From the Vault: Mystery Cults, Part 4

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 4 of 4) (originally published 3/13/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so we have a
vault episode for you. This is part of what part
is this? This is part four of four in our
mystery cult series that we've been re running. This one
originally published three thirteen, twenty twenty five. This should wrap
it all up. Let's jump right in and enjoy it.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
is Robert.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
the fourth and final part in our discussion of the
mystery cults of the ancient Greco Roman world. We had
a break in the series on Tuesday of this week
to air a conversation that we had about amphibians with
Mark Mandika of the Amphibian Foundation in Atlanta, and now

(01:03):
we're back to finish our business with the mysteries.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah. By the way, we also aired the interview because
I was out of town to attend the iHeart Podcast
Awards in Austin at south By Southwest. We were nominated
for Best Science Podcast, which was awarded to Ali Ward's
Ologies well deserved, and I got to chat with her briefly,
which was nice. But seeing is how our nomination might
have some new eyes on Stuff to Blow your Mind.

(01:27):
You might be wondering, well, why is a science podcast
talking about mystery, cults and religion. Well, we talk about
a lot of things here on Stuff to Blow your Mind.
We consider ourselves a science and culture podcast, with science
being the underlying bedrock, but we do explore topics that
veer into historical, philosophical, mythic, and folkloric areas as well.

(01:48):
And if you are new to the show, that's just
happens to be where you're coming in. We should also
let you know this is part four of a four
part series, so there's that as well.

Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yeah, how many syllables are allowed? I call us an
interdisciplinary science podcast. We try to bring most things back
to science in one way or another, but we like
to connect to lots of other topic domains.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Yeah, but if you asked me in an elevator what
I do for a living, and I say podcast host,
and you ask what kind of podcast, I may just
go ahead and just say science podcast and that is
still accurate.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Now, I guess we should do a brief refresher on
the first three parts of this series, which aired in
the previous weeks. The subject once again is the mystery
cults of the ancient Mediterranean, which are defined primarily by
their emphasis on secret mystic rights of initiation. So whereas
you'd have the public cults of the Greco Roman world,

(02:44):
they would be mostly built around a transactional system of
sacrifice and rituals performed by people in the expectation that
the gods would give them blessings in return. I do
sacrifices and rituals for you. You give me blessings for
the you know, for outcomes in war, for outcomes in health,
for the harvest, and so forth. And by contrast, the

(03:06):
mystery cults seem to be driven by the need to
create intense, emotionally powerful religious experiences. Experience is brought on
by participation in these occult initiation rituals, which are all
the more fascinating to us, certainly as consumers across the

(03:26):
divide of history, but also fascinating to people even at
the time, to outsiders of the time, because these rights
were kept secret from non initiates. So in some cases
historians have some strong guesses about what went on in
the mysteries, and in other cases we really don't know
much at all, and that just makes it all the

(03:48):
more fascinating now and back then as well. So in
part one of this series we primarily talked about the
social and religious context in which the mystery cults existed,
and many of the features of the public cults of
Greek and Roman polytheism, and how these public cults differed
in general from the features of mystery religions. In parts

(04:08):
two and three we talked in detail about a couple
of specific mystery cults, and we talked first about Mythraism,
which flourished in the Roman Empire from the first to
the fourth century CE, and then also we talked about
the Elusinian mysteries based out of the Sanctuary of Demeter
and Corey. At illusis a place just west of the

(04:29):
city of Athens. Now. One of the best sources we
have found on the subject, which we've referred to throughout
the series, is a book by a historian named Hugh
Boden called Mystery Cults in the Ancient World and Huge Apologies.
I think I've been mispronouncing his last name in the
previous episodes, I was calling him Hugh Bowden, but I
listened to part of the audio book and the reader

(04:51):
there calls him Boden, So apologies, Hugh Boden.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
I also made the same mistake, though I think I
accidentally called him the correct name once, so I'll give
myself backwards congratulation for that one mess up.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
If you want to go deep on the mystery cults,
I do recommend reading this book because there's so much
more interesting stuff the Boden discusses that we didn't even
have time to get into in any way here, just
to touch on briefly some of the other things that
come up, but there are chapters on other specific mystery
cults in the ancient world, such as the cult of Isis,
the cult of Dionysus, the cults of nameless gods and

(05:30):
gods without myths, the cults of a figure known as
the Great Mother or the Mother of the Gods, and
there are just so many things. One thing that I
found really interesting in the book was there's a chapter
on what Boden calls the private initiator. Is these sort
of religious professionals who would be it would be different

(05:53):
than say the example of the cult of ill usis
where there is a cult of these secret rights that
has a sort of specific home base and people come
to the temple to take part in the mysteries. This
instead would be versions of mystery cults that are sort
of purveyed by a person who goes around claiming to

(06:13):
be a religious expert who can teach you the secrets
or can initiate you, and this figure being treated by
some authors as a kind of con artist of the
ancient world, someone of ill repute who prayed on the gullible.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
Yeah. I found this really interesting as well, in part
because about the same time I was reading this, I
also watched the season four debut of The Righteous Gemstones,
which that episode features a Civil War flashback to a
robber turned fake pastor turn perhaps real pastor in some senses,
And of course the whole series comedically pokes at the

(06:50):
line between sincere religiosity and deception.

