From the Vault: Mystery Cults, Part 3

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 3 of 4) (originally published 3/6/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. Today is a Saturday, so we have
a vault episode for you. This is part three of
four in our Mystery cult series that originally published three six,
twenty twenty five. Let's dive in.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
part three in our discussion of the mystery cults of
the ancient Mediterranean. Mystery cults are religions that are differentiated
from the mainstream public cults of the Greco Roman world because,
instead of focusing on the regular transactional tending to the

(00:56):
needs of the gods through ritual and sacrifice, mystery cults
were centered around the performance of secret mystic rites, which
were usually revealed only to the cult's initiates, and which
were often described as intense sensory experiences involving direct contact
with the power of the gods. In Part one of

(01:19):
this series, we talked mainly about the historical context of
the mysteries and how they differed from the most common
religious practices of Greek and Roman polytheism. And then in
part two we looked at a couple of specific examples.
We looked at Mithraism, a mystery cult that flourished in
the Roman Empire, especially among members of the Roman army,

(01:41):
from roughly the first through the fourth century CE. And
then also we started talking about what was the most
famous and probably the most revered mystery cult for hundreds
of years among the Greeks and Romans, which was the
festival of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Secret Rites, which took
place in Eleusis, which was about twenty three kilometers west

(02:04):
of the center of ancient Athens. And we are back
today to talk about.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
More, all right.

Speaker 3 (02:10):
So in the last episode we had to leave off
in the middle of our discussion of the Elusinian Mysteries
because we ran out of time. So I think that's
where we should jump back in today. We can start
off with that subject. We already talked last time about
the story of Demeter and Persephone, which is the primary
myth associated with the cult. Particularly we're focused on the

(02:32):
version told in the sixth or seventh century BCE Dactylic
Hexameter or poem known as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,
and I'll do a brief summary to refresh. In this story,
Demeter's daughter Demeter is the goddess of course, of grain
and agriculture. Demeter's daughter Persephone called Cory meaning maiden in

(02:54):
inscriptions associated with Eleusis, is kidnapped to the underworld by Hades,
the out of the dead, and the grief stricken Demeter
searches for her around the world in vain. Along the way,
she has interactions with the royal family of Eleusis, including
a thwarted attempt to transform a baby prince named Demophoon

(03:15):
into an immortal, after which Demeter demands that the people
of that place build her a temple and performs special
rites for her which they are not allowed to depart from,
ask questions about, or broadcast to the uninitiated. Eventually, in
the story the daughter Corey or again that's the same
character as Persephone and other tellings, Corey is permitted to

(03:37):
leave the underworld, but because she has eaten of the
fruit of Hades, she cannot leave forever and must spend
part of every year back in the realm of the dead.
And this myth is often tied to seasonal cycles of
growth and harvest.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Yeah, we can't stress in enough everyone. If you venture
into a spirit realm, don't eat anything. Yeah, exactly comes
up time and time again.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
You gotta know the rules of the underworld. This came
up in another ancient poem we were talking about. Oh,
I think it's the poem of Gilgamesh and key Do
in the nether World, where in key Do loses some
stuff down like it falls into the nether world and
he has to go down to get it, and Gilgamesh
is like, look, you gotta do all these things right.

(04:21):
You don't wear certain kinds of clothes, you don't clap
too loud or shout too loud. All this stuff will
attract negative attention down there. And then in Kedo just
does it all wrong and he gets stuck. I don't
know what the other rules for Persephone would have been,
apart from donate to pomegranate seed, but presumably there are
other rules as well. But anyway, we also talked last time,

(04:44):
not just about the myth itself, but about some things
ancient writers said about the effect of taking part in
the rights of ilusis. Many writers are, of course reluctant
to share anything about the secret rituals themselves lest they
profane them. You don't talk about the mysteries. That's part
of what Demeter said, no talking about this, But they

(05:06):
do mention that the effect on the person who takes
part is a profound one and a positive one. To
illustrate that, I found the following passage from a dialogue
of Cicero called on the Laws, where a character in
this dialogue is talking about the mysteries and says, as follows,

(05:29):
much that is excellent and divine does Athens seem to
me to have produced and added to our life, But
nothing better than those mysteries by which we are formed
and molded from a rude and savage state of humanity.
And indeed, in the mysteries we perceive the real principles
of life and learn not only to live happily, but

(05:51):
to die with a fairer hope. So what does taking
part in the mysteries do for us? It seems that
it causes us to ascend from a rough, crude state
of existence, maybe an animalistic state of existence, into a
more refined type of being. Maybe it civilizes us in
some way. And this connects to something I've seen in
a few other sources having to do with the grain

(06:14):
and agriculture significance of the myth, that there's something about
the mysteries which is tied to the gift of agriculture,
of growing grain and the fruits of the harvest to
humans from the gods. And thus it's sort of like
perceived that that is the thing which separates us from
the animals. But beyond that, the mysteries also show us

(06:38):
what life is really about, or sort of the originating
principles of life. It makes us happier in this life,
and it makes us hope for better things after death.
And the last point has an interesting resonance. I don't
know if we alluded to this when we were talking
about the myth in full, but of course, Persephone known
as Corey in the inscriptions at Ilus, she is the

(07:01):
queen of the underworld, you know, so she's going to
be down there at least part of the year in
the nether world. I wonder if that has something to
do with the relationship between the mysteries and the fate
of the dead.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
Yeah. Yeah, she ends up with like a foot in
both worlds. In the agricultural world, and then also in
the world of death in the afterlife, that's who you
want to get in good with a transitional being that
understands your world as well as the next world.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
Though to be fair that that connection might just be
a coincidence. I mean, it is possible also that those
who have experienced the mysteries might expect a better fate
in the afterlife simply because they have some kind of
deeper connection with the power of the gods. They have
more God intimacy in general than people who have not
had who have not gone through the mysteries.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
Yeah, yeah, or I mean, you know, to sort of
couch it in some sort of modern language, we could
say that at least while you're going through these, you're
very much living in the now. So that's got to
at least have a temporary effect on any anxieties you
have about the future.

