Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Today is a Saturday, so we have
Speaker 1: a vault episode for you. This is part three of
Speaker 1: four in our Mystery cult series that originally published three six,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five. Let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part three in our discussion of the mystery cults of
Speaker 3: the ancient Mediterranean. Mystery cults are religions that are differentiated
Speaker 3: from the mainstream public cults of the Greco Roman world because,
Speaker 3: instead of focusing on the regular transactional tending to the
Speaker 3: needs of the gods through ritual and sacrifice, mystery cults
Speaker 3: were centered around the performance of secret mystic rites, which
Speaker 3: were usually revealed only to the cult's initiates, and which
Speaker 3: were often described as intense sensory experiences involving direct contact
Speaker 3: with the power of the gods. In Part one of
Speaker 3: this series, we talked mainly about the historical context of
Speaker 3: the mysteries and how they differed from the most common
Speaker 3: religious practices of Greek and Roman polytheism. And then in
Speaker 3: part two we looked at a couple of specific examples.
Speaker 3: We looked at Mithraism, a mystery cult that flourished in
Speaker 3: the Roman Empire, especially among members of the Roman army,
Speaker 3: from roughly the first through the fourth century CE. And
Speaker 3: then also we started talking about what was the most
Speaker 3: famous and probably the most revered mystery cult for hundreds
Speaker 3: of years among the Greeks and Romans, which was the
Speaker 3: festival of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Secret Rites, which took
Speaker 3: place in Eleusis, which was about twenty three kilometers west
Speaker 3: of the center of ancient Athens. And we are back
Speaker 3: today to talk about.
Speaker 1: More, all right.
Speaker 3: So in the last episode we had to leave off
Speaker 3: in the middle of our discussion of the Elusinian Mysteries
Speaker 3: because we ran out of time. So I think that's
Speaker 3: where we should jump back in today. We can start
Speaker 3: off with that subject. We already talked last time about
Speaker 3: the story of Demeter and Persephone, which is the primary
Speaker 3: myth associated with the cult. Particularly we're focused on the
Speaker 3: version told in the sixth or seventh century BCE Dactylic
Speaker 3: Hexameter or poem known as the Homeric Hymn to Demeter,
Speaker 3: and I'll do a brief summary to refresh. In this story,
Speaker 3: Demeter's daughter Demeter is the goddess of course, of grain
Speaker 3: and agriculture. Demeter's daughter Persephone called Cory meaning maiden in
Speaker 3: inscriptions associated with Eleusis, is kidnapped to the underworld by Hades,
Speaker 3: the out of the dead, and the grief stricken Demeter
Speaker 3: searches for her around the world in vain. Along the way,
Speaker 3: she has interactions with the royal family of Eleusis, including
Speaker 3: a thwarted attempt to transform a baby prince named Demophoon
Speaker 3: into an immortal, after which Demeter demands that the people
Speaker 3: of that place build her a temple and performs special
Speaker 3: rites for her which they are not allowed to depart from,
Speaker 3: ask questions about, or broadcast to the uninitiated. Eventually, in
Speaker 3: the story the daughter Corey or again that's the same
Speaker 3: character as Persephone and other tellings, Corey is permitted to
Speaker 3: leave the underworld, but because she has eaten of the
Speaker 3: fruit of Hades, she cannot leave forever and must spend
Speaker 3: part of every year back in the realm of the dead.
Speaker 3: And this myth is often tied to seasonal cycles of
Speaker 3: growth and harvest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we can't stress in enough everyone. If you venture
Speaker 1: into a spirit realm, don't eat anything. Yeah, exactly comes
Speaker 1: up time and time again.
Speaker 3: You gotta know the rules of the underworld. This came
Speaker 3: up in another ancient poem we were talking about. Oh,
Speaker 3: I think it's the poem of Gilgamesh and key Do
Speaker 3: in the nether World, where in key Do loses some
Speaker 3: stuff down like it falls into the nether world and
Speaker 3: he has to go down to get it, and Gilgamesh
Speaker 3: is like, look, you gotta do all these things right.
Speaker 3: You don't wear certain kinds of clothes, you don't clap
Speaker 3: too loud or shout too loud. All this stuff will
Speaker 3: attract negative attention down there. And then in Kedo just
Speaker 3: does it all wrong and he gets stuck. I don't
Speaker 3: know what the other rules for Persephone would have been,
Speaker 3: apart from donate to pomegranate seed, but presumably there are
Speaker 3: other rules as well. But anyway, we also talked last time,
Speaker 3: not just about the myth itself, but about some things
Speaker 3: ancient writers said about the effect of taking part in
Speaker 3: the rights of ilusis. Many writers are, of course reluctant
Speaker 3: to share anything about the secret rituals themselves lest they
Speaker 3: profane them. You don't talk about the mysteries. That's part
Speaker 3: of what Demeter said, no talking about this, But they
Speaker 3: do mention that the effect on the person who takes
Speaker 3: part is a profound one and a positive one. To
Speaker 3: illustrate that, I found the following passage from a dialogue
Speaker 3: of Cicero called on the Laws, where a character in
Speaker 3: this dialogue is talking about the mysteries and says, as follows,
Speaker 3: much that is excellent and divine does Athens seem to
Speaker 3: me to have produced and added to our life, But
Speaker 3: nothing better than those mysteries by which we are formed
Speaker 3: and molded from a rude and savage state of humanity.
