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…

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
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

(00:36):
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

(00:59):
this series, we talked mainly about the historical context of
the mysteries and how they differed from the most common
religious practices of Greek and Roman polytheism, and then in
Part two we looked at a couple of specific examples.
We looked at Mythraism, a mystery cult that flourished in
the Roman Empire, especially among members of the Roman army,

(01:21):
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

(01:44):
of the center of ancient Athens. And we are back
today to talk.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
About more, all right.

Speaker 3 (01:50):
So in the last episode we had to leave off
in the middle of our discussion of the Eleusinian 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

(02:12):
version told in the sixth or seventh century BCE Dactylic
Hexamit 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

(02:34):
inscriptions associated with Eleusis is kidnapped to the underworld by Hades,
the god of the dead, and the grief stricken Demeter
searches for her around the world in vain. Along the way,
she has interactions with the royal family of Eleusis, including
a thwarted attempt to transform a baby prince named Demophoon

(02:55):
into an immortal, after which Demeter demands that the people
of that place build her a temple and perform special
rites for her, which they are not allowed to depart from,
ask questions about, or broadcast to the uninitiated. Eventually, in
the story the Daughter Corey or again that's the same
character as Persephone and other tellings, Corey is permitted to

(03:17):
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 2 (03:32):
Yeah, we can't stress in enough everyone, if you venture
into a spirit realm, don't eat anything.

Speaker 3 (03:37):
Yeah, exactly comes.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Up time and time again.

Speaker 3 (03:40):
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 Ki Dou
in the Nether World, where in key Dou 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.

(04:01):
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 Keto just
does it all wrong and he gets stuck. I don't
know what the other rules for persephone would have been,
apart from donate a pomegranate seed, but presumably there are
other rules as well. But anyway, we also talked last time,

(04:24):
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

(04:46):
do mention that the effect on the person who takes
part is a profound one and a positive one. To
illustrate that, I found the following passage from a dialogue
of Cis called on the Laws, where a character in
this dialogue is talking about the mysteries and says as follows,

(05:09):
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

(05:31):
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

(05:54):
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

(06:18):
what life is really about, or sort of the originating
principles of life. It makes us happier in this life,
and it makes us hope for better things after death.
And the last point has an interesting resonance. I don't
know if we alluded to this when we were talking
about the myth in full, but of course Persephone known
as Corey in the inscriptions at ilusis she is the

(06:41):
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 2 (06:53):
Yeah. Yeah, she ends up with a 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 (07:10):
Though to be fair, 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 2 (07:31):
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 rights,
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 (07:49):
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 2 (07:56):
Yeah yeah, And I think, you know, there's probably a
case to be made that 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 (08:15):
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, Bowden being an
ancient historian affiliated with King's College, London. But I also
wanted to point to a chapter in The Wily Companion

(08:37):
to Greek Religion edited by Daniel Ogden. The chapter is
called the Mysteries of Demeter and Corey, and it is
by Kevin Clinton, who is a professor emeritus of Classics
at Cornell. Both very good resources on the Elusinian mysteries,
and I'll refer back to both authors several more times. Now,
moving beyond what we've already talked about the myth and

(08:58):
the effect on people, what do we actually know and
what can we reasonably guess about the form the mysteries took?
What were these powerful rites? Well, there are some things,
the sort of public elements of the festival, the associated festival,
that we do know with a good bit of certainty,
and we'll we'll move from what we know more about

(09:18):
what we know less about. The Eleusinian mysteries were celebrated
in stages that took place at different times of the year.
So scholars think there was a primary stage of celebration
known as the Lesser Mysteries, which were held at a
place called Agrai within the city of Athens around the

(09:39):
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

(10:01):
participated in the lesser Mysteries before doing the Greater Mysteries,
and the total festival of the Greater Mysteries lasted eight
days and began with public events. So when we talk
about the secret rights, it's not like the whole thing
of the Eleusinian Mysteries were secret rights. It was just
like one sort of climactic part of the festival. It

(10:24):
was made up of the secret rights. You had lots
of public events that included sacrifices to various gods. There
was a process of preparation and purification of the initiates,
the people who wanted to be initiated into the cult,
there was a solemn march from the center of Athens
to Eleusis, and then finally you would get to the

