WEBVTT - Mystery Cults, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.800 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.840 --> 0:00:14.760 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:15.680 name is Robert. 0:00:15.520 --> 0:00:17.599 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.239 Now many times on Stuff to Blow Your Mind when 0:00:21.320 --> 0:00:25.040 discussing religion and the ancient Greco Roman world, we have 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:29.520 referred to the mystery cults, also known as the sacred mysteries, 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:36.400 or even the mysteries. Watching my Stories, we've discussed specific 0:00:36.479 --> 0:00:40.080 mystery cults and a little more depth. But I was 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:42.640 recently thinking about this and I realized that this was 0:00:42.680 --> 0:00:46.680 a topic that deserved deeper consideration, and indeed, I think 0:00:46.880 --> 0:00:50.080 more than once I've personally kind of left it at 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.440 and this deity was also taken up by the mystery cults, 0:00:54.680 --> 0:00:59.960 as if to delve deeper is impossible or somehow forbidden. Now, 0:01:00.120 --> 0:01:04.200 certainly mysteries surrounding the various mystery cults remain and much 0:01:04.319 --> 0:01:07.160 is left open to interpretation, but we do know quite 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:09.440 a lot. Whole books have been written on the topic, 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:12.640 and we're going to follow along in these episodes to 0:01:12.680 --> 0:01:15.800 see what we can learn and share about the mysteries. 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:18.440 Well, Rob, I am excited to go on a journey 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:21.800 exploring the mystery cults of the Greco Roman world. But 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:24.240 I kind of like the way that you used to 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:26.560 leave it off, you know, just you know, in this 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:30.080 deity yes became a focus of the mystery cults and 0:01:30.120 --> 0:01:33.119 saying no more, because that is a tradition going all 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:35.800 the way back to the ancient world itself. One of 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:38.440 the main sources we're going to be using in this 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:42.240 series is a great book called Mystery Cults in the 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.080 Ancient World that just got a new edition out. I 0:01:45.080 --> 0:01:47.600 think it was originally published over a decade ago, but 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.040 it got a new edition in twenty twenty three by 0:01:50.040 --> 0:01:52.800 an author named Hugh Bowden, who is a professor of 0:01:52.800 --> 0:01:56.160 ancient history at King's College, London. This is a really 0:01:56.200 --> 0:01:58.400 great book. But one of the things he mentioned several 0:01:58.440 --> 0:02:03.600 times is ancient writers bringing up a mystery cult and 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:06.160 then saying I have been instructed in a dream not 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:07.520 to say any more about this. 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:08.560 I can. 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:12.000 My lips are sealed, like Paulsenius will be like, then, 0:02:12.080 --> 0:02:14.880 this really interesting thing happened in Samothrace, of which I 0:02:14.919 --> 0:02:18.720 can tell you nothing, which itself makes for a very 0:02:18.880 --> 0:02:19.840 enticing subject. 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:24.240 Yeah, and and course runs completely counter to our modern 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:29.160 understanding of history, like, now everything must be revealed, Please 0:02:29.200 --> 0:02:30.040 reveal it to us. 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:33.440 Yeah, everything except when you have met face to face 0:02:33.480 --> 0:02:37.760 the terrifying power of a god or a goddess. Now, Rob, 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:40.480 I know today you wanted to wanted to do some 0:02:40.600 --> 0:02:44.440 work laying the groundwork establishing a bit about the historical 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:49.639 context of broader Greco Roman religion in the ancient Mediterranean world, 0:02:50.080 --> 0:02:53.360 which is the context in which these mystery cults existed. 