initiates, and in fact, the idea was

not just that he told secrets, but that he sort of privatized the mysteries by recreating them in his house with non initiated guests. I was trying to figure out, like what exactly was the spirit of this recreation of the mysteries, Like was he was he trying to get his own mysteries going, or was it in a spirit of mockery or irony. I'm not quite sure there.

I had some more thoughts about this. Specifically. I was reading about it in that book chapter by Kevin Clinton, where he cites a passage by Aristotle which makes reference to the mysteries, and I thought this was interesting. Aristotle says, in translation quote, the initiates are not supposed to learn anything, but rather to experience and to be disposed in a certain way, that is, becoming manifestly fit or deserving. So the cult has secrets which are only revealed to initiates.

But according to Aristotle at least, and I trust he probably knew what he was talking about, the initiates are not supposed to learn any thing. That's not the point. Coming back to something we talked about in an earlier part, that the point of the cult is not an information puzzle. It's not to learn the secret password. Instead, you are supposed to have an experience. And even more interestingly about what Aristotle says here, You're supposed to have an experience

and by virtue of that experience to become worthy. Now, according to Clinton, the Greek word Aristotle uses for experience here does mean what we mean by experience, but it also means to suffer. And Clinton argues that the secrecy of the mystery cults was not originally understood as the point of them. Rather, it came to be perceived as a defining aspect of them, sort of because of the drama it implied, especially to non initiates, and because of

the severe penalties for violation of those secrets. It seems this wasn't the case always is, because you can find counterexamples. But it looks like, at least in some cases, the punishment was supposed to be death. So, given the assumption that the mystery cult was not actually about secrecy, the secrecy was not the point, Clinton asks an interesting question quote, we may then legitimately ask what actually was the point of the secrecy? But first one must consider what is

so special about a secret? A secret is a fact or a representation of a human act that cannot be disclosed beyond a certain group. What could be so exciting about a fact or an act that could draw thousands of people from all over the Greek world each year to the mysteria? And of course we do get some attempts in the ancient world to kind of frame the secret of the Elusinian mysteries as something that would be concealed for a reason of it being i don't know,

scandalous or titillating. And some of these reports come from from early Christian writers, and that kind of makes sense, like they would be maybe hostile to other religious practices and not worried about profaning them. But it's also unclear how accurate these these claims are and whether we should

believe their descriptions. But one example is that Clinton mentions that some Christian authors claimed the big secret of the Elysian mysteries is you got to watch a priest and a priestess have sex.

not true. But Clinton kind of argues against it. He says this would not be sufficient to attract the kind of attention and like draw the kind of crowds from all around like are described like for one thing, it's not that unique, And to me it just sounds kind of like a like a slander that one religion says about another, And there were of slander's going the opposite way too, Slanders Greek and Roman polytheists accused Christians of being immoral, of engaging in cannibalism and incest and all

kinds of stuff.

when in fact it doesn't need to be. And you know that got me thinking, like, I don't mean to insult the mysteries by this or profound religious experiences in general, but I kind of can't help make the comparison to a common sort of influencer who exists today that I would characterize as like the influencer mystic, a person who ostensibly traffics in insights somebody who is out there and maybe they've got media channels or whatever, and they do

commentary and analysis or life advice. But their insights, at least as I judge, might not be especially interesting or seem especially valid if they were just presented in written

form or paraphrased into plain language. But this kind of influencer mystic can achieve a fan base because they're able to talk in a way that makes whatever they're saying feel like a great occult secret is being unearthed, and by listening to them, you are the first witness to an unveiling of truths, which is an intoxicating feeling if

somebody can pull it off. And so, of course I'm speaking with a little bit of derision about these modern examples, but you could also, at the same time use the theatrics of the unveiled secret to increase the salience of genuine, profound insights and experiences. So I'm not suggesting the Eleusinian mysteries were necessarily hollow at their core or anything like that. Again, there's just a lot we don't know about their core.

bullet list of the main things that are important. And so the idea that there would be levels to something or some sort of a secret reveal that it is not for everyone else to know it does kind of run counter to sort of the informational DNA that a lot of us have.