(10:45):
secret rights inside a closed hall of initiation called the Telesterion,
which was the sort of big central building inside the
sanctuary of Demeter and Corey in Ilusis. It's hard to
say exactly when these festivals began and when they ended
in history, but we know a couple of things to
sort of set the maximal boundaries in time. While the

(11:10):
archaeological record in the area directly around the sanctuary goes
all the way back to the Bronze Age, it appears
to have been abandoned for some time around twelve hundred BCE,
and then the site was continuously occupied beginning sometime in
the eighth century BCE for hundreds of years after that,
and then we know that the rites probably continued no

(11:31):
later than the end of the fourth century CE, when
Illusis was destroyed by the Goths, and after this there
appears to have been no attempt to rebuild the sanctuary.
By this time, the Roman Empire would have been largely
Christian anyway, and you know that would have produced some
severe friction for the cult of Iluses.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
And we'll come back to the twilight of the mystery
cults here in a bit. Now.

Speaker 3 (11:58):
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
Ilusus to be initiated into the mysteries, and that in
itself kind of highlights a curious fact. While the core

(12:23):
rights themselves, the mysteries were secret and you couldn't share
them with outsiders, people would come from all over to
be initiated, so it seems that the secret rituals were
in a way more kind of open, more kind of
globally open to participation than many of the public the

(12:43):
so called public cults of the Greco Roman world would be,
which many of which were quite locally focused. So for
most of the time the mysteries existed, it seems that
anyone from anywhere was allowed to come and be initiated
as long as they met a couple of criteria. They
had to speak Greek or be a Roman later on
under the Roman Empire, and they had to have not

(13:05):
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 2 (13:14):
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 (13:26):
Yeah, I guess, I guess. The question is like, do
local people know that you committed murder?

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Right?

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Did you commit murder anywhere around Athens?

Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (13:35):
Okay? So what else do we know about what took
place around the mysteries? Here again, I'm drawing largely 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 through the Greek cities ensuring
that anyone who wanted to be able to come to

(13:57):
the mysteries 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
hi era. I'm going to say hira for now. These

(14:19):
were carried in enclosed vessels tied with a red ribbon,
and they were carried in a ceremonial procession by the
priests of Eleusis, first two Athens at the beginning of
the festival, and then back to Iluses for the end.
So what were these sacred hidden objects? That was one

(14:40):
of the secrets you don't get to know. Inside the telesterion.
The objects would probably be shown and interacted with in
some way by the initiates, but writers sympathetic to the
mysteries do not tell us what these sacred objects were.
Bowden argues that the hira were probably not stacked choose
of Demeter and Corey like you might get with other cults.

(15:02):
I mean, it would be very common for other public
cults in the Greco Roman world to have a cult
statue that you might even in some cases if it
was small enough like take out and carry in a parade.
That doesn't seem to be the case here. Instead, the
priests were probably bearing some collection of small sacred objects
which represented the goddesses in some way. One Christian writer

(15:27):
from the ancient world writing against so called heresies, claims
that the main secret object was an ear of grain.
So we don't know if this is correct or not,
but that would not be weird for grain imagery to
be used in these rituals, given the role of demeter.
It seems plausible.

Speaker 2 (15:44):
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 (15:55):
Yeah, I mean, but something we'll get into in a
minute here is you can present a a sheaf of
wheat in a much more or much less dramatic fashion.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
That's right. The presentation is everything. Yes.

Speaker 3 (16:09):
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

(16:31):
seems at least customary that people would usually go through
the lesser mysteries at Agri first. Agra is another place nearby,
sort of within the city of Athens, and people seemingly
did these other things before they went to the greater mysteries.
But it is hard to say for sure. There's a
lot we don't know about the lesser mysteries. They're kind

(16:52):
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 2 (17:15):
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.

