Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamba, and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: the fourth and final part in our discussion of the
Speaker 3: mystery cults of the ancient Greco Roman world. We had
Speaker 3: a break in the series on Tuesday of this week
Speaker 3: to air a conversation that we had about Amphibians with
Speaker 3: Mark Mandica of the Amphibian Foundation in Atlanta, and now
Speaker 3: we're back to finish our business with the mysteries.
Speaker 2: Yeah. By the way, we also aired the interview because
Speaker 2: I was out of town to attend the iHeart Podcast
Speaker 2: Awards in Austin at south By Southwest. We were nominated
Speaker 2: for Best Science Podcast, which was awarded to Ali Ward's Ologies.
Speaker 2: Well deserved and I got to chat with her briefly,
Speaker 2: which was nice. But seeing is how our nomination might
Speaker 2: have some new eyes on Stuff to Book Your Mind.
Speaker 2: You might be wondering, well, why is a science podcast
Speaker 2: talking about mystery cults and religion. Well, we talk about
Speaker 2: a lot of things here on Stuff to Believe Your Mind.
Speaker 2: We consider ourselves a science and culture podcast, with science
Speaker 2: being the underlying bedrock, but we do explore topics that
Speaker 2: veer into historical, philosophical, mythic, and folkloric areas as well.
Speaker 2: And if you are new to the show, that's just
Speaker 2: happens to be where you're coming in. We should also
Speaker 2: let you know this is part four of a four
Speaker 2: part series, so there's that as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when this many syllables are allowed, I call us
Speaker 3: an interdisciplinary science podcast. We try to bring most things
Speaker 3: back to science in one way or another, but we
Speaker 3: like to connect to lots of other topic domains.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know, if you ask me in an
Speaker 2: elevator what I do for a living, and I say
Speaker 2: podcast host, and you ask what kind of podcasts, I
Speaker 2: may just go ahead and just say science podcast and
Speaker 2: that is still accurate.
Speaker 3: Now, I guess we should do a brief refresher on
Speaker 3: the first three parts of this series, which in the
Speaker 3: previous weeks. The subject once again is the mystery cults
Speaker 3: of the ancient Mediterranean, which are defined primarily by their
Speaker 3: emphasis on secret mystic rites of initiation. So whereas you'd
Speaker 3: have the public cults of the Greco Roman world, they
Speaker 3: would be mostly built around a transactional system of sacrifice
Speaker 3: and rituals performed by people in the expectation that the
Speaker 3: gods would give them blessings in return. I do sacrifices
Speaker 3: and rituals for you. You give me blessings for the
Speaker 3: for outcomes in war, for outcomes in health, for the harvest,
Speaker 3: and so forth. And by contrast, the mystery cults seem
Speaker 3: to be driven by the need to create intense, emotionally
Speaker 3: powerful religious experiences. Experience is brought on by participation in
Speaker 3: these occult initiation rituals, which are all the more fascinating
Speaker 3: to us, certainly as consumers across the divide history, but
Speaker 3: also fascinating to people even at the time, to outsiders
Speaker 3: at the time, because these rites were kept secret from
Speaker 3: non initiates. So in some cases historians have some strong
Speaker 3: guesses about what went on in the mysteries, and in
Speaker 3: other cases we really don't know much at all, and
Speaker 3: that just makes it all the more fascinating now and
Speaker 3: back then as well. So in Part one of this series,
Speaker 3: we primarily talked about the social and religious context in
Speaker 3: which the mystery cults existed, and many of the features
Speaker 3: of the public cults of Greek and Roman polytheism and
Speaker 3: how these public cults differed in general from the features
Speaker 3: of mystery religions. In parts two and three, we talked
Speaker 3: in detail about a couple of specific mystery cults, and
Speaker 3: we talked first about mythraism, which flourished in the Roman
Speaker 3: Empire from the first to the fourth century CE, and
Speaker 3: then also we talked about the Elusinian mysteries based out
Speaker 3: of the Sanctuary of Demeter and Corey at ill Uses,
Speaker 3: a place just west of the city of Athens.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 3: One of the best sources we have found on the subject,
Speaker 3: which we've referred to throughout the series, is a book
Speaker 3: by a historian named Hugh Boden called Mystery Cults in
Speaker 3: the Ancient World and Huge Apologies. I think I've been
Speaker 3: mispronouncing his last name. In the previous episodes. I was
Speaker 3: calling him Hugh Bowden, but I listened to part of
Speaker 3: the audio book and the reader there calls him Boden,
Speaker 3: So apologies, Hugh Boden.
Speaker 2: I also made the same mistake, though I think I
Speaker 2: accidentally called him the correct name once, so I'll give
Speaker 2: myself backwards congratulation for that one mess up.
Speaker 3: If you want to go deep on the mystery cults,
Speaker 3: I do recommend reading this book because there's so much
Speaker 3: more interesting stuff the Boden discusses that we didn't even
Speaker 3: have time to get into in any way here just
Speaker 3: to touch on briefly some of the other things that
Speaker 3: come up, but there are chapters on other specific mystery
Speaker 3: cults in the ancient world, such as the cult of Isis,
Speaker 3: the cult of Dayanai, the cults of nameless gods and
Speaker 3: gods without myths, the cults of a figure known as
Speaker 3: the Great Mother or the Mother of the Gods, and
Speaker 3: there are just so many things. One thing that I
Speaker 3: found really interesting in the book was there's a chapter
Speaker 3: on what Boden calls the private initiator, is these sort
Speaker 3: of religious professionals who would be It would be different
Speaker 3: than say the example of the cult of ill Usus,
Speaker 3: where there is a cult of these secret rights that
Speaker 3: has a sort of specific home base and people come
Speaker 3: to the temple to take part in the mysteries. This
Speaker 3: instead would be versions of mystery cults that are sort
Speaker 3: of purveyed by a person who goes around claiming to
Speaker 3: be a religious expert who can teach you the secrets
Speaker 3: or can initiate you, and this figure being treated by
Speaker 3: some authors as a kind of con artist of the
Speaker 3: ancient world, someone of ill repute who preyed on the gullible.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I found this really interesting as well, in part
Speaker 2: because about the same time I was reading this, I
Speaker 2: also watched the season four debut of The Righteous Gemstones,
Speaker 2: which that episode features a Civil War flashback to a
Speaker 2: robber turned fake pastor turned perhaps real pastor in some senses,
Speaker 2: And of course the whole series comedically pokes at the
Speaker 2: line between sincere religiosity and deception.
Speaker 3: Right now, the book we're talking about, it's not making
Speaker 3: the argument that all of these people in the ancient
Speaker 3: world actually were necessarily con artists or deceivers. That's instead
Speaker 3: that seems to be a common way they were portrayed
Speaker 3: and say dramas of the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, now, and particularly these yeah, private initiators. They
Speaker 2: come up a few different times in the book, and indeed,
Speaker 2: as he points out, they are called out in Plato's
Speaker 2: Republic as the sort that quote go to rich men's
Speaker 2: doors and make them believe that they, by means of
Speaker 2: sacrifices and incantations, have accumulated a treasure of power from
Speaker 2: the gods that can expiate and cure with pleasurable festivals.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they're going they're going door to door, they'reknocking
Speaker 2: on the right doors and saying, hey, you interested in
Speaker 2: that whole mystery cult thing, because I have it here
Speaker 2: with me and we can get you where you need
Speaker 2: to go. Or at least that's my interpretation of the
Speaker 2: allegations that are made here.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I feel like there's a thing that
Speaker 3: still exists. I think a lot of quite wealthy people,
Speaker 3: you know, there's the idea of they might have their
Speaker 3: own personal spiritual advisor who's kind of you could say
Speaker 3: in some cases that's well, that's great, that's something everybody
Speaker 3: should have, you know, there's somebody who that can kind
Speaker 3: of bounce ideas off of and find sacred ways of
Speaker 3: looking at life. But then the more cynical way of
Speaker 3: looking at it is they're they're just looking to pay
Speaker 3: somebody money to make them feel good about themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, in reading about this, I was also reminded
Speaker 2: of another cult of deity that I don't believe Boden
Speaker 2: gets into in this book, or perhaps I'm just not
Speaker 2: remembering it, and that is the deity Glicon.