Speaker 3: And indeed, in the mysteries we perceive the real principles
Speaker 3: of life and learn not only to live happily, but
Speaker 3: to die with a fairer hope. So what does taking
Speaker 3: part in the mysteries do for us? It seems that
Speaker 3: it causes us to ascend from a rough, crude state
Speaker 3: of existence, maybe an animalistic state of existence, into a
Speaker 3: more refined type of being. Maybe it civilizes us in
Speaker 3: some way. And this connects to something I've seen in
Speaker 3: a few other sources having to do with the grain
Speaker 3: and agriculture significance of the myth, that there's something about
Speaker 3: the mysteries which is tied to the gift of agriculture,
Speaker 3: of growing grain and the fruits of the harvest to
Speaker 3: humans from the gods. And thus it's sort of like
Speaker 3: perceived that that is the thing which separates us from
Speaker 3: the animals. But beyond that, the mysteries also show us
Speaker 3: what life is really about, or sort of the originating
Speaker 3: principles of life. It makes us happier in this life,
Speaker 3: and it makes us hope for better things after death.
Speaker 3: And the last point has an interesting resonance. I don't
Speaker 3: know if we alluded to this when we were talking
Speaker 3: about the myth in full, but of course, Persephone known
Speaker 3: as Corey in the inscriptions at Ilus, she is the
Speaker 3: queen of the underworld, you know, so she's going to
Speaker 3: be down there at least part of the year in
Speaker 3: the nether world. I wonder if that has something to
Speaker 3: do with the relationship between the mysteries and the fate
Speaker 3: of the dead.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, she ends up with like a foot in
Speaker 1: both worlds. In the agricultural world, and then also in
Speaker 1: the world of death in the afterlife, that's who you
Speaker 1: want to get in good with a transitional being that
Speaker 1: understands your world as well as the next world.
Speaker 3: Though to be fair that that connection might just be
Speaker 3: a coincidence. I mean, it is possible also that those
Speaker 3: who have experienced the mysteries might expect a better fate
Speaker 3: in the afterlife simply because they have some kind of
Speaker 3: deeper connection with the power of the gods. They have
Speaker 3: more God intimacy in general than people who have not
Speaker 3: had who have not gone through the mysteries.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, or I mean, you know, to sort of
Speaker 1: couch it in some sort of modern language, we could
Speaker 1: say that at least while you're going through these, you're
Speaker 1: very much living in the now. So that's got to
Speaker 1: at least have a temporary effect on any anxieties you
Speaker 1: have about the future.
Speaker 3: Well certainly, yeah, while you're doing the rights themselves. But
Speaker 3: I mean, to be clear, these authors do talk about
Speaker 3: it as having a lasting effect, one that follows you home.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And I think, you know, there's probably a
Speaker 1: case to be maybe if you couple a sensational experience
Speaker 1: with those elements of at least temporarily exiting your anxieties.
Speaker 1: This could be the essentially the cocktail recipe for some
Speaker 1: sort of lasting change.
Speaker 3: Now, before I move on, I want to mention a
Speaker 3: couple of my major sources. One is a book we've
Speaker 3: already talked about in this series by a scholar named
Speaker 3: Hugh Bowden called Mystery Cults in the Ancient World the
Speaker 3: Times and Hudson twenty twenty three edition, a Bowden being
Speaker 3: an ancient historian affiliated with King's College, London. But I
Speaker 3: also wanted to point to a chapter in The Wily
Speaker 3: Companion to Greek Religion edited by Daniel Ogden. The chapter
Speaker 3: is called the Mysteries of Demeter and Corey, and it
Speaker 3: is by Kevin Clinton, who is a professor emeritus of
Speaker 3: Classics at Cornell. Both very good resources on the Eleusinian mysteries,
Speaker 3: and I'll refer back to both authors several more times. Now,
Speaker 3: moving beyond what we've already talked about the myth and
Speaker 3: the effect on people, what do we actually know and
Speaker 3: what can we reasonably guess about the form the mysteries took?
Speaker 3: What were these powerful rights? Well, there are some things
Speaker 3: the sort of public elements of the festival, the associated
Speaker 3: festival that we do know with a good bit of certainty,
Speaker 3: and we'll move from what we know more about what
Speaker 3: we know less about. The Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated in
Speaker 3: stages that took place at different times of the year.