0:02:54.040 --> 0:02:56.079 But before we do that, I thought it might be 0:02:56.200 --> 0:03:00.000 important just to do a little bit of disambiguation on terminology, 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:05.760 because if you are coming into an episode called mystery cults, 0:03:06.080 --> 0:03:09.520 and you are bringing the normal connotations of the word 0:03:09.680 --> 0:03:13.280 mystery and cult that modern English speakers would bring with you, 0:03:13.919 --> 0:03:16.880 that might send your mind off in several different wrong 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:17.920 directions at once. 0:03:18.639 --> 0:03:21.440 That's right. If you were to tell someone I just 0:03:21.520 --> 0:03:25.440 joined a mystery cult today, you might be it might 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:28.440 be accurate to think, oh, this individual joined a book club, 0:03:28.840 --> 0:03:31.880 or maybe this is a really cool band name. And 0:03:31.919 --> 0:03:35.640 if someone were to join a mystery cult, say in 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:40.920 the nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties in say the United States, 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:43.720 well it's going to have different connotations and it might 0:03:43.800 --> 0:03:45.400 read to a certain it might lead to a certain 0:03:45.400 --> 0:03:50.240 amount of panic. But yeah, we have to differentiate a 0:03:50.480 --> 0:03:53.640 mystery cult in its ancient application. 0:03:53.240 --> 0:03:56.160 Here, right, And so we need to do work on 0:03:56.240 --> 0:03:58.840 both of those words, actually, on mystery and on cult. 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.600 So in in modern English, the word cult is typically 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:08.040 used to mean a specific type of religious phenomenon, almost 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:13.800 always with pejorative connotations. So a cult refers to a marginal, 0:04:14.320 --> 0:04:18.760 extreme and usually socially harmful form of religion from the 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.800 point of view of the person choosing this term. So, 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:25.440 for example, a cult is a religion that has relatively 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:29.160 few adherents compared to major world religions. Maybe one that 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:34.440 enforces strict reverence and obedience of a human leader. Maybe 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:38.560 religion that requires adherents to cut off contact with loved 0:04:38.560 --> 0:04:41.200 ones and the rest of the outside world. Things like that. 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:46.200 Yes. Indeed, the word cult has often been used by 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:53.040 more established religious groups against new religious movements, new religious 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:57.000 movements that could potentially have harmful attributes but may not. 0:04:58.279 --> 0:05:00.839 This was a hallmark, of course, of the Christian countercult 0:05:00.839 --> 0:05:04.359 movement of the late twentieth century, often targeting Christian groups 0:05:04.680 --> 0:05:09.919 held as heretical by larger Christian organizations, which of course 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:13.200 is a tail almost as old as Christianity itself in 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:14.040 many respects. 0:05:14.520 --> 0:05:17.040 And in some cases what the Christians were saying about 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.080 those people probably resembled what the Roman Pagans were saying 0:05:20.080 --> 0:05:23.120 about the early Christians. You know, they meet in secret, 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.360 and they eat babies alive and stuff. 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:27.960 Yeah, and of course all this bleeds over too into 0:05:28.080 --> 0:05:32.359 fiction and fantasy. You know, if you play Dungeons and Dragons, 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.800 you've probably noticed that I haven't checked in the new 0:05:35.880 --> 0:05:37.880 Monster Manual which just came out. I have a copy 0:05:37.920 --> 0:05:40.599 of it, but I haven't gotten to the cultists yet. 0:05:40.640 --> 0:05:45.240 But generally, cultists are an enemy type in Dungeons and Dragons. 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:47.480 And what do you think of in Dungeons and Dragons 0:05:47.520 --> 0:05:50.480 Within the context of Dungeons and Dragons when you encounter cultists, well, 0:05:50.520 --> 0:05:54.920 they are just absolute bad guys with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:58.719 They're just they're villains that you battle. They see that 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:00.840 another fantasy as well. 0:06:00.920 --> 0:06:04.200 Usually their own proprietary robes and daggers if you loot them. 0:06:04.400 --> 0:06:07.640 Yes, yes, yeah. If you get a mini of a cultists, 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:09.839 what do you expect to see a robe and a dagger? 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:12.599 Those are the hallmarks, right, So that's what cult usually 0:06:12.640 --> 0:06:15.400 means in English today in general usage, and then of 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:18.000 course you get the derivative term, you know, like cult 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.919 films and stuff that are more ironic usages stemming from 0:06:22.040 --> 0:06:26.360 that usage. Yeah, but in the context of Greco Roman history, 0:06:26.400 --> 0:06:29.400 the word cult does not have any of those connotations. 