Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: Now many times on Stuff to Blow Your Mind when
Speaker 2: discussing religion and the ancient Greco Roman world, we have
Speaker 2: referred to the mystery cults, also known as the sacred mysteries,
Speaker 2: or even the mysteries. Watching my Stories, we've discussed specific
Speaker 2: mystery cults and a little more depth. But I was
Speaker 2: recently thinking about this and I realized that this was
Speaker 2: a topic that deserved deeper consideration, and indeed, I think
Speaker 2: more than once I've personally kind of left it at
Speaker 2: and this deity was also taken up by the mystery cults,
Speaker 2: as if to delve deeper is impossible or somehow forbidden. Now,
Speaker 2: certainly mysteries surrounding the various mystery cults remain and much
Speaker 2: is left open to interpretation, but we do know quite
Speaker 2: a lot. Whole books have been written on the topic,
Speaker 2: and we're going to follow along in these episodes to
Speaker 2: see what we can learn and share about the mysteries.
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, I am excited to go on a journey
Speaker 3: exploring the mystery cults of the Greco Roman world. But
Speaker 3: I kind of like the way that you used to
Speaker 3: leave it off, you know, just you know, in this
Speaker 3: deity yes became a focus of the mystery cults and
Speaker 3: saying no more, because that is a tradition going all
Speaker 3: the way back to the ancient world itself. One of
Speaker 3: the main sources we're going to be using in this
Speaker 3: series is a great book called Mystery Cults in the
Speaker 3: Ancient World that just got a new edition out. I
Speaker 3: think it was originally published over a decade ago, but
Speaker 3: it got a new edition in twenty twenty three by
Speaker 3: an author named Hugh Bowden, who is a professor of
Speaker 3: ancient history at King's College, London. This is a really
Speaker 3: great book. But one of the things he mentioned several
Speaker 3: times is ancient writers bringing up a mystery cult and
Speaker 3: then saying I have been instructed in a dream not
Speaker 3: to say any more about this.
Speaker 2: I can.
Speaker 3: My lips are sealed, like Paulsenius will be like, then,
Speaker 3: this really interesting thing happened in Samothrace, of which I
Speaker 3: can tell you nothing, which itself makes for a very
Speaker 3: enticing subject.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and and course runs completely counter to our modern
Speaker 2: understanding of history, like, now everything must be revealed, Please
Speaker 2: reveal it to us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything except when you have met face to face
Speaker 3: the terrifying power of a god or a goddess. Now, Rob,
Speaker 3: I know today you wanted to wanted to do some
Speaker 3: work laying the groundwork establishing a bit about the historical
Speaker 3: context of broader Greco Roman religion in the ancient Mediterranean world,
Speaker 3: which is the context in which these mystery cults existed.
Speaker 3: But before we do that, I thought it might be
Speaker 3: important just to do a little bit of disambiguation on terminology,
Speaker 3: because if you are coming into an episode called mystery cults,
Speaker 3: and you are bringing the normal connotations of the word
Speaker 3: mystery and cult that modern English speakers would bring with you,
Speaker 3: that might send your mind off in several different wrong
Speaker 3: directions at once.
Speaker 2: That's right. If you were to tell someone I just
Speaker 2: joined a mystery cult today, you might be it might
Speaker 2: be accurate to think, oh, this individual joined a book club,
Speaker 2: or maybe this is a really cool band name. And
Speaker 2: if someone were to join a mystery cult, say in
Speaker 2: the nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties in say the United States,
Speaker 2: well it's going to have different connotations and it might
Speaker 2: read to a certain it might lead to a certain
Speaker 2: amount of panic. But yeah, we have to differentiate a
Speaker 2: mystery cult in its ancient application.
Speaker 3: Here, right, And so we need to do work on
Speaker 3: both of those words, actually, on mystery and on cult.
Speaker 3: So in in modern English, the word cult is typically
Speaker 3: used to mean a specific type of religious phenomenon, almost
Speaker 3: always with pejorative connotations. So a cult refers to a marginal,
Speaker 3: extreme and usually socially harmful form of religion from the
Speaker 3: point of view of the person choosing this term. So,
Speaker 3: for example, a cult is a religion that has relatively
Speaker 3: few adherents compared to major world religions. Maybe one that
Speaker 3: enforces strict reverence and obedience of a human leader. Maybe
Speaker 3: religion that requires adherents to cut off contact with loved
Speaker 3: ones and the rest of the outside world. Things like that.
Speaker 2: Yes. Indeed, the word cult has often been used by
Speaker 2: more established religious groups against new religious movements, new religious
Speaker 2: movements that could potentially have harmful attributes but may not.
Speaker 2: This was a hallmark, of course, of the Christian countercult
Speaker 2: movement of the late twentieth century, often targeting Christian groups
Speaker 2: held as heretical by larger Christian organizations, which of course
Speaker 2: is a tail almost as old as Christianity itself in
Speaker 2: many respects.
Speaker 3: And in some cases what the Christians were saying about
Speaker 3: those people probably resembled what the Roman Pagans were saying
Speaker 3: about the early Christians. You know, they meet in secret,
Speaker 3: and they eat babies alive and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course all this bleeds over too into
Speaker 2: fiction and fantasy. You know, if you play Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 2: you've probably noticed that I haven't checked in the new
Speaker 2: Monster Manual which just came out. I have a copy
Speaker 2: of it, but I haven't gotten to the cultists yet.