Speaker 3: So scholars think there was a primary stage of celebration,
Speaker 3: known as the Lesser Mysteries, which were held at a
Speaker 3: place called Agrai within the city of Athens around the
Speaker 3: end of the winter beginning of spring, so our February
Speaker 3: March season, and that was a different, separate thing, but
Speaker 3: people usually did this before the main thing, which was
Speaker 3: the Greater Mysteries, which took place between Athens and Eleusis
Speaker 3: during the autumn around our months of September October. Clues
Speaker 3: from the literature of the time indicate that people generally
Speaker 3: participated in the lesser mysteries before doing the greater mysteries,
Speaker 3: and the total festival of the Greater Mysteries lasted eight
Speaker 3: days and began with public events. So when we talk
Speaker 3: about the secret rights, it's not like the whole thing
Speaker 3: of the Elusinian Mysteries were secret rights. It was just
Speaker 3: like one sort of climactic part of the festival was
Speaker 3: made up of the secret rights. You had lots of
Speaker 3: public events that included sacrifices to various gods. There was
Speaker 3: a process of preparation and purification of the initiates, the
Speaker 3: people who wanted to be initiated into the cult. There
Speaker 3: was a solemn march from the center of Athens to Eleusis,
Speaker 3: and then finally you would get to the secret rights
Speaker 3: inside a closed hall of initiation called the Telesterion, which
Speaker 3: was the sort of big central building inside the sanctuary
Speaker 3: of Demeter and Corey in Ilusis. It's hard to say
Speaker 3: exactly when these festivals began and when they ended in history,
Speaker 3: but we know a couple of things to sort of
Speaker 3: set the maximal boundaries in time. While the archaeological record
Speaker 3: in the area directly around the sanctuary goes all the
Speaker 3: way back to the Bronze Age, it appears to have
Speaker 3: been abandoned for some time around twelve hundred BCE, and
Speaker 3: then the site was continuously occupied beginning sometime in the
Speaker 3: eighth century BCE for hundreds of years after that, and
Speaker 3: then we know that the rights probably continued no later
Speaker 3: than the end of the fourth century CE, when Eleusis
Speaker 3: was destroyed by the Goths, and after this there appears
Speaker 3: to have been known attempt to rebuild the sanctuary. By
Speaker 3: this time, the Roman Empire would have been largely Christian anyway,
Speaker 3: and you know that would have produced some severe friction
Speaker 3: for the cult of Ilusus.
Speaker 1: And we'll come back to the twilight of the mystery
Speaker 1: cults here in a bit.
Speaker 3: Now. An interesting thing is that during the time the
Speaker 3: cult was in operation, lots of famous people in the
Speaker 3: ancient world, including authors that we would read, including multiple
Speaker 3: Roman emperors like Augustus Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius, made the
Speaker 3: trip to Eleusis to be initiated into the mysteries, and
Speaker 3: that in itself kind of highlights a curious fact. While
Speaker 3: the core rights themselves, the mysteries were secret and you
Speaker 3: couldn't share them with outsiders, people would come from all
Speaker 3: over to be initiated, So it seems that the secret
Speaker 3: rituals were in a way more kind of open, more
Speaker 3: kind of globally open to participation then many of the public,
Speaker 3: the so called public cults of the Greco Roman world
Speaker 3: would be, which many of which were quite locally focused.
Speaker 3: So for most of the time the mysteries existed. It
Speaker 3: seems that anywhere, anyone from anywhere was allowed to come
Speaker 3: and be initiated as long as they met a couple
Speaker 3: of criteria. They had to speak Greek or be a
Speaker 3: Roman later on under the Roman Empire, and they had
Speaker 3: to have not committed murder. And if you met those criteria,
Speaker 3: you could you could be initiated, you could learn the
Speaker 3: you could learn the secrets, you could take part in
Speaker 3: the mysteries.
Speaker 1: And I assume you could lie about the second one,
Speaker 1: or it could be left up to your interpretation what
Speaker 1: murder was. It's not like you had like a designated
Speaker 1: punch card that you would have to show.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess. I guess. The question is like, do
Speaker 3: do local people know that you committed murder? Right? Did
Speaker 3: you commit murder anywhere around Athens?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, So what else do we know about what took
Speaker 3: place around the mysteries? Here again, I'm drawing large from Bowden,
Speaker 3: trying to pull together all these facts. One thing is that,
Speaker 3: going back to what I was just saying about people
Speaker 3: coming from all over before the festivities began in the autumn,
Speaker 3: a truce went out through the Greek cities ensuring that
Speaker 3: anyone who wanted to be able to come to the mysteries,
Speaker 3: could travel safely to Athens to take part, so a
Speaker 3: kind of period of sanctuary on travel around the area.
Speaker 3: We also know something about the rights involving specific sacred
Speaker 3: objects called heira or hyra. I'm sorry I did not
Speaker 3: look up which way to say that. It's h i
Speaker 3: e r A. I'm going to say hira for now.
Speaker 3: These were carried in enclosed vessels tied with a red ribbon,
Speaker 3: and they were carried in a ceremonial procession by the
Speaker 3: priests of Ilusus, first two Athens at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the festival, and then back to Illuses for the end.
Speaker 3: So what were these sacred hidden objects? That was one
Speaker 3: of the secrets you don't get to know. Inside the Telesterion.
Speaker 3: The objects would probably be shown and interacted with in
Speaker 3: some way by the initiates, but writer sympathetic to the
Speaker 3: mysteries do not tell us what these sacred objects were.
Speaker 3: Bowden argues that the hiro were probably not statues of
Speaker 3: Demeter and Corey like you might get with other cults.
Speaker 3: I mean, it would be very common for other public
Speaker 3: cults in the Greco Roman world to have a cult
Speaker 3: statue that you might even in some cases if it
Speaker 3: was small enough take out and carry in a parade.
Speaker 3: That doesn't seem to be the case here. Instead, the
Speaker 3: priests were probably bearing some collection of small sacred objects
Speaker 3: which represented the goddesses in some way. One Christian writer
Speaker 3: from the ancient world, writing against so called heresies, claims
Speaker 3: that the main secret object was an ear of grain.
Speaker 3: So we don't know if this is correct or not,
Speaker 3: but that would not be weird for grain imagery to
Speaker 3: be used in these rituals, given the role of demeter.
Speaker 3: It seems plausible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like the ritual and the storytelling would
Speaker 1: really have to do the heavy lifting if the sacred
Speaker 1: object was just the grain, though there had to be
Speaker 1: other objects as well. Right, here's a piece of wheat.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, but something we'll get into in a
Speaker 3: minute here is you can present a sheaf of wheat
Speaker 3: in a much more or much less dramatic fashion.