with movies and the idea of no spoilers. You know, not only don't spoil this for me, but I think more profoundly, when you have an experience where there's some sort of a film out there and either is particularly well crafted or it does involve a particularly innovative twist or effective twist, or an emotional twist, and people will stress, don't read the spoilers, go into this without you know, don't watch the trailer, go into it so that everything

is a surprise, you know. Outside of that, like, there's not much that we're we're we generally engage in where we're open to that sort of experience. I mean, I guess in some respects we are like like, you know, some one might say, have a child. You don't know how this is going to turn out, but you're in the long run, it's gonna be it's gonna be a surprise. There's gonna be some twists you're not expecting. It's true, but you know, the parenthood and movies, those are the

two examples that come to mind. But when it comes to religion, we're more of the mind, well, what are they believe in? Give me a list? Is there a Holy book? All right? I'm gonna skip to the end is maybe there's some cliff notes on it and so forth.

have clear meaning and function. You can kind of have a systematic explanation of what the purpose and meaning of the rituals are, versus what's known as the imagistic model of religious practice, where rituals tend to be rare, strange, high intensity, and more ambiguous in terms of meaning. Maybe nobody's even telling you what to make of the experience you had now, I guess the implication is that mysteries such as the mysteries of ill Usis would be much

more firmly in the imagistic mode of worship. That there's something profound, high intensity going on, and it may well be very ambiguous, very open to your own contemplation and interpretation. Maybe nobody tells you what it means or even what it's doing. But that does bring us back to the Secret Rights themselves. So what else can we guess about the content of the mysteries? And here I'm going to synthesize from multiple accounts, including Clinton's and Bowden's and a

few other things I've read. But it seems that, for one thing, the Secret Rights probably involved some reenactment of the myth of Demeter and Corey. Now it's questionable to what extent it followed the story completely, which parts of the story were represented, and what version of the story you got, but there are multiple clues pointing to the idea that some version of this story is being re enacted,

at least in part in these rituals. This could include wandering around in the darkness, like searching for the kidnapped daughter after her disappearance, possibly witnessing or hearing the grief stricken cries of Demeter. For at least part of the ritual, initiates may have been blindfolded or shrouded with a hood.

Ancient authors make reference to something about this where they would probably be guided by their mystagogue, you know, the more experienced guide would would show them the way to go while they were baffled, and you know, and they didn't know where to go, stumbling around in the dark, and all of this before the initiates were eventually made aware somehow of the reunion of mother and daughter of Demeter and Corey at the end of the myth, and

then finally brought into the hall, like coming out of the darkness into a hall brightly illuminated by torches for a celebration and revealing of things hidden. Now again, those last parts are they seem reasonable based on what we know, but we don't know for sure. That's the form it took. Torches seem to play a role. There are a lot There are a lot of mentions of darkness and blindfoldedness and agony and struggles in the darkness and then coming into the light.

southern church affiliated haunted house. And at the end, as you wandered or perhaps rushed out of the darkness, pursued by chainsaws and the like, where do you enter into you enter into a tent where a preacher is then going to speak to you and sell you on eternal salvation and of course the alternatives that you just witnessed in the Haunted House.

you belong to us. Now you've been convinced by witnessing these horrors, you need to go to our church. That does not necessarily seem to be the goal here. I don't detect based on what I've read that the purpose of the mysteries is a persuasive one that you need to like join the cult of ill usis though. I mean, I guess the people who are who go through as mistas the first time, and this is a distinction the

first time you are initiated to the mysteries. You were known as mistys or mistace, a term which seems to derive from the concept of having one's eyes closed, and then you would usually come back a second time and then you would be known as epop dase, which means

look or viewer. So there is a kind of return and the difference between those terms is interesting too, by the way, because the difference between like mistace meaning eyes closed and a pop dase meaning looking or viewing, that could of course be little role like maybe the first time you do it you are blindfolded or hooded, and the second time you can look, or maybe there are particular elements that two time initiates are particular permitted to

look upon the first time initiates or not. But this difference could also just refer to a kind of metaphorical perspective on what is happening, the same way that we say to have previous experience with something is to go into it with open eyes.

free to skip a bit if you wish. But this also reminds me of the way that some parents approach Santa Claus and Christmas traditions, the idea being that instead of just not doing them, or trying to keep the myth and the or the fiction of Santa Claus going like well beyond it's a healthy phase, instead you kind of break it down like this, where it is kind of treated like a mystery when the child is young, and then when the child reaches a certain age, it's like,

now you were part of the mystery, and now you can help create this mystery for perhaps younger siblings, other young people you know in the family or in the community, and so forth. And perhaps this is like a less doctrinal example compared to the Haunted House thing, because I guess there's not really a doctrine regarding Santa that is being pursued in the long run, though it is of

course more certainly like narrative and so forth. And I guess perhaps the Santa Claus example is better than the Haunted House example because Santa Claus, there's not really a doctrine there that we're trying to drive home into children aside from be good or else, I guess.

