February 19, 2026 • 53 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe dive into the world of Greco-Roman Mystery Cults. What exactly were the Mysteries and how did they factor into religious practices of the day? Find out… (part 2 of 4) (originally published 3/4/2025)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. It is winter break, so we are
continuing some Vault episodes this week. This time we're going
to give you Part two of our Mystery Cults series.
This is part two of four. It originally published three four,
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
My name is Robert Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick,
and we're back with Part two in our discussion of
the mystery religions or mystery cults of the ancient Mediterranean.
Mystery cult is a category used by scholars to refer
to worship systems in the ancient Greco Roman world that
we're centered around, powerful in tense experiences of secretive mystic
(01:04):
rights revealed only to the cults initiates.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Now.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
In Part one of this series, we talked mainly about
the historical context of these rights and some about how
they overlapped with and differed from the most common religious
practices of Greek and Roman polytheism. We also talked about
a book that is going to be one of our
major background sources in these episodes. That is a book
(01:28):
called Mystery Cults in the Ancient World by Hugh Bowden,
who is an ancient historian at King's College, London. This
book was published by Thamesen Hudson. The edition both Rob
and I were reading is the one from twenty twenty three.
There was an older edition before that, and today we
wanted to come back and get a little bit deeper
into the mysteries by going beyond the general and looking
(01:50):
at a couple of specific examples.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, and I feel like one of the really interesting
things about these various mystery cults is that a lot
of the mysteries really do remain, like in part because
any knowledge that we have of the ancient world is
you know, is incomplete at least to some degree. But
also these guys were just really good at keeping their
mysteries intact in some cases, and what went on behind
(02:17):
closed doors like remained behind closed doors, and we just
have to speculate regarding the details of what say, initiation
rights consisted of and what they meant, both in terms
of like personal meaning to the initiate, but also within
like the sort of.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
The larger like worldview of the particular cult.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
That's right, and we do know a lot of things,
especially about the more public aspects of the mystery religions,
because they often had a kind of you know, public
facing elements and then the hidden elements. And it's particularly
those those secretive, hidden elements that you know they are.
There are many cases where we still don't really know
today what they were about. We may have some claims
(02:59):
from the ancient world, we may have some pieces of evidence,
but yeah, a lot of mysteries remain.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Though.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
One thing I do want to mention, it's something we
got into in the last episode, is a bit of
clarification on the role of mystery in mystery religion, because
that can be somewhat misleading and could maybe cause people
to think about the idea of a mystery cult as
a religion where the main goal is to solve a
(03:26):
kind of information puzzle. It's like to get the hidden
answer to a question, and that really doesn't seem to
be what these mystery religions were primarily about. They had
very elements that we could absolutely call mysterious. There were
secret rights, there were secret sacred objects that were hidden
from view, and all you know, you could only see
what they were if you were initiated. But the main
(03:48):
goal of these religions was, especially as argued by Bowden
in this book, we've been talking about not primarily to
solve an information puzzle and like learn the secret, but
instead that it was to have a profound experience, to
take part in these mystic rights, these secret rights that
would cause some kind of experience or encounter directly with
(04:12):
the power of the gods.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So mystery very much in the sense of the Beatles
album from sixty seven, The Magical Mystery Tour.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I don't know what sense that would be.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, I don't think it really revolves around a particular
puzzle or a particular mystery is there, But it's more,
you know, versed in psychedelic weirdness and yeah, yeah, and
perhaps cryptic meaning. I mean, I am the Walrus, right.
What are we to make of this song? What are
we to make of the imagery associated with it?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I remember way back when I first heard that, I
was much younger, and the line about the like yellow
custard dripping from a dead dog's eye seemed especially unbeatlesy
to me.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
They get pretty weird, they get pretty weird. There's kind
of the Beatles that you think you know and associate
with sort of the mainstream understanding of the Beatles, but
then you can really dig into some.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Weird stuff in there as well, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
But setting aside the mysteries of the Beatles, I would
like to turn our attention now to the mysteries of Mithraism.
We mentioned, you know, in the last episode. We're talking
very much about the Greco Roman world, and this is
definitely one from the Roman world.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Right, this is one coming later on the scene than
most of the other examples we'll end up talking about.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Right, right, we're talking the first through the fourth century CE,
so it's taking off alongside another brand new religion, that
of the way, centered around the teachings of Jesus Christ.
This would of course come to be known as Christianity
at least by like one hundred CE. But this is
where I should I should throw out that we have
of course mentioned Mithraism in passing or in a few
(05:54):
details on the show in the past. We mentioned mithra
in our Hall of Hell episode as well as in
our episodes on Whistling. As I mentioned then, fans of
the Ridley Scott produced sci fi series Raised by Wolves,
which ran twenty twenty through twenty twenty two. We'll also
remember the name as in the fictional future of this series,
(06:18):
it is the predominant religion that is practiced by one
of the key factions in that show. So sort of
like an alternate future where instead of perhaps Christianity taking
off as this influential human religion, what if Mithraism is
the religion that took off and ended up defining a civilization.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Rob, would it be fair to say, based on what
you've read that it's kind of shocking how little we
know about Mithraism with certainty given how popular it was
during its heyday in the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, that is something that impressed me as well, because
we're not talking about something that was just practiced by
say like a few elites, you know, in the basement
of a palace here and there, something to that effect,
or a few deranged cultists. To sort of imagine the again,
the sort of call of Cuthulu dungeons and dragons treatment
(07:10):
of colts. Now, this was widely practiced during this time
period again, first through fourth century CE, and it was
wildly popular, especially in the Roman army and wherever the
Roman army went. So too traveled the mystery cult of Mithra,
with its temples popping up just throughout the Roman Empire
(07:31):
of the time as far north as the British Isles.
And we have a surviving archaeological evidence all of these
special temples, which we'll get back to in a bit,
and we can piece together some of what went on. Now.
One of the interesting things here that we're going to
dig into here is of course, the idea that we
(07:51):
have a religion, a cult an organization here, and its
ideas are based on pre existing religion ideas, and for
a while, the way historians interpreted it was to go
back to some of the myths that informed Roman mythraism
and use that to try and piece together what Roman
(08:13):
mythraism was all about. So I want you to keep
that in mind as I read a quote here from
an older source. This is from will Durant Caesar and
Christ from nineteen forty four, in which he writes that
during the period of roughly thirty CE through ninety six CE,
one sees a great influx of foreign faiths and Rome
and Roman life, and these faiths, he writes, enter into
(08:35):
Rome via returning soldiers, war captives and also merchants. A
lot of people are coming in and out of Rome.
People brought their traditional gods with them, and he writes
that quote. The Roman government treated these alien faiths for
the most part with toleration. Since it would not permit
foreigners to its own worship, it preferred that they should
(08:57):
practice their imported rights rather than have no religion at all.
In return, it required that each new faith should exercise
a similar tolerance towards other creeds, and should include in
its ritual sum obsessence to the emperor's genius and the
goddess Roma as an expression of loyalty to the state.
So we touched on this before that. Generally the Romans
(09:18):
were like, fine, you practice whatever faith you already had
or have or have brought with you. Just make sure
that it's you know, checking off the right boxes, and
you know, not messing up anything we have going on at.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
The top, not questioning our authority. I don't think that
the Roman rule on this should be seen as generally merciful,
because the Roman Empire for the large part, was not
very merciful. It was more like they didn't really care
about this. Their idea of religion was not an evangelical one,
and they were not trying to convince other people to
follow it. Instead, it was just like, you need to
(09:53):
obey us and not cause problems. Otherwise, practice whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Right, Yeah, I think that's a fair way of understanding it. Yeah,
And we don't need to lean into some idea that
the Roman authorities were just in general super tolerant. But
in this respect, you know, you can make an argument that, okay,
they kind of were, but only because they didn't care
what you're doing, as long as you didn't upset the
order of things. And in this section of the book
(10:20):
by Durant, he does mention Mithra. In Mithraism, he writes,
quote from hostile Parthia came the cult of another sudden god, Mithras.
Its devotees were enlisted as soldiers in the great cosmic
war of light against darkness, of good against evil. It
was a virile faith that won men rather than women,
and pleased the Roman legions stationed on distant frontiers where
(10:44):
where they could hardly hear the voices of their native gods.
So already that's a lot to unpack. We have this again,
this the nineteen forty four text, but the interpretation that
durant here seems to be making is that of a
foreign mystery taken up almost exclusively by male Roman soldiers
and worshiped in every far flung corner of the Roman
(11:06):
controlled territory. Perhaps some deity and faith that casts the
role of the enlisted not as mere protectors of Rome,
but perhaps as warriors and some sort of epic struggle
against the darkness. All right, So that was nineteen forty
four's interpretation. But where are we at now? So diving
into Hugh Bowden's mystery cults in the ancient world, which
(11:26):
we've been looking at here, the author does have a
lot to say about Mithraism, but as is often the
case with some of these mystery cults, there's a lot
we don't know and we'll never know concerning the details
of the faith. And it seems like the trend, he says,
for a while was to try and use information regarding
(11:48):
ancient worship of Mithra in ancient Iran in the interpretations
of this Indo Iranian faith as a way to try
and figure out what Roman mythri was about. Because, to
be clear, there was worship of a deity known as
Mithra in ancient Iran and accounts date back to at
least fourteen hundred bcee, and then eventually Mithra becomes the
(12:13):
central figure of these Roman mystery cults of Mithraism, the
details of which again are not all that forthcoming, But
we do have some literary references, we have archaeological evidence,
some of it fairly recent, and we also have some
artistic imagery that has survived. And from this a fair
number of conclusions can be drawn. But the current predominant interpretation,
(12:37):
according to Bowden, is that the cult of Mithra in
the Roman Empire was something mostly new. It was for
the most part for Romans and by Romans, despite these
Persian motifs that were applied to it. So in previous decades, again,
it was common for historians to try and piece together
the details of Mithraism, based in part on aspects of
(12:59):
the ancient Indo Orraean religion centered around Mithra, but current
trends tend to dismiss this. So in Bowden's chapter on Mithrasm,
he doesn't mention anything about soldiers of light against darkness.