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:33.520 It doesn't have any negative implications. It does not imply 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:38.560 a marginal or unusual practice either. There were cults of 0:06:38.760 --> 0:06:42.479 the mainstream gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon, so 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:45.799 you'd have the local cult of Apollo, the local cult 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:50.000 of Jupiter, the cult of Dionysus, et cetera. So when 0:06:50.200 --> 0:06:52.840 used by ancient historians, you can think of the word 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.440 cult as basically just a synonym for the word worship 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:00.200 or system of worship. So the cult of Apollo a 0:07:00.240 --> 0:07:03.400 particular time and place in the Hellenic world would be 0:07:03.440 --> 0:07:07.360 the system of beliefs, practices, and social structures under which 0:07:07.400 --> 0:07:10.680 Apollo was worshiped. In fact, there's a bit of interesting 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:16.640 etymology here. The English word cult is derived through several steps, 0:07:16.680 --> 0:07:21.040 originally from the Latin cultus, which often literally means worship 0:07:21.160 --> 0:07:25.200 but also means care in the sense of taking care 0:07:25.440 --> 0:07:29.520 of something or tending to the needs of something. So, 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:34.720 for example, agriculture is tending to the needs of the fields. 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:39.320 To cultivate means to till a field and preparation for planting. 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:43.160 So the cult of a particular god is the way 0:07:43.320 --> 0:07:46.560 of tending to the needs of that God in the 0:07:46.560 --> 0:07:51.600 form of worship, prayer, festivals, rituals, and sacrifices, the latter 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:55.400 of which could take many forms, often agricultural products like 0:07:55.520 --> 0:07:59.640 grain or the meat of livestock, or could have other forms, 0:07:59.680 --> 0:08:02.720 you know, maybe a monetary donation, purchasing one of the 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:06.880 aforementioned products, or things like incense or wine. 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.120 So when we think of something like the cult of Cthulhu, 0:08:10.320 --> 0:08:13.400 we're just talking about taking care of Cthulhu. Yes, looking 0:08:13.440 --> 0:08:17.120 after Cthulhu, tending to the needs of Cthulhu, which sounds 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:18.600 far less frightening and threatening. 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:21.720 That's true, it's a beautiful thing. And in fact this 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:26.840 highlights something about Greek and Roman pagan religion that is 0:08:27.440 --> 0:08:31.640 unfamiliar to practitioners of many of the major world religions today. 0:08:31.680 --> 0:08:36.880 People who are primarily familiar with religion through Christianity or 0:08:36.920 --> 0:08:42.080 Islam or Judaism. The most common form of public religion 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:47.480 in the Greek and Roman world was essentially a transactional 0:08:47.880 --> 0:08:53.360 quid pro quo relationship between the person or the local 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:58.480 community and a god. So the person and the community 0:08:58.520 --> 0:09:03.280 at large performed rituals and sacrifices in honor of the god, 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:08.319 and in return, the God was expected to provide blessings 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:11.320 to the person. So it was generally understood that, you know, 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:14.720 the gods would have power over events that were beyond 0:09:14.800 --> 0:09:18.320 human control. They can maybe control how, you know, the 0:09:18.360 --> 0:09:24.360 weather and agricultural outcomes and diseases and things like that, 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:27.520 and so in order to get the God to you know, 0:09:27.640 --> 0:09:30.280 treat you nice as far as those things beyond human 0:09:30.320 --> 0:09:33.400 control went, the thing you would do is take care 0:09:33.440 --> 0:09:36.080 of the God. You would honor their festivals, you would 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:38.920 make sacrifices to them, you would do prayers for them. 0:09:39.360 --> 0:09:41.400 And in that sense, you can really look at it 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:43.720 as kind of a contract. There's a bargain. We do 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:45.640 things for you, you do things for us. 0:09:46.440 --> 0:09:51.680 Yeah, I think the agriculture comparison is quite apt here 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.520 to think of it almost as like a knowledge of 0:09:55.559 --> 0:09:59.320 the unseen world that then you of course have to honor. 0:09:59.400 --> 0:10:02.079 Like Okay, we've discovered this. We were aware of this 0:10:02.720 --> 0:10:06.360 relationship between these entities we cannot see, but who are 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:09.800 quite powerful over human affairs. And of course we have 0:10:09.920 --> 0:10:13.720 to cultivate this relationship. We have to make sure that 0:10:13.720 --> 0:10:16.600 they're happy so we can be happy. This is how 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:17.840 the world works. 