Speaker 1: That's right. The presentation is everything.
Speaker 3: Yes. Another thing we know is that the procession of
Speaker 3: the sacred objects between the cities got an armed escort
Speaker 3: made of young men from Athens, so they were well guarded,
Speaker 3: and the initiates were generally understood to have to do
Speaker 3: some stuff beforehand before you go into the greater mysteries.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was actually required, but it
Speaker 3: seems at least customary that people would usually go through
Speaker 3: the lesser mysteries at Agri first. Agra is another place nearby,
Speaker 3: sort of within in the city of Athens uh And
Speaker 3: people seemingly did these other things before they went to
Speaker 3: the greater mysteries. But it is hard to say for sure.
Speaker 3: There's a lot we don't know about the lesser mysteries.
Speaker 3: They're kind of passing references to them. This is one
Speaker 3: thing I brought up in the last episode, where like
Speaker 3: in a dialogue of Plato, Socrates just says to somebody
Speaker 3: by point of comparison that like they figured out something
Speaker 3: big before they figured out something small. They say, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, you've been initiated to the greater mysteries before
Speaker 3: the lesser mysteries. I didn't know you could do that.
Speaker 1: You know, this is not the first time I was
Speaker 1: reminded of this. I've thought about this a little bit
Speaker 1: in the last episode, but I was thinking about side shows.
Speaker 1: You know, you would have your main circus and then
Speaker 1: you would have the side show, which might have things
Speaker 1: that were a little more specialized in maybe less public interest.
Speaker 1: They might be, you know, have more to do with
Speaker 1: you know, human a normaladies or other curios or you know,
Speaker 1: fake specimens of imaginary creatures. And it seems like you
Speaker 1: could at least compare this a little bit to the
Speaker 1: idea of lesser and greater mysteries. You go through one,
Speaker 1: then you go through the other, and there are variations
Speaker 1: of this and other elements of entertainment. We kept talking
Speaker 1: about haunted attractions or haunted houses, and one of the
Speaker 1: big ones we have in the Atlanta area has almost
Speaker 1: always two houses. There's the one larger house and then
Speaker 1: there's a smaller secondary house, which is generally like a
Speaker 1: little harder in its horror, a lot more chainsaws and
Speaker 1: blood and stuff. So you know, you have one set
Speaker 1: of sensational experiences you might have, and then there's like
Speaker 1: another the next level you go to if you dare
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 3: And again I do not have direct evidence, and none
Speaker 3: of the authors I read seem to indicate that we
Speaker 3: know you had to do the lesser mysteries first. Instead,
Speaker 3: it seems more like it was just understood that if
Speaker 3: you were going to do them both, you would do
Speaker 3: the lesser first. There was no reason to do the
Speaker 3: greater and then do the lesser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, lacking full context and understanding again of the mysteries,
Speaker 1: it seems like I feel like a jerk if I
Speaker 1: just did the greater mysteries and not the lesser mysteries,
Speaker 1: or if I'd done the lesser mysteries before, I might
Speaker 1: want to like refresh. It's like watching season one before
Speaker 1: before season two comes out, right, you want to rewatch it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. According to Plutarch, there is this it seemed to
Speaker 3: me at least hilarious incident where a Hellenistic king named Demetrius,
Speaker 3: who was ruling in the fourth to the third centuries BCE,
Speaker 3: had the Athenians officially alter their calendar, the calendar of
Speaker 3: the year, so that he could do the lesser and
Speaker 3: then the greater mysteries back to back within a few days.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like I'm going to make the
Speaker 3: Americans change their calendars so i can do Halloween, Christmas,
Speaker 3: and then Valentine's Day all on a weekend. Demetrius, by
Speaker 3: the way, he went the way he did another thing
Speaker 3: called the apoptica, which meant seeing the Greater Mysteries for
Speaker 3: a second time. And this is another thing referenced commonly
Speaker 3: in the ancient world. It seems that you were not
Speaker 3: fully initiated until you had taken part in the Greater
Speaker 3: Mysteries twice, and you had a different role, it seems
Speaker 3: the second time you were there. I'll talk more about
Speaker 3: that in a minute. So at the beginning of the
Speaker 3: festival you get a big announcement in the Agora of Athens.
Speaker 3: Then people wishing to be initiated would go down to
Speaker 3: the sea with a young pig, wash it in the water,
Speaker 3: and then they would sacrifice it. And this was in
Speaker 3: some cases done by like thousands of initiates at a time,
Speaker 3: so you can imagine the scene as pretty bananas. At
Speaker 3: some point, new initiates would be paired with a sort
Speaker 3: of figure called a mystigogos, essentially like a sponsor. This
Speaker 3: would be somebody who already knew what was going on
Speaker 3: or was initiated, whould guide the newbie in the coming rights.
Speaker 3: On the following days, there would be more sacrifices in
Speaker 3: Athens to the Elusinian goddesses, and then, beginning later in
Speaker 3: the history of the festival, also to Asclepius, the god
Speaker 3: of healing and medicine. There was like a tradition here
Speaker 3: involving a sacred snake, and then after several days of
Speaker 3: preparation and sacrifices, you'd get the procession going back from
Speaker 3: Athens to Eleusis to the cult center. And this would
Speaker 3: have one group made of priests transporting the concealed sacred
Speaker 3: objects the Hira underguard, and then there would be another
Speaker 3: group that was made up of the initiates to the cult.