I'm to assume that perhaps that's something that previously historians
drug in from the more ancient model of Mithra's worship.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
You know, you can very much see the appeal of
that older interpretive lens, which tries to figure out what
a religion means by searching out the earliest versions of it,
because we tend to think about the primacy of originals,
like originals in time. You know, we've talked about this
coming up before on the podcast when we were talking
(13:42):
about Greek myths. We're trying to find, like, what's the
earliest written version of this so that we can know
what the real version of the myth is, you know,
but that's not actually the real version of the myth.
And finding maybe the earliest version that was written down
that we still have access to and does not tell
you how people hundreds of years later in a different
(14:04):
time and place understood the story or what it meant.
It just you know that, I mean, it is worth
knowing that tells you one thing, but it doesn't necessarily
tell you that thing. And so searching out myth what
a god or a religious figure meant in one time
and place, even though it came earlier, that doesn't necessarily
tell you what it meant to people in a different time,
(14:25):
in a different place. And I think this is still
true today. I think, actually, say, if you just went
to the New Testament and read the Gospels and then
tried to read from those and predict what form Christianity
would take as practiced, say in the United States in
the twenty first century, you'd be so far off you
(14:47):
have no idea what to predict from that.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, And I think we can point to examples of
this and other major religions as well, and also elsewhere.
Like I instantly thought to Dracula, perhaps because I had
Dracula on the mind a lot recently. But it's like,
imagine you were to examine the text known as Dracula
three thousand. Let's see what year did Dracula three thousand
come out?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Do you think I know off the top of my head.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I don't. Yeah, I expect you to two thousand and four.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Okay, okay, okay, that sounds right.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So imagine you watch a Dracula three thousand and then
you were like, I wish to understand what this film
is trying to say. I am going to read this
book by Brian Stoker, Dracula, and that shall answer all
my questions. I can take everything is in that book
and apply it to this movie and me yeah, to
a certain extent, there might be some useful connections to
(15:37):
be made there, But Dracula. Dracula movies are all built
around the central figure of Dracula, but the textual Dracula
in brim Stoker's original novel might not prove all that useful.
And understanding some depictions of Dracula in other media, including
Bell Lagosi's Dracula, which we discussed in Weird Howse Cinema recently,
or say Marvel Comics Dracula, The Dracula and Dracula three
(15:59):
thousand or or whatever Dracula update you're looking at. Sometimes
you know, a Dracula movie may just take Dracula out
of it and they're just ignoring everything else thematically, plot wise,
time period and so forth, Like the Dracula in Monster
Squad is only loosely related to the original novel.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
That's right. So it may in fact be a very
interesting exercise to see which elements from the older version
are poured it into the newer version and which are
left behind. So it's not like it is useless to
compare the versions, but it is not necessary. But understanding
the earlier version does not necessarily tell you what to
expect in the newer version. Say, if we had pages
(16:42):
missing from the you know, all we had was like
an incomplete script of Dracula three thousand. We didn't have
the movie, and we were trying to figure out what
was still in there. Going back to the novel Dracula
would not tell us, right.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And that would be again, assuming that all all adaptations
of Dracula and all Dracula media still holds the original
novel in some regard or looks to it in some fashion.
You know, you can look at all the various examples though,
of religions where there is some sort of old text
that remains important and the particular like model of that
(17:16):
religion may still be unrecognizable across time, even though it's
based on the book. And in the case of Roman mythraism,
I'm not it's my understanding that we're not really dealing
with any kind of like central texts that would have
been the authority. The main authority would have been perhaps
some collection of myths, but also a modern understanding of astrology.
(17:39):
And so it really sounds like it takes mithra It
takes this Indo Iranian deity and then creates a new
form out of it, you know, almost kind of like
propping up some astrological ideas with the appeal of this
foreign deity and again creating something new that is by
(18:01):
Romans for Romans, likely with its origin according to Bowden,
in Italy, if not in Rome itself rather than the frontiers.
It was then carried out to the frontiers by Roman soldiers.
M okay, So, based on what the evidence we do
(18:27):
have regarding Roman Mythriism, which again involves some texts, some
archaeological evidence, and also some artistic depictions, the cult would
have met in special cave like and sometimes partially cave
based chambers. These were called mithraeum. They were long windowless
(18:48):
rectangles with chairs or seating down the long walls of
the chamber and so again no windows, so you just
had to depend on torches and or candles, and these
would have illuminated a strongly astrological decor so based on
archaeological evidence, the exclusively male devotees of Mithriism would often
(19:11):
join together, apparently in feasts that included a lot of meat,
some wine, and I have to note that I'm already
getting like a very strong Elks Club vibe here. You know,
it sounds just like a men's club where they're all
getting together to drink and eat meat and maybe observe
some rites.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I mean, if you can experience the power of the
gods and just drink with your bros at the same time,
that's a good two for one.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, So the astrological decor here would have included depictions
of the Sun is vitally important because Mithra is, even
in Roman mythriism.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
A solar deity or a solar figure.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You have the Moon, the planets all coming together in
what we might think of as an astrological model of
the universe, and Balden argues that in the absence of
any key surviving text and only a few myths of
Mithra and his adventures slash live slash mythic existence, modern
understanding of astrology again like this would have been first
(20:12):
through third century understanding of the stars and then the
astrological model of how these stars and planets are impacting
our lives. This would have likely served as the unifying
factor of the religion across its various far flung forms.
You'd see some changes in the way things were depicted,
but in the absence of any kind of like top
(20:35):
down doctrine. This is what you had, and so a mithraem. Again,
the temple where the mithra worshipers held their ceremonies and
their feasts. It likely the building itself likely served as
a model, perhaps for further indoctrinization into the astrological secrets
(20:55):
of Mithraism, but also as a model of the universe
and the initiate place in it, which I think that
alone is kind of interesting to think of in terms
of soldiers in the Roman army, you know, perhaps very close,
if not on the frontiers of this, you know, this
vast region, and perhaps feeling far from home and having
(21:17):
some you know, maybe more specific thoughts and questions about
where I am in time and space, but perhaps those
are echoing, you know, greater questions, and maybe that's where
Mithraism comes into their lives with meaning. Now again we
have a lot of evidence, archaeological evidence about what may
have gone on at some of the feasts that they had.
(21:37):
There's at least one side in what is now Belgium
from the third century that suggests ritual destruction of wine
vessels as well as feasting. I think they said that
perhaps feasting exclusively on male animals, but also some eels
that Abouten points out they might not have been able
to sex the eels. Maybe they meant it me eat
only male eels as well, but at any rate, they
(21:59):
ate a lit meat, they drank and or ritually destroyed
wine vessels. And then he also says that there's evidence
at this one side, no other side, of a wine
vessel with a snake motif that when heated, would have
resulted in steam escaping from the serpent's mouth. Oh cool, yeah,
pretty cool. Yeah, but we don't know what that may
(22:20):
or may not mean. Maybe it was just cool.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Well. I don't want to comment on Mithraism specifically, but
with respect to many of the mystery religions, I think
cool on its own may have been reason enough. Again,
a lot of these cults I think you could think
of as being oriented towards producing profound, exciting, dazzling sensory experiences.
(22:48):
And so I don't know, a snake breathing out wine
steam that seems like that could be one of those things.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I should also point out that I
believe the Belgium site indicates the potential potentially a large
feast like something like hundreds of individuals. But for the
most part, the mythraem were understood to be you know,
smaller places where you would have a more intimate gathering,
and if there were and you might have like more
than one mithram in a given area, so that you
(23:16):
could keep the number small, so that that might also
stack up with some of how we're interpreting what these
spaces and these meetings could have meant to these individuals.
You know, it would have perhaps been a smaller, comfortable
meeting and not necessarily like a grand feast, all right.
So but obviously it can't all be cozy feasts, right
(23:40):
because as we as we've been discussing, mystery cults also
involved at times harrowing rights of initiation, sites and sounds
that were unique in life that gave you some insight
into the inner workings of the universe or the afterlife
or what have you. And as Bowden points out, there
(24:02):
were apparently some rights involved here. So there were like
seven grades of Mithraism, and it's likely that each initiate
that each grade of Mithraism involved a different ritual, But
we do know a little bit about the rituals that
were involved. Most notably one that involves a sword and
(24:23):
a crown. For instance, a Christian writer Tertullian, who lived
roughly one through two twenty ce mentions a mithra and
right by which the initiate is taken into a dark space. Obviously,
the mithraem and offered a crown at sword point, and
(24:44):
then he is expected to strike the crown from their
own head onto their own shoulders and proclaim that no
mithra is my crown. I do not need any other
crown but mithra and. Based on surviving frescoes and some
evidence from some pottery, we also have some vague ideas
that the initiate would have been brought into this ritual
(25:05):
space bound and naked, or at least a blindfolded and naked,
and then made a kneel for the placement of the crown,
and then eventually made to lay upon the ground or
the floor of the mithram, perhaps held down even And
the general interpretation is indeed that this, at least this
grades initiation would have been rather terrifying. You know, you're
(25:26):
at sword point, You're naked, brought in blindfolded again into
a space that is either a cave or partially a cave,
or at least designed to be as lightless as a
cave and lit only by torches, with also these added
astrological signs around you.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
It's funny, especially in this version, thinking about the comparisons
we have two more recent things in our own culture,
Like this strikes me as part religious ritual but also
just part fraternity initiation.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, it reminds me. I can't help but think of
the episode of The Simpsons with a hither the Stonecutters
stonecutters still Yeah, yeah, with the very all the different
initiation rights that were all essentially just ritually spanking each other.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
I mean, in our culture, when that is depicted in
media and storytelling, it's usually played for comedy. Now, it's
kind of mocking the silliness of this, but I think
there are some pretty profound psychological reasons why, you know,
why a lot of brotherhoods or groups that are encouraging
(26:29):
people to form a deep bond and commit to secrecy
and things like that, why they involve painful and confusing
initiation processes. And we'll talk about that more as we
go on and discuss some of these other mystery religions.