(17:35):
They might be, you know, have more to do with
you know, human abnormalities 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

(17:58):
of this in other elements of entertainment. We kept talking
about haunted attractions or haunted houses, and one of the
big ones we have in the Atlanta area has almost
always two houses. There's the one larger house, and then
there's a smaller secondary house, which is generally like a
little harder in its horror, a lot more chainsaws and

(18:18):
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 (18:31):
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 2 (18:49):
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 enough the lesser mysteries, or
if I've done the less mysteries before, I might want
to like refresh. It's like watching season one before season
two comes out, right, you want to rewatch it? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:08):
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.

(19:28):
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 all the way. He did another
thing called the epoptica, which meant seeing the greater mysteries
for a second time. And this is another thing referenced

(19:50):
commonly in the ancient world. It seems that you were
not fully initiated until you had taken part in the
greater mysteries twice, and you had a different role. It
seems the second time you were there. I'll talk more
about that in a minute. So at the beginning of

(20:13):
the festival you get a big announcement in the Agora
of Athens, than people wishing to be initiated would go
down to the sea with a young pig, wash it
in the water, and then they would sacrifice it. And
this was in some cases done by like thousands of
initiates at a time, so you can imagine the scene
as pretty bananas. At some point, new initiates would be

(20:38):
paired with a sort of guide figure called a mystic
goo goos, essentially like a sponsor. This would be somebody
who already knew what was going on or was initiated,
who would guide the newbie in the coming rights. On
the following days, there would be more sacrifices in Athens
to the Elusinian goddesses, and then beginning later in the
history of the festival, also to a Scleep, the god

(21:00):
of healing and medicine. There was like a tradition here
involving a sacred snake, and then after several days of
preparation and sacrifices, you'd get the procession going back from
Athens to eleusis to the cult center, and this would
have one group made of priests transporting the concealed sacred
objects the Hira underguard, and then there would be another

(21:21):
group that was made up of the initiates to the cult.
And the walk between the cities was pretty long. It
was like twenty two or twenty three kilometers, and at
one special place near the end of the journey, Bowden
mentions that the initiates endured a form of ritual mockery
by onlookers called the gepherismas, which I don't know that

(21:43):
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 2 (21:54):
It's like a roast, a mini roast.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
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 seemed to be a few differences. Bowden
mentions that there was probably no cult statue of the goddesses,

(22:19):
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 was clearly rebuilt and expanded a couple of

(22:42):
times in its history. In its largest form, it could
hold thousands of people at a time, maybe like three
thousand people inside, and had a sort of tiered stadium
standing room area so that people further in the back
could see, so you can think of it as a
kind of big square theater. And then in side the
Telesterion was a smaller building called the Nacteraron, which means palace.

(23:06):
So the initiates got a day of rest after they
arrived at the sanctuary complex, and during the stay it's
not certain what they did, but they may have fasted
and possibly also consumed a prepared liquid that we talked
about in the last episode called Kukion spelled k y
k e n. Now that came up in the last

(23:28):
episode because it featured in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
That poem we talked about. The context was Demeter arrives
at King Celius's home in disguise and she is offered
wine by the Queen Medonaira, but she refuses it and
instead she drinks coukion. And that's supposed to be a
beverage or maybe a gruel made from grain, water and herbs.

(23:53):
Last time I mentioned mint, but I've also seen penny
royal indicated here. And there appear to be different versions
of kukon described in ancient literature. Sometimes it's just this
grain gruel. Sometimes it was mixed with wine and perhaps cheese.
Sometimes it is described as intoxicating in nature. Sometimes it
is not described that way. Sometimes it appears to have

(24:16):
been a mundane drink consumed by peasants, and other times,
mainly here, it seems to have deep ritual significance. And
so kokion has attracted a lot of attention, even from
people who are not primarily interested in ancient history, but
from people who are interested in questions of speculative religious pharmacology.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
That's right. Yeah, Over the past several decades there's been
a recurring question, and that question is still out there
is still battering around in contemporary literature, the question being
was cook on a psychedelic substance of some sort? And
this idea has been explored by various commentators over the years,
including Robert Graves, storian and author, Albert Hoffman, the chemist,