Speaker 3 (08:09):
Well certainly, yeah, while you're doing the rights themselves. But
I mean, to be clear, these authors do talk about
it as having a lasting effect, one that follows you home.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
Yeah yeah, And I think, you know, there's probably a
case to be maybe if you couple a sensational experience
with those elements of at least temporarily exiting your anxieties.
This could be the essentially the cocktail recipe for some
sort of lasting change.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Now, before I move on, I want to mention a
couple of my major sources. One is a book we've
already talked about in this series by a scholar named
Hugh Bowden called Mystery Cults in the Ancient World the
Times and Hudson twenty twenty three edition, a Bowden being
an ancient historian affiliated with King's College, London. But I
also wanted to point to a chapter in The Wily

(08:57):
Companion to Greek Religion edited by Daniel Ogden. The chapter
is called the Mysteries of Demeter and Corey, and it
is by Kevin Clinton, who is a professor emeritus of
Classics at Cornell. Both very good resources on the Eleusinian mysteries,
and I'll refer back to both authors several more times. Now,
moving beyond what we've already talked about the myth and

(09:18):
the effect on people, what do we actually know and
what can we reasonably guess about the form the mysteries took?
What were these powerful rights? Well, there are some things
the sort of public elements of the festival, the associated
festival that we do know with a good bit of certainty,
and we'll move from what we know more about what

(09:39):
we know less about. The Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated in
stages that took place at different times of the year.
So scholars think there was a primary stage of celebration,
known as the Lesser Mysteries, which were held at a
place called Agrai within the city of Athens around the

(09:59):
end of the winter beginning of spring, so our February
March season, and that was a different, separate thing, but
people usually did this before the main thing, which was
the Greater Mysteries, which took place between Athens and Eleusis
during the autumn around our months of September October. Clues
from the literature of the time indicate that people generally

(10:21):
participated in the lesser mysteries before doing the greater mysteries,
and the total festival of the Greater Mysteries lasted eight
days and began with public events. So when we talk
about the secret rights, it's not like the whole thing
of the Elusinian Mysteries were secret rights. It was just
like one sort of climactic part of the festival was

(10:44):
made up of the secret rights. You had lots of
public events that included sacrifices to various gods. There was
a process of preparation and purification of the initiates, the
people who wanted to be initiated into the cult. There
was a solemn march from the center of Athens to Eleusis,
and then finally you would get to the secret rights

(11:06):
inside a closed hall of initiation called the Telesterion, which
was the sort of big central building inside the sanctuary
of Demeter and Corey in Ilusis. It's hard to say
exactly when these festivals began and when they ended in history,
but we know a couple of things to sort of
set the maximal boundaries in time. While the archaeological record

(11:31):
in the area directly around the sanctuary goes all the
way back to the Bronze Age, it appears to have
been abandoned for some time around twelve hundred BCE, and
then the site was continuously occupied beginning sometime in the
eighth century BCE for hundreds of years after that, and
then we know that the rights probably continued no later

(11:52):
than the end of the fourth century CE, when Eleusis
was destroyed by the Goths, and after this there appears
to have been known attempt to rebuild the sanctuary. By
this time, the Roman Empire would have been largely Christian anyway,
and you know that would have produced some severe friction

(12:12):
for the cult of Ilusus.

Speaker 1 (12:14):
And we'll come back to the twilight of the mystery
cults here in a bit.

Speaker 3 (12:18):
Now. An interesting thing is that during the time the
cult was in operation, lots of famous people in the
ancient world, including authors that we would read, including multiple
Roman emperors like Augustus Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, made the
trip to Eleusis to be initiated into the mysteries, and
that in itself kind of highlights a curious fact. While

(12:42):
the core rights themselves, the mysteries were secret and you
couldn't share them with outsiders, people would come from all
over to be initiated, So it seems that the secret
rituals were in a way more kind of open, more
kind of globally open to participation then many of the public,

(13:03):
the so called public cults of the Greco Roman world
would be, which many of which were quite locally focused.
So for most of the time the mysteries existed. It
seems that anywhere, anyone from anywhere was allowed to come
and be initiated as long as they met a couple
of criteria. They had to speak Greek or be a
Roman later on under the Roman Empire, and they had

(13:25):
to have not committed murder. And if you met those criteria,
you could you could be initiated, you could learn the
you could learn the secrets, you could take part in
the mysteries.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
And I assume you could lie about the second one,
or it could be left up to your interpretation what
murder was. It's not like you had like a designated
punch card that you would have to show.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Yeah, I guess. I guess. The question is like, do
do local people know that you committed murder? Right? Did
you commit murder anywhere around Athens?

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Okay, So what else do we know about what took
place around the mysteries? Here again, I'm drawing large from Bowden,
trying to pull together all these facts. One thing is that,
going back to what I was just saying about people
coming from all over before the festivities began in the autumn,
a truce went out through the Greek cities ensuring that
anyone who wanted to be able to come to the mysteries,

(14:18):
could travel safely to Athens to take part, so a
kind of period of sanctuary on travel around the area.
We also know something about the rights involving specific sacred
objects called heira or hyra. I'm sorry I did not
look up which way to say that. It's h i
e r A. I'm going to say hira for now.

(14:39):
These were carried in enclosed vessels tied with a red ribbon,
and they were carried in a ceremonial procession by the
priests of Ilusus, first two Athens at the beginning of
the festival, and then back to Illuses for the end.
So what were these sacred hidden objects? That was one

(15:00):
of the secrets you don't get to know. Inside the Telesterion.
The objects would probably be shown and interacted with in
some way by the initiates, but writer sympathetic to the
mysteries do not tell us what these sacred objects were.
Bowden argues that the hiro were probably not statues of

(15:20):
Demeter and Corey like you might get with other cults.
I mean, it would be very common for other public
cults in the Greco Roman world to have a cult
statue that you might even in some cases if it
was small enough take out and carry in a parade.
That doesn't seem to be the case here. Instead, the
priests were probably bearing some collection of small sacred objects

(15:42):
which represented the goddesses in some way. One Christian writer
from the ancient world, writing against so called heresies, claims
that the main secret object was an ear of grain.
So we don't know if this is correct or not,
but that would not be weird for grain imagery to
be used in these rituals, given the role of demeter.