0:10:17.960 --> 0:10:21.000 Right, and this is the main way religion is understood 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.960 among the ancient Greeks and Romans. That way of approaching 0:10:25.000 --> 0:10:30.440 religion is fundamentally different from the major religions of the 0:10:30.480 --> 0:10:35.600 world today, like Christianity and Islam, which place emphasis on 0:10:36.120 --> 0:10:40.880 belief and on a form of mental submission to God. 0:10:41.720 --> 0:10:45.000 Mainstream Greek and Roman religion was really there was not 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:48.880 a lot of discourse about what you believed or like, 0:10:49.400 --> 0:10:54.240 you know, did you mentally internally honor and love God? 0:10:54.400 --> 0:10:56.559 That That was just not really a common way of 0:10:56.600 --> 0:10:59.480 approaching it for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Instead, it 0:10:59.559 --> 0:11:02.320 was did you do the rituals, did you do the prayers? 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:05.320 Did you make the sacrifices, did you celebrate the festivals? 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:09.000 Yeah? Yeah, do you know what the gods want? And 0:11:09.080 --> 0:11:11.800 generally what the gods want are those rituals, are those 0:11:11.840 --> 0:11:15.120 sacrifices and so forth. It's more transactional. 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:18.880 I was thinking about another difference that came to mind 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:21.240 for me as I was reading this Abouden book that 0:11:21.280 --> 0:11:23.440 we're going to be talking about in the series. I 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:26.560 can really only speak to my intimate familiarity with Christianity 0:11:26.600 --> 0:11:30.000 here in America today. But I think a lot of 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:34.880 modern Christians, at least in the United States, would today 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:40.000 say that God does not need our worship, like he 0:11:40.120 --> 0:11:44.280 is not left wanting if deprived of it. Rather, I 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:48.280 think most would say that say something like we worship 0:11:48.440 --> 0:11:51.880 God because it is right to do so, that God 0:11:52.000 --> 0:11:55.680 is by nature deserving of worship, and so we his 0:11:55.760 --> 0:12:00.840 followers are simply acknowledging that. I don't get that impression 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:04.480 about Greco Roman pagans. I don't get the feeling they 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.320 would have thought of it this way. The worship and 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:11.080 sacrifices that Greco Roman pagans seem to have given the 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:15.360 gods were things that the gods wanted and in fact needed. 0:12:15.920 --> 0:12:19.040 And one piece of evidence for this occurred to me 0:12:19.120 --> 0:12:23.440 when I was reading Bowden's recounting of the myth of 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:27.240 Demeter and Persephone, in which Persephone has stolen a way 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:31.640 to the underworld. Demeter is left to straw looking for her. Eventually, 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:34.680 she can return back to the upper world for part 0:12:34.720 --> 0:12:36.800 of the year, but has to return to the underworld 0:12:36.840 --> 0:12:39.280 for another part of the year, and this ends up 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:45.440 relating to understandings of seasonal cycles. But anyway, this myth 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:50.160 is related to one of the most important mystery cults 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:54.480 in the ancient Mediterranean, the Elusinian Mysteries. More on that later, 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.120 but there is a part of the myth where Demeter, 0:12:57.720 --> 0:13:00.840 the Greek goddess of fertile fields and the harbor, is 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:03.719 mourning the kidnapping of her daughter into the underworld, and 0:13:04.000 --> 0:13:07.280 she uses her power over the fields to stop grain 0:13:07.480 --> 0:13:10.720 from growing over the earth. And it turns out, at 0:13:10.800 --> 0:13:13.599 least within a common telling of this tale in the 0:13:13.920 --> 0:13:17.960 Homeric Hymn to Demeter, this is alarming not only to 0:13:18.160 --> 0:13:20.480 humans who need to eat the grain. You know that's 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:23.560 going to cause famine on earth, but it's also alarming 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:27.000 to the gods, because the gods need to receive grain 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:31.800 sacrifices from humans, and so Zeus is motivated to do 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.520 something to fix the situation, and that struck me as 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:39.360 very alien to the most common ways of thinking about 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:42.720 God that I encounter at least to the twenty first 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:45.640 century American. It seems to me that that to the 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.080 Greco Roman pagans, not only was the worship of the 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:52.400 god's transactional. The gods were not just taking pity on 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:55.240 us or doing us a favor by engaging in this 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:58.840 deal making. They needed, or at least very much wanted, 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:00.480 what we were bringing to the table. 