(25:04):
and also ethnobotanist and mystic Terrence McKenna. Specifically, I had
to bust out my copy of Terrence McKinnon's Food of
the Gods because McKennon gets into this. He points out
that the Graves Robert Graves suggested the possibility of the
psychedelic mushroom psilocybin being involved and kind of initially champion

(25:28):
this idea, while Albert Hoffman and R. Gordon Lawson presented
the theory of ergotized beer brewed from a strain of
the ergot fungus, those being two of the main sort
of theories regarding what this could have been if it
was a psychedelic substance. And there are some problems, especially
with the ergotized beer examples we'll get into, and Balbin

(25:53):
discusses some of this in the book as well. He
points out that, Okay, this is an idea that's never
been particularly well received by expert and historians, though it
continues to generate a lot of interest in scholarship, and
he outlines two primary objections, the first practical in the
second theoretical. So, first of all, the practical objection concerning

(26:15):
specific theories that the mysteries in question depended on an
ergot derived psychedelic which would have been similar to LSD.
So as a reminder, ergot doesn't contain LSD, but contains
lysergic acid as well as the precursor to LSD, Ergotyminge.
But the main problem here, the practical objection, is that

(26:36):
psychedelic doses of ergot itself would result in just terrible
illness and death rather than a temporary experience something that
you would then you know that would be this defining
moment of your life. Perhaps we did episodes on ergotism
for stuff to boil your mind back in twenty fifteen,
and yet generally it does not sound like an afternoon

(26:58):
of Enlightenment.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
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 2 (27:07):
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

(27:29):
who set out to prove by self experiment the Wasson
Hoffman theory concerning Elusius. But then he also presents a
couple of ideas that we're out there regarding, on one hand,
a particular species or erga that might yield less toxicity
and higher psychoactive results, as well as the notion presented

(27:49):
by Wasson and Hoffman that if you were to properly
macerate the argotized grain in water, you might have been
able to separate the water soluble psychoactive alkaloids. But again
McKenna stressed that the burden of proof is on those
who assert, and no one at that point and sense
has sufficiently proven any of this.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
But you can see why the example of the Lucian
mysteries would be incredibly appealing to people who have a
general theory that like psychedelics play some major role in
the establishment of religious practices.

Speaker 2 (28:22):
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. But his discussion of

(28:43):
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 mckinna, you're dealing with someone who
was a visionary, animistic and definitely has some key arguments

(29:05):
for the about the trajectory of human civilization, what has
gone wrong and what needs to be corrected, a number
of opinions that I don't think are really all that
off track. But we also shouldn't like overstate what Food
of the Gods is compared to other works of dedicated scholarship.
And I mean he does stress that again, there are

(29:25):
a number of mysteries in play here, including just you know,
what are we talking about here? Was it even something tangible?
He references an example that was presented by Wilson and
Hoffman in their thesis and all of this that there's
this four fifteen BCE example in which an Athenian noble,

(29:46):
a noble that we're going to come back to that
is sometimes described as quote a flamboyant Athenian playboy. His
name is Alcibiades, and he's recorded as having been fine
for bringing the Eleusinian sacrament home for entertainment purposes with friends.
And the argument here is, well, this would seem to

(30:07):
suggest that it was not only tangible, but perhaps something
entertaining in and of itself. Now, the theoretical objection to
psychedelic theories concerning the kokion is referenced by Bowden. The
theoretical objection basically blows down to the fact that drugs
are not strictly necessary for these rights as we understand them.

(30:29):
The ancient Greeks had plenty other tricks up their sleeves
to create the experience, many based in performance and even
mechanical theatrical effects, and so he stresses that even say,
the nocturnal bachic revels of the Dionysus mystery cults might
not have depended on wine. So if wine wasn't needed

(30:52):
for the revels of bacchus, then do we really need
psychedelic substances for these to work? That being that they
might have had wine. And it's also very possible that
the rights were discussing here involve substances of one form
or another, either as a whole or at different points
that they were laid out. But I think this is

(31:16):
an excellent point about and raise this, and I think
one way to think about it is to think about
another like the modern version of like the spectacle that
we indulge in with other people, that being going to
a concert, like think of a big concert you went,
or even a small concert, just a noteworthy concert you
went to. If you've been to a concert at all

(31:36):
over the past, I don't know, several decades, no doubt
you've encountered folks that have imbibed in say alcohol that
is generally sold freely at most of these events, or
perhaps individuals who've imbibed in some level of illicit drug use,
be it you know, simple marijuana or some psychedelic or stimulant.