(16:03):
It seems plausible.

Speaker 1 (16:04):
Yeah, it feels like the ritual and the storytelling would
really have to do the heavy lifting if the sacred
object was just the grain, though there had to be
other objects as well. Right, here's a piece of wheat.

Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah, I mean, but something we'll get into in a
minute here is you can present a sheaf of wheat
in a much more or much less dramatic fashion.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
That's right. The presentation is everything.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Yes. Another thing we know is that the procession of
the sacred objects between the cities got an armed escort
made of young men from Athens, so they were well guarded,
and the initiates were generally understood to have to do
some stuff beforehand before you go into the greater mysteries.
I don't know if it was actually required, but it

(16:51):
seems at least customary that people would usually go through
the lesser mysteries at Agri first. Agra is another place nearby,
sort of within in the city of Athens uh And
people seemingly did these other things before they went to
the greater mysteries. But it is hard to say for sure.
There's a lot we don't know about the lesser mysteries.

(17:12):
They're kind of passing references to them. This is one
thing I brought up in the last episode, where like
in a dialogue of Plato, Socrates just says to somebody
by point of comparison that like they figured out something
big before they figured out something small. They say, oh,
you know, you've been initiated to the greater mysteries before
the lesser mysteries. I didn't know you could do that.

Speaker 1 (17:35):
You know, this is not the first time I was
reminded of this. I've thought about this a little bit
in the last episode, but I was thinking about side shows.
You know, you would have your main circus and then
you would have the side show, which might have things
that were a little more specialized in maybe less public interest.

(17:55):
They might be, you know, have more to do with
you know, human a normaladies or other curios or you know,
fake specimens of imaginary creatures. And it seems like you
could at least compare this a little bit to the
idea of lesser and greater mysteries. You go through one,
then you go through the other, and there are variations

(18:18):
of this and other elements of entertainment. We kept talking
about haunted attractions or haunted houses, and one of the
big ones we have in the Atlanta area has almost
always two houses. There's the one larger house and then
there's a smaller secondary house, which is generally like a
little harder in its horror, a lot more chainsaws and

(18:38):
blood and stuff. So you know, you have one set
of sensational experiences you might have, and then there's like
another the next level you go to if you dare
that's right.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
And again I do not have direct evidence, and none
of the authors I read seem to indicate that we
know you had to do the lesser mysteries first. Instead,
it seems more like it was just understood that if
you were going to do them both, you would do
the lesser first. There was no reason to do the
greater and then do the lesser.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, lacking full context and understanding again of the mysteries,
it seems like I feel like a jerk if I
just did the greater mysteries and not the lesser mysteries,
or if I'd done the lesser mysteries before, I might
want to like refresh. It's like watching season one before
before season two comes out, right, you want to rewatch it.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
Yeah. According to Plutarch, there is this it seemed to
me at least hilarious incident where a Hellenistic king named Demetrius,
who was ruling in the fourth to the third centuries BCE,
had the Athenians officially alter their calendar, the calendar of
the year, so that he could do the lesser and
then the greater mysteries back to back within a few days.

(19:48):
So it's kind of like I'm going to make the
Americans change their calendars so i can do Halloween, Christmas,
and then Valentine's Day all on a weekend. Demetrius, by
the way, he went the way he did another thing
called the apoptica, which meant seeing the Greater Mysteries for
a second time. And this is another thing referenced commonly

(20:10):
in the ancient world. It seems that you were not
fully initiated until you had taken part in the Greater
Mysteries twice, and you had a different role, it seems
the second time you were there. I'll talk more about
that in a minute. So at the beginning of the

(20:33):
festival you get a big announcement in the Agora of Athens.
Then people wishing to be initiated would go down to
the sea with a young pig, wash it in the water,
and then they would sacrifice it. And this was in
some cases done by like thousands of initiates at a time,
so you can imagine the scene as pretty bananas. At

(20:56):
some point, new initiates would be paired with a sort
of figure called a mystigogos, essentially like a sponsor. This
would be somebody who already knew what was going on
or was initiated, whould guide the newbie in the coming rights.
On the following days, there would be more sacrifices in
Athens to the Elusinian goddesses, and then, beginning later in

(21:17):
the history of the festival, also to Asclepius, the god
of healing and medicine. There was like a tradition here
involving a sacred snake, and then after several days of
preparation and sacrifices, you'd get the procession going back from
Athens to Eleusis to the cult center. And this would
have one group made of priests transporting the concealed sacred

(21:38):
objects the Hira underguard, and then there would be another
group that was made up of the initiates to the cult.
And the walk between the cities was pretty long. It
was like twenty two or twenty three kilometers, and at
one special place near the end of the journey, Bowden
mentions that the initiates endured a form of ritual mockery

(21:58):
by onlookers called the gepherismos, which I don't know that
stuck with me. I want to come back to that
in a minute. It's interesting. So it's like it's just
understood as part of it. You're taking part. People are
going to mock you, insult you, her whole things at
you as you go by.

Speaker 1 (22:14):
It's like a roast, a mini roast.

Speaker 3 (22:17):
Then finally you reach the sanctuary complex of Demeter and corey,
and here there's like dancing that takes place outside, and
then you would go inside for what lies beyond. Now,
how did this sanctuary compare to other religious sanctuaries in
the Greek world? Seem to be a few differences. Bowden
mentions that there was probably no cult statue of the goddesses,

(22:39):
at least that we know of, not like we had
in other famous temples. And it also does not seem
that animal sacrifices were made on the altar here. The
central building was again the one I mentioned earlier, the Telesterion,
the Hall of Mysteries, and this was the big square
building that clearly rebuilt and expanded a couple of times

(23:02):
in its history. In its largest form, it could hold
thousands of people at a time, maybe like three thousand
people inside and had a sort of tiered stadium standing
room area so that people further in the back could see,
so you can think of it as a kind of
big square theater. And then inside the Telesterion was a
smaller building called the Enacteraron, which means palace. So the

(23:26):
initiates got a day of rest after they arrived at
the sanctuary complex and during the stay. It's not certain
what they did, but they may have facted and possibly
also consumed a prepared liquid that we talked about in
the last episode called Kookion spelled kyk e n. Now