Speaker 4: I don't remember that coming up in the book.
Speaker 2: This is a snake god whose cult was popular during
Speaker 2: the second and third century CE, so you know, similar
Speaker 2: timeframe to some of these other cults we've been discussing.
Speaker 2: He even pops up on some Roman coins. If you
Speaker 2: look up at an image of Glicon, this deity tends
Speaker 2: to look like a snake with like long hair and
Speaker 2: maybe a slightly unserpentine head and face. It's an interesting look.
Speaker 2: And you also might be familiar with Glicon due to
Speaker 2: the fact that writer and comics legend Alan Moore has
Speaker 2: I think maybe partially ingest sometimes it's kind of hard
Speaker 2: to tell with more, but he has expressed his devotion
Speaker 2: to Glicon as first of all, an obvious hoax and
Speaker 2: secondly being a hoax less likely to become problematic and
Speaker 2: dangerous in the way of other deities in religion. Mm.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, I looked up the statues of like On
Speaker 3: with the hair and he looks like he's got rock
Speaker 3: star hair.
Speaker 2: Yeah he really does.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, lead singer snake.
Speaker 2: So criticism of Glycan's cult as a hoax goes back
Speaker 2: to the writings of the ancient world Lucian of Samosata,
Speaker 2: who wrote scathingly of the cult as being a creation
Speaker 2: of Greek mystic and oracle Alexander of Avenotitus, centered again,
Speaker 2: centered around an enigmatic snake with human hair that allegedly
Speaker 2: might have consisted of a live snake with like a
Speaker 2: fake head or mask on, or perhaps a puppet of
Speaker 2: some sort. And this cult did apparently engage in both
Speaker 2: secrecy and overstimulating rituals. So it does seem like the
Speaker 2: sort of cult you could loosely classify as a mystery cult,
Speaker 2: or if you're leaning into the allegations of fraud here,
Speaker 2: as a pseudo mystery cult. Yeah, and I think this
Speaker 2: is all worth thinking about as we reflect on what
Speaker 2: we've talked about in the previous episodes, Because, as we discussed,
Speaker 2: theatrical effects were employed in the mystery cult initiations, it
Speaker 2: would seem.
Speaker 4: And strongly suspected.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, And for that matter, you know, if you're
Speaker 2: to say, okay, theatrical effects are for fine, but no puppets,
Speaker 2: pupp that's just a sception. Well then why shouldn't we
Speaker 2: become complete iconoclasts and refuse religious imagery altogether? You know,
Speaker 2: just say, well, likenesses, statues, altars. Arguments can be made
Speaker 2: that all of that as well is part of a
Speaker 2: theatrical effect to create a feeling of the sacred and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: I'd argue one of the most powerful special effects that
Speaker 3: can be deployed by a religion is something a lot
Speaker 3: of people wouldn't even think about as a special effect,
Speaker 3: and that's music. Music has overwhelming emotional power and can
Speaker 3: certainly cause people to get into ecstatic states even a
Speaker 3: secular Even in a secular setting, you know, at concerts
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, people get into ecstatic states when
Speaker 3: they're not expecting to meet the power of a god.
Speaker 3: Imagine you go into a powerful musical experience and you
Speaker 3: are expecting to meet a god and experience their power. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so like that doesn't even cross a lot of
Speaker 3: people's minds. That like, music is a special effect designed
Speaker 3: to sort of set you up to have a certain
Speaker 3: kind of emotional vulnerability or openness to an experience, maybe
Speaker 3: a religious of an experience or secular nature.
Speaker 2: That's a great point. And what's so interesting about that
Speaker 2: point is that I myself will be I'll be quicker
Speaker 2: to criticize a film for emotionally manipulating me with its music,
Speaker 2: then I will some sort of religious ceremony where they
Speaker 2: are likely doing something of the same nature.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think this is funny because people get
Speaker 3: people get really excited and interested about the idea of
Speaker 3: hallucinogenic compounds possibly being used in these ancient cults, like
Speaker 3: you know, and we can't rule it out.
Speaker 4: They may or may not have been.
Speaker 3: I think some of the arguments for us We've just
Speaker 3: talked in the last episode about how say the arguments
Speaker 3: for ergotism is being used at elusis or probably not
Speaker 3: very strong.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: You could maybe say it's a little more possible that
Speaker 3: mushrooms were involved, but there's not strong evidence for that.
Speaker 3: But people are really captivated by this idea. There's a
Speaker 3: lot less attention seems to be paid to how often
Speaker 3: music is mentioned, and a lot of these ceremonies as
Speaker 3: being like a key element.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: The rights of Dionysus involve ecstatic dancing on the mountain
Speaker 3: side out in the wild with overwhelming loud music, shrieking
Speaker 3: and flutes and drums and singing. I don't know, that
Speaker 3: sounds to me like its own kind of hallucinogen.
Speaker 4: In a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have the rhythm of the heat.
Speaker 3: In fact, it comes back to a strain comparison that
Speaker 3: Boden does make in his book. There's a part where
Speaker 3: he talks about, I think quite convincingly notices parallels between
Speaker 3: ecstatic religious experiences and rave culture.
Speaker 2: That's a great connection. You know. We also mentioned in
Speaker 2: Passing some of the ideas that Terrence McKenna had. Terrence
Speaker 2: McKenna also was very much an advocate of, I guess
Speaker 2: more like the sort of cy trance culture, but adjacent
Speaker 2: to rave culture, and a part of that, very much
Speaker 2: tying that in with the sort of the same sort
Speaker 2: of experiences that that may have played a part in
Speaker 2: ancient religions. Yes, now coming back to allegations of fraud
Speaker 2: in the ancient world concerning mystery cults, especially gly couldn't hear,
Speaker 2: we also have to reflect on some of the things
Speaker 2: that Boden points out regarding critics of mystery cults who
Speaker 2: would often dwell on alleged spoiler regarding sacred items that
Speaker 2: are part of the initiation, such as you know, revealing
Speaker 2: oh it's a grain of wheat or whatnot, you know,
Speaker 2: letting you know what's in the secret box, and by
Speaker 2: removing the spoiler from the context of the initiation, you know,
Speaker 2: attempting to sort of gut punch it a little bit
Speaker 2: and say, look, this religion is about nothing, because this
Speaker 2: is what is in the box.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So some of these claims we have of the secret
Speaker 3: content of the mysteries come from Christian apologists who were
Speaker 3: opposed to the mystery cults, and we're talking about how, oh,
Speaker 3: these things are stupid, they're celebrations of error, or sometimes
Speaker 3: they even make these weird kind of numerological or kind
Speaker 3: of word play arguments that like, oh, actually, here's why
Speaker 3: you know they're they're instead of celebrating the wisdom of
Speaker 3: the gods, they're worshiping the error of Eve and eating
Speaker 3: the apple or something. So so, yeah, they're not a
Speaker 3: fan of these rival religions, and they're revealing the secrets
Speaker 3: in order to lampoon them in a way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we have to keep all of that in
Speaker 2: mind when we're considering these criticisms. So, on one hand,
Speaker 2: it's possible that a cult like that of Glycans could
Speaker 2: be considered in keeping with just theatrics of the time,
Speaker 2: like maybe you're just dwelling a little bit too much
Speaker 2: on the fact that, yes, they're using theatrical effects to
Speaker 2: enhance the initiation rights of the mystery, you know, and
Speaker 2: because in this particular case, the cult of Glican it
Speaker 2: was likely a spin on already established snake cults in
Speaker 2: the region, and it seems to have survived in some
Speaker 2: form or re emerged after its creator's death. It's also
Speaker 2: possible that Alexander, the creator, alleged creator of the religion
Speaker 2: was not that different from other mystics of the time.