(31:57):
And you know, the question that raises is okay, well,
is the resulting mental state from taking any of these
substances going to enhance the experience of the show. Well,
certainly a strong a case or a strong case can
be made, like even if you're just talking about, Hey,
I had a cup of coffee to help keep me
awake until the headliner came on. Fair enough, But is

(32:18):
any of this strictly necessary for a great time? And
I realized that this sounds like a question posed in
a dare program from high school for many people. But
if we think about it logically, I think it works out.
You know, all the technical, theatrical, social aspects of a
concert are in place. They're generally very potent. You've probably

(32:41):
bought that ticket and gone out to the show because
you already have some invested interest in the spectacle. And
as such substances they might be helpful in one regard
or another, they might enhance things, but the spectacle is
already the spectacle, the lights, the music, the communal energy,
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (33:00):
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 2 (33:06):
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

(33:29):
you if you did go to a Prohibition era speakeasy,
you know, kudos to you for being up on podcasts
and so forth. But you know, it's like there's generally
this level of like, oh I had to go through
a secret door to get into this bar. You know,
it just makes everything all the more exciting.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
Right, I want to come back to that in a
minute here.

Speaker 2 (33:46):
So Abouden writes, quote, if we are to look for
an external explanation for the Elusinian experience, the theater seems
a better place to look than the kitchen or brewery.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
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 2 (34:06):
Right, and it does create As McKenna pointed out, an
additional burden of proof is that is required. Now. I
looked at some more recent articles exploring the various psychedelic
theories regarding the Lyusinian mysteries, and you do see proponents
still arguing that some of these theories, at least the

(34:27):
psychotropic mushroom one, the mushroom theory, seems to be more
valid and less fraught with complications compared to the aragot beer.
You know that one may be in the mix still,
but at the end of the day, all we can
really do is speculate, and again it just adds an
additional level of evidence that would be required, evidence that

(34:49):
we do not have, but certainly more possible, fewer complications
than saying maybe it was aliens by all means.

Speaker 3 (35:06):
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.

(35:27):
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.

(35:50):
But we have some clues. So there are ancient references
to the mysteries inside the Telesterion as quote things, things shown,
and things said, which is sort of vague, but that
still tells you a bit. It suggests there is a
visual display things shown, a physically enacted element, things done,

(36:13):
and a recited element things said aloud. The second to
third century Christian Church father Clement of Alexandria claims that
initiates to the Eleusinian mysteries had to recite a kind
of passphrase which translates too. I fasted, I drank the kookion,
I took from the chest, and having worked with the

(36:36):
sacred implements, I removed them into the basket and from
the basket into the chest. Which that last part sounds like, oh,
the kind of activity that would just thrill my toddler
right now. Is that a common thing for kids at
this age?

Speaker 2 (36:51):
I don't know, 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 (37:00):
Right, so out of this box, into that box and
then back again.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:05):
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

(37:28):
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 Alcibiades, the fifth century
BCE Athens based general who he got in trouble because
the deal was he was like right about to head

(37:49):
off for a naval campaign to Sicily, so they're getting
ready to go to launch this expedition, and suddenly he
is accused by enemies of having revealed the mysteries of
Eleusis to non initiates, and in fact, the idea was
not just that he told secrets, but that he sort
of privatized the mysteries by recreating them in his house

(38:12):
with non initiated guests. I was trying to figure out,
like what exactly was the spirit of this recreation of
the mysteries, Like was he was he trying to get
his own mysteries going, or was it in a spirit
of mockery or irony. I'm not quite sure there.

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Or kind of like being It could have been a
sense of he was like just a superfan. He's like,
I love this stuff so much, you know, he's just
s geeking 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 (38:46):
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 profane
and the secret rights, the gods are going to work
their wrath on him with defeat in battle. And so

(39:07):
maybe 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,

(39:30):
in translation quote, the initiates are not supposed to learn anything,
but rather to experience and to be disposed in a
certain way, that is, becoming manifestly fit or deserving. So
the cult has secrets which are only revealed to initiates.