Speaker 2: But generally, cultists are an enemy type in Dungeons and Dragons.
Speaker 2: And what do you think of in Dungeons and Dragons
Speaker 2: Within the context of Dungeons and Dragons when you encounter cultists, well,
Speaker 2: they are just absolute bad guys with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
Speaker 2: They're just they're villains that you battle. They see that
Speaker 2: another fantasy as well.
Speaker 3: Usually their own proprietary robes and daggers if you loot them.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yeah. If you get a mini of a cultists,
Speaker 2: what do you expect to see a robe and a dagger?
Speaker 3: Those are the hallmarks, right, So that's what cult usually
Speaker 3: means in English today in general usage, and then of
Speaker 3: course you get the derivative term, you know, like cult
Speaker 3: films and stuff that are more ironic usages stemming from
Speaker 3: that usage. Yeah, but in the context of Greco Roman history,
Speaker 3: the word cult does not have any of those connotations.
Speaker 3: It doesn't have any negative implications. It does not imply
Speaker 3: a marginal or unusual practice either. There were cults of
Speaker 3: the mainstream gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon, so
Speaker 3: you'd have the local cult of Apollo, the local cult
Speaker 3: of Jupiter, the cult of Dionysus, et cetera. So when
Speaker 3: used by ancient historians, you can think of the word
Speaker 3: cult as basically just a synonym for the word worship
Speaker 3: or system of worship. So the cult of Apollo a
Speaker 3: particular time and place in the Hellenic world would be
Speaker 3: the system of beliefs, practices, and social structures under which
Speaker 3: Apollo was worshiped. In fact, there's a bit of interesting
Speaker 3: etymology here. The English word cult is derived through several steps,
Speaker 3: originally from the Latin cultus, which often literally means worship
Speaker 3: but also means care in the sense of taking care
Speaker 3: of something or tending to the needs of something. So,
Speaker 3: for example, agriculture is tending to the needs of the fields.
Speaker 3: To cultivate means to till a field and preparation for planting.
Speaker 3: So the cult of a particular god is the way
Speaker 3: of tending to the needs of that God in the
Speaker 3: form of worship, prayer, festivals, rituals, and sacrifices, the latter
Speaker 3: of which could take many forms, often agricultural products like
Speaker 3: grain or the meat of livestock, or could have other forms,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe a monetary donation, purchasing one of the
Speaker 3: aforementioned products, or things like incense or wine.
Speaker 2: So when we think of something like the cult of Cthulhu,
Speaker 2: we're just talking about taking care of Cthulhu. Yes, looking
Speaker 2: after Cthulhu, tending to the needs of Cthulhu, which sounds
Speaker 2: far less frightening and threatening.
Speaker 3: That's true, it's a beautiful thing. And in fact this
Speaker 3: highlights something about Greek and Roman pagan religion that is
Speaker 3: unfamiliar to practitioners of many of the major world religions today.
Speaker 3: People who are primarily familiar with religion through Christianity or
Speaker 3: Islam or Judaism. The most common form of public religion
Speaker 3: in the Greek and Roman world was essentially a transactional
Speaker 3: quid pro quo relationship between the person or the local
Speaker 3: community and a god. So the person and the community
Speaker 3: at large performed rituals and sacrifices in honor of the god,
Speaker 3: and in return, the God was expected to provide blessings
Speaker 3: to the person. So it was generally understood that, you know,
Speaker 3: the gods would have power over events that were beyond
Speaker 3: human control. They can maybe control how, you know, the
Speaker 3: weather and agricultural outcomes and diseases and things like that,
Speaker 3: and so in order to get the God to you know,
Speaker 3: treat you nice as far as those things beyond human
Speaker 3: control went, the thing you would do is take care
Speaker 3: of the God. You would honor their festivals, you would
Speaker 3: make sacrifices to them, you would do prayers for them.
Speaker 3: And in that sense, you can really look at it
Speaker 3: as kind of a contract. There's a bargain. We do
Speaker 3: things for you, you do things for us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the agriculture comparison is quite apt here
Speaker 2: to think of it almost as like a knowledge of
Speaker 2: the unseen world that then you of course have to honor.
Speaker 2: Like Okay, we've discovered this. We were aware of this
Speaker 2: relationship between these entities we cannot see, but who are
Speaker 2: quite powerful over human affairs. And of course we have
Speaker 2: to cultivate this relationship. We have to make sure that
Speaker 2: they're happy so we can be happy. This is how
Speaker 2: the world works.
Speaker 3: Right, and this is the main way religion is understood
Speaker 3: among the ancient Greeks and Romans. That way of approaching
Speaker 3: religion is fundamentally different from the major religions of the
Speaker 3: world today, like Christianity and Islam, which place emphasis on
Speaker 3: belief and on a form of mental submission to God.
Speaker 3: Mainstream Greek and Roman religion was really there was not
Speaker 3: a lot of discourse about what you believed or like,
Speaker 3: you know, did you mentally internally honor and love God?
Speaker 3: That That was just not really a common way of
Speaker 3: approaching it for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Instead, it
Speaker 3: was did you do the rituals, did you do the prayers?