Speaker 3: And the walk between the cities was pretty long. It
Speaker 3: was like twenty two or twenty three kilometers, and at
Speaker 3: one special place near the end of the journey, Bowden
Speaker 3: mentions that the initiates endured a form of ritual mockery
Speaker 3: by onlookers called the gepherismos, which I don't know that
Speaker 3: stuck with me. I want to come back to that
Speaker 3: in a minute. It's interesting. So it's like it's just
Speaker 3: understood as part of it. You're taking part. People are
Speaker 3: going to mock you, insult you, her whole things at
Speaker 3: you as you go by.
Speaker 1: It's like a roast, a mini roast.
Speaker 3: Then finally you reach the sanctuary complex of Demeter and corey,
Speaker 3: and here there's like dancing that takes place outside, and
Speaker 3: then you would go inside for what lies beyond. Now,
Speaker 3: how did this sanctuary compare to other religious sanctuaries in
Speaker 3: the Greek world? Seem to be a few differences. Bowden
Speaker 3: mentions that there was probably no cult statue of the goddesses,
Speaker 3: at least that we know of, not like we had
Speaker 3: in other famous temples. And it also does not seem
Speaker 3: that animal sacrifices were made on the altar here. The
Speaker 3: central building was again the one I mentioned earlier, the Telesterion,
Speaker 3: the Hall of Mysteries, and this was the big square
Speaker 3: building that clearly rebuilt and expanded a couple of times
Speaker 3: in its history. In its largest form, it could hold
Speaker 3: thousands of people at a time, maybe like three thousand
Speaker 3: people inside and had a sort of tiered stadium standing
Speaker 3: room area so that people further in the back could see,
Speaker 3: so you can think of it as a kind of
Speaker 3: big square theater. And then inside the Telesterion was a
Speaker 3: smaller building called the Enacteraron, which means palace. So the
Speaker 3: initiates got a day of rest after they arrived at
Speaker 3: the sanctuary complex and during the stay. It's not certain
Speaker 3: what they did, but they may have facted and possibly
Speaker 3: also consumed a prepared liquid that we talked about in
Speaker 3: the last episode called Kookion spelled kyk e n. Now
Speaker 3: that came up in the last episode because it featured
Speaker 3: in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. That poem we talked about.
Speaker 3: The context was Demeter arrives at King Celius's home in disguise,
Speaker 3: and she has offered wine by the Queen Medonaira, but
Speaker 3: she refuses it and instead she drinks cookon And that's
Speaker 3: supposed to be a beverage or maybe a gruel made
Speaker 3: from grain, water and herbs. Last time I mentioned mint,
Speaker 3: but I've also seen penny royal indicated here. And there
Speaker 3: appear to be different versions of Kukon described in ancient literature.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's just this grain gruel. Sometimes it was mixed
Speaker 3: with wine and perhaps cheese. Sometimes it is described as
Speaker 3: intoxicating in nature. Sometimes it is not described that way.
Speaker 3: Sometimes it appears to have been a mundane drink consumed
Speaker 3: by peasants, and other times, mainly here, it seems to
Speaker 3: have deep ritual significance. And so Kukion has attracted a
Speaker 3: lot of attention even from people who are not primarily
Speaker 3: interested in ancient history, but from people who are interested
Speaker 3: in questions of speculative religious pharmacology.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Over the past several decades, there's been a recurring question,
Speaker 1: and that question is still out there, still battered around
Speaker 1: in contemporary literature. The question being was cookie on a
Speaker 1: psychedelic substance of some sort, and this idea has been
Speaker 1: explored by various commentators over the years, including Robert Graves,
Speaker 1: the historian and author, Albert Hoffman the chemist, and also
Speaker 1: ethnobotanist and mystic Terrence mckinna. Specifically, I had to bust
Speaker 1: out my copy of Terence McKinnon's Food of the Gods
Speaker 1: because McKennon gets into this. He points out that the Graves,
Speaker 1: Robert Graves suggested the possibility of the psychedelic mushroom psilocybin being.
Speaker 3: Involved and.
Speaker 1: Kind of initially championed this idea, while Albert Hoffman and R.
Speaker 1: Gordon Wasawson presented the theory of ergotized beer brewed from
Speaker 1: a strain of the ergot fungus, those being two of
Speaker 1: the main sort of theories regarding what this could have
Speaker 1: been if it was a psychedelic substance, and there are
Speaker 1: some problems, especially with the ergatized beer examples we'll get into,
Speaker 1: and Balden discusses some of this in the book as well.
Speaker 1: He points out that, okay, this is an idea that's
Speaker 1: never been particularly well received by experts in historians, though
Speaker 1: it continues to generate a lot of interest in scholarship,
Speaker 1: and he outlines two primary objections, the first practical in
Speaker 1: the second theoretical. So, first of all, the practical objection
Speaker 1: concerning specific theories that the mysteries in question depended on
Speaker 1: an ergot derived psychedelic which would have been similar to LSD.
Speaker 1: So as a reminder, ergot doesn't contain LSD, but contains
Speaker 1: lysergic acid as well as the precursor to LSD ergotymine.