0:14:01.120 --> 0:14:04.280 Yes. Yes, very different from the idea of well, God 0:14:04.320 --> 0:14:07.959 created you. God wants your love, and you are loved 0:14:08.000 --> 0:14:11.760 by God and therefore like invited into his arms. No, 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.480 this is more we need that grain, like there's a 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:17.280 there's an economy here, and it needs to be maintained. 0:14:17.760 --> 0:14:20.280 Yeah, that's right. So anyway, I guess we got into 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:23.280 some digressions there. But that's why the word cult should 0:14:23.320 --> 0:14:24.000 not mislead you. 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:24.240 There. 0:14:24.440 --> 0:14:27.440 We're not talking about the you know, the the cultists 0:14:27.480 --> 0:14:30.040 of dungeons and dragons. It just means a form of 0:14:30.080 --> 0:14:44.360 worship as understood within the ancient Mediterranean. Now, the other 0:14:44.400 --> 0:14:47.480 word in a mystery cult is mystery. This is an 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:52.000 interesting case too. In common usage today, mystery refers to 0:14:52.080 --> 0:14:56.160 a sort of puzzle with a hidden solution. So a 0:14:56.200 --> 0:14:59.280 mystery story is one where the plot is propelled by 0:14:59.280 --> 0:15:04.040 your desire to have a question answered. There may be 0:15:04.920 --> 0:15:07.360 a hidden solution, or there may be no known solution 0:15:07.440 --> 0:15:10.640 at all. Sometimes a mystery refers to a thing that 0:15:10.960 --> 0:15:12.440 a question that cannot. 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:14.480 Be answered right unsolved mysteries. 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:19.000 Yes, So this could imply that a mystery cult is 0:15:19.040 --> 0:15:23.160 a form of worship where the main goal is to 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.560 solve some kind of information puzzle, to answer a question, 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:31.760 or to access a piece of hidden information. That's not 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:35.560 primarily what's going on with mystery cults. While the Greco 0:15:35.640 --> 0:15:39.560 Roman mystery cults absolutely did have elements of secrecy and 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:42.560 privileged information, and we'll get into more of that later 0:15:42.600 --> 0:15:46.000 as well, the main sense in which the word mystery 0:15:46.240 --> 0:15:49.040 is used in mystery cults is to refer not to 0:15:49.120 --> 0:15:53.400 an information puzzle, but to a specific type of secret 0:15:53.600 --> 0:16:00.440 initiation ritual known in Greek as mysteria, which some somewhat 0:16:00.440 --> 0:16:05.400 overlaps with other Greek concepts of orgia and teleti. Abouden 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:09.240 mentions these three concepts altogether. They seem to sometimes be 0:16:09.320 --> 0:16:12.560 used interchangeably, or maybe to refer to related but slightly 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:17.400 different things Orgea and teleti. He translates as mystic rights 0:16:17.440 --> 0:16:22.080 and initiations, So what are the mysteries? The mysteries are 0:16:22.160 --> 0:16:26.440 these initiation rights, and they could indeed be described as 0:16:26.440 --> 0:16:29.760 in many ways mysterious. They were often held at night. 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:33.120 They were often conducted in secret, so they might take 0:16:33.160 --> 0:16:37.480 place inside a kind of a protected building outside of 0:16:37.520 --> 0:16:40.960 public view. So in the case of the Elusinian mysteries, 0:16:41.000 --> 0:16:44.320 which will describe in more detail later, I'm sure there 0:16:44.320 --> 0:16:47.960 would be kind of publicly viewable part of this festival. 0:16:48.000 --> 0:16:50.360 They would take place outside, people would be able to 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:54.800 see it going on, but eventually the festival would progress 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:59.840 into an enclosed area inside a kind of temple complex, 0:17:00.240 --> 0:17:04.520 where things would happen inside and those not initiated into 0:17:04.560 --> 0:17:06.560 the secret rights would not be able to know what 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:10.040 was going on. Sometimes these rights would also be mysterious 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:14.160 in the sense that participants might be blindfolded or hooded 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:17.000 so that they couldn't see or understand what was happening. 