Speaker 3: Did you make the sacrifices, did you celebrate the festivals?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, do you know what the gods want? And
Speaker 2: generally what the gods want are those rituals, are those
Speaker 2: sacrifices and so forth. It's more transactional.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about another difference that came to mind
Speaker 3: for me as I was reading this Abouden book that
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about in the series. I
Speaker 3: can really only speak to my intimate familiarity with Christianity
Speaker 3: here in America today. But I think a lot of
Speaker 3: modern Christians, at least in the United States, would today
Speaker 3: say that God does not need our worship, like he
Speaker 3: is not left wanting if deprived of it. Rather, I
Speaker 3: think most would say that say something like we worship
Speaker 3: God because it is right to do so, that God
Speaker 3: is by nature deserving of worship, and so we his
Speaker 3: followers are simply acknowledging that. I don't get that impression
Speaker 3: about Greco Roman pagans. I don't get the feeling they
Speaker 3: would have thought of it this way. The worship and
Speaker 3: sacrifices that Greco Roman pagans seem to have given the
Speaker 3: gods were things that the gods wanted and in fact needed.
Speaker 3: And one piece of evidence for this occurred to me
Speaker 3: when I was reading Bowden's recounting of the myth of
Speaker 3: Demeter and Persephone, in which Persephone has stolen a way
Speaker 3: to the underworld. Demeter is left to straw looking for her. Eventually,
Speaker 3: she can return back to the upper world for part
Speaker 3: of the year, but has to return to the underworld
Speaker 3: for another part of the year, and this ends up
Speaker 3: relating to understandings of seasonal cycles. But anyway, this myth
Speaker 3: is related to one of the most important mystery cults
Speaker 3: in the ancient Mediterranean, the Elusinian Mysteries. More on that later,
Speaker 3: but there is a part of the myth where Demeter,
Speaker 3: the Greek goddess of fertile fields and the harbor, is
Speaker 3: mourning the kidnapping of her daughter into the underworld, and
Speaker 3: she uses her power over the fields to stop grain
Speaker 3: from growing over the earth. And it turns out, at
Speaker 3: least within a common telling of this tale in the
Speaker 3: Homeric Hymn to Demeter, this is alarming not only to
Speaker 3: humans who need to eat the grain. You know that's
Speaker 3: going to cause famine on earth, but it's also alarming
Speaker 3: to the gods, because the gods need to receive grain
Speaker 3: sacrifices from humans, and so Zeus is motivated to do
Speaker 3: something to fix the situation, and that struck me as
Speaker 3: very alien to the most common ways of thinking about
Speaker 3: God that I encounter at least to the twenty first
Speaker 3: century American. It seems to me that that to the
Speaker 3: Greco Roman pagans, not only was the worship of the
Speaker 3: god's transactional. The gods were not just taking pity on
Speaker 3: us or doing us a favor by engaging in this
Speaker 3: deal making. They needed, or at least very much wanted,
Speaker 3: what we were bringing to the table.
Speaker 2: Yes. Yes, very different from the idea of well, God
Speaker 2: created you. God wants your love, and you are loved
Speaker 2: by God and therefore like invited into his arms. No,
Speaker 2: this is more we need that grain, like there's a
Speaker 2: there's an economy here, and it needs to be maintained.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So anyway, I guess we got into
Speaker 3: some digressions there. But that's why the word cult should
Speaker 3: not mislead you.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: We're not talking about the you know, the the cultists
Speaker 3: of dungeons and dragons. It just means a form of
Speaker 3: worship as understood within the ancient Mediterranean. Now, the other
Speaker 3: word in a mystery cult is mystery. This is an
Speaker 3: interesting case too. In common usage today, mystery refers to
Speaker 3: a sort of puzzle with a hidden solution. So a
Speaker 3: mystery story is one where the plot is propelled by
Speaker 3: your desire to have a question answered. There may be
Speaker 3: a hidden solution, or there may be no known solution
Speaker 3: at all. Sometimes a mystery refers to a thing that
Speaker 3: a question that cannot.
Speaker 2: Be answered right unsolved mysteries.
Speaker 3: Yes, So this could imply that a mystery cult is
Speaker 3: a form of worship where the main goal is to
Speaker 3: solve some kind of information puzzle, to answer a question,
Speaker 3: or to access a piece of hidden information. That's not
Speaker 3: primarily what's going on with mystery cults. While the Greco
Speaker 3: Roman mystery cults absolutely did have elements of secrecy and
Speaker 3: privileged information, and we'll get into more of that later
Speaker 3: as well, the main sense in which the word mystery
Speaker 3: is used in mystery cults is to refer not to
Speaker 3: an information puzzle, but to a specific type of secret
Speaker 3: initiation ritual known in Greek as mysteria, which some somewhat
Speaker 3: overlaps with other Greek concepts of orgia and teleti. Abouden
Speaker 3: mentions these three concepts altogether. They seem to sometimes be
Speaker 3: used interchangeably, or maybe to refer to related but slightly
Speaker 3: different things Orgea and teleti. He translates as mystic rights
Speaker 3: and initiations, So what are the mysteries? The mysteries are
Speaker 3: these initiation rights, and they could indeed be described as
Speaker 3: in many ways mysterious. They were often held at night.
Speaker 3: They were often conducted in secret, so they might take
Speaker 3: place inside a kind of a protected building outside of
Speaker 3: public view. So in the case of the Elusinian mysteries,
Speaker 3: which will describe in more detail later, I'm sure there
Speaker 3: would be kind of publicly viewable part of this festival.