(39:51):
But according to Aristotle at least, and I trust he
probably knew what he was talking about, the initiates are
not supposed to learn any thing. That's not the point.
Coming back to something we talked about in an earlier part,
that the point of the cult is not an information puzzle.
It's not to learn the secret password. Instead, you are
supposed to have an experience. And even more interestingly about

(40:16):
what Aristotle says here, You're supposed to have an experience
and by virtue of that experience to become worthy. Now,
according to Clinton, the Greek word Aristotle uses for experience
here does mean what we mean by experience, but it
also means to suffer. And Clinton argues that the secrecy

(40:38):
of the mystery cults was not originally understood as the
point of them. Rather, it came to be perceived as
a defining aspect of them, sort of because of the
drama it implied, especially to non initiates, and because of
the severe penalties for violation of those secrets. It seems
this wasn't the case always is, because you can find counterexamples.

(41:01):
But it looks like, at least in some cases, the
punishment was supposed to be death. So, given the assumption
that the mystery cult was not actually about secrecy, the
secrecy was not the point, Clinton asks an interesting question quote,
we may then legitimately ask what actually was the point

(41:23):
of the secrecy? But first one must consider what is
so special about a secret? A secret is a fact
or a representation of a human act that cannot be
disclosed beyond a certain group. What could be so exciting
about a fact or an act that could draw thousands
of people from all over the Greek world each year

(41:43):
to the mysteria? And of course we do get some
attempts in the ancient world to kind of frame the
secret of the Elusinian mysteries as something that would be
concealed for a reason of it being i don't know,
scandalous or titillating. And some of these reports come from
from early Christian writers, and that kind of makes sense,
like they would be maybe hostile to other religious practices

(42:06):
and not worried about profaning them. But it's also unclear
how accurate these these claims are and whether we should
believe their descriptions. But one example is that Clinton mentions
that some Christian authors claimed the big secret of the
Elysian mysteries is you got to watch a priest and
a priestess have sex.

Speaker 2 (42:26):
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 (42:37):
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

(42:58):
about another, And there were of slander's going the opposite
way too, Slanders Greek and Roman polytheists accused Christians of
being immoral, of engaging in cannibalism and incest and all
kinds of stuff.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
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, right?

Speaker 3 (43:21):
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 that which we receive as common knowledge feels trivial,

(43:42):
that which is hidden and is 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

(44:03):
know that got me thinking, like, I don't mean to
insult the mysteries by this or profound religious experiences in general,
but I kind of can't help make the comparison to
a common sort of influencer who exists today that I
would characterize as like the influencer mystic, a person who

(44:23):
ostensibly traffics in insights somebody who is out there and
maybe they've got media channels or whatever, and they do
commentary and analysis or life advice. But their insights, at
least as I judge, might not be especially interesting or
seem especially valid if they were just presented in written

(44:44):
form or paraphrased into plain language. But this kind of
influencer mystic can achieve a fan base because they're able
to talk in a way that makes whatever they're saying
feel like a great occult secret is being unearthed, and
by listening to them, you are the first witness to
an unveiling of truths, which is an intoxicating feeling if

(45:06):
somebody can pull it off. And so, of course I'm
speaking with a little bit of derision about these modern examples,
but you could also, at the same time use the
theatrics of the unveiled secret to increase the salience of genuine,
profound insights and experiences. So I'm not suggesting the Eleusinian
mysteries were necessarily hollow at their core or anything like that. Again,

(45:28):
there's just a lot we don't know about their core.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
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

(45:51):
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 (46:09):
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

(46:30):
curtain now.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
I think the place, weirdly enough, where it is often
the most respected is in terms of narrative storytelling, particularly
with movies and the idea of no spoilers. You know,
not only don't spoil this for me, but I think
more profoundly, when you have an experience where there's some
sort of a film out there and either is particularly