Speaker 1: But the main problem here, the practical objection is that
Speaker 1: psychedelic doses of ergot itself would result in just terrible
Speaker 1: illness and death rather than a temporary experience something that
Speaker 1: you would then you know that would be this like
Speaker 1: defining moment of your life. Perhaps we did episodes and
Speaker 1: ergotism for stuff to boil your mind. Back in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: and yeah, generally it does not sound like an afternoon
Speaker 1: of enlightenment.
Speaker 3: No, so I certainly don't have expertise in this area,
Speaker 3: but from what I can tell, this seems like a
Speaker 3: pretty reasonable objection.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, we're, if memory serves getting into
Speaker 1: the details of ergotism, we're talking in times like flesh
Speaker 1: peeling madness. So nothing that's again seems like it would
Speaker 1: be part of an overall positive spiritual experience. And in
Speaker 1: Food of the Gods, Terence McKinnon also addressed this, joking
Speaker 1: that quote clearly unpleasant experiences may lie ahead for those
Speaker 1: who set out to prove by self experiment the Wasason
Speaker 1: Hoffman theory concerning Elusius. But then he also presents a
Speaker 1: couple of ideas that were out there regards, on one hand,
Speaker 1: a particular species or erga that might yield less toxicity
Speaker 1: and higher psychoactive results, as well as the notion presented
Speaker 1: by Watson and Hoffmann that if you were to properly
Speaker 1: macerate the argotized grain in water, you might have been
Speaker 1: able to separate the water soluble psychoactive alkaloids. But again
Speaker 1: mckinna stressed that the burden of proof is on those
Speaker 1: who assert and no one at that point and sense
Speaker 1: has sufficiently proven any of this.
Speaker 3: But you can see why the example of the Elusinian
Speaker 3: mysteries would be incredibly appealing to people who have a
Speaker 3: general theory that psychedelics play a major role in the
Speaker 3: establishment of religious practices.
Speaker 1: Right right, And certainly that is the case with McKenna's
Speaker 1: overall thesis the role that psychedelics may have played and
Speaker 1: the evolution of humans into their current state, as well
Speaker 1: as the advancement of human civilization. He but his discussion
Speaker 1: of this is interesting and I think ultimately a lot
Speaker 1: more balanced than some might expect. Overall, I think Food
Speaker 1: of the Gods is The scholarship is a lot better
Speaker 1: than some might think, because I don't want to overstress things,
Speaker 1: because I think with McKenna you're dealing with someone who
Speaker 1: was a visionary and a mystic and definitely has some
Speaker 1: key arguments for the about the trajectory of human civilization,
Speaker 1: what has gone wrong and what needs to be corrected.
Speaker 1: A number of opinions that I don't think are really
Speaker 1: all that off track. But we also shouldn't like overstate
Speaker 1: what Food of the Gods is compared to other works
Speaker 1: of dedicated scholarship, and I mean he does stress that
Speaker 1: again there are a number of mysteries in play here,
Speaker 1: including just you know, what are we talking about here?
Speaker 1: Was it even something tangible? He references an example that
Speaker 1: was presented by Wilson and Hoffman in their thesis and
Speaker 1: all of this, that there's this four to fifteen BCE
Speaker 1: example in which an Athenian noble, a noble that we're
Speaker 1: going to come back to that is sometimes described as
Speaker 1: quote a flamboyant Athenian playboy. His name is Alcibiades, and
Speaker 1: he's recorded as having been fine for bringing the Elusinian
Speaker 1: sacrament home for entertainment purposes with friends. And the argument
Speaker 1: here is, well, this would seem to suggest that it
Speaker 1: was not only tangible, but perhaps something entertaining in and
Speaker 1: of itself. Now, the theoretical objection to psychedelic theories concerning
Speaker 1: the kokion is referenced by Bowden. The theoretical objection basically
Speaker 1: blows down to the fact that drugs are not strictly
Speaker 1: necessary for these rights as we understand them. The ancient
Speaker 1: Greeks had plenty other tricks up their sleeves to create
Speaker 1: the experience. Many based in performance and even mechanical theatrical effects.
Speaker 1: And so he stresses that you know, even say the
Speaker 1: nocturnal bachic revels of the Dionysus mystery cults might not
Speaker 1: have depended on wine. So if wine wasn't needed for
Speaker 1: the revels of Bacchus, then do we really need psychedelic
Speaker 1: substances for these to work. That being said, they might
Speaker 1: have had wine. And it's also very possible that the
Speaker 1: rights were discussing here involved substances of one form or another,
Speaker 1: either as a whole or at different points that they
Speaker 1: were laid out. But I think this is an excellent
Speaker 1: point about a raisis, and I think one way to
Speaker 1: think about it is to think about another like the
Speaker 1: modern version of the spectacle that we indulge in with
Speaker 1: other people, that being going to a concert, Like think
Speaker 1: of a big concert you went, or even a small concert,
Speaker 1: just a noteworthy concert you went to. If you've been
Speaker 1: to a concert at all over the past I don't know,
Speaker 1: several decades, no doubt you've encountered folks that have imbibed
Speaker 1: in say alcohol that is generally sold freely at most
Speaker 1: of these events, or perhaps individuals who've imbibed in some
Speaker 1: level of illicit drug use, be it you know, simple
Speaker 1: marijuana or some psychedelic or stimulant. And you know, the
Speaker 1: question that this raises is okay, Well, is the resulting
Speaker 1: mental state from taking any of these substances going to
Speaker 1: enhance the experience of the show? Well? Certainly a strong
Speaker 1: a case or a strong case can be made, like
Speaker 1: even if you're just talking about, Hey, I had a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee to help keep me awake until the
Speaker 1: headliner came on. Fair enough, But is any of this
Speaker 1: strictly necessary for a great time? And I realized that
Speaker 1: this sounds like a question posed in a dare program
Speaker 1: from high school for many people. But if we think
Speaker 1: about it logically, I think it works out. You know,
Speaker 1: all the technical, theatrical, social aspects of a concert are
Speaker 1: in place. They're generally very potent. You've probably bought that
Speaker 1: ticket and gone out to the show because you already
Speaker 1: have some invested interest in the spectacle. And as such,
Speaker 1: substances they might be helpful in one regard or another,
Speaker 1: they might enhance things, but the spectacle is already the spectacle,
Speaker 1: the lights, the music, the communal energy, and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and imagine if you were approaching the concert with
Speaker 3: the knowledge that what happened there was was secret and
Speaker 3: couldn't be revealed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, which is just going to enhance everything. And
Speaker 1: certainly that's I mean, anytime you have any kind of
Speaker 1: a theatrical presentation, you know, either mildly theatrical or overtly theatrical,
Speaker 1: if there's a secrecy to it, oh well, that just
Speaker 1: makes it all the more special. Think about a speakeasy.