(23:47):
that came up in the last episode because it featured
in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. That poem we talked about.
The context was Demeter arrives at King Celius's home in disguise,
and she has offered wine by the Queen Medonaira, but
she refuses it and instead she drinks cookon And that's
supposed to be a beverage or maybe a gruel made

(24:09):
from grain, water and herbs. Last time I mentioned mint,
but I've also seen penny royal indicated here. And there
appear to be different versions of Kukon described in ancient literature.
Sometimes it's just this grain gruel. Sometimes it was mixed
with wine and perhaps cheese. Sometimes it is described as

(24:30):
intoxicating in nature. Sometimes it is not described that way.
Sometimes it appears to have been a mundane drink consumed
by peasants, and other times, mainly here, it seems to
have deep ritual significance. And so Kukion has attracted a
lot of attention even from people who are not primarily

(24:52):
interested in ancient history, but from people who are interested
in questions of speculative religious pharmacology.

Speaker 1 (24:59):
That's right.

Speaker 3 (24:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Over the past several decades, there's been a recurring question,
and that question is still out there, still battered around
in contemporary literature. The question being was cookie on a
psychedelic substance of some sort, and this idea has been
explored by various commentators over the years, including Robert Graves,
the historian and author, Albert Hoffman the chemist, and also

(25:25):
ethnobotanist and mystic Terrence mckinna. Specifically, I had to bust
out my copy of Terence McKinnon's Food of the Gods
because McKennon gets into this. He points out that the Graves,
Robert Graves suggested the possibility of the psychedelic mushroom psilocybin being.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Involved and.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Kind of initially championed this idea, while Albert Hoffman and R.
Gordon Wasawson presented the theory of ergotized beer brewed from
a strain of the ergot fungus, those being two of
the main sort of theories regarding what this could have
been if it was a psychedelic substance, and there are
some problems, especially with the ergatized beer examples we'll get into,

(26:12):
and Balden discusses some of this in the book as well.
He points out that, okay, this is an idea that's
never been particularly well received by experts in historians, though
it continues to generate a lot of interest in scholarship,
and he outlines two primary objections, the first practical in
the second theoretical. So, first of all, the practical objection

(26:34):
concerning specific theories that the mysteries in question depended on
an ergot derived psychedelic which would have been similar to LSD.
So as a reminder, ergot doesn't contain LSD, but contains
lysergic acid as well as the precursor to LSD ergotymine.
But the main problem here, the practical objection is that

(26:56):
psychedelic doses of ergot itself would result in just terrible
illness and death rather than a temporary experience something that
you would then you know that would be this like
defining moment of your life. Perhaps we did episodes and
ergotism for stuff to boil your mind. Back in twenty fifteen,
and yeah, generally it does not sound like an afternoon

(27:18):
of enlightenment.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
No, so I certainly don't have expertise in this area,
but from what I can tell, this seems like a
pretty reasonable objection.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're, if memory serves getting into
the details of ergotism, we're talking in times like flesh
peeling madness. So nothing that's again seems like it would
be part of an overall positive spiritual experience. And in
Food of the Gods, Terence McKinnon also addressed this, joking
that quote clearly unpleasant experiences may lie ahead for those

(27:49):
who set out to prove by self experiment the Wasason
Hoffman theory concerning Elusius. But then he also presents a
couple of ideas that were out there regards, on one hand,
a particular species or erga that might yield less toxicity
and higher psychoactive results, as well as the notion presented

(28:09):
by Watson and Hoffmann that if you were to properly
macerate the argotized grain in water, you might have been
able to separate the water soluble psychoactive alkaloids. But again
mckinna stressed that the burden of proof is on those
who assert and no one at that point and sense
has sufficiently proven any of this.

Speaker 3 (28:29):
But you can see why the example of the Elusinian
mysteries would be incredibly appealing to people who have a
general theory that psychedelics play a major role in the
establishment of religious practices.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Right right, And certainly that is the case with McKenna's
overall thesis the role that psychedelics may have played and
the evolution of humans into their current state, as well
as the advancement of human civilization. He but his discussion

(29:02):
of this is interesting and I think ultimately a lot
more balanced than some might expect. Overall, I think Food
of the Gods is The scholarship is a lot better
than some might think, because I don't want to overstress things,
because I think with McKenna you're dealing with someone who
was a visionary and a mystic and definitely has some

(29:24):
key arguments for the about the trajectory of human civilization,
what has gone wrong and what needs to be corrected.
A number of opinions that I don't think are really
all that off track. But we also shouldn't like overstate
what Food of the Gods is compared to other works
of dedicated scholarship, and I mean he does stress that

(29:44):
again there are a number of mysteries in play here,
including just you know, what are we talking about here?
Was it even something tangible? He references an example that
was presented by Wilson and Hoffman in their thesis and
all of this, that there's this four to fifteen BCE
example in which an Athenian noble, a noble that we're

(30:07):
going to come back to that is sometimes described as
quote a flamboyant Athenian playboy. His name is Alcibiades, and
he's recorded as having been fine for bringing the Elusinian
sacrament home for entertainment purposes with friends. And the argument
here is, well, this would seem to suggest that it

(30:28):
was not only tangible, but perhaps something entertaining in and
of itself. Now, the theoretical objection to psychedelic theories concerning
the kokion is referenced by Bowden. The theoretical objection basically
blows down to the fact that drugs are not strictly
necessary for these rights as we understand them. The ancient

(30:51):
Greeks had plenty other tricks up their sleeves to create
the experience. Many based in performance and even mechanical theatrical effects.
And so he stresses that you know, even say the
nocturnal bachic revels of the Dionysus mystery cults might not
have depended on wine. So if wine wasn't needed for

(31:12):
the revels of Bacchus, then do we really need psychedelic
substances for these to work. That being said, they might
have had wine. And it's also very possible that the
rights were discussing here involved substances of one form or another,
either as a whole or at different points that they
were laid out. But I think this is an excellent