(46:51):
well crafted or it does involve a particularly innovative twist
or effective twist, or an emotional twist, and people will stress,
don't read the spoilers, go into this without you know,
don't watch the trailer, go into it so that everything
is a surprise, you know. Outside of that, like, there's
not much that we're we're we generally engage in where
we're open to that sort of experience. I mean, I

(47:13):
guess in some respects we are like like, you know,
some one might say, have a child. You don't know
how this is going to turn out, but you're in
the long run, it's gonna be it's gonna be a surprise.
There's gonna be some twists you're not expecting. It's true,
but you know, the parenthood and movies, those are the
two examples that come to mind. But when it comes
to religion, we're more of the mind, well, what are
they believe in? Give me a list? Is there a

(47:34):
Holy book? All right? I'm gonna skip to the end
is maybe there's some cliff notes on it and so forth.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
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 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

(48:04):
have clear meaning and function. You can kind of have
a systematic explanation of what the purpose and meaning of
the rituals are, versus what's known as the imagistic model
of religious practice, where rituals tend to be rare, strange,
high intensity, and more ambiguous in terms of meaning. Maybe

(48:26):
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.

(48:48):
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

(49:09):
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

(49:31):
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,

(49:53):
initiates may have been blindfolded or shrouded with a hood.
Ancient authors make reference to something about this where they
would probably be guided by their mystagogue, you know, the
more experienced guide would would show them the way to
go while they were baffled, and you know, and they
didn't know where to go, stumbling around in the dark,

(50:13):
and all of this before the initiates were eventually made
aware somehow of the reunion of mother and daughter of
Demeter and Corey at the end of the myth, and
then finally brought into the hall, like coming out of
the darkness into a hall brightly illuminated by torches for
a celebration and revealing of things hidden. Now again, those

(50:36):
last parts are they seem reasonable based on what we know,
but we don't know for sure. That's the form it took.
Torches seem to play a role. There are a lot
There are a lot of mentions of darkness and blindfoldedness
and agony and struggles in the darkness and then coming
into the light.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
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, as a rural
southern church affiliated haunted house. And at the end, as
you wandered or perhaps rushed out of the darkness, pursued

(51:15):
by chainsaws and the like, where do you enter into
you enter into a tent where a preacher is then
going to speak to you and sell you on eternal
salvation and of course the alternatives that you just witnessed
in the Haunted House.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
Yeah, so 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,

(51:53):
but I think it's fair to say usually 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

(52:15):
of the mysteries is a persuasive one that you need
to like join the cult of ill usis though. I mean,
I guess the people who are who go through as
mistas the first time, and this is a distinction the
first time you are initiated to the mysteries. You were
known as mistys or mistace, a term which seems to
derive from the concept of having one's eyes closed, and

(52:38):
then you would usually come back a second time and
then you would be known as epop dase, which means
look or viewer. So there is a kind of return
and the difference between those terms is interesting too, by
the way, because the difference between like mistace meaning eyes
closed and a pop dase meaning looking or viewing, that

(52:59):
could of course be little role like maybe the first
time you do it you are blindfolded or hooded, and
the second time you can look, or maybe there are
particular elements that two time initiates are particular permitted to
look upon the first time initiates or not. But this
difference could also just refer to a kind of metaphorical
perspective on what is happening, the same way that we

(53:19):
say to have previous experience with something is to go
into it with open eyes.

Speaker 2 (53:27):
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 wish. But this
also reminds me of the way that some parents approach
Santa Claus and Christmas traditions, the idea being that instead

(53:51):
of just not doing them, or trying to keep the
myth and the or the fiction of Santa Claus going
like well beyond it's a healthy phase, instead you kind
of break it down like this, where it is kind
of treated like a mystery when the child is young,
and then when the child reaches a certain age, it's like,

(54:11):
now you were part of the mystery, and now you
can help create this mystery for perhaps younger siblings, other
young people you know in the family or in the community,
and so forth. And perhaps this is like a less
doctrinal example compared to the Haunted House thing, because I
guess there's not really a doctrine regarding Santa that is

