Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert.
Lamba, and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with the fourth and final part in our discussion of the mystery cults of the ancient Greco Roman world. We had a break in the series on Tuesday of this week to air a conversation that we had about Amphibians with Mark Mandica of the Amphibian Foundation in Atlanta, and now we're back to finish our business with the mysteries.
Yeah. By the way, we also aired the interview because I was out of town to attend the iHeart Podcast Awards in Austin at south By Southwest. We were nominated for Best Science Podcast, which was awarded to Ali Ward's Ologies. Well deserved and I got to chat with her briefly, which was nice. But seeing is how our nomination might have some new eyes on Stuff to Book Your Mind. You might be wondering, well, why is a science podcast
talking about mystery cults and religion. Well, we talk about a lot of things here on Stuff to Believe 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.
Yeah, when this many syllables are allowed, I call us an interdisciplinary science podcast. We try to bring most things back to science in one way or another, but we like to connect to lots of other topic domains.
Yeah, but you know, if you ask me in an elevator what I do for a living, and I say podcast host, and you ask what kind of podcasts, I may just go ahead and just say science podcast and that is still accurate.
Now, I guess we should do a brief refresher on the first three parts of this series, which in the previous weeks. The subject once again is the mystery cults of the ancient Mediterranean, which are defined primarily by their emphasis on secret mystic rites of initiation. So whereas you'd have the public cults of the Greco Roman world, they would be mostly built around a transactional system of sacrifice and rituals performed by people in the expectation that the
gods would give them blessings in return. I do sacrifices and rituals for you. You give me blessings for the 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 history, but also fascinating to people even at the time, to outsiders at the time, because these rites 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 ill Uses, 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.
I also made the same mistake, though I think I accidentally called him the correct name once, so I'll give myself backwards congratulation for that one mess up.
If you want to go deep on the mystery cults, I do recommend reading this book because there's so much more interesting stuff the Boden discusses that we didn't even have time to get into in any way here just to touch on briefly some of the other things that come up, but there are chapters on other specific mystery cults in the ancient world, such as the cult of Isis, the cult of Dayanai, the cults of nameless gods and gods without myths, the cults of a figure known as
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 Usus, 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 preyed on the gullible.
Yeah. I found this really interesting as well, in part because about the same time I was reading this, I also watched the season four debut of The Righteous Gemstones, which that episode features a Civil War flashback to a robber turned fake pastor turned perhaps real pastor in some senses, And of course the whole series comedically pokes at the line between sincere religiosity and deception.
Right now, the book we're talking about, it's not making the argument that all of these people in the ancient world actually were necessarily con artists or deceivers. That's instead that seems to be a common way they were portrayed and say dramas of the time.
Yeah, yeah, now, and particularly these yeah, private initiators. They come up a few different times in the book, and indeed, as he points out, they are called out in Plato's Republic as the sort that quote go to rich men's doors and make them believe that they, by means of sacrifices and incantations, have accumulated a treasure of power from the gods that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals.
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.
Well, I mean, I feel like there's a thing that still exists. I think a lot of quite wealthy people, you know, there's the idea of they might have their own personal spiritual advisor who's kind of you could say in some cases that's well, that's great, that's something everybody should have, you know, there's somebody who that can kind of bounce ideas off of and find sacred ways of
looking at life. But then the more cynical way of looking at it is they're they're just looking to pay somebody money to make them feel good about themselves.
Yeah. Now, in reading about this, I was also reminded of another cult of deity that I don't believe Boden gets into in this book, or perhaps I'm just not remembering it, and that is the deity Glicon.
I don't remember that coming up in the book.
This is a snake god whose cult was popular during the second and third century CE, so you know, similar timeframe to some of these other cults we've been discussing. He even pops up on some Roman coins. If you look up at an image of Glicon, this deity tends to look like a snake with like long hair and maybe a 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 ingest sometimes it's kind of hard to tell with more, but he has expressed his devotion to Glicon 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 in religion. Mm.