But it seems like not an accident to me, like
there's a kind of psychological triggering mechanism involved where when
(26:50):
you've been through some kind of pain and suffering it
for some reason triggers you to commit more deeply.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, it's like we just pretend to to threaten to
kill you with the sword, but now we're all bros
and we can have some wines and meat that sort
of thing. That's again oversimplification of what's going on here,
but we can't help withdraw those comparisons. So at the
center of all this, we still have this solar deity
of sorts, this Mithra, at once the Sun itself and
(27:20):
also seemingly a servant of a greater Sun god, perhaps
born out of an eggs. I think a little unsure
in some of these depictions, like if Mithra is supposed
to be emerging from an egg or maybe it's the sun,
and then Mithra rises to chase the lunar bull with
a sword and eventually slay it, and that's where we
get to that symbol.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah, this is one of the main motifs I was
familiar with, not really knowing that much about mythraism, but
I knew that there were artistic motifs that involved a
sort of fight or struggle with a giant bull, or
maybe being killed by a bull or killing the bull.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yes, this is the Taroctiny and it is this recurring
visual motif of Mythraism. In it we see the unconquered
sun god Mithra dressed in a cloak and what is described.
I don't think he's wearing this in every depiction, but
at least it is more prominent in some a Persian
(28:17):
style hat, and he is grappling a bull and stabbing
it through the neck with his sword. At the same time,
a scorpion is stinging the bulls testicles, and a dog
and a snake are drinking blood from the sword wound. Okay,
All while a sun watches on a moon watches on.
(28:38):
There are also two figures that are present that each
have a torch, and they're sometimes part of this is too.
One is holding the torch high, one holding the torch low.
Everything is very astrologically charged here, with these different symbols
having you know, zodiac references entailed. The central idea here, though,
(28:59):
which may not have been revealed or apparent to all
adherents to Mithraism, is that it has to do with
the position of the sun and the constellation Taurus during
the hottest months of.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
The year late July till late August.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
So Balden contends that some elements of this faith may
have originally originated in Eastern Anatolia, but the cult of
Mithraism is again likely originated itself largely in Italy and
likely within Rome, and was then taken out to the
far flung frontiers by Roman soldiers. So and it's also
(29:34):
telling that apparently, despite its foreign elements and inspirations uite
clear inspirations, it was likely considered a very Roman thing
to do, and ultimately it backs up and acknowledges Roman ideals,
and so it likely attracted initiates who wanted to be
more Roman, including foreigners in Rome, which is interesting to
(29:57):
think of. It may have offered some degree of social
wors upward mobility, but it also doesn't seem to have
offered any notion of privileged status in the afterlife, but
instead likely leaned heavily on an astrology fueled understanding of
where one stood in the world and maybe in the
universe in the larger sense. I mean, this is just
(30:19):
me spitballing here. But it does like all these elements
they do. They do sound like the things that might
be created by people who are having a certain crisis
about like who they are and where they belong in
the world. That might fit in in an empire that
is expanding at the same time, absorbing different elements, you know.
(30:43):
And then this, this structure of this cult is built
out to sort of give you some level of assurance
and say, no, no, no, don't worry. We know a lot
about the movements of the stars and the planets, and
no matter how you know, crazy, everything else is getting
out there, like this can tell you exactly where you
are and who you are in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yeah, the meaning is written in the sky. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
But at the same time, also like, hey, this thing's
pretty popular. I want to fit in. I should probably
go to this too. I hear they sometimes have meat
and wine, so you know, I think you have to
factor all these different ideas into it. But it does
sound like the initiation rituals could be very terrifying, at
least based on the way that I am interpreting it.
(31:30):
And it seems like Bowden and others have interpreted maybe
it was played just for giggles, but I doubt it
based on so based on the comparisons we have in
other mystery cults.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Well, speaking of other cults, that would interface perfectly with
things that people in the ancient world wrote about. The
next example that I want to talk about. I don't
know if we'll have a chance to explore everything about
these in today's episode with the time we've got left,
but we can at least start talking about the Elusinian Mysteries,
probably the most famous mystery cult of the Greek world.
(32:14):
Now we know about the Eleusinian Mysteries from a number
of sources of information, primarily from what ancient authors wrote
about them, including from literature that that attempts to describe
things about them directly, but then also from literature that
makes oblique or incidental reference to them. And it turns
(32:34):
out there's a lot of the latter. I mean, there
will just there will just be little dialogues of Plato
where you know, Socrates says something that implies a certain
understanding of what the Eleusinian mysteries meant, but is not
meaning to talk about them directly, not like here, let's
have a discourse about them.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
That's another thing I guess it's interesting, too important to
realize and discussions. It's like there's there's stuff that is
forgot because it was secret, and there's also plenty of
things that were forgotten because it was just common knowledge.
Why would you write that down?
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah, exactly. Also, apart from the ancient written sources, we
have some physical archaeological remains, especially at el Usis, the
cult center, including artworks that depict elements of the associated myth.
One example of the latter is a marble fragment from
the sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis, of which there are
(33:29):
copies from scattered about from the Roman period as well.
But Raba included an image in our outline for you
to look at this marble relief. It shows the goddesses
Demeter and Persephone standing on either side of a nude
young man, and they are just towering over the sky.
They're much bigger than he is. The youth is thought
(33:49):
to probably be a figure named Tryptolemus, who is a
figure in mythology sent by Demeter to teach agriculture to
the people, sort of a kind of an intermediary prometheus
of grain in a way. And one interesting thing about
this marble relief you're looking at, rob is that the
Demeter and Persephone here are They're like holding their hands
(34:12):
out as if they're each holding something out to this
naked man, and their marble fingers probably originally held some
kind of object, but that object or those objects are
gone and we don't know what they were. Oh hell,
so some basic facts to ground us about the Eleusinian mysteries.
They were based out of a city called Eleusis, which
(34:35):
was located in the region of Attica, only about twenty
three kilometers west of the city of Athens, so pretty
close to the city of Athens and also close to
another important ancient city called Megara. The myth associated with
the mystic rights of Eleusis is a version of the
story of Demeter and Persephone. Now, as with most of
(34:57):
the big Greek myths, there are multiple versions of this
story in circulation, with lots of differences in the narrative.
So I am specifically going to be talking about the
version of the story found in the Greek hymn or
poem known as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which was
written in dactylic hexameter probably sometime between six fifty and
(35:18):
five fifty BCE, and this is the take on the
story that seems to directly implicate the city of el Usis.
So in this myth, Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture
in the Harvest, has a daughter with the god Zeus,
and in a lot of versions of the story the
daughter is named Persephone, but in the version of the
(35:39):
story told at Eleusis, the daughter is referred to only
as Corey, Corey or core Kore, meaning maiden. So core
and Persephone are basically the same character. But I'm going
to use core in my telling here because of the
Elusinian connection. So the trouble begins in the story when Zeus,
(36:00):
without the consent of Demeter, allows his brother Hades, the
god of the underworld and the king of the Dead,
to kidnap Demeter's daughter core while she is out gathering
flowers upon a plain, and Hades takes her away to
his subterranean kingdom of the dead. When Demeter finds out
that her daughter is missing, she spends nine days scouring
(36:23):
the earth, scouring the face of the earth in grief,
searching for her daughter by torchlight. It's mentioned that she
carries a torch, and eventually a couple of other gods,
Hecate and Helios, tell Demeter what happened, and so here
we get to the part involving the city of Eleusis. Demeter,
disgusted with Zeus and with the gods for allowing this
(36:46):
to happen to her daughter. She leaves Mount Olympus, disguises
herself as a human, and then walks all over the world,
and eventually she ends up in the city of Eleusis,
where she meets the family of a king named King Celius,
and she is hired to work for the king's family
as a nurse. Now, in Bowden's retelling of this myth,
(37:07):
there are a number of great details here that are
very cryptic to the modern reader and sort of fascinating.
For this reason. I love little details where it's like,
why include that, what does that mean? So it says
that she is invited into the house of the family
of King Celias. She has offered a chair to sit,
but says no, no, no, I'll just sit on this
(37:28):
stool covered in a fleece instead, And then she is
offered a cup of wine, but she refuses the wine
and instead accepts a type of beverage. It's a beverage
or perhaps a gruel, the name of which in Greek
is spelled k y k e n kai kion, but
(37:49):
I've heard it pronounced as kukion, so I'm gonna say kukon.
It is made of water, grain, and herbs. Bowden specifies
that the grain is barley and the herb is mint.
So think of a kind of beverage or gruel made
with barley, water and mint.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Could be good, could be good, good, be could be
rather refreshing.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Remember that drink. It may not be till the next
episode that it comes back, but it will factor in.
At elusis also in here. It says that Demeter smiles
at a joke made by a woman named Iambi. Anyway,
Demeter in disguise is hired to nurse the newborn prince
in this household. The newborn prince is named Demophoon, but
(38:36):
instead of feeding him each night in secret, she anoints
him with ambrosia and then exposes him to the fire
in the hearth. And there's a reason for this. This
is a process she's doing to make the boy eventually immortal,
So she's sort of transforming this baby into a god. However,
(38:56):
it doesn't work because one night, Demeter Intos gets caught.
She gets caught in the middle of doing this by Metanira,
Demophoon's mother, who screams in terror, which you can understand
why that would happen, but Demeter. Demeter is not happy
about this. She explains what she was doing, and she says,
(39:17):
you know now that the spell is broken. Now that
you've caught me, Demophoon cannot become immortal. And Demeter is
very angered by this reversal, and she says, Okay, what
you've got to do now to appease me is build
me a temple. Build a temple to me in Elyusis,
and I will teach you sacred rights that you need
to do in my honor in order to keep me
(39:37):
from getting really mad. Next, and I mentioned this in
the last episode, Demeter says, all grain on Earth is
going to stop growing right now. This is bad for humans,
obviously because we need that to eat, but it's also
bad for the gods because they need to receive grain
as sacrifices from humans. So it seems like this finally
(39:59):
gets Zeus to do something about the problem that he created.