(31:36):
point about a raisis, and I think one way to
think about it is to think about another like the
modern version of the spectacle that we indulge in with
other people, that being going to a concert, Like think
of a big concert you went, or even a small concert,
just a noteworthy concert you went to. If you've been
to a concert at all over the past I don't know,

(31:58):
several decades, no doubt you've encountered folks that have imbibed
in say alcohol that is generally sold freely at most
of these events, or perhaps individuals who've imbibed in some
level of illicit drug use, be it you know, simple
marijuana or some psychedelic or stimulant. And you know, the

(32:19):
question that this raises is okay, Well, is the resulting
mental state from taking any of these substances going to
enhance the experience of the show? Well? Certainly a strong
a case or a strong case can be made, like
even if you're just talking about, Hey, I had a
cup of coffee to help keep me awake until the
headliner came on. Fair enough, But is any of this
strictly necessary for a great time? And I realized that

(32:43):
this sounds like a question posed in a dare program
from high school for many people. But if we think
about it logically, I think it works out. You know,
all the technical, theatrical, social aspects of a concert are
in place. They're generally very potent. You've probably bought that
ticket and gone out to the show because you already

(33:04):
have some invested interest in the spectacle. And as such,
substances they might be helpful in one regard or another,
they might enhance things, but the spectacle is already the spectacle,
the lights, the music, the communal energy, and so forth.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
Yeah, and imagine if you were approaching the concert with
the knowledge that what happened there was was secret and
couldn't be revealed.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Yeah, yeah, which is just going to enhance everything. And
certainly that's I mean, anytime you have any kind of
a theatrical presentation, you know, either mildly theatrical or overtly theatrical,
if there's a secrecy to it, oh well, that just
makes it all the more special. Think about a speakeasy.
Any of you have ever been to one of the
modern speakeasies, not like a Prohibition era speakeasy, but if

(33:49):
you if you did go to a Prohibition era speakeasy,
you know, kudos to you for being up on podcasts
and so forth. But you know, it's like there's generally
this level of like, oh I had to go through
a secret door or to get into this bar. You know,
it just makes everything all the more exciting.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
Right, I want to come back to that in a
minute here.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
So Abouden writes, quote, if we are to look for
an external explanation for the Eleusinian experience, the theater seems
a better place to look than the kitchen or brewery.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Again, that seems quite reasonable to me, you can't totally
rule out a pharmacological influence, but I don't think we
need to go there to explain anything.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Right, And it does create, as McKenna pointed out, an
additional burden of proof, that is that is required.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
Now.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
I looked at some more recent articles exploring the various
psychedelic theories regarding the Elusinian mysteries, and you do see
proponents still arguing that some of these theories, at least
the psychotropic mushroom one, that the mushroom theory seems to
be more valid than and less less fraught with complications

(34:56):
compared to the aragot beer. You know that one may
be in the mix still, But at the end of
the day, all we could really do is speculate, And
again it just adds an additional level of evidence that
would be required, evidence that we do not have, but
certainly more possible, fewer complications than saying maybe it was
aliens by all means.

Speaker 3 (35:26):
All right, So whether or not the people engaged in
this were consuming hallucinogenic barley mush again, no reason to
assume they needed to do that to explain anything we know,
but who knows. Maybe whether or not that was happening
after the public rituals at the end of the festival.
Not quite at the end, actually, there was a little
bit after this, but basically the climax of the festival.

(35:47):
Once night had fallen, you would get to the big deal,
the secret rites inside the closed hall of mysteries, the Telesterion.
So what was going on there? Well, here's where we
know a lot less, because, as we've discussed, those who
had not been initiated were not supposed to know, and
those who had been initiated were not supposed to tell.

(36:10):
But we have some clues. So there are ancient references
to the mysteries inside the Telesterion as quote things done,
things shown, and things said, which is sort of vague,
but that still tells you a bit. It suggests there
is a visual display things shown, a physically enacted element

(36:32):
things done, and a recited element things said aloud. The
second to third century Christian Church father Clement of Alexandria
claims that initiates to the Eleusinian mysteries had to recite
a kind of pass phrase, which translates to I fasted,
I drank the kookion, I took from the chest, and

(36:55):
having worked with the sacred implements. I removed them into
the basket and from the back into the chest, which
that last part sounds like, Oh the kind of activity
that would just thrill my toddler right now. Is that
a common thing for kids at this age? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (37:11):
I mean, does it ever go away? I love putting
things in little boxes and taking things out of boxes. Yeah,
I mean people watch whole videos online just to see unboxings.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
Right, soah, out of this box, into that box and
then back again.

Speaker 1 (37:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
Anyway, as for the things shown in that phrase, a
lot of ancient sources, while not saying what was shown,
really emphasized the idea of the mysteries as a visual display.
In fact, the priest of Demeter is known as the hyrafant,
which means that name translates to a person who shows
or displays sacred things. Now, this might be a good

(37:48):
place to talk a bit about the idea of the
profanation of the mysteries. Bowden's book has a good little
subsection on this, and you were alluding to it earlier
with the idea of that guy I'll see is the
fifth century BCE Athens based general who he got in
trouble because the deal was he was like right about

(38:09):
to head off for a naval campaign to Sicily, So
they're getting ready to go to launch this expedition, and
suddenly he is accused by enemies of having revealed the
mysteries of Eleusis to non initiates. And in fact, the
idea was not just that he told secrets, but that
he sort of privatized the mysteries by recreating them in

(38:31):
his house with non initiated guests. I was trying to
figure out, like what exactly was the spirit of this
recreation of the mysteries, Like was he trying to get
his own mysteries going or was it in a spirit
of mockery or irony. I'm not quite sure there.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
Or kind of like being it could have been a
sense of he was like just a super fan. He's
like I love this stuff so much. You know, he's
just s geaking out about it, wanting to share it
with his buddies. But then in doing so, you know,
commits at least minor heresy. You know, these things can
get out of control sometimes.