Speaker 3 (06:54):
Right now, the book we're talking about, it's not making
the argument that all of these people in the ancient
world actually were necessarily con artists or deceivers. That's instead
that seems to be a common way they were portrayed,
and say dramas of the time.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, yeah, now, and particularly these yeah, private initiators. They
come up a few different times in the book. And indeed,
as he points out, they are called out in Plato's
Republic as the sort that quote go to rich men's
doors and make them believe that they, by means of
sacrifices and incantations, have accumulated a treasure of power from

(07:29):
the gods that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals.
So yeah, they're going they're going door to door, they'reknocking
on the right doors and saying, hey, you interested in
that whole mystery cult thing, because I have it here
with me, and we can get you where you need
to go. Or at least that's my interpretation of the

(07:49):
allegations that are made here.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Well, I mean, I feel like there's a thing that
still exists. I think a lot of quite wealthy people,
you know, there's the idea of they might have their
own personal spirit ritual advisor who's kind of you could
say in some cases, that's well, that's great, that's something
everybody should have. You know, there's somebody who that can
kind of bounce ideas off of and find sacred ways
of looking at life. But then the more cynical way

(08:13):
of looking at it is they're just looking to pay
somebody money to make them feel good about themselves.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah. Now, in reading about this, I was also reminded
of another cult of deity that I don't believe Boden
gets into in this book, or perhaps I'm just not
remembering it, and that is the deity Glicon.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
I don't remember that coming up in the book.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
This is a snake god whose cult was popular during
the second and third century. See, so you know, similar timeframe,
just some of these other cults we've been discussing. He
even pops up on some Roman coins. If you look
up at an image of Glicon, this deity tends to look
like a snake, with like long hair and maybe a

(08:55):
slightly unserpentine head and face. It's an interesting look, and
you also might be familiar with Glicon due to the
fact that writer and comics legend Alan Moore has I
think maybe partially in ingest sometimes it's kind of hard
to tell with more, but he has expressed his devotion
to Glyicon as first of all an obvious hoax and

(09:19):
secondly being a hoax less likely to become problematic and
dangerous in the way of other deities and religions.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
M yeah, sorry, I looked up the statues of Glaicon
with the hair and he looks like he's got rock
star hair.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
Yeah he really does.

Speaker 3 (09:36):
Yeah, yeah, lead singer snake.

Speaker 1 (09:39):
So criticism of Glycon's cult as a hoax goes back
to the writings of the ancient world Lucian of Samosata,
who wrote scathingly of the cult as being a creation
of Greek mystic and oracle Alexander of Avnotitus centered again,
centered around an enigmatic snake with human hair that allegedly

(10:02):
might have consisted of a live snake with like a
fake head or mask on, or perhaps a puppet of
some sort. And this cult did apparently engage in both
secrecy and overstimulating rituals. So it does seem like the
sort of cult you could loosely classify as a mystery cult, or,

(10:22):
if you're leaning into allegations of fraud here, as a
pseudo mystery cult. Yeah, and I think this is all
worth thinking about as we reflect on what we've talked
about in the previous episodes, Because, as we discussed, theatrical
effects were employed in the mystery cult initiations, it would seem.

Speaker 3 (10:43):
And strongly suspected.

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Yes, yes, And for that matter, you know, if you're
to say, okay, theatrical effects are for fine, but no puppets, puppets,
that's just a sception. Well then why shouldn't we become
complete iconoclasts and refuse religious imagery all the game? You know,
just say, well, likenesses, statues, altars, arguments can be made
that all of that as well is part of a

(11:07):
theatrical effect to create a feeling of the sacred and
so forth.

Speaker 3 (11:13):
I'd argue one of the most powerful special effects that
can be deployed by a religion is something a lot
of people wouldn't even think about as a special effect,
and that's music. Music has overwhelming emotional power and can
certainly cause people to get into ecstatic states even a
secular Even in a secular setting, you know, at concerts

(11:33):
and stuff like that, people get into ecstatic states when
they're not expecting to meet the power of a god.
Imagine you go into a powerful musical experience and you
are expecting to meet a god and experience their power. Yeah,
and so like, that doesn't even cross a lot of
people's minds that like music is a special effect designed
to sort of set you up to have a certain

(11:55):
kind of emotional vulnerability or openness to an experience, maybe
a religion of an experience or secular nature.

Speaker 1 (12:02):
That's a great point. And what's so interesting about that
point is that I myself will be I'll be quicker
to criticize a film for emotionally manipulating me with its
music than I will some sort of religious ceremony where
they're likely doing something of the same nature.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, And I think this is funny because people get
people get really excited and interested about the idea of
hallucinogenic compounds possibly being used in these ancient cults, like
you know, and we can't rule it out. They may
or may not have been. I think some of the
arguments for us we've just talked in the last episode
about how say the arguments for ergotism is being used

(12:46):
at lusis or probably not very strong. You know, you
can maybe say it's a little more possible that mushrooms
were involved, but there's not strong evidence for that. But
people are really captivated by this idea. There's a lot
less attention seems to be paid to how often music
is mentioned, and a lot of these ceremonies as being
like a key element. You know, the rights of Dionysus

(13:08):
involve ecstatic dancing on the mountain side, out in the wild,
with overwhelming loud music, shrieking and flutes and drums and singing.
I don't know, that sounds to me like its own
kind of hallucinogen in a way.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, they the rhythm of the heat.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
In fact, it comes back to a strange comparison that
Boden does make in his book. There's a part where
he talks about, I think quite convincingly notices parallels between
ecstatic religious experiences and rave culture.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
That's a great connection.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
You know.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
We also mentioned in Passing some of the ideas that
Terrence McKenna had. Terrence McKenna also was very much an
advocate of, I guess more like the sort of cy
trance culture, but adjacent to rave culture, and a part
of that very much tying that in with the sort
of the same sort of experience is that that may

(14:03):
have played a part in ancient religions. Yes, Now, coming
back to allegations of fraud in the ancient world concerning
mystery cults, especially gl I couldn't hear. We also have
to reflect on some of the things that Boden points
out regarding critics of mystery cults who would often dwell

(14:25):
on alleged spoilers regarding sacred items that are part of
the initiation, such as you know, revealing, oh it's a
grain of wheat or whatnot, you know, letting you know
what's in the secret box, and by removing the spoiler
from the context of the initiation, you know, attempting to
sort of gut punch it a little bit and say, look,
this religion is about nothing because this is what is