He's like Demeter, what can I do to make you happy?
And Demeter says, give me my daughter back, and so
Zeus agrees. He sends the messenger god Hermes to Hades
to the underworld to tell him that Corey the Maiden
must be allowed to return to the world above, But
(40:19):
Hades has a trick up his sleeve. Before Corey leaves,
he gives her a pomegranate seed, a pomegranate seed from
the underworld, and she eats it, and now having eaten
the food of the underworld, she is ensnared. She cannot
permanently leave, and while she's free to spend two thirds
of the year up above, she has to return to
(40:41):
the land of the dead for one third of each year.
And this myth is often linked to seasonal cycles of
growth in agriculture, though not necessarily with the seasons you're
thinking of. I think the natural way that most people
would interpret it is okay, so you know, the dog
of the grain goddess. She can come up to the
(41:03):
upper world during the you know, the spring and the summer,
the warm months, and then in the winter when the
when the plants die after the harvest, she disappears into
the underworld. That may be it, but actually Bowden says
it could be the other way around, because in Greece,
the hottest part of the summer was sort of often
the least productive agricultural season because things would be very dry,
(41:25):
and the winter was actually used as a it was
a very productive agricultural season, and so maybe sort of
that way around instead of the way we naturally think.
But however it actually lines up with the seasonal timeline.
It's clear to understand why this myth has agricultural significance anyway.
At the end of the myth, after being comforted by
(41:46):
her own mother Raya, who is one of the Titans,
Demeter allows the grain to grow again, and then Demeter,
as she promised, comes back to the people of Eleusis
to teach them the mysteries. She teaches them special rights
that they would have to do in her honor. And
then I want to read from What follows is a
(42:07):
translation of a passage in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,
the version that appears in Bowden's book. So it goes,
so the whole broad earth grew heavy with leafage and bloom,
and she went to the lawgiver kings Tryptolemus and horse
goating Diocles, strong Eumolpus, and Celius, leader of hosts, and
(42:29):
showed them the conduct of her sacred matters, and taught
her solemn rights, which one cannot depart from, or inquire
about or broadcast, for great awe of the gods restrains
us from speaking. Blessed is he of men on earth
who has beheld them, whereas he that is uninitiated in
the rights, or he that has no part in them,
(42:52):
never enjoys a similar lot down in the musty dark
when he is dead.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
So first of all, I love that this is not
from Yeah. And then but then also, unlike seemingly with
our example of mythraism, this mystery cult does seem to
impart some sort of privileged knowledge of and or destination
in the afterlife.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
It does, but I want to complicate that with something
in just a minute here. So yeah, so many interesting
things going on here. The goddess teaches the people of
elusis the secret rituals, says you cannot depart from these rituals,
so don't change them, don't give them up. You cannot
ask questions about them. No talking no questioning, and you
(43:36):
cannot talk about them with the uninitiated. You've got to
keep them a secret only to the people who have
been initiated to the cult. And of course, if you
are initiated and you get to witness these rights, you
are blessed. If you are not initiated and know nothing
of the mysteries, then you are not blessed, and you
(43:56):
will apparently have a worse fate in Hades down in
the musty don't and if I'm interpreting this right, it
does not say that those who have been blessed by
witnessing the rights will not go to Hades instead. It
just seems like something is going to be different from them.
You know, it's going to be better for you. Now
(44:24):
to explore that a little more, this last part about
the effect of initiation to the mystic rights on a
person's lot in the afterlife. That is a major part
of how mystery cults have been understood by later scholars.
It was, i think, once widely held that the mystery
cults of the reco Roman world were mainly about improving
(44:47):
a person's lot in the afterlife. But Bowden argues that
at least in some cases, The evidence is this was
not a major focus of the rights, and that any
belief that you would have a better or afterlife by
having been initiated was more of a side effect of
having achieved a special closeness or direct encounter with the
(45:09):
gods through the mysteries. It was not the primary goal
or function of the mysteries. So we don't have evidence
that the goal was like to go to heaven by
doing these rituals. It was just kind of like there
were blessings and good things about having this mystic encounter,
about going through the rights, and one of the things
(45:29):
that came with it in some cases was that it's
said that something is better for you after you die.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Okay, so again, it's not that you're going to get
a better treatment in the afterlife. It's something maybe a
little more sublime. Hear me out. I don't know if
this is a good idea, a good one. It may
not be a good idea. Maybe it's not a good analogy.
But imagine you're going to go see the Android Lloyd
Weber musical Cats, and beforehand, someone who is wise and
(45:59):
knowledgeable comes to you and says, before you go, read
this nineteen thirty nine poetry collection Old Possum's Book of
Practical Cats by T. S. Elliott, Because of course these
are the poems that the musical is based upon. And
you might then ask, oh, if I read this, will
I have better seats? No, you will not have better
seats based on reading this, but perhaps you'll understand the
(46:19):
musical more, or you'll have some deeper connection with the musical,
and that will enhance the experience of it. Something to
that effect, as opposed to like, will this secret knowledge
actually get me closer to the front or give me
more legrom.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah, that may well be a good analogy, except again,
it would not be about reading anything in particular here.
It would be like about having the experience. Maybe instead
it's like should you go to see the play? Like
that's really the thing that it's more like, isn't it.
It's like going to take part in and witness something
kind of be part of a collaborative theatrical experience. But yeah,
(46:54):
I think that's a good way of thinking about it,
because I want to read another thing that an ancient
source that Bowden mentions in the book. So you know,
many ancient authors, as we talked about last time, are
unable or unwilling to profane the cult of the Eleusinian
mysteries by sharing the secrets of its hidden rights, so
we don't get You know, many ancient sources where people
(47:15):
are like trying to tell us what happened inside the
inside the secret chamber, but multiple writers attest to the
power of the mysteries and the positive effect they had
on those initiated. One of those passages cited in Bowden
is from the Greek anthology by Crnagoras, published that was
(47:36):
written in the first century BCE, and what Crnagoras says
is quote, even if yours has always been a sedentary life,
and you have never sailed the sea nor walked the
roads of the land, you should nevertheless go to Attica
so that you may witness those nights of the festival
of Great Demeter. For then your heart may be free
of care while you live, and lighter when you go
(47:59):
to the land of the dead. Oh wow, yeah, So
whatever happens, it is said by many to be a
powerful experience that is perceived as life altering in a
good way. For a modern comparison, when you read some
of these ancient passages where people talk like this, It's
kind of like how some psychedelic evangelists talk about taking
(48:20):
LSD for the first time, Like you realize your cares
and anxieties are meaningless, you lose your fear of death.
Maybe things like that. It's also kind of the way
sometimes people talk about contemplative practices or experiences that they
believe are spiritually important, like meditation. Though the way the
mysteries are described it is a much less regular and
(48:43):
more high intensity experience than meditation usually is, I guess,
but similar kind of descriptions of like a way of
opening the mind, of changing your relationship to life. Your
heart is lighter, and you can be lighter when you
go to the land of the dead.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Yeah, I mean, in some ways, I'm reminded of going
to a haunted attraction here in our modern world, you know,
go to a haunted house around Halloween, where the various
actors and various tricks will be utilized to scare you
and give you a good laugh. I mean, it is
like a sensory overload experience. And granted it has no
it has no religious agenda.
Speaker 4 (49:20):
Well I take that back. Sometimes it does have a religious.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
Agenda, but there are those Yeah, But in general, it
does the idea of just scaring you doesn't have a
religious agenda. But now that I've accidentally mentioned it, I
am reminded Youah, maybe there's a case to be made
that like church themed or orchestrated haunted attractions like small
town affairs are kind of in keeping with mystery cults
(49:45):
to some degree. I guess based on my experience of
those Christian haunted house haunted attractions there tended to be
very little in terms of like supernatural content in them.
Generally they were depicting like real life hers and not
so much like here. Now you're witnessing angels, maybe you're
(50:07):
witnessing demons, but you know you're not going to see
glory from the other side.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
I think the common recipe is you get to see
people go into hell. Yeah, and that the point of
the hell house also is a persuasive one, like it's
supposed to make you afraid that, oh, I'm going to
go to hell like the people in the play here,
and it's going to be scary if I don't say
the Sinner's prayer and get saved or go to this
church here. And so it's like a way, it's like
(50:33):
a foot in the door. It's trying to get you
into the actually the doctrinal religion, the regular, more low
intensity experience of going to this church, whereas with the mysteries,
it seems like the point of the mysteries was the
experience of the mysteries is like that was what it
was about. At least in the case of the Elusinian mysteries,
(50:54):
it wasn't like a persuasive event to try to get
you into to show up every week. Instead, it was like,
this is why you're here, this is what it's all about.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
There there's often the sense that it's not something you
could even put into words exactly like it was that
level of an experience, not on keeping again, not dissimilar
from some of the accounts of psychedelic experiences and paranormal experiences.
Rather different from in that regard compared to a haunted attraction,
(51:25):
where generally you can describe everything quite well once you
leave the facilities.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
All right, So we've talked about a written version of
the myth associating the goddess Demeter with the city of
el Jusis, and we've talked about how people in the
ancient world wrote about the personal effect of being initiated
or attending the mysteries. But what's beyond this, of course,
is to describe the rituals themselves. I think we do
(51:51):
not have time left to do that today, so I
think that should be where we pick up in the
next episode.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
All right, so we'll meet you back here on Thursday
for our continued look at the ancient mystery cults of
the Greco Roman world. In the meantime, we'll remind you
that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
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 stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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Speaker 5 (52:47):
Shows, the
Speaker 2 (53:04):
PO
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. It is winter break, so we are
continuing some Vault episodes this week. This time we're going
to give you Part two of our Mystery Cults series.
This is part two of four. It originally published three four,
twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
My name is Robert Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick,
and we're back with Part two in our discussion of
the mystery religions or mystery cults of the ancient Mediterranean.