0:17:17.640 --> 0:17:24.040 And the rights were often just made up of weird, baffling, frightening, 0:17:24.280 --> 0:17:29.560 emotionally intense experiences and encounters with the power of the gods. 0:17:30.160 --> 0:17:34.520 So there are absolutely things about these rights that we 0:17:34.640 --> 0:17:37.640 might think of as mysterious and the mystery cults did 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:42.480 absolutely have secrets, but the mystery in the name refers 0:17:42.600 --> 0:17:46.639 to these rights, refers to the strange, powerful, obscure rights 0:17:46.640 --> 0:17:51.000 of initiation, not so much to an information puzzle mystery 0:17:51.080 --> 0:17:55.160 in the Sherlock Holmes sense. If that distinction makes sense. 0:17:55.359 --> 0:17:59.320 Yes, yes, absolutely. Now I want to add an additional 0:17:59.400 --> 0:18:03.000 note on the term that you mentioned already, orgia. This 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:05.200 term is of course used in the context of religious 0:18:05.280 --> 0:18:09.920 rights in ancient Greece, and while orgea might entail sexuality, 0:18:10.000 --> 0:18:14.719 it does not inherently entail sexuality. I was reading a 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.840 bit about this in a really nice twenty twenty three 0:18:17.920 --> 0:18:23.960 piece in The Conversation by Christian George Schwinzel. This is 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:28.439 a historian, a French historian of the ancient world, and 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:30.560 he writes about this, and he points out that the 0:18:30.680 --> 0:18:36.640 term that we in common usage today, org orgy in English, 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:40.639 didn't come to mean group sexual activity and excessive food 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:45.080 and drink till after eighteen hundred CE, especially during the 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:51.359 nineteenth century, and especially in French literature of the time. Schwinzel, however, 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:54.000 stresses that this doesn't mean that the ancient Greeks and 0:18:54.080 --> 0:18:58.399 Romans didn't engage in such activities. They certainly did, they 0:18:58.480 --> 0:19:01.600 just referred to them by different names. Games Twinzel, who 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.600 is again himself French, wrote an entire book on the subject. 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:08.320 It's funny how this is one of these terms that 0:19:08.359 --> 0:19:10.480 has come around, kind of like cult in a way, 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:14.439 where I use the word orgy all the time, not 0:19:14.640 --> 0:19:17.960 to refer to anything sexual. I just mean like a 0:19:18.119 --> 0:19:22.160 sort of an excessive indulgence in something. 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:24.919 Right right. Well, And in fact, he gets into this 0:19:24.960 --> 0:19:28.600 a little bit like bringing up the film Babylon for 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:32.000 the kind of thing came out that same year, which 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.159 is like a Hollywood Babylon sort of thing, and he 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.360 points out that some of that the movie does contain 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:42.760 a fictional depiction of a Hollywood orgy in the modern sense. 0:19:43.320 --> 0:19:45.800 But then one might say, well, this movie is an 0:19:45.920 --> 0:19:49.640 orgy for the senses in the metaphorical sense. But again, 0:19:49.680 --> 0:19:51.679 when you get back to the use of the of 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:55.920 the term orgea, it does not necessarily mean any kind 0:19:55.920 --> 0:19:59.840 of sexual activity was going on. It could, but it 0:20:00.040 --> 0:20:05.200 doesn't inherently mean that. So it's just another important footnote 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:10.120 about the the usages of the term. The French literature example, 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:13.600 you do see works of that in thearing that time 0:20:13.640 --> 0:20:18.359 period that are portraying the ancient world as engaging in 0:20:18.400 --> 0:20:22.080 these sorts of rights, that putting more of a you know, 0:20:22.119 --> 0:20:23.760 an erotic sexual spin on them. 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:26.320 Right, So that's kind of an adaptation. But even in 0:20:26.359 --> 0:20:29.400 the original Greek understanding that we were just talking about, 0:20:29.400 --> 0:20:32.720 as explained by Bowden, there is the idea that the 0:20:33.640 --> 0:20:37.400 orgea or orgea, these mystic rights would have been probably 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:43.680 extremely emotionally intense and overwhelming to the senses ancient writers 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:46.800 who do, even if they don't describe what the rights 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.400 themselves were, they often describe the effect of them, which 0:20:50.440 --> 0:20:54.320 is that they are life changing, an overwhelming experience that 0:20:54.440 --> 0:20:58.840 leaves one deeply shaken to the core exactly now. 0:20:58.880 --> 0:21:02.679 Again, that book by