Speaker 2: We just happened to have strong surviving criticism of him,
Speaker 2: whereas we might not have that regarding other particular mystery cults.
Speaker 2: On the other hand, if Alexander really was, as Lucian charged,
Speaker 2: is involved in murder plots against his critics, well then
Speaker 2: perhaps there was something kind of singular about him, and
Speaker 2: he really was a heel. I was reading a bit
Speaker 2: more about this in an article titled Narcissistic Fraud in
Speaker 2: the Ancient World by Stephen A. Kent. This was published
Speaker 2: in Ancient Narrative back in two thousand and seven, and he
Speaker 2: contends that based on what we know about Alexander from
Speaker 2: these writings, he may well have been the sort of
Speaker 2: person that we'd now classify as a malignant narcissist.
Speaker 3: Oh it sounds juicy. I wanted to tell me more.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, Lucian had a lot to say. He really
Speaker 2: digs into this guy. I'll read a few quotes from him.
Speaker 2: He points out that Alexander quote was tall and good looking,
Speaker 2: really godlike, with a fair complexion, a beard that was
Speaker 2: not very thick, hair partially natural and partially false, but
Speaker 2: so well matched that most people couldn't tell the difference.
Speaker 2: His eyes flashed like one possessed, while his voice was
Speaker 2: very clear and pleasant. And he goes on to talk
Speaker 2: about various other positive attributes that this guy had, and
Speaker 2: talking about how when you met him, you believe that
Speaker 2: this guy you know, believe you know this guy, believe
Speaker 2: everything he's telling you is very sincere. And he had
Speaker 2: all of these gifts, but quote, he used them for
Speaker 2: the worst purposes, and equipped with noble instruments, he lost
Speaker 2: no time in becoming the most accomplished of those who
Speaker 2: have been notorious for wickedness. And he goes on to
Speaker 2: accuse him of being quote a quack, the type who
Speaker 2: offer magic spells and marvelous incantations charms for love, affairs,
Speaker 2: afflictions for your enemies, discoveries of buried treasure, and inheritances
Speaker 2: to his states. He also goes into detail about You're
Speaker 2: going to be tired of winning, and then he also
Speaker 2: goes in it goes on to discuss a little bit
Speaker 2: about the Gliton puppet in question, about first of all,
Speaker 2: Alexander would he alleges that he would do some sort
Speaker 2: of an act where he would chew on soap work
Speaker 2: that would cause him to foam at the mouth so
Speaker 2: that he could fake some sort of a fit of madness.
Speaker 2: And then also that the act of producing gly kind
Speaker 2: involved quote a snake's head made of linen. It had
Speaker 2: a slightly human look to it and was painted to
Speaker 2: look completely lifelike. Its mouth opened and closed by means
Speaker 2: of horse hairs, and the tongue black and forked like
Speaker 2: a snake's would shoot out, also controlled by hairs.
Speaker 3: So I guess I don't fully understand the spirit of
Speaker 3: the allegation. Is it a problem that it's a puppet,
Speaker 3: or is it that like, oh, he's trying to say,
Speaker 3: it's not a puppet, it's a puppet he's trying to
Speaker 3: pass off as a living organism.
Speaker 2: Well, his criticism here, and I should add that historians
Speaker 2: seem to agree that this is this is an actual
Speaker 2: historic individual it is being criticized here. Yeah, I'm to
Speaker 2: understand the stronger criticism here is that he's a scoundrel,
Speaker 2: but I mean, he's also accused of being a quack,
Speaker 2: so the fakeness of what he is doing, the theatrical
Speaker 2: effects are also being criticized here, and it seems like
Speaker 2: one interpretation could be that those particular criticisms are perhaps
Speaker 2: maybe a little unfair compared to what is probably going
Speaker 2: on with other mystery religions of the time. However, again,
Speaker 2: if Alexander It really is as deceptive and awful as
Speaker 2: he is accused of being here, then we definitely have
Speaker 2: to take that into account too, and maybe that's what
Speaker 2: pushes it over the edge here.
Speaker 3: Now, this could be totally off base because as I said,
Speaker 3: I don't know much about what Lucian is doing here.
Speaker 3: But I wonder also could it be that a criticism
Speaker 3: like this could be aimed at such a puppet being
Speaker 3: in bad taste Like to the people of the time,
Speaker 3: you'd have a certain kind of sensibility about what is
Speaker 3: accept what are the acceptable special effects within a religious context,
Speaker 3: and what are the not acceptable special effects the same
Speaker 3: way that people would now, Like, there are certain types
Speaker 3: of things that people think, oh, yeah, that fits right
Speaker 3: in at a church. Music, it fits in in most
Speaker 3: churches in some form. That's a powerful special effect. But
Speaker 3: there are other things that if you did them in
Speaker 3: a church, people in our culture would probably say, like,
Speaker 3: that's really gaudy, that's that's not the appropriate tone.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I wonder if something like.
Speaker 3: That could be operative in other times and places in
Speaker 3: history as well.
Speaker 2: Like he is, he is crossing a line that his
Speaker 2: critics are not ready for. But perhaps some of the
Speaker 2: initiates are cool with or have come to accept or
Speaker 2: just have a you know, a different threshold.
Speaker 3: For Yeah, Like probably a lot of churches today would
Speaker 3: be fine with music, but not with a pyrotechnics display
Speaker 3: for the sermon. But I bet some some use them, probably.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But I mean even you know, generationally in churches,
Speaker 2: for example, you'll have some that are like electric guitars
Speaker 2: in a service. That's just that's not done. You shouldn't
Speaker 2: say that, And others are like, no, that's what we're
Speaker 2: doing and that's what's bringing people in. So you know,
Speaker 2: I think you could probably get into what might in
Speaker 2: the long term be silly disputes about what is proper
Speaker 2: and isn't proper given any particular religious right or service.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I'm unsure exactly where to parse all of
Speaker 2: the glycin situation here. But again, the cult of Glicon
Speaker 2: did deal in theatrics and secrets, and what Lucian here
Speaker 2: is doing is definitely spilling some tea about the secrets.
Speaker 3: That brings us back to an interesting subject that I
Speaker 3: did want to return to today. So there was a
Speaker 3: scholar I talked about in Part three named Kevin Clinton
Speaker 3: who wrote a chapter that dealt with the Elusinian mysteries,
Speaker 3: And there's a part where Clinton was exploring a passage
Speaker 3: and Aristotle making the case that the initiate who goes
Speaker 3: through the secret rights at ilusis is not supposed to
Speaker 3: learn anything. They're not there to get information, but rather
Speaker 3: to have an experience. And then Aristotle says, and thus
Speaker 3: by having the experience to become fit or deserving. I
Speaker 3: interpret that as deserving of a certain kind of relationship
Speaker 3: or intimacy with the gods.