Mystery cult is a category used by scholars to refer
to worship systems in the ancient Greco Roman world that
we're centered around, powerful in tense experiences of secretive mystic
(01:04):
rights revealed only to the cults initiates.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Now.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
In Part one of this series, we talked mainly about
the historical context of these rights and some about how
they overlapped with and differed from the most common religious
practices of Greek and Roman polytheism. We also talked about
a book that is going to be one of our
major background sources in these episodes. That is a book
(01:28):
called Mystery Cults in the Ancient World by Hugh Bowden,
who is an ancient historian at King's College, London. This
book was published by Thamesen Hudson. The edition both Rob
and I were reading is the one from twenty twenty three.
There was an older edition before that, and today we
wanted to come back and get a little bit deeper
into the mysteries by going beyond the general and looking
(01:50):
at a couple of specific examples.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah, and I feel like one of the really interesting
things about these various mystery cults is that a lot
of the mysteries really do remain, like in part because
any knowledge that we have of the ancient world is
you know, is incomplete at least to some degree. But
also these guys were just really good at keeping their
mysteries intact in some cases, and what went on behind
(02:17):
closed doors like remained behind closed doors, and we just
have to speculate regarding the details of what say, initiation
rights consisted of and what they meant, both in terms
of like personal meaning to the initiate, but also within
like the sort of.
Speaker 4 (02:34):
The larger like worldview of the particular cult.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
That's right, and we do know a lot of things,
especially about the more public aspects of the mystery religions,
because they often had a kind of you know, public
facing elements and then the hidden elements. And it's particularly
those those secretive, hidden elements that you know they are.
There are many cases where we still don't really know
today what they were about. We may have some claims
(02:59):
from the ancient world, we may have some pieces of evidence,
but yeah, a lot of mysteries remain.
Speaker 4 (03:05):
Though.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
One thing I do want to mention, it's something we
got into in the last episode, is a bit of
clarification on the role of mystery in mystery religion, because
that can be somewhat misleading and could maybe cause people
to think about the idea of a mystery cult as
a religion where the main goal is to solve a
(03:26):
kind of information puzzle. It's like to get the hidden
answer to a question, and that really doesn't seem to
be what these mystery religions were primarily about. They had
very elements that we could absolutely call mysterious. There were
secret rights, there were secret sacred objects that were hidden
from view, and all you know, you could only see
what they were if you were initiated. But the main
(03:48):
goal of these religions was, especially as argued by Bowden
in this book, we've been talking about not primarily to
solve an information puzzle and like learn the secret, but
instead that it was to have a profound experience, to
take part in these mystic rights, these secret rights that
would cause some kind of experience or encounter directly with
(04:12):
the power of the gods.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
So mystery very much in the sense of the Beatles
album from sixty seven, The Magical Mystery Tour.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
I don't know what sense that would be.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Well, I don't think it really revolves around a particular
puzzle or a particular mystery is there, But it's more,
you know, versed in psychedelic weirdness and yeah, yeah, and
perhaps cryptic meaning. I mean, I am the Walrus, right.
What are we to make of this song? What are
we to make of the imagery associated with it?
Speaker 3 (04:42):
I remember way back when I first heard that, I
was much younger, and the line about the like yellow
custard dripping from a dead dog's eye seemed especially unbeatlesy
to me.
Speaker 1 (04:55):
They get pretty weird, they get pretty weird. There's kind
of the Beatles that you think you know and associate
with sort of the mainstream understanding of the Beatles, but
then you can really dig into some.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Weird stuff in there as well, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
But setting aside the mysteries of the Beatles, I would
like to turn our attention now to the mysteries of Mithraism.
We mentioned, you know, in the last episode. We're talking
very much about the Greco Roman world, and this is
definitely one from the Roman world.
Speaker 3 (05:23):
Right, this is one coming later on the scene than
most of the other examples we'll end up talking about.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
Right, right, we're talking the first through the fourth century CE,
so it's taking off alongside another brand new religion, that
of the way, centered around the teachings of Jesus Christ.
This would of course come to be known as Christianity
at least by like one hundred CE. But this is
where I should I should throw out that we have
of course mentioned Mithraism in passing or in a few
(05:54):
details on the show in the past. We mentioned mithra
in our Hall of Hell episode as well as in
our episodes on Whistling. As I mentioned then, fans of
the Ridley Scott produced sci fi series Raised by Wolves,
which ran twenty twenty through twenty twenty two. We'll also
remember the name as in the fictional future of this series,
(06:18):
it is the predominant religion that is practiced by one
of the key factions in that show. So sort of
like an alternate future where instead of perhaps Christianity taking
off as this influential human religion, what if Mithraism is
the religion that took off and ended up defining a civilization.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Rob, would it be fair to say, based on what
you've read that it's kind of shocking how little we
know about Mithraism with certainty given how popular it was
during its heyday in the Roman Empire.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Yeah, that is something that impressed me as well, because
we're not talking about something that was just practiced by
say like a few elites, you know, in the basement
of a palace here and there, something to that effect,
or a few deranged cultists. To sort of imagine the again,
the sort of call of Cuthulu dungeons and dragons treatment
(07:10):
of colts. Now, this was widely practiced during this time
period again, first through fourth century CE, and it was
wildly popular, especially in the Roman army and wherever the
Roman army went. So too traveled the mystery cult of Mithra,
with its temples popping up just throughout the Roman Empire
(07:31):
of the time as far north as the British Isles.
And we have a surviving archaeological evidence all of these
special temples, which we'll get back to in a bit,
and we can piece together some of what went on. Now.
One of the interesting things here that we're going to
dig into here is of course, the idea that we
(07:51):
have a religion, a cult an organization here, and its
ideas are based on pre existing religion ideas, and for
a while, the way historians interpreted it was to go
back to some of the myths that informed Roman mythraism
and use that to try and piece together what Roman
(08:13):
mythraism was all about. So I want you to keep
that in mind as I read a quote here from
an older source. This is from will Durant Caesar and
Christ from nineteen forty four, in which he writes that
during the period of roughly thirty CE through ninety six CE,
one sees a great influx of foreign faiths and Rome
and Roman life, and these faiths, he writes, enter into
(08:35):
Rome via returning soldiers, war captives and also merchants. A
lot of people are coming in and out of Rome.
People brought their traditional gods with them, and he writes
that quote. The Roman government treated these alien faiths for
the most part with toleration. Since it would not permit
foreigners to its own worship, it preferred that they should
(08:57):
practice their imported rights rather than have no religion at all.
In return, it required that each new faith should exercise
a similar tolerance towards other creeds, and should include in
its ritual sum obsessence to the emperor's genius and the
goddess Roma as an expression of loyalty to the state.
So we touched on this before that. Generally the Romans
(09:18):
were like, fine, you practice whatever faith you already had
or have or have brought with you. Just make sure
that it's you know, checking off the right boxes, and
you know, not messing up anything we have going on at.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
The top, not questioning our authority. I don't think that
the Roman rule on this should be seen as generally merciful,
because the Roman Empire for the large part, was not
very merciful. It was more like they didn't really care
about this. Their idea of religion was not an evangelical one,
and they were not trying to convince other people to
follow it. Instead, it was just like, you need to
(09:53):
obey us and not cause problems. Otherwise, practice whatever you want.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Right, Yeah, I think that's a fair way of understanding it. Yeah,
And we don't need to lean into some idea that
the Roman authorities were just in general super tolerant. But
in this respect, you know, you can make an argument that, okay,
they kind of were, but only because they didn't care
what you're doing, as long as you didn't upset the
order of things. And in this section of the book
(10:20):
by Durant, he does mention Mithra. In Mithraism, he writes,
quote from hostile Parthia came the cult of another sudden god, Mithras.
Its devotees were enlisted as soldiers in the great cosmic
war of light against darkness, of good against evil. It
was a virile faith that won men rather than women,
and pleased the Roman legions stationed on distant frontiers where
(10:44):
where they could hardly hear the voices of their native gods.
So already that's a lot to unpack. We have this again,
this the nineteen forty four text, but the interpretation that
durant here seems to be making is that of a
foreign mystery taken up almost exclusively by male Roman soldiers
and worshiped in every far flung corner of the Roman
(11:06):
controlled territory. Perhaps some deity and faith that casts the
role of the enlisted not as mere protectors of Rome,
but perhaps as warriors and some sort of epic struggle
against the darkness. All right, So that was nineteen forty
four's interpretation. But where are we at now? So diving
into Hugh Bowden's mystery cults in the ancient world, which
(11:26):
we've been looking at here, the author does have a
lot to say about Mithraism, but as is often the
case with some of these mystery cults, there's a lot
we don't know and we'll never know concerning the details
of the faith. And it seems like the trend, he says,
for a while was to try and use information regarding
(11:48):
ancient worship of Mithra in ancient Iran in the interpretations
of this Indo Iranian faith as a way to try
and figure out what Roman mythri was about. Because, to
be clear, there was worship of a deity known as
Mithra in ancient Iran and accounts date back to at
least fourteen hundred bcee, and then eventually Mithra becomes the
(12:13):
central figure of these Roman mystery cults of Mithraism, the
details of which again are not all that forthcoming, But
we do have some literary references, we have archaeological evidence,
some of it fairly recent, and we also have some
artistic imagery that has survived. And from this a fair
number of conclusions can be drawn. But the current predominant interpretation,
(12:37):
according to Bowden, is that the cult of Mithra in
the Roman Empire was something mostly new. It was for
the most part for Romans and by Romans, despite these
Persian motifs that were applied to it. So in previous decades, again,
it was common for historians to try and piece together
the details of Mithraism, based in part on aspects of
(12:59):
the ancient Indo Orraean religion centered around Mithra, but current
trends tend to dismiss this. So in Bowden's chapter on Mithrasm,
he doesn't mention anything about soldiers of light against darkness.