else different right. Another interesting passage that is often cited in historical writing about the mystery religions is from Plutarch. Or Plutarch characterizes the mysteries generally by way of metaphor. What he's actually talking about is what happens to the soul at the end of life. But he's sort of saying, you know, what happens to the soul at the end of life is much like what you all know happens

after you're initiated into the mysteries. And to be clear, he doesn't say specifically he's talking about the Eleusinian mysteries, but he probably is. These were the most famous. So what Plutarch says is quote wandering astray in the beginning, tiresome walkings in circles, some frightening paths in darkness that lead nowhere. Then, and immediately before the end, all the terrible things, panic and shivering and sweat and bewilderment. And

then some wonderful light comes to meet you. Purer regions and meadows are there to greet you with sounds and dances and solemn sacred words and holy views. And they're the initiate, perfect by now set free and loose from all bondage, walks about, crowned with a wreath, celebrating the festival together with the other sacred and pure people. And he looks down on the uninitiated, unpurified crowd in this world in mud and fog beneath his feet.

set loose in some way, perfected in some way. But I also like that the first half of this passage, where it seems to be more describing, just in general and emotional terms, what the experience of going through the mysteries is like. And it's one that begins with confusion, bafflement, exhaustion and suffering and ends with hope and cathartic relief.

And so I guess this brings us to the question of what did the mysteries mean to the people who practiced them Abouten explores this at length in his book Discussing. As we've already alluded to the possibility that the meaning of the mysteries was not made explicit. Instead, like the standard model of the imagistic mode of religion, it's sort of left ambiguous. It invites participants to reflect later and

contemplate to figure out for themself what it means. And that's very interesting to me too, because I mean, a huge part actually of what religion is, at least in

my experience, is exegesis on what things mean. It's like, you know, religions have, or many religions have, you know, they have contents, they may have texts and stories, they may have physical objects or places, they have rituals, and there's just so much effort devoted to clarifying what everything means, and that that's what a lot of people want out of religion today. You know, they want to understand how, what, why we do it? What how to make sense of it?

But this version of religion may have been a kind of different one where it's like, instead, you witness something and you go through something that is strange and overwhelming and powerful, and then you're kind of just sent home to make your own sense of it.

his own hypothetical reconstruction of the rituals. So the following passage does include some assumptions based on guesses, but reasonable guesses, so Clinton writes, quote, the mysteria revealed simple things like the return of a lost daughter to her mother, a goddess in suffering parentheses, an extraordinary state for a Greek god or goddess, joy that accompanies the appearance of grain, the grain that is plutos, meaning wealth, the agrarian prosperity

that sustains family and clan, all simple things that at

the same time had profound signs magnificance. The impact lay in part in the dramatic presentation, which was an essential aspect of the experience, And that kind of takes me to another place, which is it makes me think I've been thinking about this primarily from the point of view of the new initiate, the mistas or the apoptes, you know, who's for the first or second time going through the greater mysteries and experiencing it and seeing what it means.

But this kind of makes me think about it from the point of view of the priesthood. Say you are a hierofant or you're one of the people whose job it is to put on the show of the Eleusinian mysteries,

it seems actually there's quite a burden. There's quite a burden to put on a good show because people are sort of relying on the fact that you put on a good show in order to find meaning in their life, to escape their fear of death, to feel like their life will have blessings yet to come, and they fit in a divine order, which is fascinating. And I guess something that people I don't know religious performers and in other situations probably do feel a similar kind of obligation.

But it again made all the more alluring in this case because of the power of the secrecy, because there I think, we still don't know. There's some things we don't know. We don't know exactly what they were doing, and it's like it's agonizing. You want to know, but we can't.

a lot of holes. All right, Well, on that note, we're going to go ahead and close out this episode, but we have decided we will come back with at least a fourth episode on the Mystery Cults, and it may not be the next episode of Stuff to Blow your mind, It may occur after that. So in the not too distant future, you will under a fourth episode

and we'll continue this fascinating discussion. There are so many different mystery cults and we're not going to be able to discuss all of them, and we're of course not going to get into everything that Balden discusses in his book. Again, we do highly recommend you check that out if you are interested in the topic. The title of that book again, his Mystery Cults in the Ancient World by Hugh Bowden.

In the meantime, we'd like to remind everyone that's Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have a short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.