Speaker 3: They would take place outside, people would be able to
Speaker 3: see it going on, but eventually the festival would progress
Speaker 3: into an enclosed area inside a kind of temple complex,
Speaker 3: where things would happen inside and those not initiated into
Speaker 3: the secret rights would not be able to know what
Speaker 3: was going on. Sometimes these rights would also be mysterious
Speaker 3: in the sense that participants might be blindfolded or hooded
Speaker 3: so that they couldn't see or understand what was happening.
Speaker 3: And the rights were often just made up of weird, baffling, frightening,
Speaker 3: emotionally intense experiences and encounters with the power of the gods.
Speaker 3: So there are absolutely things about these rights that we
Speaker 3: might think of as mysterious and the mystery cults did
Speaker 3: absolutely have secrets, but the mystery in the name refers
Speaker 3: to these rights, refers to the strange, powerful, obscure rights
Speaker 3: of initiation, not so much to an information puzzle mystery
Speaker 3: in the Sherlock Holmes sense. If that distinction makes sense.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, absolutely. Now I want to add an additional
Speaker 2: note on the term that you mentioned already, orgia. This
Speaker 2: term is of course used in the context of religious
Speaker 2: rights in ancient Greece, and while orgea might entail sexuality,
Speaker 2: it does not inherently entail sexuality. I was reading a
Speaker 2: bit about this in a really nice twenty twenty three
Speaker 2: piece in The Conversation by Christian George Schwinzel. This is
Speaker 2: a historian, a French historian of the ancient world, and
Speaker 2: he writes about this, and he points out that the
Speaker 2: term that we in common usage today, org orgy in English,
Speaker 2: didn't come to mean group sexual activity and excessive food
Speaker 2: and drink till after eighteen hundred CE, especially during the
Speaker 2: nineteenth century, and especially in French literature of the time. Schwinzel, however,
Speaker 2: stresses that this doesn't mean that the ancient Greeks and
Speaker 2: Romans didn't engage in such activities. They certainly did, they
Speaker 2: just referred to them by different names. Games Twinzel, who
Speaker 2: is again himself French, wrote an entire book on the subject.
Speaker 3: It's funny how this is one of these terms that
Speaker 3: has come around, kind of like cult in a way,
Speaker 3: where I use the word orgy all the time, not
Speaker 3: to refer to anything sexual. I just mean like a
Speaker 3: sort of an excessive indulgence in something.
Speaker 2: Right right. Well, And in fact, he gets into this
Speaker 2: a little bit like bringing up the film Babylon for
Speaker 2: the kind of thing came out that same year, which
Speaker 2: is like a Hollywood Babylon sort of thing, and he
Speaker 2: points out that some of that the movie does contain
Speaker 2: a fictional depiction of a Hollywood orgy in the modern sense.
Speaker 2: But then one might say, well, this movie is an
Speaker 2: orgy for the senses in the metaphorical sense. But again,
Speaker 2: when you get back to the use of the of
Speaker 2: the term orgea, it does not necessarily mean any kind
Speaker 2: of sexual activity was going on. It could, but it
Speaker 2: doesn't inherently mean that. So it's just another important footnote
Speaker 2: about the the usages of the term. The French literature example,
Speaker 2: you do see works of that in thearing that time
Speaker 2: period that are portraying the ancient world as engaging in
Speaker 2: these sorts of rights, that putting more of a you know,
Speaker 2: an erotic sexual spin on them.
Speaker 3: Right, So that's kind of an adaptation. But even in
Speaker 3: the original Greek understanding that we were just talking about,
Speaker 3: as explained by Bowden, there is the idea that the
Speaker 3: orgea or orgea, these mystic rights would have been probably
Speaker 3: extremely emotionally intense and overwhelming to the senses ancient writers
Speaker 3: who do, even if they don't describe what the rights
Speaker 3: themselves were, they often describe the effect of them, which
Speaker 3: is that they are life changing, an overwhelming experience that
Speaker 3: leaves one deeply shaken to the core exactly now.
Speaker 2: Again, that book by Hugh Bowden has been one of
Speaker 2: our key resources here, and Balden does a great job
Speaker 2: as a great approach to the topic, grounding his initial
Speaker 2: approach in a discussion of what we might refer to
Speaker 2: as the mainstream religious ecosystem of the ancient Greco Roman world,
Speaker 2: and then diving into where the mystery cults fit in
Speaker 2: and how they generally differed. And we've already been engaging
Speaker 2: with some of this, you know, we have to we
Speaker 2: have to exit our modern understanding of organized, top down
Speaker 2: religion and get into a different ecosystem, a different way
Speaker 2: that things worked in order to understand then how the
Speaker 2: mystery cults are sort of set aside even from that,
Speaker 2: So we're we're largely dealing with the world before Christianity
Speaker 2: and set apart from its key characteristics, namely, you know,
Speaker 2: any notion of a centrally organized doctrinal religion. So first up,
Speaker 2: this is this probably seems like an outrageous overstate the obvious,
Speaker 2: but there were a lot of gods, yes, and by
Speaker 2: that we don't just mean the standard twelve Olympians set
Speaker 2: menu that instantly comes to mind. You know your Zeo's here,
Speaker 2: Apollo and so forth. You know your main Greek gods,
Speaker 2: the ones that you're going to see in a poster.