Hugh Bowden has been one of 0:21:02.720 --> 0:21:06.640 our key resources here, and Balden does a great job 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:10.080 as a great approach to the topic, grounding his initial 0:21:10.119 --> 0:21:13.280 approach in a discussion of what we might refer to 0:21:13.320 --> 0:21:17.560 as the mainstream religious ecosystem of the ancient Greco Roman world, 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:20.479 and then diving into where the mystery cults fit in 0:21:20.800 --> 0:21:24.640 and how they generally differed. And we've already been engaging 0:21:24.640 --> 0:21:26.679 with some of this, you know, we have to we 0:21:26.720 --> 0:21:31.480 have to exit our modern understanding of organized, top down 0:21:31.520 --> 0:21:37.440 religion and get into a different ecosystem, a different way 0:21:37.480 --> 0:21:40.199 that things worked in order to understand then how the 0:21:40.240 --> 0:21:42.720 mystery cults are sort of set aside even from that, 0:21:44.080 --> 0:21:47.000 So we're we're largely dealing with the world before Christianity 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:50.159 and set apart from its key characteristics, namely, you know, 0:21:50.200 --> 0:21:56.160 any notion of a centrally organized doctrinal religion. So first up, 0:21:56.760 --> 0:22:00.679 this is this probably seems like an outrageous overstate the obvious, 0:22:00.720 --> 0:22:03.680 but there were a lot of gods, yes, and by 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.840 that we don't just mean the standard twelve Olympians set 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:10.719 menu that instantly comes to mind. You know your Zeo's here, 0:22:10.760 --> 0:22:14.760 Apollo and so forth. You know your main Greek gods, 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:16.080 the ones that you're going to see in a poster. 0:22:16.320 --> 0:22:20.600 They're the ones that are frequently utilized in Greek mythology 0:22:20.680 --> 0:22:24.520 themed works of fiction. No, I would say, instead, think 0:22:24.560 --> 0:22:29.160 of an exhaustive cheesecake factory style menu, one that makes 0:22:29.200 --> 0:22:32.200 you question whether the kitchen can truly deliver on all 0:22:32.200 --> 0:22:35.480 of these diverse menu items. Only even that is not 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:38.280 a perfect technology, because the cheesecake factory is, as I 0:22:38.400 --> 0:22:41.680 understand it centrally organized. The idea is that any cheesecake 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:43.920 factory you go to is going to have the same 0:22:44.080 --> 0:22:45.360 exhaustive menu. 0:22:45.119 --> 0:22:48.040 Right, Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to think of a 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:50.919 better analogy, because so you had lots of different gods, 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:55.600 and then you had local versions of all these gods. 0:22:55.640 --> 0:22:59.240 So almost more like how you got McDonald's. But the 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:02.480 local McDonald Donald's is a franchise, you know they But 0:23:02.600 --> 0:23:06.040 that's a little misleading too, because there's top down control 0:23:06.119 --> 0:23:09.600 like McDonald's Corporates, that's rules about what franchise owners can do. 0:23:10.800 --> 0:23:14.400 So I don't know. You imagine you've you've got your 0:23:14.440 --> 0:23:16.439 basic list of gods, then you've got a lot of 0:23:16.560 --> 0:23:20.000 other lesser known gods, and then you've also got the 0:23:20.200 --> 0:23:23.479 local ways or the local cult of each of the 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:26.560 main gods that are going to be different than how 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:29.639 that god is appreciated and understood in a different place. 0:23:29.960 --> 0:23:32.680 That's right. Yeah, Any given community or city, states, city 0:23:32.720 --> 0:23:34.520 state is going to have its own cast of deities. 0:23:34.920 --> 0:23:38.600 They determine the course of people's lives. Individual cult practices 0:23:39.000 --> 0:23:43.280 are going to vary widely across the inherently fractured populations. 0:23:43.880 --> 0:23:46.800 A variety that was at times due to actual independence, 0:23:47.560 --> 0:23:50.040 such as in the post Alexander period where you had 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:53.960 a you know, very formerly united and now fractured empire, 0:23:54.440 --> 0:23:57.560 or during Roman rule, where you know, everything is is 0:23:58.880 --> 0:24:04.000 wrapped up under Roman rule, but with local religious customs 0:24:04.080 --> 0:24:06.359 largely left alone. As long as they're not interfering with 0:24:06.400 --> 0:24:08.600 what the Romans are doing, fine, go ahead and do 0:24:08.760 --> 0:24:12.440 whatever you were doing beforehand. So you know, as an example, 0:24:12.480 --> 0:24:15.720 in ancient Greece, you'd likely find the major Olympian gods, 0:24:15.720 --> 0:24:17.920 you know, the Big Twelve anywhere you went, as well 0:24:17.920 --> 0:24:21.399 as the various underworld deities, although there again might be 0:24:21.440 --> 0:24:23.679 regional differences in the way any of these are treated. 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:26.920 But then you'd also have lesser nature deities and especially 0:24:27.000 --> 0:24:30.200