Speaker 1: Any of you have ever been to one of the
Speaker 1: modern speakeasies, not like a Prohibition era speakeasy, but if
Speaker 1: you if you did go to a Prohibition era speakeasy,
Speaker 1: you know, kudos to you for being up on podcasts
Speaker 1: and so forth. But you know, it's like there's generally
Speaker 1: this level of like, oh I had to go through
Speaker 1: a secret door or to get into this bar. You know,
Speaker 1: it just makes everything all the more exciting.
Speaker 3: Right, I want to come back to that in a
Speaker 3: minute here.
Speaker 1: So Abouden writes, quote, if we are to look for
Speaker 1: an external explanation for the Eleusinian experience, the theater seems
Speaker 1: a better place to look than the kitchen or brewery.
Speaker 3: Again, that seems quite reasonable to me, you can't totally
Speaker 3: rule out a pharmacological influence, but I don't think we
Speaker 3: need to go there to explain anything.
Speaker 1: Right, And it does create, as McKenna pointed out, an
Speaker 1: additional burden of proof, that is that is required.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I looked at some more recent articles exploring the various
Speaker 1: psychedelic theories regarding the Elusinian mysteries, and you do see
Speaker 1: proponents still arguing that some of these theories, at least
Speaker 1: the psychotropic mushroom one, that the mushroom theory seems to
Speaker 1: be more valid than and less less fraught with complications
Speaker 1: compared to the aragot beer. You know that one may
Speaker 1: be in the mix still, But at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, all we could really do is speculate, And
Speaker 1: again it just adds an additional level of evidence that
Speaker 1: would be required, evidence that we do not have, but
Speaker 1: certainly more possible, fewer complications than saying maybe it was
Speaker 1: aliens by all means.
Speaker 3: All right, So whether or not the people engaged in
Speaker 3: this were consuming hallucinogenic barley mush again, no reason to
Speaker 3: assume they needed to do that to explain anything we know,
Speaker 3: but who knows. Maybe whether or not that was happening
Speaker 3: after the public rituals at the end of the festival.
Speaker 3: Not quite at the end, actually, there was a little
Speaker 3: bit after this, but basically the climax of the festival.
Speaker 3: Once night had fallen, you would get to the big deal,
Speaker 3: the secret rites inside the closed hall of mysteries, the Telesterion.
Speaker 3: So what was going on there? Well, here's where we
Speaker 3: know a lot less, because, as we've discussed, those who
Speaker 3: had not been initiated were not supposed to know, and
Speaker 3: those who had been initiated were not supposed to tell.
Speaker 3: But we have some clues. So there are ancient references
Speaker 3: to the mysteries inside the Telesterion as quote things done,
Speaker 3: things shown, and things said, which is sort of vague,
Speaker 3: but that still tells you a bit. It suggests there
Speaker 3: is a visual display things shown, a physically enacted element
Speaker 3: things done, and a recited element things said aloud. The
Speaker 3: second to third century Christian Church father Clement of Alexandria
Speaker 3: claims that initiates to the Eleusinian mysteries had to recite
Speaker 3: a kind of pass phrase, which translates to I fasted,
Speaker 3: I drank the kookion, I took from the chest, and
Speaker 3: having worked with the sacred implements. I removed them into
Speaker 3: the basket and from the back into the chest, which
Speaker 3: that last part sounds like, Oh the kind of activity
Speaker 3: that would just thrill my toddler right now. Is that
Speaker 3: a common thing for kids at this age? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, does it ever go away? I love putting
Speaker 1: things in little boxes and taking things out of boxes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean people watch whole videos online just to see unboxings.
Speaker 3: Right, soah, out of this box, into that box and
Speaker 3: then back again.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, as for the things shown in that phrase, a
Speaker 3: lot of ancient sources, while not saying what was shown,
Speaker 3: really emphasized the idea of the mysteries as a visual display.