Speaker 4: But this really goes.
Speaker 3: Against our normal idea of a secret doesn't it Like
Speaker 3: when we talk about secrets, a secret is almost always
Speaker 3: understood to mean information kept hidden from someone. So by
Speaker 3: becoming an initiate and going through the mystic rights, you
Speaker 3: gain access to the secrets. What is hidden from others
Speaker 3: is revealed to you. But it's emphasized over and over
Speaker 3: by all these sources we've been talking about that the
Speaker 3: point is not to gain information. The initiat is not
Speaker 3: expected to learn any informational content. So why the secrecy?
Speaker 3: What is it doing? What's the point of it? And
Speaker 3: I guess when you ask why about something like secrecy,
Speaker 3: you could mean that question in different ways. So in
Speaker 3: one sense, you might be asking why did the people
Speaker 3: who first decided these rights should be kept secret decide that? Like,
Speaker 3: what motivation did they have in their minds to establish
Speaker 3: a tradition of secrecy? It seems there's probably no way
Speaker 3: to answer that question with any confidence we could do.
Speaker 3: All you could do is speculate. And then, in a
Speaker 3: very different sense, you could ask why the secrecy to
Speaker 3: mean why were cults with secret initiation rights successful and appealing?
Speaker 3: In other words, why do secrets work in a religious context?
Speaker 3: Why does a cult with secrets.
Speaker 4: Make people want to come join it.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And so this got me thinking about the psychology of secrets,
Speaker 3: which we we have covered to some extent on the
Speaker 3: show before.
Speaker 4: I think years ago, we did at.
Speaker 3: Least one episode, maybe a couple of parts about the
Speaker 3: psychological effects of having secrets. There's definitely research about how,
Speaker 3: like having a shameful secret, or one you perceive as shameful,
Speaker 3: causes psychological distress. This shouldn't come as any surprise. It
Speaker 3: tends to lead to feelings of isolation, to anxiety and
Speaker 3: so forth, especially if depending on the nature and nature
Speaker 3: of the secret, and like how it applies to say,
Speaker 3: relationships you're in if you are forced to think about
Speaker 3: the secret a lot, and stuff like that, and a
Speaker 3: lot of the psychological studies on secrets have this kind
Speaker 3: of focus. Essentially there about the effects of thinking about
Speaker 3: concealed personal information which people believe would be harmful to
Speaker 3: them if discovered by others. The classic example is the
Speaker 3: fact that you did something morally bad or something embarrassing
Speaker 3: you hope no one ever finds out, so now it's
Speaker 3: your secret. But when you think about it that way,
Speaker 3: that's actually a very different kind of secret than we're
Speaker 3: talking about with the mystery cults. If I am an
Speaker 3: initiate of a mystery cults, I am an apoptase of
Speaker 3: the Elusinian mystery. So I've gone through initiation the second
Speaker 3: time with open eyes. I've seen all the mystic rites
Speaker 3: of Demeter. I've witnessed something that is kept secret to outsiders,
Speaker 3: and I'm not allowed to talk about it or share
Speaker 3: it under pain of great penalty, possibly under pain of death.
Speaker 3: I will be in a state where I have to
Speaker 3: carry this secret with me and I can't tell people.
Speaker 3: But there's no evidence that there is any feeling of
Speaker 3: shame associated with this secret. It's not bad or damaging information,
Speaker 3: certainly not about me, probably not about anyone. And in fact,
Speaker 3: there's not really much evidence that these secrets were perceived
Speaker 3: as a burden in any way. Also, the thing that
Speaker 3: is being kept secret is, as best I can tell,
Speaker 3: probably not a piece of discrete information that can easily
Speaker 3: be put into words, like you know, one thing like
Speaker 3: that would be the kinds of secrets that we trade
Speaker 3: in in regular, regular gossip. So those kind of secrets
Speaker 3: might be like a fact about something that somebody did
Speaker 3: you know, so and so cheated on their spouse or
Speaker 3: so and so lied about something. Things like that, they're
Speaker 3: not really discrete things that you can put into words. Instead,
Speaker 3: it seems like these secrets were probably a kind of baffling,
Speaker 3: overwhelming emotional experience of sites, sounds, strange words, strange objects,
Speaker 3: and rituals that you took part in yourself. So it
Speaker 3: would almost be as if like the secret were not
Speaker 3: information encoded in words, but like the experience of going
Speaker 3: to a concert or a great play like we've been
Speaker 3: talking about.
Speaker 2: So, for instance, an example of the former would be
Speaker 2: Bruce Wayne's secret being that he is Batman, but the
Speaker 2: latter would be the secret that we all might realize
Speaker 2: that we are all Batman, something that maybe is a
Speaker 2: little harder to really explain, but if you know it,
Speaker 2: you know it well.
Speaker 3: It's also that that might be a good example, because
Speaker 3: it's the kind of thing that if you just say it,
Speaker 3: it sounds kind of banal, it's not a very interesting
Speaker 3: thing to hear. But if you saw a great story,
Speaker 3: like if you watched a movie that convinced you and
Speaker 3: your gut that yes, we are all Batman, then it
Speaker 3: would feel really powerful.
Speaker 2: Right, and it might might very well depend on a
Speaker 2: sensory overload experience like seeing a really good Batman movie.
Speaker 3: Also, ancient writers describe the effect of being in on
Speaker 3: the secret of a mystery cult as an extremely positive one.
Speaker 3: It's a good thing. It doesn't feel bad, it doesn't
Speaker 3: feel like a burden, it feels good. Instead, being in
Speaker 3: on the secret actually unburdens you of your worries. It
Speaker 3: allows you to go with lightness when it is time
Speaker 3: to enter the land of the dead. So I was
Speaker 3: looking to see if there's any research on positive secrets,
Speaker 3: and indeed there have been some experiments on this. One
Speaker 3: study I wanted to mention was by Michael Sleepian, Catherine Greenaway,
Speaker 3: Nicholas camp and Adam Galinsky called The bright Side of Secrecy,
Speaker 3: The Energizing Effect of Positive Secrets in the Journal of
Speaker 3: Personality and Social Psychology twenty twenty three. Now, the author's
Speaker 3: here is start off by saying, like, yes, we do
Speaker 3: often associate secrets with burdens and distress, but this is
Speaker 3: in the scientific context. This is mainly because secrets have
Speaker 3: been studied in cases of adverse secrets. It's stuff we
Speaker 3: don't want people to find out about. What about when
Speaker 3: people have information that they are not sharing with other people,
Speaker 3: but it's information they feel good about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this is this is going to be another
Speaker 2: silly example. But I'm reminded of a stand up bit
Speaker 2: from Uparna Mantula, who is hilarious, but she has a
Speaker 2: bit about reading in a women's magazine, the advice that
Speaker 2: she should walk around like she's carrying a sexy secret
Speaker 2: and which is on the face silly, and I believe
Speaker 2: her bit is like it sounds like women's magazines are
Speaker 2: just written by spambots. That's what she that's her interpretation.