Speaker 3 (39:06):
But this accusation is received as quite serious, like it
would be a grave offense which would lead to divine punishment.
The kind of implication is, if you know, you send
out a general out to war who has just profaned
the secret rights, the gods are going to work their
wrath on him with defeat in battle. And so maybe

(39:27):
this is a good place to come back and explore
the idea of the secrecy of the rights a little more.
We talked about this a minute ago, and I had
some more thoughts about this. Specifically, I was reading about
it in that book chapter by Kevin Clinton where he
cites a passage by Aristotle which makes reference to the mysteries,
and I thought this was interesting. Aristotle says, in translation quote,

(39:52):
the initiates are not supposed to learn anything, but rather
to experience and to be disposed in a certain way,
that is, becoming manifestly fit or deserving. So the cult
has secrets which are only revealed to initiates. But according
to Aristotle at least, and I trust he probably knew

(40:15):
what he was talking about, the initiates are not supposed
to learn anything. That's not the point. Coming back to
something we talked about in an earlier part, that the
point of the cult is not an information puzzle. It's
not to learn the secret password. Instead, you are supposed
to have an experience. And even more interestingly about what

(40:37):
Aristotle says here, you're supposed to have an experience and
by virtue of that experience to become worthy. Now, according
to Clinton, the Greek word Aristotle uses for experience here
does mean what we mean by experience, but it also
means to suffer. And Clinton argues that the secrecy of

(40:58):
the Mystery cults was not originally understood as the point
of them. Rather, it came to be perceived as a
defining aspect of them, sort of because of the drama
it implied, especially to non initiates, and because of the
severe penalties for violation of those secrets. It seems this

(41:18):
wasn't the case always, because you can find counterexamples, but
it looks like, at least in some cases, the punishment
was supposed to be death. So, given the assumption that
the mystery cult was not actually about secrecy, the secrecy
was not the point. Clinton asks an interesting question quote,

(41:38):
we may then legitimately ask what actually was the point
of the secrecy, But first one must consider what is
so special about a secret. A secret is a fact
or a representation of a human act that cannot be
disclosed beyond a certain group. What could be so exciting
about a fact or an act that could draw thousands

(42:00):
of people from all over the Greek world each year
to the mysteria. And of course we do get some
attempts in the ancient world to kind of frame the
secret of the Eleusinian mysteries as something that would be
concealed for a reason of it being i don't know,
scandalous or titillating. And some of these reports come from
early Christian writers, and that kind of makes sense, like

(42:23):
they would be maybe hostile to other religious practices and
not worried about profaning them. But it's also unclear how
accurate these these claims are and whether we should believe
their descriptions. But one example is that Clinton mentions that
some Christian authors claimed the big secret of the Elysinian
mysteries is you got to watch a priest and a

(42:43):
priestess have sex.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
Again, I come back to the idea of some sort
of a sideshow tent. You go into the back and
you get to see like a little something extra that's
not for everyone who came to the main circus.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Yeah, so again we have no way of knowing that's
not true. But Clinton kind of argues against it. He says,
this would not be sufficient to attract the kind of
attention and like draw the kind of crowds from all
around like are described like for one thing. It's not
that unique. And to me it just sounds kind of
like a like a slander that one religion says about another.

(43:19):
And there were plenty of Slanders going the opposite way too,
Slanders Greek and Roman polytheists accused Christians of being immoral,
of engaging in cannibalism and incest and all kinds of stuff.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah, if you just wanted to see a sexual act
or sexual act for performance, there are surely other shows
in town. So yeah, this does sort of ring of
some sort of a slander, doesn't it.

Speaker 3 (43:41):
Right, So instead, Clinton argues that the purpose of the
secrecy was in order to make the experience of the
solemn rituals feel extraordinary. And I mean this rings true
to me. That which we that which we receive as
common knowledge, feels trivial. That which is hidden and is

(44:05):
specially revealed to us feels like it gets an automatic
leg up in profundity. You know, it's just so much
easier to interpret a secret revealed to you as something
that is meaningful in itself, when in fact it doesn't
need to be. And you know that got me thinking, like,

(44:26):
I don't mean to insult the mysteries by this or
profound religious experiences in general, but I kind of can't
help make the comparison to a common sort of influencer
who exists today that I would characterize as like the
influencer mystic, a person who ostensibly traffics in insights somebody

(44:46):
who is out there. Maybe they've got media channels or whatever,
and they do commentary and analysis or life advice. But
their insights, at least as I judge, might not be
especially interesting or seem especially valid if they were just
presented in written form or paraphrased into plain language. But

(45:07):
this kind of influencer mystic can achieve a fan base
because they're able to talk in a way that makes
whatever they're saying feel like a great occult secret is
being unearthed, and by listening to them you are the
first witness to an unveiling of truths, which is an
intoxicating feeling if somebody can pull it off. And so

(45:28):
of course I'm speaking with a little bit of derision
about these modern examples. But you could also, at the
same time use the theatrics of the unveiled secret to
increase the salience of genuine, profound insights and experiences. So
I'm not suggesting the Eleusinian mysteries were necessarily hollow at
their core or anything like that. Again, there's just a

(45:49):
lot we don't know about their core.

Speaker 1 (45:50):
It's really interesting to think about this too in terms
of the secular modern world and even the religious modern
world in many respects, Like we are so accustomed to
the idea that you can skip to the end and read,
read the finish, read the conclusion, it would get a

(46:11):
bullet list of the main things that are important. And
so the idea that there would be levels to something
or some sort of a secret reveal that it is
not for everyone else to know it does kind of
run counter to sort of the informational DNA that a
lot of us have.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Yeah, and so while I think in the modern world
this is often used for ill, it wouldn't necessarily have
to be used for ill. But I think you can
get you can get a lot of persuasive and attentional
mileage just by framing your opinion or whatever you're about
to say as a secret that is being unveiled to someone,
you know, like I'm going to pull back the curtain now.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
I think that the place, weirdly enough, where it is
often the most respected is in terms of narrative storyteller,
particularly with movies and the you know, the idea of
no spoilers, you know, not only don't spoil this for me,
but I think more profoundly, when you have an experience
where there's some sort of a film out there and
either is particularly well crafted or it does involve a

(47:13):
particularly innovative twist or effective twist or an emotional twist,
and people will stress, don't read the spoilers, go into
this without you know, don't watch the trailer, go into
it so that everything is a surprise. You know.