Yeah, sorry, I looked up the statues of like On with the hair and he looks like he's got rock star hair.
Yeah he really does.
Yeah, yeah, lead singer snake.
So criticism of Glycan's cult as a hoax goes back to the writings of the ancient world Lucian of Samosata, who wrote scathingly of the cult as being a creation of Greek mystic and oracle Alexander of Avenotitus, centered again, centered around an enigmatic snake with human hair that allegedly might have consisted of a live snake with like a fake head or mask on, or perhaps a puppet of some sort. And this cult did apparently engage in both
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 the 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.
And strongly suspected.
Yes, yes, And for that matter, you know, if you're to say, okay, theatrical effects are for fine, but no puppets, pupp that's just a sception. Well then why shouldn't we become complete iconoclasts and refuse religious imagery altogether? You know, just say, well, likenesses, statues, altars. Arguments can be made that all of that as well is part of a theatrical effect to create a feeling of the sacred and so forth.
I'd argue one of the most powerful special effects that can be deployed by a religion is something a lot of people wouldn't even think about as a special effect, and that's music. Music has overwhelming emotional power and can certainly cause people to get into ecstatic states even a secular Even in a secular setting, you know, at concerts and stuff like that, people get into ecstatic states when they're not expecting to meet the power of a god.
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 religious of an experience or secular nature.
That's a great point. And what's so interesting about that point is that I myself will be I'll be quicker to criticize a film for emotionally manipulating me with its music, then I will some sort of religious ceremony where they are likely doing something of the same nature.
Yeah, And I think this is funny because people get people get really excited and interested about the idea of hallucinogenic compounds possibly being used in these ancient cults, like you know, and we can't rule it out.
They may or may not have been.
I think some of the arguments for us We've just talked in the last episode about how say the arguments for ergotism is being used at elusis or probably not very strong.
You know.
You could maybe say it's a little more possible that mushrooms 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.
Yeah, they have the rhythm of the heat.
In fact, it comes back to a strain comparison that Boden does make in his book. There's a part where he talks about, I think quite convincingly notices parallels between ecstatic religious experiences and rave culture.
That's a great connection. You know. We also mentioned in Passing some of the ideas that Terrence McKenna had. Terrence McKenna also was very much an advocate of, I guess more like the sort of cy trance culture, but adjacent to rave culture, and a part of that, very much tying that in with the sort of the same sort of experiences that that may have played a part in
ancient religions. Yes, now coming back to allegations of fraud in the ancient world concerning mystery cults, especially gly 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 spoiler 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.
Yeah, exactly.
So some of these claims we have of the secret content of the mysteries come from Christian apologists who were opposed to the mystery cults, and we're talking about how, oh, these things are stupid, they're celebrations of error, or sometimes they even make these weird kind of numerological or kind of word play arguments that like, oh, actually, here's why you know they're they're instead of celebrating the wisdom of the gods, they're worshiping the error of Eve and eating
the apple or something. So 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.
Yeah, so we have to keep all of that in mind when we're considering these criticisms. So, on one hand, it's possible that a cult like that of Glycans could be considered in keeping with just theatrics of the time, like maybe you're just dwelling a little bit too much on the fact that, yes, they're using theatrical effects to 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 charged, is 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.
Oh it sounds juicy. I wanted to tell me more.
Okay, Well, Lucian had a lot to say. He really digs into this guy. I'll read a few quotes from him. He points out that Alexander quote was tall and good looking, really godlike, with a fair complexion, a beard that was not very thick, hair partially natural and partially false, but so well matched that most people couldn't tell the difference. His eyes flashed like one possessed, while his voice was
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 offer magic spells and marvelous incantations charms for love, affairs, afflictions for your enemies, discoveries of buried treasure, and inheritances
to his states. 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 Gliton 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 work 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 gly kind
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.
So I guess I don't fully understand the spirit of the allegation. Is it a problem that it's a puppet, or is it that like, oh, he's trying to say, it's not a puppet, it's a puppet he's trying to pass off as a living organism.