Speaker 2: But on the other hand, I also kind of understand
Speaker 2: what they're getting at, like the idea of having some
Speaker 2: sort of a secret that is not a negative secret
Speaker 2: but positive that you know you're keeping it secret so
Speaker 2: you're not just expressing it everywhere, but perhaps the light
Speaker 2: of that secret is shining through you.
Speaker 3: Instead of walking around feeling like you are in hawk
Speaker 3: to the world by you know, the way you do
Speaker 3: when you have a shameful secret, Having a positive secret
Speaker 3: that you haven't shared with anyone feels like a you have,
Speaker 3: like a plus you have a credit. You know you
Speaker 3: have a plus thing on the balance that hasn't cleared yet. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: so in their abstract to the author's right. In contrast
Speaker 3: to the prior research, five experiments total sample size of
Speaker 3: twenty eight hundred find that positive secrets increase feelings of
Speaker 3: energy relative to first of all content matched positive non secrets.
Speaker 3: So it's not just that positive news increases your energy,
Speaker 3: it's specifically when it is secret news, the other thing
Speaker 3: being other pieces of unknown positive information, and finally other
Speaker 3: kinds of secrets. So that last part might not be surprising,
Speaker 3: but yes, positive secrets are more energizing than negative secrets
Speaker 3: the author's right. Importantly, these energizing effects of positive secrets
Speaker 3: were independent of positive affect We further found that positive
Speaker 3: secrets are energizing because, compared to other kinds of secrets,
Speaker 3: people keep them for more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated reasons.
Speaker 3: That is, these secrets are more freely chosen, more consistent
Speaker 3: with personal values, and more motivated by internal desires than
Speaker 3: by external pressures. Using both measures and manipulations of these motivations,
Speaker 3: we found that a motivational mechanism helps explain the energizing
Speaker 3: effect of positive secrets. The present results offer new insights
Speaker 3: into secrecy how people respond to positive life events and
Speaker 3: the subjective experiences of vitality and energy. And for a
Speaker 3: little more explication of this study, I found a summary
Speaker 3: written for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology by
Speaker 3: first author Michael Sleepian here and Sleepian explains their finding
Speaker 3: by first of all, by saying, a lot of times
Speaker 3: we don't keep positive news secret. They started with a
Speaker 3: survey of five hundred people that found when people learn
Speaker 3: good news, seventy six percent of respondents said that the
Speaker 3: first thing they would do is go tell someone. And
Speaker 3: you can almost kind of feel that in those writings
Speaker 3: from the ancient world about the mystery cults where people
Speaker 3: are like, you know, I can't tell you what the
Speaker 3: mystery are, but I want It's like it's really good,
Speaker 3: it's really good stuff, Like you should go, you know,
Speaker 3: you talk to those multiple passages where they're just exhorting readers,
Speaker 3: go for yourself.
Speaker 4: Check it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no spoilers, but it's wonderful.
Speaker 3: But in contrast to this desire to immediately share good news,
Speaker 3: the authors found there are distinct psychological benefits to keeping
Speaker 3: good news a secret. So the authors one way they
Speaker 3: investigated this was they took a list of thirty eight
Speaker 3: common types of good news, and they found that on average,
Speaker 3: people had between five and six pieces of good news
Speaker 3: that they were currently keeping to themselves for the time being. Now,
Speaker 3: you might think, well, like, what kinds of good news?
Speaker 3: What would examples be? A very common one was a
Speaker 3: self gift. That's what the authors call it. It's when
Speaker 3: you have bought or otherwise treated yourself to something special.
Speaker 3: Apparently this is a common type of secret people have
Speaker 3: and they feel good about it.
Speaker 2: Supposed to feel good about those I feel bad about this.
Speaker 2: I do too.
Speaker 4: Every time I'm trying to get over it.
Speaker 3: Whenever I like get myself something nice, I feel real guilty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, same, Yeah, I'm struggle. I don't think I
Speaker 2: have any positive secrets I'm keeping to myself at the moment.
Speaker 2: I think I've let them all out.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll see. We'll go down the list for a
Speaker 3: few more common examples. What about a gift to another
Speaker 3: person that they don't know about yet?
Speaker 2: Yeah, none of those right now either. I'm like in
Speaker 2: one of those periods between birthdays and okay, in mother's
Speaker 2: days and so forth.
Speaker 3: How about having found something that the person was looking for.
Speaker 3: This apparently often people are walking around feeling good about
Speaker 3: having found the thing, but they didn't tell anybody they
Speaker 3: found it.
Speaker 2: I had one of those a couple of days ago,
Speaker 2: but then then I gave it to them. So now
Speaker 2: that's time.
Speaker 3: So finally completing a task. Oh this is a common thing, right,
Speaker 3: Oh you know, I finished writing this thing I was
Speaker 3: working on, but I haven't talked to anybody about it.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, all right, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So anyways, sleeping goes on to say quote. Across several studies,
Speaker 3: we asked participants to think of a positive secret they
Speaker 3: were keeping, and then measured their current mood and how
Speaker 3: energized they felt in that moment. Another group of participants
Speaker 3: were asked was asked to think of good news that
Speaker 3: was not secret. For the same types of good news,
Speaker 3: thinking about the secret good news was more energizing than
Speaker 3: thinking about non secret good news. Thinking about positive secrets
Speaker 3: was also more energizing than thinking about positive information that
Speaker 3: has not been shared for other reasons, such as when
Speaker 3: you intend to share good news with someone but cannot
Speaker 3: talk to them until later in the day. So I
Speaker 3: thought that was a very interesting distinction to make there,
Speaker 3: at least within this sample given these controls, there's something
Speaker 3: specially invigorating about having positive information that you specifically intend
Speaker 3: to keep secret, that you have made the choice not
Speaker 3: to share with people, as opposed to just you haven't
Speaker 3: had a chance to tell them yet.
Speaker 2: And you know it could be a sexy, say, just
Speaker 2: to come back to what we mentioned.
Speaker 3: Earlier, certainly good. So I thought this was very interesting. Obviously,
Speaker 3: these secrets being discussed here are are also not a
Speaker 3: perfect analogy to the hidden truths of the mystery cults
Speaker 3: for multiple reasons, some of which we've already talked about,
Speaker 3: which I'll get to in just a minute. So it's
Speaker 3: not exactly the same kind of thing as being in
Speaker 3: on the secret of Illusis or any of these other cults.
Speaker 3: But I feel like it's closer than most of the
Speaker 3: research we look at on secrecy, which is about like
Speaker 3: something shameful or you believe to be shameful, that you're hiding.
Speaker 3: And I can see how this kind of I know,
Speaker 3: this bubbling up sense of energy that comes from thinking
Speaker 3: about the secret that is good news to you, but
Speaker 3: you are choosing not to share with others. It seems
Speaker 3: to be, as the author say, a kind of expression
Speaker 3: of one's own intrinsic personality, like the fact that you
Speaker 3: know this thing and others don't becomes a part of
Speaker 3: your idea entity. It becomes a way of thinking about
Speaker 3: who you are. Part of who I am is that
Speaker 3: I know this thing and I don't express it to
Speaker 3: other people, at least unless they're initiated as well. And
Speaker 3: then maybe that creates a whole second order thing of
Speaker 3: effects of the kind of bonding you might experience with
Speaker 3: other initiates, people you could talk to about the secret,
Speaker 3: and that that creates a whole other sense of bonding
Speaker 3: and you know their social benefits there as well.