(14:47):
in the box.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
Yeah, exactly. So some of these claims we have of
the secret content of the mysteries come from Christian apologists
who were opposed to the mystery cults, and we're talking
about how, oh, these things are stupid. They're celebrations of error,
or sometimes they even make these weird kind of numerological
or kind of word play arguments that like, oh, actually,

(15:08):
here's why, you know, they're instead of celebrating the wisdom
of the gods, they're worshiping the error of Eve and
eating the apple or something. So, yeah, they're not a
fan of these rival religions and they're revealing the secrets
in order to lampoon them in a way.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Yeah, so we have to keep all of that in
mind when we're considering these criticisms. So on one hand,
it's possible that a cult like that of Glycans could
be considered in keeping with just theatrics of the time,
like maybe you're just dwelling a little bit too much
on the fact that, yes, they're using theatrical effects to
enhance the initiation rights of the mystery, you know. And

(15:49):
because in this particular case, the cult of Glican it
was likely a spin on already established snake cults in
the region, and it seems to have survived in some
form or re emerged after its creator's death. It's also
possible that Alexander, the creator, alleged creator of the religion
was not that different from other mystics of the time.

(16:12):
We just happened to have strong surviving criticism of him,
whereas we might not have that regarding other particular mystery cults.
On the other hand, if Alexander really was, as Lucian
charges involved in murder plots against his critics, well, then
perhaps there was something kind of singular about him, and

(16:33):
he really was a heel. I was reading a bit
more about this in an article titled Narcissistic Fraud in
the Ancient World by Stephen A. Kent. This was published
in Ancient Narrative back in two thousand and seven, and he
contends that based on what we know about Alexander from
these writings, he may well have been the sort of

(16:54):
person that we'd now classify as a malignant narcissist.

Speaker 3 (16:58):
Oh it sounds juicy, Tell me more.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Okay, Well, Lucian had a lot to say. He really
digs into this guy. I'll read a few quotes from him.
He points out that Alexander quote was tall and good looking,
really godlike, with a fair complexion, a beard that was
not very thick, hair partially natural and partially false, but
so well matched that most people couldn't tell the difference.

(17:24):
His eyes flashed like one possessed, while his voice was
very clear and pleasant. And he goes on to talk
about various other positive attributes that this guy had, and
talking about how when you met him, you believe that
this guy you know, believe you know this guy, believe
everything he's telling you is very sincere and he had
all of these gifts, but quote he used them for

(17:45):
the worst purposes, and equipped with noble instruments, he lost
no time in becoming the most accomplished of those who
have been notorious for wickedness. And he goes on to
accuse him of being quote a quack, the type who
offered magic spells and marvelous incantation, charms for love affairs,
afflictions for your enemies, discoveries of buried treasure, and inheritances

(18:08):
to estates. He also goes into detail about You're going
to be tired of winning, and then he also goes
in it goes on to discuss a little bit about
the glycon puppet in question, about first of all, Alexander
would he alleges that he would do some sort of
an act where he would chew on soap wort that

(18:28):
would cause him to foam at the mouth so that
he could fake some sort of a fit of madness,
and then also that the act of producing glycin involved
quote a snake's head made of linen. It had a
slightly human look to it and was painted to look
completely lifelike. Its mouth opened and closed by means of

(18:49):
horse hairs, and the tongue black and forked like a
snake's would shoot out, also controlled by hairs.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
So I guess I don't fully understand the spirit of
the allegation. Is it a problem that it's a puppet
or is it that like, oh, he's trying to say
it's not a puppet, it's a puppet. He's trying to
pass off as a living organism.

Speaker 1 (19:09):
Well, his criticism here, and I should add that historians
seem to agree that this is this is an actual
historic individual. It is being criticized here. Yeah, I'm to
understand the stronger criticism here is that he's a scoundrel,
But I mean, he's also accused of being a quack,
So the fakeness of what he is doing, the theatrical

(19:31):
effects are also being criticized here, And it seems like
one interpretation could be that those particular criticisms are perhaps
maybe a little unfair compared to what is probably going
on with other mystery religions of the time. However, again,
if Alexander It really is as deceptive and awful as

(19:54):
he is accused of being here, then we definitely have
to take that into account too, and maybe that's what
pushes it over the.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
Now. This could be totally off base because, as I said,
I don't know much about what Lucian is doing here.
But I wonder also could it be that a criticism
like this could be aimed at such a puppet being
in bad taste like ye, to the people of the time,
you'd have a certain kind of sensibility about what is
accept what are the acceptable special effects within a religious context,

(20:26):
and what are the not acceptable special effects the same
way that people would now, Like there are certain types
of things that people think, oh, yeah, that fits right
in at a church. Music, it fits in in most
churches in some form. That's a powerful special effect. But
there are other things that if you did them in
a church, people in our culture would probably say, like,
that's really gaudy, that's that's not the appropriate tone.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
You know.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
I wonder if something like that could be operative in
other times and places in history as well.

Speaker 1 (20:56):
Like he is, he is crossing a line that critics
are not ready for. But perhaps some of the initiates
are cool with or have come to accept or just
have a you know, a different threshold.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
For Yeah, like probably a lot of churches today would
be fine with music, but not with the pyrotechnics display
for the sermon, but I bet some some use them, probably.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
Yeah, But I mean even you know, generationally in churches,
for example, you'll have some that are like electric guitars
in a service that's just that's not done. You shouldn't
say that, and others are like, no, that's what we're
doing and that's what's bringing people in. So you know,
I think you could probably get into what might in
the long term be silly disputes about what is proper
and isn't proper given any particular religious right or service.