Well, his criticism here, and I should add that historians seem to agree that this is this is an actual
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 edge here.
Now, this could be totally off base because as I said, I don't know much about what Lucian is doing here.
But I wonder also could it be that a criticism like this could be aimed at such a puppet being in bad taste Like 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.
You know.
I wonder if something like.
That could be operative in other times and places in history as well.
Like he is, he is crossing a line that his critics are not ready for. But perhaps some of the initiates are cool with or have come to accept or just have a you know, a different threshold.
For Yeah, Like probably a lot of churches today would be fine with music, but not with a pyrotechnics display for the sermon. But I bet some some use them, probably.
Yeah, But I mean even you know, generationally in churches, for example, you'll have some that are like electric guitars in a service. That's just that's not done. You shouldn't say that, And others are like, no, that's what we're doing and that's what's bringing people in. So you know, I think you could probably get into what might in the long term be silly disputes about what is proper and isn't proper given any particular religious right or service.
So yeah, I'm unsure exactly where to parse all of the glycin situation here. But again, the cult of Glicon did deal in theatrics and secrets, and what Lucian here is doing is definitely spilling some tea about the secrets.
That brings us back to an interesting subject that I did want to return to today. So there was a scholar I talked about in Part three named Kevin Clinton who wrote a chapter that dealt with the Elusinian mysteries, And there's a part where Clinton was exploring a passage and Aristotle making the case that the initiate who goes through the secret rights at ilusis is not supposed to learn anything. They're not there to get information, but rather
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 initiat 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 confidence we could do. 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.
Uh.
And so this got me thinking about the psychology of secrets, which we we have covered to some extent on the show before.
I think years ago, we did 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 you're in 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 there 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 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.
So, for instance, an example of the former would be Bruce Wayne's secret being that he is Batman, but the latter would be the secret that we all might realize that we are all Batman, something that maybe is a little harder to really explain, but if you know it, you know it well.
It's also that that might be a good example, because it's the kind of thing that if you just say it, it sounds kind of banal, it's not a very interesting thing to hear. But if you saw a great story, like if you watched a movie that convinced you and your gut that yes, we are all Batman, then it would feel really powerful.
Right, and it might might very well depend on a sensory overload experience like seeing a really good Batman movie.
Also, ancient writers describe the effect of being in on the secret of a mystery cult as an extremely positive one. It's a good thing. It doesn't feel bad, it doesn't feel like a burden, it feels good. Instead, being in on the secret actually unburdens you of your worries. It allows you to go with lightness when it is time to enter the land of the dead. So I was looking to see if there's any research on positive secrets,
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.
Yeah, yeah, this is this is going to be another silly example. But I'm reminded of a stand up bit from Uparna Mantula, who is hilarious, but she has a bit about reading in a women's magazine, the advice that she should walk around like she's carrying a sexy secret and which is on the face silly, and I believe her bit is like it sounds like women's magazines are just written by spambots. 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 a 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.
Instead of walking around feeling like you are in hawk to the world by you know, the way you do when you have a shameful secret, Having a positive secret that you haven't shared with anyone feels like a you have, like a plus you have a credit. You know you have a plus thing on the balance that hasn't cleared yet. Yeah, yeah,
so in their abstract to the author's right. In contrast to the prior research, five experiments total sample size of twenty eight hundred find that positive secrets increase feelings of energy relative to first of all content matched positive non secrets. So it's not just that positive news increases your energy, it's specifically when it is secret news, the other thing being other pieces of unknown positive information, and finally other
kinds of secrets. So that last part might 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 Sleepian 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 mystery are, but I want It's like it's really good, it's really good stuff, Like you should go, you know, you talk to those multiple passages where they're just exhorting readers, go for yourself.
Check it out.
Yeah, no spoilers, but it's wonderful.
But in contrast to this desire to immediately share good news, the authors found there are distinct psychological benefits to keeping good news a secret. So the authors one way they investigated this was they took a list of thirty eight common types of good news, and they found that on average, people had between five and six pieces of good news that they were currently keeping to themselves for the time being. Now, you might think, well, like, what 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.