(54:33):
being pursued in the long run, though it is of
course more certainly like narrative and so forth. And I
guess perhaps the Santa Claus example is better than the
Haunted House example because Santa Claus, there's not really a
doctrine there that we're trying to drive home into children
aside from be good or else, I guess.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
Yeah, Oh, but I guess I got sidetracked there talking
about the mistakes versus the apoptaes 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 Usinian mysteries,
it's like the experience is the point. It's not just

(55:10):
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 to the

(55:32):
soul at the end of life. But he's sort of saying,
you know, what happens to the soul at the end
of life is much like what you all know happens
after you're initiated into the mysteries. And to be clear,
he doesn't say specifically he's talking about the Eleusinian mysteries,
but he probably is. These were the most famous. So
what Plutarch says is quote wandering astray in the beginning,

(55:54):
tiresome walkings in circles, some frightening paths in darkness that
lead nowhere. Then, and immediately before the end, all the
terrible things, panic and shivering and sweat and bewilderment. And
then some wonderful light comes to meet you. Purer regions
and meadows are there to greet you with sounds and
dances and solemn sacred words and holy views. And they're

(56:17):
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.

Speaker 2 (56:35):
Oh wow, So.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
That square somewhat with what we've already talked about, 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

(56:59):
I also like that the first half of this passage,
where it seems to be more describing, just in general
and emotional terms, what the experience of going through the
mysteries is like. And it's one that begins with confusion, bafflement,
exhaustion and suffering and ends with hope and cathartic relief.

(57:29):
And so I guess this brings us to the question
of what did the mysteries mean to the people who
practiced them Abouten explores this at length in his book Discussing.
As we've already alluded to the possibility that the meaning
of the mysteries was not made explicit. Instead, like the
standard model of the imagistic mode of religion, it's sort

(57:52):
of left ambiguous. It invites participants to reflect later and
contemplate to figure out for themself what it means. And
that's very interesting to me too, because I mean, a
huge part actually of what religion is, at least in
my experience, is exegesis on what things mean. It's like,

(58:12):
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

(58:32):
of religion today. You know, they want to understand how, what,
why we do it? What how to make sense of it?
But this version of religion may have been a kind
of different one where it's like, instead, you witness something
and you go through something that is strange and overwhelming
and powerful, and then you're kind of just sent home

(58:52):
to make your own sense of it.

Speaker 2 (58:54):
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

(59:16):
you won't forget it.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
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

(59:38):
goddess in suffering parentheses, an extraordinary state for a Greek
god or goddess, joy that accompanies the appearance of grain,
the grain that is plutos, meaning wealth, the agrarian prosperity
that sustains family and clan, all simple things that at
the same time had profound signs magnificance. The impact lay

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

(01:00:22):
greater mysteries and experiencing it and seeing what it means.
But this kind of makes me think about it from
the point of view of the priesthood. Say you are
a hierofant or you're one of the people whose job
it is to put on the show of the Eleusinian mysteries,
it seems actually there's quite a burden. There's quite a
burden to put on a good show because people are

(01:00:45):
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

(01:01:05):
other situations probably do feel a similar kind of obligation.
But it again made all the more alluring in this
case because of the power of the secrecy, because there
I think, we still don't know. There's some things we
don't know. We don't know exactly what they were doing,
and it's like it's agonizing. You want to know, but
we can't.

Speaker 2 (01:01:25):
Yeah, we want it all laid out, Like from a
historical standpoint, from an anthropology of religion standpoint, we want
to know 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,

(01:01:45):
but we have decided we will come back with at
least a fourth episode on the Mystery Cults, and it
may not be the next episode of Stuff to Blow
your mind, It may occur after that. So in the
not too distant future, you will under a fourth episode
and we'll continue this fascinating discussion. There are so many
different mystery cults and we're not going to be able

(01:02:06):
to discuss all of them, and we're of course not
going to get into everything that Balden discusses in his book. Again,
we do highly recommend you check that out if you
are interested in the topic. The title of that book again,
his Mystery Cults in the Ancient World by Hugh Bowden.
In the meantime, we'd like to remind everyone that's Stuff
to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,

(01:02:27):
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 (01:02:38):
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 1 (01:03:00):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.