Speaker 3 (47:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Outside of that, like, there's not much that we're we're
we generally engage in where we're open to that sort
of experience. I mean, I guess in some respects we
are like like, you know, some one might say, have
a child, you don't know how this is going to
turn out, but you're you're in the long run, it's
it's gonna be a surprise. There's gonna be some twists
you're not expecting it's true. But you know, the parenthood

(47:47):
and movies, those are the two examples that come to mind.
But when it comes to religion, we're more of the mind, well,
what are they believe in? Give me a list? Is
there a holy book? All right, I'm going to skip
to the end. Is maybe there's some cliff notes on
it and so forth.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Well, I mean, and that goes back to something we
talked about in the first episode of the series about
that anthropological framework of the doctrinal religious model versus the
imagistic or a religious model. Bowden makes reference to these ideas,
and the short version is that doctrinal modes of worship
worship tend to be frequent, regular, low intensity, but also

(48:24):
have clear meaning and function. You can kind of have
a systematic explanation of what the purpose and meaning of
the rituals are, versus what's known as the imagistic model
of religious practice, where you know, rituals tend to be rare, strange,
high intensity, and more ambiguous in terms of meaning. Maybe

(48:46):
nobody's even telling you what to make of the experience
you had. Now, I guess the implication is that mysteries
such as the mysteries of ill Usis would be much
more firmly in the imagistic mode of worship. That there's
something profound, high intensity going on, and it may well
be very ambiguous, very open to your own contemplation and interpretation.

(49:08):
Maybe nobody tells you what it means or even what
it's doing. But that does bring us back to the
Secret Rights themselves. So what else can we guess about
the content of the mysteries? And here I'm going to
synthesize from multiple accounts, including Clinton's and Bowden's and a
few other things I've read. But it seems that, for

(49:29):
one thing, the Secret Rights probably involved some reenactment of
the myth of Demeter and Corey. Now it's questionable to
what extent it followed the story completely, which parts of
the story were represented, and what version of the story
you got, but there are multiple clues pointing to the

(49:51):
idea that some version of this story is being re enacted,
at least in part in these rituals. This could include
wandering around in the darkness, like searching for the kidnapped
daughter after her disappearance, possibly witnessing or hearing the grief
stricken cries of Demeter. For at least part of the ritual,

(50:13):
initiates may have been blindfolded or shrouded with a hood.
Ancient authors make reference to something about this where they
would probably be guided by their mystagogue, you know, the
more experienced guide would show them the way to go
while they were baffled and you know, and they didn't
know where to go, stumbling around in the dark, and

(50:33):
all of this before the initiates were eventually made aware
somehow of the reunion of mother and daughter of Demeter
and Corey at the end of the myth, and then
finally brought into the hall, like coming out of the
darkness into a hall brightly illuminated by torches for a
celebration and revealing of things hidden. Now again, those last

(50:56):
parts are they seem reasonable based on what we know,
but we don't know for sure. That's the form it took.
Torches seem to play a role. There are a lot
There are a lot of mentions of darkness and blindfoldedness
and agony and struggles in the darkness and then coming
into the light.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
You know, this brings me back. We talked again talking
about haunted attractions and how you do encounter some that
are church affiliated. I have distinct memories of going to
one as when I was a youth. There's a rural
Southern church affiliated haunted house. And at the end, as
you wandered or perhaps rushed out of the darkness pursued

(51:35):
by chainsaws and the like, where do you enter into
You enter into a tent where a preacher is then
going to speak to you and sell you on eternal
salvation and of course the the alternatives that you just
witnessed in the haunted house.

Speaker 3 (51:52):
Yeah, so that that that high contrast creates an intensity,
like an emotional motivation and intensity of experience that really
I don't know. In this case, again, we've already noted
the difference between like the Christian hell House or whatever
variation there where the goal is to I don't want
to oversimplify, but I think it's fair to say usually

(52:14):
at least the goal there is going to be to
convert you into the doctrinal form of that religion, to say, like,
you belong to us. Now you've been convinced by witnessing
these horrors, you need to go to our church. That
does not necessarily seem to be the goal here. I
don't detect based on what I've read that the purpose

(52:35):
of the mysteries is a persuasive one that you need
to like join the cult of ill usis though, I mean,
I guess the people who are who go through as
misdays the first time, and this is a distinction. The
first time you are initiated the mysteries, you were known
as misty's or mistace, a term which seems to derive
from the concept of having one's eyes closed, and then

(52:58):
you would usually come back second time, and then you
would be known as epop dase, which means look or viewer,
So there is a kind of return and the difference
between those terms is interesting too, by the way, because
the difference between like mistase meaning eyes closed and a
pop dase meaning looking or viewing that could of course

(53:19):
be literal like maybe the first time you do it
you are blindfolded or hooded and the second time you
can look, or maybe there are particular elements that two
time initiates are particular permitted to look upon that first
time initiates or not. But this difference could also just
refer to a kind of metaphorical perspective on what is happening.
The same way that we say to have previous experience

(53:42):
with something is to go into it with open eyes.

Speaker 1 (53:47):
For anyone out there who's listening with I don't know
if this is really a listen with the whole family
sort of episode, but in the case event that you are,
I'm about to throw out some Christmas spoilers, so feel
free to skip a bit if you if you wish.
But this also reminds me of the way that some
parents approach Santa Claus and Christmas traditions, the idea of

(54:10):
being that instead of just not doing them or trying
to keep the myth and the or the fiction of
Santa Claus going like well beyond it's a healthy phase. Instead,
you kind of break it down like this, where it
is kind of treated like a mystery when the child
is young, and then when the child reaches a certain age,

(54:31):
it's like, now you were part of the mystery, and
now you can help create this mystery for perhaps younger siblings,
other young people you know in the family or in
the community, and so forth. And perhaps this is like
a less doctrinal example compared to the Haunted House thing,
because I guess there's not really a doctrine regarding Santa