Supposed to feel good about those I feel bad about this. I do too.
Every time I'm trying to get over it.
Whenever I like get myself something nice, I feel real guilty.
Yeah, yeah, same, Yeah, I'm struggle. I don't think I have any positive secrets I'm keeping to myself at the moment. I think I've let them all out.
Well, we'll see. We'll go down the list for a few more common examples. What about a gift to another person that they don't know about yet?
Yeah, none of those right now either. I'm like in one of those periods between birthdays and okay, in mother's days and so forth.
How about having found something that the person was looking for. This apparently often people are walking around feeling good about having found the thing, but they didn't tell anybody they found it.
I had one of those a couple of days ago, but then then I gave it to them. So now that's time.
So finally completing a task. Oh this is a common thing, right, Oh you know, I finished writing this thing I was working on, but I haven't talked to anybody about it.
Okay, all right, all right, that makes sense.
So anyways, sleeping goes on to say quote. Across several studies, we asked participants to think of a positive secret they were keeping, and then measured their current mood and how energized they felt in that moment. Another group of participants were asked was asked to think of good news that was not secret. For the same types of good news, thinking about the secret good news was more energizing than
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 but 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.
And you know it could be a sexy, say, just to come back to what we mentioned.
Earlier, certainly good. So I thought this was very interesting. Obviously, these secrets being discussed here are are also not a perfect analogy to the hidden truths of the mystery cults for multiple reasons, some of which we've already talked about, which I'll get to in just a minute. So it's not exactly the same kind of thing as being in on the secret of Illusis or any of these other cults.
But I feel like it's closer than most of the research we look at on secrecy, which is about like something shameful 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 idea entity. 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.
We mentioned in passing the idea of weird fiction ideas of cultists, and it does occur to me that what we're talking about here does match up in interesting ways with some of the revelations that occur in weird fiction, with those revelations being kind of an inversion of what we're talking about here where I have I just went through some serious stuff and I got a real dark revelation about the secret nature of the universe, and it's sanity shredding, and I probably can't tell anyone about it
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.
And might not even be able to put it into words right right.
It could be the opposite is like I just went through this amazing ritual initiation to a strength, dark god and it was amazing. I have this real clear cut vision of what the universe is all about. Now I can't convey it to you in words, but you've got to You've got to go to the colt as well. That's the only way you get to be able to understand what I'm even getting at here.
Well in that vein.
This got me thinking about another way of framing the secrecy. What these secret rights are? You know, it came up in the Boden book that it is something. Of course, there are there are mystic rights of Dionysus as well. You know, this is one of the famous mystery religions. It is sometimes said that 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 hiddenists. Rev 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.
Now, as we close out this four part look at the Mystery Cults, it makes sense to finally discuss properly the end of the mysteries, and in doing so on to briefly come back to the writings of Terence McKenna, who we referenced Food of the Gods a little bit in a previous episode on the Mystery Cults here and again.
The broader themes in the Food of the Gods 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 dominators dial 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. Tell us what you really think, Terrence, Yeah, And like I say, this is all very much part of his you know, archaic revival bohemian thread messaging. And I will again say that I do think food of
the Gods. Whether you agree with with this some of the the the theories that he's throwing out there, I do think it's it's a better work of scholarship than than some might assume. But I found this 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 cult 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 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.
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 and spirit experienced other voices in the mind toward
their increasing silence. You can go back and listen to our episodes where we discuss 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.
Yeah, it's been a while in that, but you know, I do remember thinking that despite obviously I'm not convinced of the bicameral mind hypothesis, but I remember thinking a lot of James's peripheral insights about the smaller matters were often quite interesting.
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And you know, he is, you know, getting at some major shifts and changes that were occurring, but there are a lot of different ways to tease apart what was happening and why. Now in Boden's book, he of course gets into this and discusses the end of the mystery cults. As you know, we previously discussed the Roman Empire's relative tolerance toward various 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.