(21:43):
So yeah, it's I'm unsure exactly where to parse all
of the Glycin situation here. But again, the cult of
Glycon did deal in theatrics and secrets, and what Lucian
here is doing is definitely spilling some tea about the secrets.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
That brings us back to an interesting subject that I
did want to return to today. So there was a
scholar I talked about in Part three named Kevin Clinton
who wrote a chapter that dealt with the Alusinian mysteries.
And there's a part where Clinton was exploring a passage
in Aristotle making the case that the initiate who goes

(22:31):
through the secret rights at ilusis is not supposed to
learn anything. They're not there to get information, but rather
to have an experience. And then Aristotle says, and thus
by having the experience to become fit or deserving. I
interpret that as deserving of a certain kind of relationship

(22:54):
or intimacy with the gods. But this really goes against
our normal idea of a secret, doesn't it. Like when
we talk about secrets, a secret is almost always understood
to mean information kept hidden from someone. So by becoming
an initiate and going through the mystic rights, you gain

(23:16):
access to the secrets. What is hidden from others is
revealed to you. But it's emphasized over and over by
all these sources we've been talking about that the point
is not to gain information. The initiate is not expected
to learn any informational content. So why the secrecy? What
is it doing? What's the point of it? And I

(23:36):
guess when you ask why about something like secrecy, you
could mean that question in different ways. So in one sense,
you might be asking why did the people who first
decided these rights should be kept secret decide that? Like,
what motivation did they have in their minds to establish
a tradition of secrecy. It seems there's probably no way

(23:58):
to answer that question with any content evil. All you
could do is speculate, and then in a very different sense,
you could ask why the secrecy, to mean, why were
cults with secret initiation rights successful and appealing? In other words,
why do secrets work in a religious context? Why does
a cult with secrets make people want to come join it?

(24:22):
And so this got me thinking about the psychology of secrets,
which we have covered to some extent on the show before.
I think years ago, we did a at least one episode,
maybe a couple of parts about the psychological effects of
having secrets. There's definitely research about how, like having a
shameful secret, or one you perceive as shameful, causes psychological distress.

(24:46):
This shouldn't come as any surprise. It tends to lead
to feelings of isolation, to anxiety and so forth, especially
if depending on the nature and nature of the secret,
and like how it applies to say, relationships, and if
you are forced to think about the secret a lot
and stuff like that, and a lot of the psychological
studies on secrets have this kind of focus. Essentially, they're

(25:10):
about the effects of thinking about concealed personal information which
people believe would be harmful to them if discovered by others.
The classic example is the fact that you did something
morally bad or something embarrassing you hope no one ever
finds out, So now it's your secret. But when you

(25:30):
think about it that way, that's actually a very different
kind of secret than we're talking about with the mystery cults.
If I am an initiate of a mystery cults, I
am an apoptase of the Elusinian mystery. So I've gone
through initiation the second time with open eyes. I've seen
all the mystic rites of Demeter. I've witnessed something that

(25:52):
is kept secret to outsiders, and I'm not allowed to
talk about it or share it under pain of great penalty,
possibly under pain of death. I will be in a
state where I have to carry this secret with me
and I can't tell people. But there's no evidence that
there is any any feeling of shame associated with this secret.
It's not bad or damaging information, certainly not about me,

(26:15):
probably not about anyone. And in fact, there's not really
much evidence that these secrets were perceived as a burden
in any way. Also, the thing that is being kept
secret is, as best I can tell, probably not a
piece of discrete information that can easily be put into words,
like you know, one thing like that would be the

(26:37):
kinds of secrets that we trade in in regular, regular gossip.
So those kind of secrets might be like a fact
about something that somebody did you know, so and so
cheated on their spouse, or so and so lied about something.
Things like that, They're not really discrete things that you
can put into words. Instead, it seems like these secrets

(26:59):
were probably a kind of baffling, overwhelming emotional experience of sites, sounds,
strange words, strange objects and rituals that you took part
in yourself. So it would almost be as if like
the secret were not information encoded in words, but like

(27:19):
the experience of going to a concert or a great
play like we've been talking about.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
So, for instance, an example of the former would be
Bruce Wayne's secret being that he is Batman. Yeah, but
the latter would be the secret that we all might
realize that we are all Batman, something that maybe is
a little, you know, harder to really explain, but if

(27:44):
you know it, you know it well.

Speaker 3 (27:47):
It's also that that might be a good example, because
it's the kind of thing that if you just say it,
it sounds kind of banal. It's not a very interesting
thing to hear. But if you saw a great story,
like if you watched a movie that convinced you and
your gut that yes, we are all Batman, then it
would feel really powerful.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
Right, And it might might very well depend on a
sensory overload experience like seeing a really good Batman movie.

Speaker 3 (28:13):
Also, ancient writers describe the effect of being in on
the secret of a mystery cult as an extremely positive one.
It's a good thing. It doesn't feel bad, it doesn't
feel like a burden, it feels good. Instead, being in
on the secret actually unburdens you of your worries. It
allows you to go with lightness when it is time

(28:33):
to enter the land of the dead. So I was
looking to see if there's any research on positive secrets,
and indeed there have been some experiments on this. One
study I wanted to mention was by Michael Sleepian, Catherine Greenaway,
Nicholas camp and Adam Galinsky called The bright Side of
Secrecy The Energizing Effect of Positive Secrets in the Journal

(28:56):
of Personality and Social Psychology twenty twenty three. Now, the
author's here is start off by saying, like, yes, we
do often associate secrets with burdens and distress, but this
is in the scientific context. This is mainly because secrets
have been studied in cases of adverse secrets. It's stuff
we don't want people to find out about. What about

(29:17):
when people have information that they are not sharing with
other people, but it's information they feel good about.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
Yeah, yeah, this is going to be another silly example.
But I'm reminded of a stand up bit from Uparna Manchula,
who is hilarious, but she has a bit about reading
in a women's magazine, the advice that she should walk
around like she's carrying a sexy secret, and which is
on the face silly, and I believe her bit is

(29:46):
like it sounds like women's magazines are just written by spambots.
That's what she that's her interpretation. But on the other hand,
I also kind of understand what they're getting at, like
the idea of having some sort of a secret that
is not an negative secret but positive that you know
you're keeping it secret so you're not just expressing it everywhere.
But perhaps the light of that secret is shining through you.