Speaker 2: We mentioned in passing the idea of weird fiction ideas
Speaker 2: of cultists, and it does occur to me that what
Speaker 2: we're talking about here does match up in interesting ways
Speaker 2: with some of the revelations that occur in weird fiction,
Speaker 2: with those revelations being kind of an inversion of what
Speaker 2: we're talking about here where I have I just went
Speaker 2: through some serious stuff and I got a real dark
Speaker 2: revelation about the secret nature of the universe, and it's
Speaker 2: sanity shredding, and I probably can't tell anyone about it
Speaker 2: or properly convey it to other people. So that's that's
Speaker 2: the sort of the negative version of what we're talking
Speaker 2: about here.
Speaker 3: And might not even be able to put it into
Speaker 3: words right right.
Speaker 2: It could be the opposite is like I just went
Speaker 2: through this amazing ritual initiation to a strength, dark god
Speaker 2: and it was amazing. I have this real clear cut
Speaker 2: vision of what the universe is all about. Now I
Speaker 2: can't convey it to you in words, but you've got
Speaker 2: to You've got to go to the colt as well.
Speaker 2: That's the only way you get to be able to
Speaker 2: understand what I'm even getting at here.
Speaker 4: Well in that vein.
Speaker 3: This got me thinking about another way of framing the secrecy.
Speaker 3: What these secret rights are? You know, it came up
Speaker 3: in the Boden book that it is something. Of course,
Speaker 3: there are there are mystic rights of Dionysus as well.
Speaker 3: You know, this is one of the famous mystery religions.
Speaker 3: It is sometimes said that the god Dionysus appears only
Speaker 3: in disguise. In fact, he is often represented by a mask,
Speaker 3: and that perhaps what's going on is that when women
Speaker 3: went out into the wild mountain side to participate in
Speaker 3: ecstatic music and dance and fulfill the mystic rights of Dionysus.
Speaker 3: Something about that profound experience meant that you would get
Speaker 3: to see the god unmasked. You would see the true
Speaker 3: face of Dionysus, which is always kept in disguise with
Speaker 3: everyone else.
Speaker 4: And it struck me.
Speaker 3: That this is another way of thinking about the type
Speaker 3: of secret that is revealed here, not as information divulged,
Speaker 3: but as either intimacy attained or true form revealed, and
Speaker 3: both connect to the idea of seeing someone uncovered, either
Speaker 3: like unmasked in the sense of true form revealed, or
Speaker 3: disrobed in the sense of intimacy. And I think this
Speaker 3: is often one of the most emotionally powerful types of hiddenists.
Speaker 3: Rev of these moments of revelation that we get in
Speaker 3: storytelling or in religious ritual or whatever you know. In storytelling,
Speaker 3: if you're watching a play or a movie, when a
Speaker 3: masked character is suddenly unmasked, and let's say, this is
Speaker 3: not like revealing them to be some other character that
Speaker 3: we already know about. Instead, we're just seeing somebody's face
Speaker 3: for the first time. This might not really reveal much
Speaker 3: that can be encoded into words, except maybe in a
Speaker 3: loose way by describing the face. But it still feels
Speaker 3: like a profound type of revelation. It's one of the
Speaker 3: most potent revelations there is. But it's not really a
Speaker 3: clue or piece of information. It's an experience of knowing someone.
Speaker 3: And I wonder if the secrets of mystery cults actually
Speaker 3: felt a bit more like that. It's not so much
Speaker 3: the secret password that you have learned, though there are
Speaker 3: a few things like that, but a masked face unmasked
Speaker 3: and is it is the face of a god with
Speaker 3: unspeakable power over your life.
Speaker 2: Now, as we close out this four part look at
Speaker 2: the Mystery Cults, it makes sense to finally discuss properly
Speaker 2: the end of the mysteries, and in doing so on
Speaker 2: to briefly come back to the writings of Terence McKenna,
Speaker 2: who we referenced Food of the Gods a little bit
Speaker 2: in a previous episode on the Mystery Cults here and again.
Speaker 2: The broader themes in the Food of the Gods concerned
Speaker 2: the possible roles that in theogens may have played in
Speaker 2: human evolution and the development of archaic human cultures, with
Speaker 2: a falling off and gradual descent with the advent of
Speaker 2: Western civilization and mckinna's does specifically point to the end
Speaker 2: of the mystery cults as one possible watershed moment in
Speaker 2: all of this, one that helped reinforce quote the emergence
Speaker 2: of the anti visionary dominators dial of culture and this
Speaker 2: beginning to usher in a quote, progressively more vacant, more
Speaker 2: ego dominated world whose energies were coalescing into monotheism, patriarchy,
Speaker 2: and male domination. Tell us what you really think, Terrence, Yeah,
Speaker 2: And like I say, this is all very much part
Speaker 2: of his you know, archaic revival bohemian thread messaging. And
Speaker 2: I will again say that I do think food of
Speaker 2: the Gods. Whether you agree with with this some of
Speaker 2: the the the theories that he's throwing out there, I
Speaker 2: do think it's it's a better work of scholarship than
Speaker 2: than some might assume. But I found this this commentary interesting.
Speaker 2: You know, in fact, many of the mystery cults were
Speaker 2: centered on mother goddesses and or their consorts Sybil in
Speaker 2: the Roman Magna Mater cult isis Demeter and Corey, who
Speaker 2: have talked about as well as the mother goddess that
Speaker 2: we alluded to just several minutes ago. So I think
Speaker 2: a lot of what he's getting at does coalesce nicely
Speaker 2: with what we're discussing here. To bring up another theorist,
Speaker 2: sort of outside thinker that we've talked about on the
Speaker 2: show before. I'm not going to go down the complete
Speaker 2: bicameral mind rabbit hole, but Julian James refers to this
Speaker 2: time period as one in which religions that adhere to
Speaker 2: more estatic or in his writings, possessive rights are falling
Speaker 2: to quote, a siege of rationalism as Christianity picks up
Speaker 2: steam and to be clear, changes during this time period
Speaker 2: to become an increasingly dominant religion, certainly within the Roman Empire.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, to be sure, James was discussing all of this
Speaker 2: in his nineteen seventy six book to support his theory
Speaker 2: regarding a gradual change in human consciousness from one of
Speaker 2: inherently and spirit experienced other voices in the mind toward
Speaker 2: their increasing silence. You can go back and listen to
Speaker 2: our episodes where we discuss the bicameral mind hypothesis in
Speaker 2: greater detail whether there is any truth to it in
Speaker 2: the end, I do think James was in part exploring
Speaker 2: some of the same changes we're discussing here in the
Speaker 2: Manifestation of Religious Experiences.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been a while in that, but you know,
Speaker 3: I do remember thinking that despite obviously I'm not convinced
Speaker 3: of the bicameral mind hypothesis, but I remember thinking a
Speaker 3: lot of James's peripheral insights about the smaller matters were
Speaker 3: often quite interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. And you know, he is,
Speaker 2: you know, getting at some major shifts and changes that
Speaker 2: were occurring, but there are a lot of different ways
Speaker 2: to tease apart what was happening and why. Now in
Speaker 2: Boden's book, he of course gets into this and discusses
Speaker 2: the end of the mystery cults. As you know, we
Speaker 2: previously discussed the Roman Empire's relative tolerance toward various religions
Speaker 2: and cults was notable. As long as they didn't conflict
Speaker 2: with Roman authority and didn't stir up trouble with other faiths,
Speaker 2: then you know, things were generally tolerated.