I mean, there are other cases in the book he talks about where other mystery religions were subject to some regulation or suppression, say if Roman authorities thought they were contributing to disorder or thought that they might become a might become sort of a launching point for political conspiracy. In fact, I don't remember the specific example, but there
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, you could very well to sort of lean into Alan Moore's interpretation of glyc on. You can imagine them being like, yeah, this, this snake puppet is obviously fake. They can totally have this. Let's actually put it on some coins.
But driving the point that, you know, the Romans, what they were mainly concerned about was like actual here and now power. When they were concerned with stamping out other religious stuff, it was because they perceived it as some kind of here and now power threat exactly.
Yeah, and you might well ask about Christian persecution during this time period as well, you know, feeding christianstillions and so forth. As we've discussed on the show before in other episodes in the past, the persecution of Christians wasn't
total and constant throughout this period. It's sort of varied depending on who was in charge, with different fluctuations, but after three point 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 inner 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.
Yeah, Now, one topic that often comes up is it does seem that the decline of mystery cults, like the general decline of Greek and Roman polytheism, is related to the rise of Christianity. But like, what is the explanation there? People have offered a lot of different theories over the years, like what led to the success of Christianity within the Roman Empire. People have tried to explain it in terms
of like particular doctrines or attributes of Christian communities. Those those arguments may have some weight to them, may may not. But one argument about the success of Christchristianity in 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 loo 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 Lusini 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 with Demeter, and that was all fine. That Christianity was kind of unique, and that when you converted to Christianity, 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 you know, that flowed downstream from their household and so forth. So it was the exclusivity of Christianity when compared to these other religions, according to Ermine's argument, which I find pretty convincing.
Yeah, yeah, I mean you can imagine the ripples that that creates in the religious ecosystem. Yeah, you suddenly can't just sort of, oh, yeah, I'm a member of five different ones. No, you've got to commit. This religion wants you to commit and settle down. And as that becomes popular and that becomes an increasing in group, Yeah, its power just grows socially.
Right, it's like a one way vowel. People are mostly just flowing in and not back out.
Yeah yeah, yeah, you can't sort of have one foot in and one foot out so much, orly is not as easily, not with as much social fluidity as had been possible before. Right. A lot has been written about the decline of mystery cults the rise of Christianity, about the possible links between the two, especially the extent to which early Christianity was in many ways a mystery cult, and how you know, arguably Christianity becomes this sort of
anti visionary religion as it rises. And one thing 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.
Oh, because because they're doing an anti Catholic narrative. Yeah, so they're saying that stuff that the parts of Christianity as practice today that we don't approve of that came from other religions.
Right, Right, And Likewise, critics of Christianity in general, he says, might argue that Christianity itself borrows heavily from the likes of Mythraism, and that alone you can really get into like a nuanced discussion off like how much of it is Christianity potentially borrowing from Mithraism or them just sort of like being like on the same vibe, you know, and how much in religious right is truly exclusive to anyone given faith.
You could also argue that Christianity need not have borrowed from Mythraism to have similarities. They could in fact, I mean, of course, some similarities could just be coincidences in the way that a lot of religions have similar things. But you could also have a common ancestor, right, a lot of religions have common ancestors. Things that shared, shared rituals and stuff are derived from traditions that are found all over the place.
Absolutely, so, whatever the reason mystery cults end up falling away, their temples when destroyed, are sacked, are just often not rebuilt. Things fall into ruin or disrepair and are not re repaired.
And Boden gets into this a bit as well, pointing out that the rise of Christianity, it doesn't completely eradicate is static religious experience under its watch, the history of Christianity is sprinkled with Christian mystics and 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 revived and fate healing tradition as well.
Yeah, Boden has a long section on snake handling, where you know, when you read about snake handling, you really there's a lot of emphasis put on the snakes or maybe on the other deadly things like the drinking of poison, and of course that is a big part of the practice, 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 music once again, you know,
that gets you into a kind of trance. And people describe 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 a wild array of sights and sounds.