I'm to assume that perhaps that's something that previously historians
drug in from the more ancient model of Mithra's worship.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
You know, you can very much see the appeal of
that older interpretive lens, which tries to figure out what
a religion means by searching out the earliest versions of it,
because we tend to think about the primacy of originals,
like originals in time. You know, we've talked about this
coming up before on the podcast when we were talking
(13:42):
about Greek myths. We're trying to find, like, what's the
earliest written version of this so that we can know
what the real version of the myth is, you know,
but that's not actually the real version of the myth.
And finding maybe the earliest version that was written down
that we still have access to and does not tell
you how people hundreds of years later in a different
(14:04):
time and place understood the story or what it meant.
It just you know that, I mean, it is worth
knowing that tells you one thing, but it doesn't necessarily
tell you that thing. And so searching out myth what
a god or a religious figure meant in one time
and place, even though it came earlier, that doesn't necessarily
tell you what it meant to people in a different time,
(14:25):
in a different place. And I think this is still
true today. I think, actually, say, if you just went
to the New Testament and read the Gospels and then
tried to read from those and predict what form Christianity
would take as practiced, say in the United States in
the twenty first century, you'd be so far off you
(14:47):
have no idea what to predict from that.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yeah, And I think we can point to examples of
this and other major religions as well, and also elsewhere.
Like I instantly thought to Dracula, perhaps because I had
Dracula on the mind a lot recently. But it's like,
imagine you were to examine the text known as Dracula
three thousand. Let's see what year did Dracula three thousand
come out?
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Do you think I know off the top of my head.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
I don't. Yeah, I expect you to two thousand and four.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Okay, okay, okay, that sounds right.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
So imagine you watch a Dracula three thousand and then
you were like, I wish to understand what this film
is trying to say. I am going to read this
book by Brian Stoker, Dracula, and that shall answer all
my questions. I can take everything is in that book
and apply it to this movie and me yeah, to
a certain extent, there might be some useful connections to
(15:37):
be made there, But Dracula. Dracula movies are all built
around the central figure of Dracula, but the textual Dracula
in brim Stoker's original novel might not prove all that useful.
And understanding some depictions of Dracula in other media, including
Bell Lagosi's Dracula, which we discussed in Weird Howse Cinema recently,
or say Marvel Comics Dracula, The Dracula and Dracula three
(15:59):
thousand or or whatever Dracula update you're looking at. Sometimes
you know, a Dracula movie may just take Dracula out
of it and they're just ignoring everything else thematically, plot wise,
time period and so forth, Like the Dracula in Monster
Squad is only loosely related to the original novel.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
That's right. So it may in fact be a very
interesting exercise to see which elements from the older version
are poured it into the newer version and which are
left behind. So it's not like it is useless to
compare the versions, but it is not necessary. But understanding
the earlier version does not necessarily tell you what to
expect in the newer version. Say, if we had pages
(16:42):
missing from the you know, all we had was like
an incomplete script of Dracula three thousand. We didn't have
the movie, and we were trying to figure out what
was still in there. Going back to the novel Dracula
would not tell us, right.
Speaker 1 (16:55):
And that would be again, assuming that all all adaptations
of Dracula and all Dracula media still holds the original
novel in some regard or looks to it in some fashion.
You know, you can look at all the various examples though,
of religions where there is some sort of old text
that remains important and the particular like model of that
(17:16):
religion may still be unrecognizable across time, even though it's
based on the book. And in the case of Roman mythraism,
I'm not it's my understanding that we're not really dealing
with any kind of like central texts that would have
been the authority. The main authority would have been perhaps
some collection of myths, but also a modern understanding of astrology.
(17:39):
And so it really sounds like it takes mithra It
takes this Indo Iranian deity and then creates a new
form out of it, you know, almost kind of like
propping up some astrological ideas with the appeal of this
foreign deity and again creating something new that is by
(18:01):
Romans for Romans, likely with its origin according to Bowden,
in Italy, if not in Rome itself rather than the frontiers.
It was then carried out to the frontiers by Roman soldiers.
M okay, So, based on what the evidence we do
(18:27):
have regarding Roman Mythriism, which again involves some texts, some
archaeological evidence, and also some artistic depictions, the cult would
have met in special cave like and sometimes partially cave
based chambers. These were called mithraeum. They were long windowless
(18:48):
rectangles with chairs or seating down the long walls of
the chamber and so again no windows, so you just
had to depend on torches and or candles, and these
would have illuminated a strongly astrological decor so based on
archaeological evidence, the exclusively male devotees of Mithriism would often
(19:11):
join together, apparently in feasts that included a lot of meat,
some wine, and I have to note that I'm already
getting like a very strong Elks Club vibe here. You know,
it sounds just like a men's club where they're all
getting together to drink and eat meat and maybe observe
some rites.
Speaker 3 (19:29):
I mean, if you can experience the power of the
gods and just drink with your bros at the same time,
that's a good two for one.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, So the astrological decor here would have included depictions
of the Sun is vitally important because Mithra is, even
in Roman mythriism.
Speaker 4 (19:48):
A solar deity or a solar figure.
Speaker 1 (19:51):
You have the Moon, the planets all coming together in
what we might think of as an astrological model of
the universe, and Balden argues that in the absence of
any key surviving text and only a few myths of
Mithra and his adventures slash live slash mythic existence, modern
understanding of astrology again like this would have been first
(20:12):
through third century understanding of the stars and then the
astrological model of how these stars and planets are impacting
our lives. This would have likely served as the unifying
factor of the religion across its various far flung forms.
You'd see some changes in the way things were depicted,
but in the absence of any kind of like top
(20:35):
down doctrine. This is what you had, and so a mithraem. Again,
the temple where the mithra worshipers held their ceremonies and
their feasts. It likely the building itself likely served as
a model, perhaps for further indoctrinization into the astrological secrets
(20:55):
of Mithraism, but also as a model of the universe
and the initiate place in it, which I think that
alone is kind of interesting to think of in terms
of soldiers in the Roman army, you know, perhaps very close,
if not on the frontiers of this, you know, this
vast region, and perhaps feeling far from home and having
(21:17):
some you know, maybe more specific thoughts and questions about
where I am in time and space, but perhaps those
are echoing, you know, greater questions, and maybe that's where
Mithraism comes into their lives with meaning. Now again we
have a lot of evidence, archaeological evidence about what may
have gone on at some of the feasts that they had.
(21:37):
There's at least one side in what is now Belgium
from the third century that suggests ritual destruction of wine
vessels as well as feasting. I think they said that
perhaps feasting exclusively on male animals, but also some eels
that Abouten points out they might not have been able
to sex the eels. Maybe they meant it me eat
only male eels as well, but at any rate, they
(21:59):
ate a lit meat, they drank and or ritually destroyed
wine vessels. And then he also says that there's evidence
at this one side, no other side, of a wine
vessel with a snake motif that when heated, would have
resulted in steam escaping from the serpent's mouth. Oh cool, yeah,
pretty cool. Yeah, but we don't know what that may
(22:20):
or may not mean. Maybe it was just cool.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
Well. I don't want to comment on Mithraism specifically, but
with respect to many of the mystery religions, I think
cool on its own may have been reason enough. Again,
a lot of these cults I think you could think
of as being oriented towards producing profound, exciting, dazzling sensory experiences.
(22:48):
And so I don't know, a snake breathing out wine
steam that seems like that could be one of those things.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I should also point out that I
believe the Belgium site indicates the potential potentially a large
feast like something like hundreds of individuals. But for the
most part, the mythraem were understood to be you know,
smaller places where you would have a more intimate gathering,
and if there were and you might have like more
than one mithram in a given area, so that you
(23:16):
could keep the number small, so that that might also
stack up with some of how we're interpreting what these
spaces and these meetings could have meant to these individuals.
You know, it would have perhaps been a smaller, comfortable
meeting and not necessarily like a grand feast, all right.
So but obviously it can't all be cozy feasts, right
(23:40):
because as we as we've been discussing, mystery cults also
involved at times harrowing rights of initiation, sites and sounds
that were unique in life that gave you some insight
into the inner workings of the universe or the afterlife
or what have you. And as Bowden points out, there
(24:02):
were apparently some rights involved here. So there were like
seven grades of Mithraism, and it's likely that each initiate
that each grade of Mithraism involved a different ritual, But
we do know a little bit about the rituals that
were involved. Most notably one that involves a sword and
(24:23):
a crown. For instance, a Christian writer Tertullian, who lived
roughly one through two twenty ce mentions a mithra and
right by which the initiate is taken into a dark space. Obviously,
the mithraem and offered a crown at sword point, and
(24:44):
then he is expected to strike the crown from their
own head onto their own shoulders and proclaim that no
mithra is my crown. I do not need any other
crown but mithra and. Based on surviving frescoes and some
evidence from some pottery, we also have some vague ideas
that the initiate would have been brought into this ritual
(25:05):
space bound and naked, or at least a blindfolded and naked,
and then made a kneel for the placement of the crown,
and then eventually made to lay upon the ground or
the floor of the mithram, perhaps held down even And
the general interpretation is indeed that this, at least this
grades initiation would have been rather terrifying. You know, you're
(25:26):
at sword point, You're naked, brought in blindfolded again into
a space that is either a cave or partially a cave,
or at least designed to be as lightless as a
cave and lit only by torches, with also these added
astrological signs around you.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
It's funny, especially in this version, thinking about the comparisons
we have two more recent things in our own culture,
Like this strikes me as part religious ritual but also
just part fraternity initiation.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Yeah, it reminds me. I can't help but think of
the episode of The Simpsons with a hither the Stonecutters
stonecutters still Yeah, yeah, with the very all the different
initiation rights that were all essentially just ritually spanking each other.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
I mean, in our culture, when that is depicted in
media and storytelling, it's usually played for comedy. Now, it's
kind of mocking the silliness of this, but I think
there are some pretty profound psychological reasons why, you know,
why a lot of brotherhoods or groups that are encouraging
(26:29):
people to form a deep bond and commit to secrecy
and things like that, why they involve painful and confusing
initiation processes. And we'll talk about that more as we
go on and discuss some of these other mystery religions.