Speaker 2: They're the ones that are frequently utilized in Greek mythology
Speaker 2: themed works of fiction. No, I would say, instead, think
Speaker 2: of an exhaustive cheesecake factory style menu, one that makes
Speaker 2: you question whether the kitchen can truly deliver on all
Speaker 2: of these diverse menu items. Only even that is not
Speaker 2: a perfect technology, because the cheesecake factory is, as I
Speaker 2: understand it centrally organized. The idea is that any cheesecake
Speaker 2: factory you go to is going to have the same
Speaker 2: exhaustive menu.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to think of a
Speaker 3: better analogy, because so you had lots of different gods,
Speaker 3: and then you had local versions of all these gods.
Speaker 3: So almost more like how you got McDonald's. But the
Speaker 3: local McDonald Donald's is a franchise, you know they But
Speaker 3: that's a little misleading too, because there's top down control
Speaker 3: like McDonald's Corporates, that's rules about what franchise owners can do.
Speaker 3: So I don't know. You imagine you've you've got your
Speaker 3: basic list of gods, then you've got a lot of
Speaker 3: other lesser known gods, and then you've also got the
Speaker 3: local ways or the local cult of each of the
Speaker 3: main gods that are going to be different than how
Speaker 3: that god is appreciated and understood in a different place.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, Any given community or city, states, city
Speaker 2: state is going to have its own cast of deities.
Speaker 2: They determine the course of people's lives. Individual cult practices
Speaker 2: are going to vary widely across the inherently fractured populations.
Speaker 2: A variety that was at times due to actual independence,
Speaker 2: such as in the post Alexander period where you had
Speaker 2: a you know, very formerly united and now fractured empire,
Speaker 2: or during Roman rule, where you know, everything is is
Speaker 2: wrapped up under Roman rule, but with local religious customs
Speaker 2: largely left alone. As long as they're not interfering with
Speaker 2: what the Romans are doing, fine, go ahead and do
Speaker 2: whatever you were doing beforehand. So you know, as an example,
Speaker 2: in ancient Greece, you'd likely find the major Olympian gods,
Speaker 2: you know, the Big Twelve anywhere you went, as well
Speaker 2: as the various underworld deities, although there again might be
Speaker 2: regional differences in the way any of these are treated.
Speaker 2: But then you'd also have lesser nature deities and especially
Speaker 2: body of water specific nymphs and the like that would
Speaker 2: depend on where you were. You know, they're inherently localized.
Speaker 2: And then you would also have foreign imported gods that
Speaker 2: were worshiped locally, you know, likely with some sort of
Speaker 2: localized spin as well. So I hope I don't sound
Speaker 2: insensitive by continuing to compare all of this to food,
Speaker 2: but it feels like one of the better ways to
Speaker 2: compare it to the modern world is to think of
Speaker 2: all the restaurants in your given location, some very widespread
Speaker 2: but perhaps localized to some degree, highly localized cuisines as well,
Speaker 2: whatever that you know, the weird local spin on pizza
Speaker 2: happens to be in your city, that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: and then also put a bubblegum on it, and then
Speaker 2: also imports from other areas that are again likely localized
Speaker 2: to some degree as well. Now there's here another great
Speaker 2: question that that about and explores early on in the book,
Speaker 2: and that is where did these gods come from? And
Speaker 2: of course this is a huge question, but he does
Speaker 2: a great job addressing it in brief, you know, for
Speaker 2: the purposes of this work. Because naturally one can go
Speaker 2: in all manner of exhaustive skeptical rationales for the emergence
Speaker 2: of belief in gods and human beings, as well as
Speaker 2: more than a few fringe theories leading up to just
Speaker 2: belief in their pre existence. You know, you just can
Speaker 2: go all the way and say, well, Zeus is real.
Speaker 2: That's all there is to it. I'm reminded of the
Speaker 2: in sort of looking at the spectrum of different ways
Speaker 2: of thinking about it, though, I'm reminded of that famous
Speaker 2: Voltaire quote, which I'll adjust for our purposes here. If
Speaker 2: gods did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.
Speaker 2: And as Balden explains, the gods did prove necessary to
Speaker 2: our ancestors, though they were not created wholesale by spiritual
Speaker 2: leaders or religious committees or anything like that. Nobody said, well,
Speaker 2: we really need some sort of invisible figure to serve
Speaker 2: this purpose in our culture or life. Now, again, that
Speaker 2: may seem like an overstatement of the obvious, but I
Speaker 2: think it's important to sort of draw that out. So rather,
Speaker 2: the gods emerged out of a variety of factors in
Speaker 2: human evolution and cognition, including Balidan points out our predisposition
Speaker 2: to have strong reactions to the potential presence of a
Speaker 2: predator or a corpse. In this I was reminded of
Speaker 2: one of the great quotes from Cork McCarthy's The Crossing,
Speaker 2: where he writes, deep in each man is the knowledge
Speaker 2: that something knows of his existence, Something knows and cannot
Speaker 2: be fled nor hid from, you know, which is kind
Speaker 2: of a fancy way of saying it feels like something's
Speaker 2: watching you. What is watching you might be a god
Speaker 2: who knows and Indeed, Balden brings up the ancient tradition
Speaker 2: of the evil Eye in this which I hadn't quite
Speaker 2: thought of as a predatory presence before, but that's pretty
Speaker 2: dead on. You can think of the evil eye roughly
Speaker 2: as an invisible supernatural entity. You see some ancient traditions
Speaker 2: regarding the evil Eye from, you know, especially throughout the
Speaker 2: Mediterranean world. Jewish superstition in particular holds that it lurks
Speaker 2: in the world at large, ready to afflict individuals with
Speaker 2: malign force if provoked, and it's particularly provoked by good luck,
Speaker 2: by boasting and so forth. So if such an entity
Speaker 2: is watching you, then what else is watching you? And
Speaker 2: in fact, we've discussed this on the show. Before you
Speaker 2: get into traditions like the Hamsa, this is like a
Speaker 2: hand eye symbol toward off the evil eye. You get
Speaker 2: into Gorgonian traditions, you know, some sort of terrifying head
Speaker 2: to scare away evil and sometimes things like the Haamsa
Speaker 2: are also connected to the idea of independent supernatural entities.