Speaker 3 (30:09):
Instead of walking around feeling like you are in hawk
to the world by you know, the way you do
when you have a shameful secret. Having a positive secret
that you haven't shared with anyone feels like you have
a you have like a plus, you have a credit.
You know, you have a plus thing on the balance
that hasn't cleared yet.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
Yeah, So in they're abstract to the author's right. In
contrast to the prior research, five experiments total sample size
of twenty eight hundred find that positive secrets increase feelings
of energy relative to first of all content matched positive
non secrets. So it's not just that positive news increases

(30:47):
your energy, it's specifically when it is secret news, the
other thing being other pieces of unknown positive information, and
finally other kinds of secrets. So that last part might
not be surprising. But yes, positive secrets are more energizing
than negative secrets the author's right. Importantly, these energizing effects
of positive secrets were independent of positive affect We further

(31:11):
found that positive secrets are energizing because, compared to other
kinds of secrets, people keep them for more intrinsically than
extrinsically motivated reasons. That is, these secrets are more freely chosen,
more consistent with personal values, and more motivated by internal
desires than by external pressures. Using both measures and manipulations

(31:34):
of these motivations, we found that a motivational mechanism helps
explain the energizing effect of positive secrets. The present results
offer new insights into secrecy, how people respond to positive
life events, and the subjective experiences of vitality and energy.
And for a little more explication of this study, I
found a summary written for the Society for Personality and

(31:57):
Social Psychology by first author Michael Sleepian here and Sleepy
and explains their finding by first of all, by saying
a lot of times we don't keep positive news secret.
They started with a survey of five hundred people that
found when people learn good news, seventy six percent of
respondents said that the first thing they would do is

(32:17):
go tell someone. And you can almost kind of feel
that in those writings from the ancient world about the
mystery cults, where people are like, you know, I can't
tell you what the mysteries are, but I want it's
like it's really good, it's really good stuff. Like you
should go. You know, you talked to those multiple passages
where they're just exhorting readers. Go for yourself, check it out.

Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah, no spoilers, but it's wonderful.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
But in contrast to this desire to immediately share good news,
the authors found there are distinct psychological benefits to keeping
good news a secret. So the authors one way they
investigated this was they took a list of thirty eight
common types of good news uh, and they found that,
on average, people had between five and six pieces of

(33:03):
good news that they were currently keeping to themselves for
the time being. Now, you might think, well, like what
kinds of good news? What would examples be? A very
common one was a self gift. That's what the authors
call it. It's when you have bought or otherwise treated
yourself to something special. Apparently, this is a common type

(33:24):
of secret people have and they feel good about it.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
You're supposed to feel good about those. I feel bad
about this. I do too.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
Every time I'm trying to get over it. Whenever I
like get myself something nice, I feel real guilty.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Yeah yeah, same, Yeah, I'm struggle. I don't think I
have any positive secrets I'm keeping myself at the moment,
I think I've let them all out.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
Well, we'll see. We'll go down the list for a
few more common examples. What about a gift to another
person that they don't know about yet.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Yeah, none of those right now either. I'm like in
one of those periods between birthdays and okay, in mother's
days and so forth.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
How about having found something that the person was looking for.
This apparently often people are walking around feeling good about
having found the thing, but they didn't tell anybody they
found it.

Speaker 1 (34:07):
I had one of those a couple of days ago,
but then I gave it to them. So now that's tie.

Speaker 3 (34:12):
So finally completing a task. Oh, this is a common thing, right.
Oh you know, I finished writing this thing I was
working on, but I haven't talked to anybody about it.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
Okay, all right, all right, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (34:24):
So anyways, sleeping goes on to say, quote, across several studies,
we asked participants to think of a positive secret they
were keeping, and then measured their current mood and how
energized they felt in that moment. Another group of participants
were asked was asked to think of good news that
was not secret for the same types of good news.
Thinking about the secret good news was more energizing than

(34:46):
thinking about non secret good news. Thinking about positive secrets
was also more energizing than thinking about positive information that
has not been shared for other reasons, such as when
you intend to share good news with someone cannot talk
to them until later in the day. So I thought
that was a very interesting distinction to make there, at

(35:06):
least within this sample, given these controls, there's something specially
invigorating about having positive information that you specifically intend to
keep secret that you have made the choice not to
share with people, as opposed to just you haven't had
a chance to tell them yet.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
And you know it could be a sexy secret. Just
to come back to what we mentioned earlier.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
It's certainly good. So I thought this was very interesting. Obviously,
these secrets being discussed here are also not a perfect
analogy to the hidden truths of the mystery cults for
multiple reasons, some of which we've already talked about, which
I'll get to in just a minute. So it's not
exactly the same kind of thing as being in on

(35:51):
the Secret of Ilusus or any of these other cults.
But I feel like it's closer than most of the
research we look at on secrecy, which is about like
something or you believe to be shameful that you're hiding.
And I can see how this kind of I know,
this bubbling up sense of energy that comes from thinking
about the secret that is good news to you, but

(36:14):
you are choosing not to share with others. It seems
to be, as the author say, a kind of expression
of one's own intrinsic personality, like the fact that you
know this thing and others don't becomes a part of
your identity. It becomes a way of thinking about who
you are. Part of who I am is that I
know this thing and I don't express it to other people,

(36:36):
at least unless they're initiated as well. And then maybe
that creates a whole second order thing of effects of
the kind of bonding you might experience with other initiates,
people you could talk to about the secret, and that
that creates a whole other sense of bonding and you
know their social benefits there as well.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
We mentioned in passing the idea of weird fiction ideas
of cult, and it does occur to me that what
we're talking about here does match up in interesting ways
with some of the revelations that occur in weird fiction,
with those revelations being kind of an inversion of what

(37:15):
we're talking about here where I have I just went
through some serious stuff and I got a real dark
revelation about the secret nature of the universe, and it's
sanity shredding, and I probably can't tell anyone about it
or properly convey it to other people. So that's that's
the sort of the negative version of what we're talking
about here.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
And might not even be able to put it into.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Words right right, It could be the opposite is like
I just went through this amazing ritual initiation to a
strength dark God, and it was amazing. I have this
real clear cut vision of what the universe is all about.
Now I can't convey it to you in words, but
you've got to You've got to go to the cold
as well. That's the only way you're going to be
able to understand what I'm even getting at here.