Speaker 3: I mean, there are other cases in the book he
Speaker 3: talks about where other mystery religions were subject to some
Speaker 3: regulation or suppression, say if Roman authorities thought they were
Speaker 3: contributing to disorder or thought that they might become a
Speaker 3: might become sort of a launching point for political conspiracy.
Speaker 3: In fact, I don't remember the specific example, but there
Speaker 3: was one case where they limited certain cults. It might
Speaker 3: have been ones related to Dionysus that you know, where
Speaker 3: it was like, you can't have too many people gathering
Speaker 3: in secret.
Speaker 2: At the same time, you could very well to sort
Speaker 2: of lean into Alan Moore's interpretation of glyc on. You
Speaker 2: can imagine them being like, yeah, this, this snake puppet
Speaker 2: is obviously fake. They can totally have this. Let's actually
Speaker 2: put it on some coins.
Speaker 3: But driving the point that, you know, the Romans, what
Speaker 3: they were mainly concerned about was like actual here and
Speaker 3: now power. When they were concerned with stamping out other
Speaker 3: religious stuff, it was because they perceived it as some
Speaker 3: kind of here and now power threat exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you might well ask about Christian persecution during
Speaker 2: this time period as well, you know, feeding christianstillions and
Speaker 2: so forth. As we've discussed on the show before in
Speaker 2: other episodes in the past, the persecution of Christians wasn't
Speaker 2: total and constant throughout this period. It's sort of varied
Speaker 2: depending on who was in charge, with different fluctuations, but
Speaker 2: after three point thirteen CEE, Christian persecution comes to an
Speaker 2: end and in the Roman Empire and Christianity begins to
Speaker 2: receive active support from the Emperor Constantine the Great, and
Speaker 2: Boden writes that this resulted in more and more converts
Speaker 2: to Christianity, and baptism began to be seen as a
Speaker 2: preliminary ritual into this new popular faith, and notably Christian
Speaker 2: baptism began to also lose its imagistic features in Christian faith.
Speaker 2: So he gets to this, this is an inner interesting
Speaker 2: thing to think about. So we're at this time where
Speaker 2: Christianity is gaining in popularity, mystery cults are falling away,
Speaker 2: but Christianity arguably is losing its mystery cult like attributes
Speaker 2: as it rises in popularity. So there's a lot of
Speaker 2: interesting transitions going on here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Now, one topic that often comes up is it
Speaker 3: does seem that the decline of mystery cults, like the
Speaker 3: general decline of Greek and Roman polytheism, is related to
Speaker 3: the rise of Christianity. But like, what is the explanation there?
Speaker 3: People have offered a lot of different theories over the years,
Speaker 3: like what led to the success of Christianity within the
Speaker 3: Roman Empire. People have tried to explain it in terms
Speaker 3: of like particular doctrines or attributes of Christian communities. Those
Speaker 3: those arguments may have some weight to them, may may not.
Speaker 3: But one argument about the success of Christchristianity in the
Speaker 3: Roman Empire that I find very persuasive is just sort
Speaker 3: of a mathematical argument that was made, at least in
Speaker 3: one case by a previous show guest, the historian bart Erman,
Speaker 3: who's been on our show before.
Speaker 4: I interviewed him a few years ago.
Speaker 3: He's a secular scholar of Christianity and of the Bible
Speaker 3: and historian of this time period of early Christianity, and
Speaker 3: he makes the point that really the main thing Christianity
Speaker 3: had going for it in terms of its success in
Speaker 3: the Roman Empire is that it was an exclusive cult,
Speaker 3: Whereas when you loo say, look at the other mystery cults,
Speaker 3: you will have powerful Roman people who are bragging about
Speaker 3: how many different mystery cults they've been initiated to Oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I did the Lusini and I'm demeter, I did this one,
Speaker 3: I did that one.
Speaker 4: Look at it.
Speaker 3: I'm racking them up. I'm becoming so accomplished and Greek
Speaker 3: and Roman Polytheism was generally of that sort. There was
Speaker 3: no need to be exclusive with one god or another.
Speaker 3: You could do some stuff for Apollo, you could do
Speaker 3: some stuff with with Demeter, and that was all fine.
Speaker 3: That Christianity was kind of unique, and that when you
Speaker 3: converted to Christianity, you didn't just add that on to
Speaker 3: the list of gods you had some relationship with. You
Speaker 3: cut off relations with all the other gods. So every
Speaker 3: time somebody converted to Christianity and stayed a christian that
Speaker 3: all of the other cults lost permanently lost and adherent
Speaker 3: and everybody you know, that flowed downstream from their household
Speaker 3: and so forth. So it was the exclusivity of Christianity
Speaker 3: when compared to these other religions, according to Ermine's argument,
Speaker 3: which I find pretty convincing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean you can imagine the ripples that
Speaker 2: that creates in the religious ecosystem. Yeah, you suddenly can't
Speaker 2: just sort of, oh, yeah, I'm a member of five
Speaker 2: different ones. No, you've got to commit. This religion wants
Speaker 2: you to commit and settle down. And as that becomes
Speaker 2: popular and that becomes an increasing in group, Yeah, its
Speaker 2: power just grows socially.
Speaker 3: Right, it's like a one way vowel. People are mostly
Speaker 3: just flowing in and not back out.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, you can't sort of have one foot
Speaker 2: in and one foot out so much, orly is not
Speaker 2: as easily, not with as much social fluidity as had
Speaker 2: been possible before. Right. A lot has been written about
Speaker 2: the decline of mystery cults the rise of Christianity, about
Speaker 2: the possible links between the two, especially the extent to
Speaker 2: which early Christianity was in many ways a mystery cult,
Speaker 2: and how you know, arguably Christianity becomes this sort of
Speaker 2: anti visionary religion as it rises. And one thing that
Speaker 2: Boden points out is that, you know that a lot
Speaker 2: of this comes down the scholarly debate often comes down to,
Speaker 2: you know, the agendas of whoever's making the argument. So
Speaker 2: Protestant voices might argue, might have argued that early Christianity
Speaker 2: was corrupted by mystery cult influences and therefore needed correcting.
Speaker 3: Oh, because because they're doing an anti Catholic narrative. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so they're saying that stuff that the parts of Christianity
Speaker 3: as practice today that we don't approve of that came
Speaker 3: from other religions.
Speaker 2: Right, Right, And Likewise, critics of Christianity in general, he says,
Speaker 2: might argue that Christianity itself borrows heavily from the likes
Speaker 2: of Mythraism, and that alone you can really get into
Speaker 2: like a nuanced discussion off like how much of it
Speaker 2: is Christianity potentially borrowing from Mithraism or them just sort
Speaker 2: of like being like on the same vibe, you know,
Speaker 2: and how much in religious right is truly exclusive to
Speaker 2: anyone given faith.
Speaker 3: You could also argue that Christianity need not have borrowed
Speaker 3: from Mythraism to have similarities. They could in fact, I mean,
Speaker 3: of course, some similarities could just be coincidences in the
Speaker 3: way that a lot of religions have similar things. But
Speaker 3: you could also have a common ancestor, right, a lot
Speaker 3: of religions have common ancestors. Things that shared, shared rituals
Speaker 3: and stuff are derived from traditions that are found all
Speaker 3: over the place.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, so, whatever the reason mystery cults end up falling away,
Speaker 2: their temples when destroyed, are sacked, are just often not rebuilt.
Speaker 2: Things fall into ruin or disrepair and are not re repaired.
