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