(54:52):
that is being pursued in the long run, though it
is of course more certainly like narrative and so forth.
And I guess perhaps the Santa Clause example is better
than the Haunted House example, because Santa Claus, there's not
really a doctrine there that we're trying to drive home
into children, aside from be good or else.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
I guess, yeah, Oh, but I guess I got sidetracked
there talking about the mystas versus the apoptase from talking
about how generally it seems like there is a difference
between the hell house model and the mystery religion model because,
or at least this particular case, because in the all
Useenian mysteries, it's like the experience is the point. It's

(55:30):
not just like a persuasive act to get you to
do something else different. Right. Another interesting passage that is
often cited in historical writing about the mystery religions is
from Plutarch. Or Plutarch characterizes the mysteries generally by way
of metaphor. What he's actually talking about is what happens

(55:52):
to the soul at the end of life. But he's
sort of saying, you know, what happens to the soul
at the end of life is much like what you
all know happens after you're iniated into the mysteries. And
to be clear, he doesn't say specifically he's talking about
the Eleusinian mysteries, but he probably is. These were the
most famous. So what Plutarch says is quote, wandering astray

(56:13):
in the beginning, tiresome walkings in circles, some frightening paths
in darkness that lead nowhere. Then immediately before the end,
all the terrible things, panic and shivering and sweat and bewilderment,
and then some wonderful light comes to meet you. Purer
regions and meadows are there to greet you with sounds
and dances and solemn sacred words and holy views. And

(56:37):
there the initiate, perfect by, now set free and loose
from all bondage, walks about, crowned with a wreath, celebrating
the festival together with the other sacred and pure people.
And he looks down on the uninitiated, unpurified crowd in
this world in mud and fog beneath his feet. Oh wow,
So that square somewhat with what we've already talked about,

(57:00):
like this feeling of lightness and sort of ascension that
comes with having gone through the mysteries. There is some
lasting effect on people that they cite that they say
is very powerful and makes them feel better, makes them
feel unafraid, set loose in some way, perfected in some way.
But I also like the first half of this passage,

(57:21):
where it seems to be more describing, just in general
and emotional terms, what the experience of going through the
mysteries is like. And it's one that begins with confusion, bafflement, exhaustion,
and suffering and ends with hope and cathartic relief. And

(57:49):
so I guess this brings us to the question of
what did the mysteries mean to the people who practiced
them Abouten explores this at length in his book Discuss
As we've already alluded to the possibility that the meaning
of the mysteries was not made explicit. Instead, like the
standard model of the imagistic mode of religion, it's sort

(58:12):
of left ambiguous. It invites participants to reflect later and
contemplate to figure out for themselves what it means. And
that's very interesting to me too, because I mean a
huge part actually of what religion is, at least in
my experience, is exegesis on what things mean. It's like,

(58:32):
you know, religions have, or many religions have. You know,
they have contents, they may have texts and stories, they
may have physical objects or places, they have rituals, and
there's just so much effort devoted to clarifying what everything means.
And that that's what a lot of people want out

(58:52):
of religion today. You know, they want to understand how, what,
why we do it? What how to make sense of it?
But this version of religion may have been a kind
of different one where it's like, instead, you witness something
and you go through something is strange and overwhelming and powerful,
and then you're kind of just sent home to make

(59:13):
your own sense of it.

Speaker 1 (59:14):
Yeah. I mean it's kind of like abstract art and
abstract cinema at its best, right where there's you go
into it without any kind of expectations, you leave it
without any i would say, prescribed interpretations. You know, you're
left to try and figure out what it possibly meant
all on your own, and maybe it meant nothing, but

(59:36):
you won't forget it.

Speaker 3 (59:38):
Kevin Clinton in his chapter writes, relying in part on
his own hypothetical reconstruction of the rituals. So the following
passage does include some assumptions based on guesses, but reasonable guesses,
so Clinton writes, quote, the mysteria revealed simple things like
the return of a lost daughter to her mother, a

(59:58):
goddess insight, differing parentheses, an extraordinary state for a Greek
god or goddess, joy that accompanies the appearance of grain,
the grain that is plutos, meaning wealth, the agrarian prosperity
that sustains family and clan, all simple things that at
the same time had profound significance. The impact lay in

(01:00:22):
part in the dramatic presentation, which was an essential aspect
of the experience. And that kind of takes me to
another place, which is it makes me think I've been
thinking about this primarily from the point of view of
the new initiate, the mistas or the apoptes, you know,
who's for the first or second time going through the

(01:00:42):
greater mysteries and experiencing it and seeing what it means.
But this kind of makes me think about it from
the point of view of the priesthood. Say you are
a hierophant or you're one of the people whose job
it is to put on the show of the Eleusinian mysteries.
It seems actually there's quite a bur there's quite a
burden to put on a good show, because are people

(01:01:05):
are sort of relying on the fact that you put
on a good show in order to find meaning in
their life, to escape their fear of death, to feel
like their life will have blessings yet to come, and
they fit in a divine order, which is fascinating. And
I guess something that people I don't know religious performers
and in other situations probably do feel a similar kind

(01:01:28):
of obligation. But it again made all the more alluring
in this case because of the power of the secrecy,
because there thing we still don't know. There's some things
we don't know. We don't know exactly what they were doing,
and it's like it's agonizing. You want to know, but
we can't.

Speaker 1 (01:01:45):
Yeah, we want it all laid out, like from a
historical standpoint, from an anthropology of religion standpoint, we want
to know, like what were the things that were believe,
what were the things that were enacted, and what was
the import of those things? And for varying reasons. We
have a lot of holes, all right. Well, on that note,
we're going to go ahead and close out this episode,

(01:02:05):
but we have decided we will come back with at
least a fourth episode on the mystery cults, and it
may not be the next episode of Stuff to Blow
Your Mind. It may occur after that. So in the
not too distant future you will encounter a fourth episode
and we'll continue this fascinating discussion. There are so many
different mystery cults and we're not going to be able

(01:02:26):
to discuss all of them, and we're of course not
going to get into everything that Balden discusses in his book. Again,
we do highly recommend you check that out if you
are interested in the topic. The title of that book
again is Mystery Cults in the Ancient World by Hugh Bowden.
In the meantime, we'd like to remind everyone that's Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,

(01:02:47):
with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have a
short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays, we set
aside most serious concerns to just talk about a weird
film on Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Huge things, 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 (01:03:20):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.