Speaker 2: And Boden gets into this a bit as well, pointing
Speaker 2: out that the rise of Christianity, it doesn't completely eradicate
Speaker 2: is static religious experience under its watch, the history of
Speaker 2: Christianity is sprinkled with Christian mystics and no doubt many
Speaker 2: a squashed heresy that leans more into a static religious
Speaker 2: experience than is comfortable for the powers that be. And
Speaker 2: we can also point to various static religious practices from say,
Speaker 2: later Protestant movements. Snake handling is discussed in the book,
Speaker 2: but you can also apply this lens too much in
Speaker 2: the revived and fate healing tradition as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Boden has a long section on snake handling, where
Speaker 3: you know, when you read about snake handling, you really
Speaker 3: there's a lot of emphasis put on the snakes or
Speaker 3: maybe on the other deadly things like the drinking of poison,
Speaker 3: and of course that is a big part of the practice,
Speaker 3: but it's also associated with just general ecstatic frenzy. You know,
Speaker 3: like a lot of these churches will have loud, powerful
Speaker 3: music to coming back to music once again, you know,
Speaker 3: that gets you into a kind of trance. And people
Speaker 3: describe the way like they feel like they're leaving their
Speaker 3: body or they feel like the Holy Spirit has entered them.
Speaker 3: They have become another person in these loud, raucous ceremonies
Speaker 3: where yes, dangerous, deadly things are happening, people are handling
Speaker 3: venomous snakes, but it's also just it's a wild array
Speaker 3: of sights and sounds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there are numerous examples of contemporary estatic dance
Speaker 2: you can point to that have the same effect. I
Speaker 2: believe speaking in tongues in some Protestant traditions. That's also
Speaker 2: brought up. So, yeah, there are various examples of religious
Speaker 2: frenzy experienced by large groups. Boden does say that these
Speaker 2: are generally discouraged in the grand arc of Christian history,
Speaker 2: but they do exist, and you can also point to
Speaker 2: examples of it in other, you know, surviving examples in
Speaker 2: other religions and contemporary faiths.
Speaker 3: This is not necessarily something that is backed up by say,
Speaker 3: religious anthropology research. It's just a kind of gut feeling
Speaker 3: I have. But I would tend to think that people
Speaker 3: who practice mystical or ecstatic religious worship stuff where they
Speaker 3: get into an altered state of consciousness and believe they're
Speaker 3: having direct experience of the power of the gods, are
Speaker 3: sometimes perceived as dangerous by religious authorities, because that kind
Speaker 3: of experience lends itself to the production of new doctrine.
Speaker 3: Like people, there's an idea that heresy emerges from that
Speaker 3: kind of behavior, and not to label it as heresy
Speaker 3: or say what doctrine is right or wrong, but I
Speaker 3: think often new beliefs and new doctrines do come out
Speaker 3: of that kind of religious behavior.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again going back to what we were talking about,
Speaker 2: doctrinal religion is very top down. The people who interpret
Speaker 2: the words of God, the will of God or God's
Speaker 2: they're at the top and they're filtering that down to
Speaker 2: the followers. They're going to be very much opposed in
Speaker 2: general to the idea that anything would be bottom up,
Speaker 2: that anyone at the bottom would have new revelations, and
Speaker 2: that God or the gods would still be speaking on
Speaker 2: any level to anyone except the top of the hierarchy.
Speaker 4: Well, that's right. By definition.
Speaker 3: If you're on the top of a hierarchy, it is
Speaker 3: your job to maintain control.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But it's also interesting that we see, you know,
Speaker 3: a kind of top down control of some these ancient
Speaker 3: mystery cults, Like so the culted Eleusis was administered, but
Speaker 3: you know, there was a religious hierarchy in place there,
Speaker 3: and we don't know all of the secrets, but it
Speaker 3: seems quite likely that they were inviting people in to
Speaker 3: become initiated, to go through these rights, to have these weird,
Speaker 3: powerful experiences, and then probably we're not told what it meant,
Speaker 3: and we're just like sending people off to make their
Speaker 3: own sense of it, which, on one hand, you would
Speaker 3: imagine from the point of view of somebody trying to
Speaker 3: control a religious tradition, that seems dangerous for exactly the
Speaker 3: reasons we've just been talking about. But that seems like
Speaker 3: probably what was going on there, So I don't know.
Speaker 3: Maybe there are other ways in which it's it's empowering
Speaker 3: in the right ways, Like it creates the right kind
Speaker 3: of effect that sends more and more people your way
Speaker 3: every year, and that's a fair trade maybe from some
Speaker 3: hierarchy's point of view.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. This topic has just been so fascinating to
Speaker 2: think about, not only in exploring how ancient people's thought
Speaker 2: about their faith, about their world and their place in
Speaker 2: the universe, but also the various ways we can apply
Speaker 2: what they seem to believe to what people believe today,
Speaker 2: and also the reverse, how we can take what we
Speaker 2: can and can't take from modern religiosity and apply to
Speaker 2: their world. Yeah, so it's been it's been really fun
Speaker 2: to research and record these.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, whenever you study something like this, there
Speaker 3: is always you always just keep catching yourself interpreting what
Speaker 3: you're reading about or seeing through a lens that's probably
Speaker 3: just too familiar, that's just too based on what something
Speaker 3: would mean in your own cultural context. And you're not
Speaker 3: you're not remembering to let it be alien and ambiguous
Speaker 3: enough to you because you just don't know the context
Speaker 3: well enough to make sense of.
Speaker 2: It, right.
Speaker 4: And and we're I know, whenever.
Speaker 3: We do these historical topics or topics about you know,
Speaker 3: cultures other than our own, there's always as a tendency
Speaker 3: to it's just too easy to feel confident that you
Speaker 3: understand what something means because you know what it would
Speaker 3: mean to you. It might not mean that to the
Speaker 3: person involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like the snake puppet. You know, we know what
Speaker 2: Lucian thought about it. We may have in our idea
Speaker 2: in our head, some idea what we would think about
Speaker 2: it if we went to a religious service and there
Speaker 2: was an obvious puppet, But as for the people that
Speaker 2: were there in attendance and perhaps came back and didn't feel,
Speaker 2: you know, ripped off by by what they experienced. You know,
Speaker 2: who's to say.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I guess all that just to say, like,
Speaker 3: you know, survey, survey the world past and present with
Speaker 3: open eyes, but be cautious about interpreting what you see.
Speaker 4: You might be jumping to conclusions. I know we do sometimes.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna go ahead and close the book
Speaker 2: here on the mystery cults, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from everyone out there if you have thoughts on the
Speaker 2: broader subject here, particular of mystery cults that we talked about,
Speaker 2: mystery cults that we didn't talk about write in. We
Speaker 2: would love to hear from you. Just a reminder once
Speaker 2: more that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a
Speaker 2: science and culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Speaker 2: On Wednesdays we air a short form episode, and on
Speaker 2: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
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Speaker 2: we are stb ym Podcast. So if you use that
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Speaker 2: but that one is perhaps one of the more active ones.
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Speaker 3: What those stories now denied to us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the mysteries are denied to us. I think it
Speaker 2: was finally eradicated. Were just locked out of it for
Speaker 2: a long time and then it was fine. It's finally gone.
Speaker 2: But now we just have to build up the new one.
Speaker 2: On's thee And then where else are we? Oh, we're
Speaker 2: on the letterbox. If you are into our Weird House
Speaker 2: Cinema episodes, you can follow us on Letterbox where we
Speaker 2: are a weird house and that's a great way to
Speaker 2: keep up with the movies that we're discussing on Weird
Speaker 2: House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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