But it seems like not an accident to me, like
there's a kind of psychological triggering mechanism involved where when
(26:50):
you've been through some kind of pain and suffering it
for some reason triggers you to commit more deeply.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Yeah, it's like we just pretend to to threaten to
kill you with the sword, but now we're all bros
and we can have some wines and meat that sort
of thing. That's again oversimplification of what's going on here,
but we can't help withdraw those comparisons. So at the
center of all this, we still have this solar deity
of sorts, this Mithra, at once the Sun itself and
(27:20):
also seemingly a servant of a greater Sun god, perhaps
born out of an eggs. I think a little unsure
in some of these depictions, like if Mithra is supposed
to be emerging from an egg or maybe it's the sun,
and then Mithra rises to chase the lunar bull with
a sword and eventually slay it, and that's where we
get to that symbol.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Yeah, this is one of the main motifs I was
familiar with, not really knowing that much about mythraism, but
I knew that there were artistic motifs that involved a
sort of fight or struggle with a giant bull, or
maybe being killed by a bull or killing the bull.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yes, this is the Taroctiny and it is this recurring
visual motif of Mythraism. In it we see the unconquered
sun god Mithra dressed in a cloak and what is described.
I don't think he's wearing this in every depiction, but
at least it is more prominent in some a Persian
(28:17):
style hat, and he is grappling a bull and stabbing
it through the neck with his sword. At the same time,
a scorpion is stinging the bulls testicles, and a dog
and a snake are drinking blood from the sword wound. Okay,
All while a sun watches on a moon watches on.
(28:38):
There are also two figures that are present that each
have a torch, and they're sometimes part of this is too.
One is holding the torch high, one holding the torch low.
Everything is very astrologically charged here, with these different symbols
having you know, zodiac references entailed. The central idea here, though,
(28:59):
which may not have been revealed or apparent to all
adherents to Mithraism, is that it has to do with
the position of the sun and the constellation Taurus during
the hottest months of.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
The year late July till late August.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
So Balden contends that some elements of this faith may
have originally originated in Eastern Anatolia, but the cult of
Mithraism is again likely originated itself largely in Italy and
likely within Rome, and was then taken out to the
far flung frontiers by Roman soldiers. So and it's also
(29:34):
telling that apparently, despite its foreign elements and inspirations uite
clear inspirations, it was likely considered a very Roman thing
to do, and ultimately it backs up and acknowledges Roman ideals,
and so it likely attracted initiates who wanted to be
more Roman, including foreigners in Rome, which is interesting to
(29:57):
think of. It may have offered some degree of social
wors upward mobility, but it also doesn't seem to have
offered any notion of privileged status in the afterlife, but
instead likely leaned heavily on an astrology fueled understanding of
where one stood in the world and maybe in the
universe in the larger sense. I mean, this is just
(30:19):
me spitballing here. But it does like all these elements
they do. They do sound like the things that might
be created by people who are having a certain crisis
about like who they are and where they belong in
the world. That might fit in in an empire that
is expanding at the same time, absorbing different elements, you know.
(30:43):
And then this, this structure of this cult is built
out to sort of give you some level of assurance
and say, no, no, no, don't worry. We know a lot
about the movements of the stars and the planets, and
no matter how you know, crazy, everything else is getting
out there, like this can tell you exactly where you
are and who you are in the grand scheme of things.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Yeah, the meaning is written in the sky. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:10):
But at the same time, also like, hey, this thing's
pretty popular. I want to fit in. I should probably
go to this too. I hear they sometimes have meat
and wine, so you know, I think you have to
factor all these different ideas into it. But it does
sound like the initiation rituals could be very terrifying, at
least based on the way that I am interpreting it.
(31:30):
And it seems like Bowden and others have interpreted maybe
it was played just for giggles, but I doubt it
based on so based on the comparisons we have in
other mystery cults.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Well, speaking of other cults, that would interface perfectly with
things that people in the ancient world wrote about. The
next example that I want to talk about. I don't
know if we'll have a chance to explore everything about
these in today's episode with the time we've got left,
but we can at least start talking about the Elusinian Mysteries,
probably the most famous mystery cult of the Greek world.
(32:14):
Now we know about the Eleusinian Mysteries from a number
of sources of information, primarily from what ancient authors wrote
about them, including from literature that that attempts to describe
things about them directly, but then also from literature that
makes oblique or incidental reference to them. And it turns
(32:34):
out there's a lot of the latter. I mean, there
will just there will just be little dialogues of Plato
where you know, Socrates says something that implies a certain
understanding of what the Eleusinian mysteries meant, but is not
meaning to talk about them directly, not like here, let's
have a discourse about them.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
That's another thing I guess it's interesting, too important to
realize and discussions. It's like there's there's stuff that is
forgot because it was secret, and there's also plenty of
things that were forgotten because it was just common knowledge.
Why would you write that down?
Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah, exactly. Also, apart from the ancient written sources, we
have some physical archaeological remains, especially at el Usis, the
cult center, including artworks that depict elements of the associated myth.
One example of the latter is a marble fragment from
the sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis, of which there are
(33:29):
copies from scattered about from the Roman period as well.
But Raba included an image in our outline for you
to look at this marble relief. It shows the goddesses
Demeter and Persephone standing on either side of a nude
young man, and they are just towering over the sky.
They're much bigger than he is. The youth is thought
(33:49):
to probably be a figure named Tryptolemus, who is a
figure in mythology sent by Demeter to teach agriculture to
the people, sort of a kind of an intermediary prometheus
of grain in a way. And one interesting thing about
this marble relief you're looking at, rob is that the
Demeter and Persephone here are They're like holding their hands
(34:12):
out as if they're each holding something out to this
naked man, and their marble fingers probably originally held some
kind of object, but that object or those objects are
gone and we don't know what they were. Oh hell,
so some basic facts to ground us about the Eleusinian mysteries.
They were based out of a city called Eleusis, which
(34:35):
was located in the region of Attica, only about twenty
three kilometers west of the city of Athens, so pretty
close to the city of Athens and also close to
another important ancient city called Megara. The myth associated with
the mystic rights of Eleusis is a version of the
story of Demeter and Persephone. Now, as with most of
(34:57):
the big Greek myths, there are multiple versions of this
story in circulation, with lots of differences in the narrative.
So I am specifically going to be talking about the
version of the story found in the Greek hymn or
poem known as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which was
written in dactylic hexameter probably sometime between six fifty and
(35:18):
five fifty BCE, and this is the take on the
story that seems to directly implicate the city of el Usis.
So in this myth, Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture
in the Harvest, has a daughter with the god Zeus,
and in a lot of versions of the story the
daughter is named Persephone, but in the version of the
(35:39):
story told at Eleusis, the daughter is referred to only
as Corey, Corey or core Kore, meaning maiden. So core
and Persephone are basically the same character. But I'm going
to use core in my telling here because of the
Elusinian connection. So the trouble begins in the story when Zeus,
(36:00):
without the consent of Demeter, allows his brother Hades, the
god of the underworld and the king of the Dead,
to kidnap Demeter's daughter core while she is out gathering
flowers upon a plain, and Hades takes her away to
his subterranean kingdom of the dead. When Demeter finds out
that her daughter is missing, she spends nine days scouring
(36:23):
the earth, scouring the face of the earth in grief,
searching for her daughter by torchlight. It's mentioned that she
carries a torch, and eventually a couple of other gods,
Hecate and Helios, tell Demeter what happened, and so here
we get to the part involving the city of Eleusis. Demeter,
disgusted with Zeus and with the gods for allowing this
(36:46):
to happen to her daughter. She leaves Mount Olympus, disguises
herself as a human, and then walks all over the world,
and eventually she ends up in the city of Eleusis,
where she meets the family of a king named King Celius,
and she is hired to work for the king's family
as a nurse. Now, in Bowden's retelling of this myth,
(37:07):
there are a number of great details here that are
very cryptic to the modern reader and sort of fascinating.
For this reason. I love little details where it's like,
why include that, what does that mean? So it says
that she is invited into the house of the family
of King Celias. She has offered a chair to sit,
but says no, no, no, I'll just sit on this
(37:28):
stool covered in a fleece instead, And then she is
offered a cup of wine, but she refuses the wine
and instead accepts a type of beverage. It's a beverage
or perhaps a gruel, the name of which in Greek
is spelled k y k e n kai kion, but
(37:49):
I've heard it pronounced as kukion, so I'm gonna say kukon.
It is made of water, grain, and herbs. Bowden specifies
that the grain is barley and the herb is mint.
So think of a kind of beverage or gruel made
with barley, water and mint.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
Could be good, could be good, good, be could be
rather refreshing.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Remember that drink. It may not be till the next
episode that it comes back, but it will factor in.
At elusis also in here. It says that Demeter smiles
at a joke made by a woman named Iambi. Anyway,
Demeter in disguise is hired to nurse the newborn prince
in this household. The newborn prince is named Demophoon, but
(38:36):
instead of feeding him each night in secret, she anoints
him with ambrosia and then exposes him to the fire
in the hearth. And there's a reason for this. This
is a process she's doing to make the boy eventually immortal,
So she's sort of transforming this baby into a god. However,
(38:56):
it doesn't work because one night, Demeter Intos gets caught.
She gets caught in the middle of doing this by Metanira,
Demophoon's mother, who screams in terror, which you can understand
why that would happen, but Demeter. Demeter is not happy
about this. She explains what she was doing, and she says,
(39:17):
you know now that the spell is broken. Now that
you've caught me, Demophoon cannot become immortal. And Demeter is
very angered by this reversal, and she says, Okay, what
you've got to do now to appease me is build
me a temple. Build a temple to me in Elyusis,
and I will teach you sacred rights that you need
to do in my honor in order to keep me
(39:37):
from getting really mad. Next, and I mentioned this in
the last episode, Demeter says, all grain on Earth is
going to stop growing right now. This is bad for humans,
obviously because we need that to eat, but it's also
bad for the gods because they need to receive grain
as sacrifices from humans. So it seems like this finally
(39:59):
gets Zeus to do something about the problem that he created.