Speaker 3 (37:59):
Well, in that vein, this got me thinking about another
way of framing the secrecy. What these secret rights are?
You know, it came up in the Boden book that
it is something. Of course, there are there are mystic
rights of Dionysus as well. You know, this is one
of the famous mystery religions. It is sometimes said that
the god Dionysus appears only in disguise. In fact, he

(38:22):
is often represented by a mask, and that perhaps what's
going on is that when women went out into the
wild mountain side to participate in ecstatic music and dance
and fulfill the mystic rights of Dionysus, something about that
profound experience meant that you would get to see the

(38:44):
god unmasked. You would see the true face of Dionysus,
which is always kept in disguise with everyone else. And
it struck me that this is another way of thinking
about the type of secret that is revealed here, not
as information divulged, but as either intimacy attained or true

(39:08):
form revealed, and both connect to the idea of seeing
someone uncovered, either like unmasked in the sense of true
form revealed, or disrobed in the sense of intimacy. And
I think this is often one of the most emotionally
powerful types of Hiddennis revealed, of these moments of revelation

(39:29):
that we get in storytelling or in religious ritual or
whatever you know in storytelling, if you're watching a play
or a movie when a masked character is suddenly unmasked,
and let's say, this is not like revealing them to
be some other character that we already know about. Instead,
we're just seeing somebody's face for the first time. This
might not really reveal much that can be encoded into words,

(39:53):
except maybe in a loose way by describing the face,
but it still feels like a profound type of revelation.
It's one of the most potent revelations there is. But
it's not really a clue or piece of information. It's
an experience of knowing someone. And I wonder if the
secrets of mystery cults actually felt a bit more like that.

(40:13):
It's not so much the secret password that you have learned,
though there are a few things like that, but a
masked face unmasked and is it is the face of
a god with unspeakable power over your life.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
Now, as we close out this four part look at
the Mystery Cults, it makes sense to finally discuss properly
the end of the mysteries, and in doing so, on
a briefly come back to the writings of Terence McKenna,
who We referenced Food of the Gods a little bit
in a previous episode on the Mystery Cults here and again.

(40:58):
The broader themes in the Food of the Odds concerned
the possible roles that in theogens may have played in
human evolution and the development of archaic human cultures with
a falling off and gradual descent with the advent of
Western civilization. And mckinna's does specifically point to the end

(41:18):
of the Mystery Cults as one possible watershed moment in
all of this, one that helped reinforce quote the emergence
of the anti visionary dominator style of culture and this
beginning to usher in a quote progressively more vacant, more
ego dominated world whose energies were coalescing into monotheism, patriarchy,

(41:40):
and male domination.

Speaker 3 (41:42):
Tell us what you really think, Terrence.

Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, And like I say, this is all very much
part of his archaic revival Bohemian thread messaging. And I
will again say that I do think Food of the Gods.
Whether you agree with with this some of the theories
that he's throwing out there, I do think it's it's
a better work of scholarship than some might assume, but

(42:06):
I found this commentary interesting. You know. In fact, many
of the mystery cults were centered on mother goddesses and
or their consorts Sybil in the Roman Magna Mater clled
isis Demeter and Corey, who have talked about, as well
as the mother Goddess that we alluded to just several
minutes ago. So I think a lot of what he's

(42:27):
getting at does coalesce nicely with what we're discussing here.
To bring up another theorist, sort of outside thinker that
we've talked about on the show before, I'm not going
to go down the complete bicameral bicameral mind rabbit hole.
But Julian James refers to this time period as one
in which religions that adhere to more estatic or in

(42:49):
his writings, possessive rights are falling to quote, a siege
of rationalism as Christianity picks up steam and to be clear,
changes during this time period to become an increasingly dominant religion,
certainly within the Roman Empire. M Yeah. Now, to be sure,
James was discussing all of this in his nineteen seventy

(43:11):
six book to support his theory, regarding a gradual change
in human consciousness from one of inherently experienced other voices
in the mind toward their increasing silence. You can go
back and listen to our episodes where we discussed the
bicameral mind hypothesis in greater detail whether there is any
truth to it. In the end, I do think James

(43:34):
was in part exploring some of the same changes we're
discussing here in the Manifestation of religious experiences.

Speaker 3 (43:40):
Yeah, it's been a while in that, but you know,
I do remember thinking that despite obviously I'm not convinced
of the bicameral mind hypothesis, but I remember thinking a
lot of James's peripheral insights about the smaller matters were
often quite interesting.

Speaker 1 (43:57):
Yeah, yeah, I think so. And you know, he is,
you know, getting at some major shifts and changes that
were occurring, but there are a lot of different ways
to tease apart what was happening and why Now in
in Boden's book, he of course gets into this and
discusses the end of the mystery cults. As you know,
we previously discussed the Roman Empire's relative tolerance toward various

(44:18):
religions and cults was notable. As long as they didn't
conflict with Roman authority and didn't stir up trouble with
other faiths, then you know, things were generally tolerated.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
I mean, there are other cases in the book he
talks about where other mystery religions were subject to some
regulation or suppression, say, if Roman authorities thought they were
contributing to disorder or thought that they might become a
might become sort of a launching point for political conspiracy.
In fact, I don't remember the specific example, but there

(44:50):
was one case where they limited certain cults. It might
have been ones related to Dionysus that you know, where
it was like, you can't have too many people gathering
in secret. At the same time.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
You could very well to sort of lean into Alan
Moore's interpretation of GLIC and you can imagine them being like, yeah,
this snake puppet is obviously fake. They can totally have this,
let's actually put it on some coins.