Speaker 2: So you're potentially using one unseen entity against another in
Speaker 2: order to protect.
Speaker 3: Yourself, right the way you might use the demon Pazuzu
Speaker 3: to protect yourself against Lamashtu or something like that exactly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, we discussed that at length back in October.
Speaker 2: And it's interesting to you have to connect these ideas
Speaker 2: like these, at least in part, like the rough forms
Speaker 2: that would be fleshed out into these traditions of deities
Speaker 2: might be in some way connected to just our hardwired
Speaker 2: nature to be on the lookout for things that are
Speaker 2: watching us and might not you know, might might wish
Speaker 2: us no harm, but also might be hungry.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this is the kind of thing where, of
Speaker 3: course it's impossible to know for sure where our original
Speaker 3: where our religious impulses originally come from. We can only
Speaker 3: come up with more or less plausible stories about how
Speaker 3: we think it may have happened. I find that the
Speaker 3: kind of predator consciousness agent detection theory is a fairly
Speaker 3: strong candidate in my view. It seems pretty plausible to me.
Speaker 2: Right right, you know, at least for some of like
Speaker 2: the initial broad strokes. But obviously you end up having
Speaker 2: a lot of additional cultural influences and just basic human
Speaker 2: needs that get woven into that, things like you know,
Speaker 2: veneration of ancestors and personal loss. I mean, the list
Speaker 2: goes on and on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like the way religions develop. It's
Speaker 3: like chess games, you know, It's like they can all
Speaker 3: start off kind of similar and then branch off into
Speaker 3: everything is a unique in the end.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the gods bout and stresses are invisible and
Speaker 2: for the most part unheard. At least, they're not heard
Speaker 2: through their voices at least by most people, but rather
Speaker 2: through their actions. But unless these actions actually occur inside
Speaker 2: a temple devoted to a particular god, it's left up
Speaker 2: to our interpretation which deity spoke and what they were
Speaker 2: trying to say, And that interpretation was often a state duty.
Speaker 2: Various forms of divination were employed to see what the
Speaker 2: gods wanted, rather again distinct from simply putting one's faith
Speaker 2: or trust in a deity, but rather figuring out what
Speaker 2: they want. And again, what they generally want is appeasement
Speaker 2: via rights and sacrifices.
Speaker 3: Now we've already alluded to the fact that a lot
Speaker 3: of these sacrifices were agricultural products, but they could take
Speaker 3: a lot of forms.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, he brings up treasure from conquest. You know,
Speaker 2: we just got this bunch of gold in and it
Speaker 2: seems rvy prisoners, Yeah, and mean prison It seems right
Speaker 2: to give you some of this gods. Also, how about
Speaker 2: some meat and the smoke from the burning fat. This
Speaker 2: of course is another hallmark of you know, of offerings
Speaker 2: to the gods. But I found it really interesting what
Speaker 2: he brings up here, pointing out the bone was often
Speaker 2: part of the sacrifice that was given to the gods,
Speaker 2: bone being long lasting, bone being you know, under in
Speaker 2: a certain way for our purposes here eternal. So you
Speaker 2: offer the bones up to the eternal gods. While the
Speaker 2: meat off the bones, well, that's that's not going to
Speaker 2: last in neither a week, and so that's why we
Speaker 2: will feast on that, and we will offer the bones
Speaker 2: to the gods.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you'd have a common way of dividing up
Speaker 3: the animal sacrifice so that, yeah, the humans eat the
Speaker 3: meat and the bones and the fat are burned for
Speaker 3: the gods. And one way a bout in frames this
Speaker 3: which I thought was interesting, is it's kind of a
Speaker 3: way for the humans and the gods to enjoy altogether.
Speaker 3: It's a shared festival. So we get the meat and
Speaker 3: the gods get to enjoy the smoke rising up from
Speaker 3: the burned bones and fat, and the organs that that's
Speaker 3: smoke is rising up into the air where it will
Speaker 3: be enjoyed by the gods. And this point of view,
Speaker 3: by the way, is not unique to Greek and Roman paganism.
Speaker 3: You find this, for example, in the Hebrew Bible. There
Speaker 3: are multiple passages in the books of I think Exodus
Speaker 3: and Leviticus that talk about the burnt offering being a
Speaker 3: pleasing aroma to the Lord. The smoke rises up and
Speaker 3: God enjoys the smell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I also really liked the way about and
Speaker 2: discussed this here, the idea that when these rites were held,
Speaker 2: the gods were invited and present, they were enjoying the
Speaker 2: food alongside us and other festivities as well, like the
Speaker 2: gods were present there. And of course I guess it's
Speaker 2: worth noting that you see echoes of this, you know,
Speaker 2: throughout other organized religions, like even today in modern Christian
Speaker 2: churches you may hear form of like well, when you know,
Speaker 2: when we gather together and worship God, God is present,
Speaker 2: at least in a spiritual.