He's like Demeter, what can I do to make you happy?
And Demeter says, give me my daughter back, and so
Zeus agrees. He sends the messenger god Hermes to Hades
to the underworld to tell him that Corey the Maiden
must be allowed to return to the world above, But
(40:19):
Hades has a trick up his sleeve. Before Corey leaves,
he gives her a pomegranate seed, a pomegranate seed from
the underworld, and she eats it, and now having eaten
the food of the underworld, she is ensnared. She cannot
permanently leave, and while she's free to spend two thirds
of the year up above, she has to return to
(40:41):
the land of the dead for one third of each year.
And this myth is often linked to seasonal cycles of
growth in agriculture, though not necessarily with the seasons you're
thinking of. I think the natural way that most people
would interpret it is okay, so you know, the dog
of the grain goddess. She can come up to the
(41:03):
upper world during the you know, the spring and the summer,
the warm months, and then in the winter when the
when the plants die after the harvest, she disappears into
the underworld. That may be it, but actually Bowden says
it could be the other way around, because in Greece,
the hottest part of the summer was sort of often
the least productive agricultural season because things would be very dry,
(41:25):
and the winter was actually used as a it was
a very productive agricultural season, and so maybe sort of
that way around instead of the way we naturally think.
But however it actually lines up with the seasonal timeline.
It's clear to understand why this myth has agricultural significance anyway.
At the end of the myth, after being comforted by
(41:46):
her own mother Raya, who is one of the Titans,
Demeter allows the grain to grow again, and then Demeter,
as she promised, comes back to the people of Eleusis
to teach them the mysteries. She teaches them special rights
that they would have to do in her honor. And
then I want to read from What follows is a
(42:07):
translation of a passage in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,
the version that appears in Bowden's book. So it goes,
so the whole broad earth grew heavy with leafage and bloom,
and she went to the lawgiver kings Tryptolemus and horse
goating Diocles, strong Eumolpus, and Celius, leader of hosts, and
(42:29):
showed them the conduct of her sacred matters, and taught
her solemn rights, which one cannot depart from, or inquire
about or broadcast, for great awe of the gods restrains
us from speaking. Blessed is he of men on earth
who has beheld them, whereas he that is uninitiated in
the rights, or he that has no part in them,
(42:52):
never enjoys a similar lot down in the musty dark
when he is dead.
Speaker 4 (42:57):
Oh wow.
Speaker 1 (42:58):
So first of all, I love that this is not
from Yeah. And then but then also, unlike seemingly with
our example of mythraism, this mystery cult does seem to
impart some sort of privileged knowledge of and or destination
in the afterlife.
Speaker 3 (43:16):
It does, but I want to complicate that with something
in just a minute here. So yeah, so many interesting
things going on here. The goddess teaches the people of
elusis the secret rituals, says you cannot depart from these rituals,
so don't change them, don't give them up. You cannot
ask questions about them. No talking no questioning, and you
(43:36):
cannot talk about them with the uninitiated. You've got to
keep them a secret only to the people who have
been initiated to the cult. And of course, if you
are initiated and you get to witness these rights, you
are blessed. If you are not initiated and know nothing
of the mysteries, then you are not blessed, and you
(43:56):
will apparently have a worse fate in Hades down in
the musty don't and if I'm interpreting this right, it
does not say that those who have been blessed by
witnessing the rights will not go to Hades instead. It
just seems like something is going to be different from them.
You know, it's going to be better for you. Now
(44:24):
to explore that a little more, this last part about
the effect of initiation to the mystic rights on a
person's lot in the afterlife. That is a major part
of how mystery cults have been understood by later scholars.
It was, i think, once widely held that the mystery
cults of the reco Roman world were mainly about improving
(44:47):
a person's lot in the afterlife. But Bowden argues that
at least in some cases, The evidence is this was
not a major focus of the rights, and that any
belief that you would have a better or afterlife by
having been initiated was more of a side effect of
having achieved a special closeness or direct encounter with the
(45:09):
gods through the mysteries. It was not the primary goal
or function of the mysteries. So we don't have evidence
that the goal was like to go to heaven by
doing these rituals. It was just kind of like there
were blessings and good things about having this mystic encounter,
about going through the rights, and one of the things
(45:29):
that came with it in some cases was that it's
said that something is better for you after you die.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
Okay, so again, it's not that you're going to get
a better treatment in the afterlife. It's something maybe a
little more sublime. Hear me out. I don't know if
this is a good idea, a good one. It may
not be a good idea. Maybe it's not a good analogy.
But imagine you're going to go see the Android Lloyd
Weber musical Cats, and beforehand, someone who is wise and
(45:59):
knowledgeable comes to you and says, before you go, read
this nineteen thirty nine poetry collection Old Possum's Book of
Practical Cats by T. S. Elliott, Because of course these
are the poems that the musical is based upon. And
you might then ask, oh, if I read this, will
I have better seats? No, you will not have better
seats based on reading this, but perhaps you'll understand the
(46:19):
musical more, or you'll have some deeper connection with the musical,
and that will enhance the experience of it. Something to
that effect, as opposed to like, will this secret knowledge
actually get me closer to the front or give me
more legrom.
Speaker 3 (46:33):
Yeah, that may well be a good analogy, except again,
it would not be about reading anything in particular here.
It would be like about having the experience. Maybe instead
it's like should you go to see the play? Like
that's really the thing that it's more like, isn't it.
It's like going to take part in and witness something
kind of be part of a collaborative theatrical experience. But yeah,
(46:54):
I think that's a good way of thinking about it,
because I want to read another thing that an ancient
source that Bowden mentions in the book. So you know,
many ancient authors, as we talked about last time, are
unable or unwilling to profane the cult of the Eleusinian
mysteries by sharing the secrets of its hidden rights, so
we don't get You know, many ancient sources where people
(47:15):
are like trying to tell us what happened inside the
inside the secret chamber, but multiple writers attest to the
power of the mysteries and the positive effect they had
on those initiated. One of those passages cited in Bowden
is from the Greek anthology by Crnagoras, published that was
(47:36):
written in the first century BCE, and what Crnagoras says
is quote, even if yours has always been a sedentary life,
and you have never sailed the sea nor walked the
roads of the land, you should nevertheless go to Attica
so that you may witness those nights of the festival
of Great Demeter. For then your heart may be free
of care while you live, and lighter when you go
(47:59):
to the land of the dead. Oh wow, yeah, So
whatever happens, it is said by many to be a
powerful experience that is perceived as life altering in a
good way. For a modern comparison, when you read some
of these ancient passages where people talk like this, It's
kind of like how some psychedelic evangelists talk about taking
(48:20):
LSD for the first time, Like you realize your cares
and anxieties are meaningless, you lose your fear of death.
Maybe things like that. It's also kind of the way
sometimes people talk about contemplative practices or experiences that they
believe are spiritually important, like meditation. Though the way the
mysteries are described it is a much less regular and
(48:43):
more high intensity experience than meditation usually is, I guess,
but similar kind of descriptions of like a way of
opening the mind, of changing your relationship to life. Your
heart is lighter, and you can be lighter when you
go to the land of the dead.
Speaker 1 (48:59):
Yeah, I mean, in some ways, I'm reminded of going
to a haunted attraction here in our modern world, you know,
go to a haunted house around Halloween, where the various
actors and various tricks will be utilized to scare you
and give you a good laugh. I mean, it is
like a sensory overload experience. And granted it has no
it has no religious agenda.
Speaker 4 (49:20):
Well I take that back. Sometimes it does have a religious.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
Agenda, but there are those Yeah, But in general, it
does the idea of just scaring you doesn't have a
religious agenda. But now that I've accidentally mentioned it, I
am reminded Youah, maybe there's a case to be made
that like church themed or orchestrated haunted attractions like small
town affairs are kind of in keeping with mystery cults
(49:45):
to some degree. I guess based on my experience of
those Christian haunted house haunted attractions there tended to be
very little in terms of like supernatural content in them.
Generally they were depicting like real life hers and not
so much like here. Now you're witnessing angels, maybe you're
(50:07):
witnessing demons, but you know you're not going to see
glory from the other side.
Speaker 3 (50:12):
I think the common recipe is you get to see
people go into hell. Yeah, and that the point of
the hell house also is a persuasive one, like it's
supposed to make you afraid that, oh, I'm going to
go to hell like the people in the play here,
and it's going to be scary if I don't say
the Sinner's prayer and get saved or go to this
church here. And so it's like a way, it's like
(50:33):
a foot in the door. It's trying to get you
into the actually the doctrinal religion, the regular, more low
intensity experience of going to this church, whereas with the mysteries,
it seems like the point of the mysteries was the
experience of the mysteries is like that was what it
was about. At least in the case of the Elusinian mysteries,
(50:54):
it wasn't like a persuasive event to try to get
you into to show up every week. Instead, it was like,
this is why you're here, this is what it's all about.
Speaker 1 (51:04):
There there's often the sense that it's not something you
could even put into words exactly like it was that
level of an experience, not on keeping again, not dissimilar
from some of the accounts of psychedelic experiences and paranormal experiences.
Rather different from in that regard compared to a haunted attraction,
(51:25):
where generally you can describe everything quite well once you
leave the facilities.
Speaker 3 (51:31):
All right, So we've talked about a written version of
the myth associating the goddess Demeter with the city of
el Jusis, and we've talked about how people in the
ancient world wrote about the personal effect of being initiated
or attending the mysteries. But what's beyond this, of course,
is to describe the rituals themselves. I think we do
(51:51):
not have time left to do that today, so I
think that should be where we pick up in the
next episode.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
All right, so we'll meet you back here on Thursday
for our continued look at the ancient mystery cults of
the Greco Roman world. In the meantime, we'll remind you
that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
short form episodes on Wednesdays and on Fridays. We set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (52:17):
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 stuff to Blow your
Mind dot com.
Speaker 2 (52:39):
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.
Speaker 5 (52:47):
Shows, the
Speaker 2 (53:04):
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