Yeah, and there are numerous examples of contemporary estatic dance you can point to that have the same effect. I believe speaking in tongues in some Protestant traditions. That's also brought up. So, yeah, there are various examples of religious
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 in other, you know, surviving examples in other religions and contemporary faiths.
This is not necessarily something that is backed up by say, religious anthropology research. It's just a kind of gut feeling I have. But I would tend to think that people who practice mystical or ecstatic religious worship stuff where they get into an altered state of consciousness and believe they're having direct experience of the power of the gods, are sometimes perceived as dangerous by religious authorities, because that kind of experience lends itself to the production of new doctrine.
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.
Yeah, and again going back to what we were talking about, doctrinal religion is very top down. The people who interpret the words of God, the will of God or God's they're at the top and they're filtering that down to the followers. They're going to be very much opposed in general to the idea that anything would be bottom up, that anyone at the bottom would have new revelations, and that God or the gods would still be speaking on any level to anyone except the top of the hierarchy.
Well, that's right. By definition.
If you're on the top of a hierarchy, it is your job to maintain control.
Yeah.
Yeah, But it's also interesting that we see, you know, a kind of top down control of some these ancient mystery cults, Like so the culted Eleusis was administered, but you know, there was a religious hierarchy in place there, and we don't know all of the secrets, but it seems quite likely that they were inviting people in to become initiated, to go through these rights, to have these weird, powerful experiences, and then probably we're not told what it meant,
and we're just like sending people off to make their own sense of it, which, on one hand, you would imagine 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 creates the right kind of effect that sends more and more people your way every year, and that's a fair trade maybe from some hierarchy's point of view.
Yeah. Yeah. This topic has just been so fascinating to think about, not only in exploring how ancient people's thought about their faith, about their world and their place in the universe, but also the various ways we can apply what they seem to believe to what people believe today, and also the reverse, how we can take what we can and can't take from modern religiosity and apply to their world. Yeah, so it's been it's been really fun to research and record these.
Yeah, I mean, whenever you study something like this, there is always you always just keep catching yourself interpreting what you're reading about or seeing through a lens that's probably just too familiar, that's just too based on what something would mean in your own cultural context. And you're not you're not remembering to let it be alien and ambiguous enough to you because you just don't know the context well enough to make sense of.
It, right.
And and we're I know, whenever.
We do these historical topics or topics about you know, cultures other than our own, there's always as a tendency to it's just too easy to feel confident that you understand what something means because you know what it would mean to you. It might not mean that to the person involved.
Yeah, like the snake puppet. You know, we know what Lucian thought about it. We may have in our idea in our head, some idea what we would think about it if we went to a religious service and there was an obvious puppet, But as for the people that were there in attendance and perhaps came back and didn't feel, you know, ripped off by by what they experienced. You know, who's to say.
Yeah, so, I guess all that just to say, like, you know, survey, survey the world past and present with open eyes, but be cautious about interpreting what you see.
You might be jumping to conclusions. I know we do sometimes.
All right, we're gonna go ahead and close the book here on the mystery cults, but we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on the broader subject here, particular of mystery cults that we talked about, mystery cults that we didn't talk about write in. We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder once more that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
On Wednesdays we air a short form episode, and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. You can follow us on various social media accounts, including Instagram, where we are stb ym Podcast. So if you use that platform follow us there. There's activity on numerous ones right now, but that one is perhaps one of the more active ones.
Though We're still working on getting our follower base up on that platform again, having lost a previous version of our Instagram account. And let's see.
What those stories now denied to us.
Yeah, the mysteries are denied to us. I think it was finally eradicated. Were just locked out of it for a long time and then it was fine. It's finally gone. But now we just have to build up the new one. On's thee And then where else are we? Oh, we're on the letterbox. If you are into our Weird House Cinema episodes, you can follow us on Letterbox where we are a weird house and that's a great way to keep up with the movies that we're discussing on Weird House Cinema.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.