Speaker 3: Sense, right, Yeah, that's right. Though I do get the feeling.
Speaker 3: There's a difference in that a lot of Christians today,
Speaker 3: I would say probably feel they enjoy a more intimate
Speaker 3: connection with God as a person. Then you get from
Speaker 3: the idea of at least the public transactional forms of
Speaker 3: Greco Roman paganism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess it's also worth noting that in
Speaker 2: like a lot of modern Christian traditions, is the idea
Speaker 2: that like God is always with you, He's always there
Speaker 2: watching what you're doing. You can always speak to him,
Speaker 2: even if you don't necessarily hear him speak back to you.
Speaker 2: And it's and to put that, at least some of
Speaker 2: the ways it's described in other monotheistic religions. Is it
Speaker 2: like God is closer than your own breath. Yeah, but
Speaker 2: another place, and this is perhaps an interesting exams ample.
Speaker 2: And then it's drawing on, you know, so called pagan religions.
Speaker 2: In its fictional treatment, you get into these accusations of
Speaker 2: the witch's Sabbath, where witches are gathering together and having
Speaker 2: their big festival, and then who shows up, Oh, it's
Speaker 2: the hornet goat himself. It's Satan who appears physically, which
Speaker 2: you know kind of like matches up to a limited
Speaker 2: degree with some of these ancient Greco Roman ideas that
Speaker 2: when you celebrate the gods. When you make offerings to
Speaker 2: the gods, the gods may appear, though.
Speaker 3: In the public festival. I mean, Bouten very much makes
Speaker 3: the point that, in his view, in the public festivals,
Speaker 3: that appearance would be indirect like that it would just
Speaker 3: be the understanding there would be like a cult statue
Speaker 3: of the God there, and there would be the understanding
Speaker 3: that by making the sacrifice, you're kind of sharing a
Speaker 3: meal with the gods. But it's very much, at least
Speaker 3: as this book argues, very much not the feeling with
Speaker 3: the public religions, the transactional ones, that God's presence is
Speaker 3: felt intimately, because that's kind of the difference that makes
Speaker 3: the mystery cults so appealing. That's when you actually have
Speaker 3: what feels like a more direct encounter with the presence
Speaker 3: of the God.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is this is this is a really good
Speaker 2: distinction to make. Yes, So the modern Christian Church example,
Speaker 2: a God is spiritually present, the totally made up which
Speaker 2: is Sabbath example, the divine or infernal force is physically present.
Speaker 2: And in the Greco Roman examples we're discussing here, according
Speaker 2: to Bowden, the gods are still very much invisible we
Speaker 2: don't see them, we don't hear them. But again, their
Speaker 2: presence is known not by anything they're doing, you know,
Speaker 2: they're at the festivities, but what they are doing in
Speaker 2: the world at large that affects humans, causing natural disasters
Speaker 2: and so forth, affecting the crops and so.
Speaker 3: Forth, or communicating through divination maybe exactly, you know, Apollo
Speaker 3: might communicate through his priestess at Delphi or something. But yeah,
Speaker 3: like you said, largely in affecting the outcomes of events
Speaker 3: beyond our control.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they were invisible, but that doesn't mean they
Speaker 2: were absent. They were thought to be very present in
Speaker 2: human affairs, and it came when it came time to
Speaker 2: engage in these special feats and sacrifices, they were understood
Speaker 2: to be present, but were invisible. And when I say
Speaker 2: they're present, though, we should also point out there would
Speaker 2: be likenesses as well, So there would be of statues,
Speaker 2: idols and whatnot carried through the streets or situated within
Speaker 2: a temple. At any rate, these various cults, as we've
Speaker 2: been discussing, engaged in activities that were concerned with maintaining
Speaker 2: proper relations with the gods and about and indicates you
Speaker 2: can roughly divide such rights into two modes of religiosity,
Speaker 2: imagistic and doctrinal. So the doctrinal is more like regular
Speaker 2: low key maintenance. So you know, you bring your car in,
Speaker 2: you know, every for so many miles whatever the sticker
Speaker 2: tells you. It's generally what, you know, a certain amount
Speaker 2: of time or certain amount of miles, bring it in,
Speaker 2: get some low key maintenance, and that's all you really
Speaker 2: need to do. And you can also compare this, he
Speaker 2: points out to modern weekly Christian religious services. You know,
Speaker 2: like you're going to go. It's not going to necessarily
Speaker 2: knock your socks off, but it's you know about regularly
Speaker 2: engaging in the top down information and rights and values
Speaker 2: of a given religion. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He describes the doctrinal approach to religion as one in
Speaker 3: which the rituals are frequent, low intensity, and usually also
Speaker 3: they have the element of being semantically clear, like their
Speaker 3: meaning is well explained and commonly understood.
Speaker 2: Right, And he points out that some of the various
Speaker 2: ancient examples of like the city states carrying out rituals
Speaker 2: on a regular basis, these might fall under that classification.