Speaker 3 (45:14):
But driving the point that you know, the Romans, what
they were mainly concerned about was like actual here and
now power. When they were concerned with stamping out other
religious stuff, it was because they perceived it as some
kind of here and now power threat exactly.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
Yeah, and you might well ask about Christian persecution during
this time period as well, you know, feeding Christians to
lions and so forth. As we've discussed on the show
before in other episodes in the past, the persecution of
Christians wasn't total and constant throughout this period. It's sort
of varied depending on who was in charge, with different fluctuations.

(45:52):
But after three thirteen CEE, Christian persecution comes to an
end and in the Roman Empire and Christianity begins to
receive active support from the Emperor Constantine the Great, and
Boden writes that this resulted in more and more converts
to Christianity, and baptism began to be seen as a

(46:13):
preliminary ritual into this new popular faith, and notably Christian
baptism began to also lose its imagistic features in Christian faith.
So he gets to this, this is an interesting thing
to think about. So we're at this time where Christianity
is gaining in popularity, mystery cults are falling away, but

(46:37):
Christianity arguably is losing its mystery cult like attributes as
it rises in popularity. So there's a lot of interesting
transitions going on here.

Speaker 3 (46:50):
Yeah, Now, one topic that often comes up is it
does seem that the decline of mystery cults, like the
general decline of Greek and Rome polytheism, is related to
the rise of Christianity. But like, what is the explanation there?
People have offered a lot of different theories over the
years what led to the success of Christianity within the

(47:12):
Roman Empire. People have tried to explain it in terms
of like particular doctrines or attributes of Christian communities. Those
arguments may have some weight to them, may not. But
one argument about the success of Christianity and the Roman
Empire that I find very persuasive is just sort of
a mathematical argument that was made, at least in one

(47:35):
case by a previous show guest, the historian bart Erman,
who's been on our show before. I interviewed him a
few years ago. He's a secular scholar of Christianity and
of the Bible and historian of this time period of
early Christianity, and he makes the point that really the
main thing Christianity had going for it in terms of
its success in the Roman Empire is that it was

(47:57):
an exclusive cult, whereas when you look at, say, look
at the other mystery cults. You will have powerful Roman
people who are bragging about how many different mystery cults
they've been initiated to. Oh yeah, I did the Alusini
and I'm Demeter, I did this one, I did that one.
Look at it. I'm racking them up. I'm becoming so accomplished.

(48:18):
And Greek and Roman polytheism was generally of that sort.
There was no need to be exclusive with one god
or another. You could do some stuff for Apollo, you
could do some stuff with Demeter, and and that was
all fine. That Christianity was kind of unique, and that
when you converted to Christianity, you you didn't just add
that on to the list of gods you had some

(48:38):
relationship with. You cut off relations with all the other gods.
So every time somebody converted to Christianity and stayed a
christian that all of the other cults lost permanently lost
and adherent and everybody that you know that flowed downstream
from their household and so forth. So it was the
exclusivity of Christianity when paired to these other religions, according

(49:01):
to Ermin's argument, which I find pretty convincing.

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Yeah, yeah, I mean you can imagine the ripples that
that creates in the religious ecosystem. Yeah, you suddenly can't
just sort of, oh yeah, I'm a member of five
different ones. No, you've got to commit. This religion wants
you to commit and settle down. And as that becomes
popular and that becomes an increasing in group, yeah, its
power just grows socially.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Right, it's like a one way valve. People are mostly
just flowing in and not back out.

Speaker 1 (49:30):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can't sort of have one foot
in and one foot out so much orly is not
as easily, not with as much social fluidity as had
been possible before. Right. A lot has been written about
the decline of mystery cults the rise of Christianity, about
the possible links between the two, especially the extent to

(49:51):
which early Christianity was in many ways a mystery cult
and how you know, arguably Christianity becomes this sort of
anti visionary religion as it rises. And one thing that
that Boden points out is that you know that a
lot of this comes down the scholarly debate often comes

(50:13):
down to, you know, the agendas of whoever's making the argument.
So Protestant voices might argue, might have argued that early
Christianity was corrupted by mystery cult influences and therefore needed correcting.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
Oh because because they're doing an anti Catholic narrative. Yeah,
so they're saying that stuff that the parts of Christianity
as practiced today that we don't approve of that came
from other religions.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
Right, right, And likewise, critics of Christianity in general, he says,
might argue that Christianity itself borrows heavily from the likes
of Mithraism, and that alone you can really get into
like a nuanced discussion of like how much of it
is Christianity potentially borrowing from Mithraism or them just sort
of like being like on the same vibe, you know,

(50:58):
and how much how much religious right is truly exclusive
to anyone given faith.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
You could also argue that Christianity need not have borrowed
from Mythraism to have similarities. They could in fact, I mean,
of course, some similarities could just be coincidences in the
way that a lot of religions have similar things, But
you could also have a common ancestor, right, a lot
of religions have common ancestors things that shared, shared rituals
and stuff are derived from traditions that are found all

(51:24):
over the place.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
Absolutely, so whatever the reason, mystery cults end up falling away,
their temples when destroyed, are sacked, are just often not rebuilt.
Things fall into ruin or disrepair and are not re repaired.

(51:49):
And Boden gets into this a bit as well, pointing
out that the rise of Christianity it doesn't completely eradicate
static religious experience. Its watch, the history of Christianity is
sprinkled with Christianistics and you know, no doubt many a
squashed heresy that leans more into a static religious experience

(52:11):
than is comfortable for the powers that be. And we
can also point to various static religious practices from say,
later Protestant movements. Snake handling is discussed in the book,
but you can also apply this lens too much in
the revival and faith healing tradition as well.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
Yeah, Boden has a long section on snake handling, where
you know, when you read about snake handling, you really
there's a lot of emphasis put on the snakes, or
maybe on the other deadly things like the drinking of poison,
And of course that is a big part of the practice,
but it's also associated with just general ecstatic frenzy. You know,

(52:51):
like a lot of these churches will have loud, powerful
music to coming back to the music once again, you know,
that gets you into a kind of trans and people
described the way like they feel like they're leaving their body,
or they feel like the Holy Spirit has entered them,
they have become another person in these loud, raucous ceremonies
where yes, dangerous, deadly things are happening, people are handling

(53:13):
venomous snakes, but it's also just it's it's a wild
array of sights and sounds.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
Yeah, and there are numerous examples of contemporary aesthetic dance
you can point to that have the same effect. I
believe speaking in tongues in some Protestant traditions that's also
brought up. So, yeah, there are various examples of religious
frenzy experienced by large groups. Boden does say that these

(53:40):
are generally discouraged in the grand arc of Christian history,
but they do exist, and you can also point to
examples of it of it in other you know, surviving
examples in other religions and contemporary faiths.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
This is not necessarily something that is backed up by
say religious anthropolgy research is just a kind of gut
feeling I have, But I would tend to think that
people who practice mystical or ecstatic religious worship stuff where
they get into an altered state of consciousness and believe
they're having direct experience of the power of the gods,

(54:17):
are sometimes perceived as dangerous by religious authorities because that
kind of experience lends itself to the production of new doctrine.
Like people, there's an idea that heresy emerges from that
kind of behavior, and not to label it as heresy
or say what doctrine is right or wrong, but I
think often new beliefs and new doctrines do come out

(54:40):
of that kind of religious behavior.

Speaker 1 (54:42):
Yeah, and again going back to what we're talking about,
doctrinal religion is very top down. The people who interpret
the words of God, the will of God, or God's
they they're at the top, and they're filtering that down
to the followers. They're going to be very much opposed
in general to the idea that anything would be bottom up,

(55:05):
that anyone at the bottom would have new revelations, and
that God or the gods would still be speaking on
any level to anyone except the top of the hierarchy.

Speaker 3 (55:16):
Well, that's right. By definition, if you're on the top
of a hierarchy, it is your job to maintain control.

Speaker 1 (55:21):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:22):
But it's also interesting that we see, you know, a
kind of top down control of some of these ancient
mystery cults, Like so the culted Eleusis was administered, but
you know, there was a religious hierarchy in place there,
and we don't know all of the secrets, but it
seems quite likely that they were inviting people in to
become initiated, to go through these rights, to have these weird,

(55:43):
powerful experiences, and then probably we're not told what it meant,
and we're just like sending people off to make their
own sense of it, which, on one hand, you would
imagine from from the point of view of somebody trying
to control a religious tradition, that seems dangerous for exactly
the reasons we've just been talking about. But that seems
like probably what was going on there, So I don't know.

(56:04):
Maybe there are other ways in which it's it's empowering
in the right ways, like it it creates the right
kind of effect that sends more and more people your
way every year, and that's a that's a fair trade
maybe from some religious hierarchy's point of view.

Speaker 1 (56:19):
Yeah. Yeah, this topic has just been so fascinating to
think about, not only in exploring how ancient peoples thought
about their faith, about their world and their place in
the universe, but also the various ways we can apply
what they seem to believe to what people believe today,

(56:41):
and also the reverse, how we can take what we
can and can't take from modern religiosity and apply to
their world. Yeah. So it's been it's been really fun
to research and record these Yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
I mean, whenever you study something like this, there is
always you always just keep catching yourself in turn cotting
what you're reading about or seeing through a lens that's
probably just too familiar, that's just too based on what
something would mean in your own cultural context, and you're
not remembering to let it be alien and ambiguous enough

(57:15):
to you because you just don't know the context well
enough to make sense.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
Of it, right.

Speaker 3 (57:20):
And and I know, whenever we do these historical topics
or topics about you know, cultures other than our own,
there's always a tendency to it's just too easy to
feel confident that you understand what something means because you
know what it would mean to you. It might not
mean that to the person involved.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
Yeah, like the snake puppet. You know, we know what
Lucian thought about it. We may have in our idea
in our head, some idea of what we would think
about it if we went to a religious service and
there was an obvious puppet. But as for the people
that were there in attendance and perhaps came back and
didn't feel, you know, ripped off by what they experienced,

(57:57):
you know, who's to say?

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Yeah, so I guess all that just to say, like,
you know, to survey the world past and present with
open eyes, but be cautious about interpreting what you see.
You might be jumping to conclusions. I know we do sometimes.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
All Right, We're going to go ahead and close the
book here on the mystery cults, but we'd love to
hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts on
the broader subject here, particular of mystery cults that we
talked about, mystery cults that we didn't talk about write in.
We would love to hear from you. Just a reminder
once more that stuff to blow your mind is primarily
a science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays

(58:36):
and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we air a short form episode,
and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
You can follow us on various social media accounts, including Instagram,
where we are STBYM podcast, So if you use that platform,
follow us there. There's activity on numerous ones right now,

(58:57):
but that one is perhaps one of the more active
ones that we're still working on getting our follower base
up on that platform again, having lost a previous version
of our Instagram account.

Speaker 3 (59:10):
And let's see what else story is now denied to us?

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Yeah, the mysteries are denied to us. I think it
was finally eradicate. Were just locked out of it for
a long time and then it was fine, it's finally gone.
But now we just have to build up the new one.
Let's see. And then where else are we? Oh, we're
on the letterbox. If you are into our Weird House
Cinema episodes, you can follow us on the letterbox where
we are a weird house. And that's a great way
to keep up with the movies that we're discussing on
Weird House Cinema.

Speaker 3 (59:33):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, this is the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.