Speaker 2: And I was also wondering, well, maybe it would. Also,
Speaker 2: you could also throw in like minor acts of household
Speaker 2: or personal protective right though I guess that would violate
Speaker 2: the general top down organization model involved with the doctrinal. Now,
Speaker 2: coming back to the imagistic, this is more important to
Speaker 2: our discussion of mystery cults. This is the infrequent, intense,
Speaker 2: and often nonverbal. It is a high key experience engaging
Speaker 2: about and points out episodic or flash bulb memory rather
Speaker 2: than semantic memory. So we're talking high levels of arousal,
Speaker 2: an experience, a roller coaster ride. And while this latter
Speaker 2: classification is not unique to the nature of mystery cults,
Speaker 2: it does seem to be a defining factor as we'll
Speaker 2: be exploring. So you're talking about engaging in a just
Speaker 2: jaw dropping experience of the gods and or the unseen
Speaker 2: world of these ancient religions.
Speaker 3: Right. So, under this system of classification, the imagistic is
Speaker 3: something that happens rarely, is extremely emotionally intense and powerful,
Speaker 3: leaves a lasting memory, and often is not clearly explained
Speaker 3: and is left for the person experiencing it to figure
Speaker 3: out what it means by themselves exactly. Now, one of
Speaker 3: the things that's interesting in the book when he brings
Speaker 3: up these concepts of these concepts from the anthropology of
Speaker 3: religion doctrinal religions versus imagistic ones, is that they seem
Speaker 3: to often arise in different systems of social organization. That
Speaker 3: doctrinal religions are more common in large, large social groupings,
Speaker 3: maybe in say cities or towns, you know, places where
Speaker 3: there are lots of people gathered together, and places that
Speaker 3: tend to be more socially hierarchical, where you've got levels
Speaker 3: of authority, whereas more often we find imagistic forms of
Speaker 3: religion in people that live in smaller groups, smaller social
Speaker 3: systems of or organization, that are less hierarchical, more egalitarian.
Speaker 3: And one can kind of think of reasons that may
Speaker 3: be the case, Like it just occurred to me that
Speaker 3: you know, in smaller societies with less hierarchy, you know,
Speaker 3: you say you're living in a in a tribe of
Speaker 3: you know, a few dozen people instead of in a
Speaker 3: in a big city full of strangers, A lot more
Speaker 3: of your existence is probably governed by individual relationships between people,
Speaker 3: and that might affect like how the meaning of experience
Speaker 3: needs to be managed. There's maybe a lot more room
Speaker 3: for ambiguity and trying to understand the uh, you know,
Speaker 3: what life means? What was the meaning of a powerful
Speaker 3: emotional experience you had that has something to do with
Speaker 3: your role in this society and and you're you're you know,
Speaker 3: attaining of age within it and things like that. Versus
Speaker 3: in a big culture, like say you live in a
Speaker 3: in a city state with a lot of strangers around,
Speaker 3: there is a lot less social trust and a lot
Speaker 3: less based on individual relationships that will be maintained over time.
Speaker 3: You're going to be doing economic transactions with strangers and
Speaker 3: things like that, and thus you really might need you
Speaker 3: might get more comfort from the idea of a system
Speaker 3: of clearly explained rules. You know, does that make sense?
Speaker 3: Like that you want to kind of legal doctrine there
Speaker 3: where things are explained and you don't have to worry
Speaker 3: about not understanding what the religious experience means anyway. So
Speaker 3: there's that kind of distinction about where you find these
Speaker 3: different modes of religion most often. But it's not a
Speaker 3: strict rule here because clearly one of the things that's
Speaker 3: going to come up in this book is that while
Speaker 3: you've got these public forms of ancient cults in the
Speaker 3: Greco Roman world that are. You know, you can argue
Speaker 3: about which category they fit better in, but they probably
Speaker 3: fit better into the doctrinal version. You know, they're more
Speaker 3: about kind of clearly explained relationships. They're more kind of
Speaker 3: low intensity than high intensity. So you've got those going
Speaker 3: on in the Ancient City States. But then you also
Speaker 3: have this parallel form of religion, which are the mystery cults,
Speaker 3: which I think you can very much argue are more
Speaker 3: like the imagistic religions. They are based on these rights
Speaker 3: that are powerful, extreme emotional experiences that people not only
Speaker 3: are not allowed to fully explain to people who have
Speaker 3: not been initiated, they probably, as Bouten argues, could not
Speaker 3: explain if they tried. So you've essentially got both forms
Speaker 3: within the same general culture, within the same time and place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so yeah, this is the basic concept of
Speaker 2: the mystery cult. This is the religious ecosystem in which
Speaker 2: you will find it. And yeah, in the following episode
Speaker 2: or episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, we're going
Speaker 2: to dig in a little deeper and look at some
Speaker 2: of these specific examples of mystery cults, what we think
Speaker 2: they were up to, what is written and known, what
Speaker 2: is presumed it should be a fun ride, a high
Speaker 2: intensity ride. Oh no, it'll be low key.
Speaker 3: It'll be low key, I'm kidding, but hopefully of high interest, yes,
Speaker 3: low key of high interest, yes, But we're not going
Speaker 3: to subject to you to like blindfolded beatings and ritual
Speaker 3: mockery and things like that like you might get on
Speaker 3: the way to the Lucinian Mystery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or on other podcasts, other podcasts maybe ended that,
Speaker 2: but that's not really our vibe here. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: we hope that you'll join us in those subsequent episodes,
Speaker 2: so the next one should come out the following Tuesday.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, though, we'd love to hear from you
Speaker 2: if you have any feedback, personal experience, and so forth
Speaker 2: regarding what we've talked about already right in, we'd love
Speaker 2: to hear from you. A reminder of the stuff. To Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though on Wednesdays we
Speaker 2: do a short form episode, and on Fridays we set
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Speaker 3: Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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