Speaker 3: In fact, the priest of Demeter is known as the hyrafant,
Speaker 3: which means that name translates to a person who shows
Speaker 3: or displays sacred things. Now, this might be a good
Speaker 3: place to talk a bit about the idea of the
Speaker 3: profanation of the mysteries. Bowden's book has a good little
Speaker 3: subsection on this, and you were alluding to it earlier
Speaker 3: with the idea of that guy I'll see is the
Speaker 3: fifth century BCE Athens based general who he got in
Speaker 3: trouble because the deal was he was like right about
Speaker 3: to head off for a naval campaign to Sicily, So
Speaker 3: they're getting ready to go to launch this expedition, and
Speaker 3: suddenly he is accused by enemies of having revealed the
Speaker 3: mysteries of Eleusis to non initiates. And in fact, the
Speaker 3: idea was not just that he told secrets, but that
Speaker 3: he sort of privatized the mysteries by recreating them in
Speaker 3: his house with non initiated guests. I was trying to
Speaker 3: figure out, like what exactly was the spirit of this
Speaker 3: recreation of the mysteries, Like was he trying to get
Speaker 3: his own mysteries going or was it in a spirit
Speaker 3: of mockery or irony. I'm not quite sure there.
Speaker 1: Or kind of like being it could have been a
Speaker 1: sense of he was like just a super fan. He's
Speaker 1: like I love this stuff so much. You know, he's
Speaker 1: just s geaking out about it, wanting to share it
Speaker 1: with his buddies. But then in doing so, you know,
Speaker 1: commits at least minor heresy. You know, these things can
Speaker 1: get out of control sometimes.
Speaker 3: But this accusation is received as quite serious, like it
Speaker 3: would be a grave offense which would lead to divine punishment.
Speaker 3: The kind of implication is, if you know, you send
Speaker 3: out a general out to war who has just profaned
Speaker 3: the secret rights, the gods are going to work their
Speaker 3: wrath on him with defeat in battle. And so maybe
Speaker 3: this is a good place to come back and explore
Speaker 3: the idea of the secrecy of the rights a little more.
Speaker 3: We talked about this a minute ago, and I had
Speaker 3: some more thoughts about this. Specifically, I was reading about
Speaker 3: it in that book chapter by Kevin Clinton where he
Speaker 3: cites a passage by Aristotle which makes reference to the mysteries,
Speaker 3: and I thought this was interesting. Aristotle says, in translation quote,
Speaker 3: the initiates are not supposed to learn anything, but rather
Speaker 3: to experience and to be disposed in a certain way,
Speaker 3: that is, becoming manifestly fit or deserving. So the cult
Speaker 3: has secrets which are only revealed to initiates. But according
Speaker 3: to Aristotle at least, and I trust he probably knew
Speaker 3: what he was talking about, the initiates are not supposed
Speaker 3: to learn anything. That's not the point. Coming back to
Speaker 3: something we talked about in an earlier part, that the
Speaker 3: point of the cult is not an information puzzle. It's
Speaker 3: not to learn the secret password. Instead, you are supposed
Speaker 3: to have an experience. And even more interestingly about what
Speaker 3: Aristotle says here, you're supposed to have an experience and
Speaker 3: by virtue of that experience to become worthy. Now, according
Speaker 3: to Clinton, the Greek word Aristotle uses for experience here
Speaker 3: does mean what we mean by experience, but it also
Speaker 3: means to suffer. And Clinton argues that the secrecy of
Speaker 3: the Mystery cults was not originally understood as the point
Speaker 3: of them. Rather, it came to be perceived as a
Speaker 3: defining aspect of them, sort of because of the drama
Speaker 3: it implied, especially to non initiates, and because of the
Speaker 3: severe penalties for violation of those secrets. It seems this
Speaker 3: wasn't the case always, because you can find counterexamples, but
Speaker 3: it looks like, at least in some cases, the punishment
Speaker 3: was supposed to be death. So, given the assumption that
Speaker 3: the mystery cult was not actually about secrecy, the secrecy
Speaker 3: was not the point. Clinton asks an interesting question quote,
Speaker 3: we may then legitimately ask what actually was the point
Speaker 3: of the secrecy, But first one must consider what is
Speaker 3: so special about a secret. A secret is a fact
Speaker 3: or a representation of a human act that cannot be
Speaker 3: disclosed beyond a certain group. What could be so exciting
Speaker 3: about a fact or an act that could draw thousands
Speaker 3: of people from all over the Greek world each year
Speaker 3: to the mysteria. And of course we do get some
Speaker 3: attempts in the ancient world to kind of frame the
Speaker 3: secret of the Eleusinian mysteries as something that would be
Speaker 3: concealed for a reason of it being i don't know,
Speaker 3: scandalous or titillating. And some of these reports come from
Speaker 3: early Christian writers, and that kind of makes sense, like
Speaker 3: they would be maybe hostile to other religious practices and
Speaker 3: not worried about profaning them. But it's also unclear how
Speaker 3: accurate these these claims are and whether we should believe
Speaker 3: their descriptions. But one example is that Clinton mentions that
Speaker 3: some Christian authors claimed the big secret of the Elysinian
Speaker 3: mysteries is you got to watch a priest and a
Speaker 3: priestess have sex.
Speaker 1: Again, I come back to the idea of some sort
Speaker 1: of a sideshow tent. You go into the back and
Speaker 1: you get to see like a little something extra that's
Speaker 1: not for everyone who came to the main circus.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so again we have no way of knowing that's
Speaker 3: not true. But Clinton kind of argues against it. He says,
Speaker 3: this would not be sufficient to attract the kind of
Speaker 3: attention and like draw the kind of crowds from all
Speaker 3: around like are described like for one thing. It's not
Speaker 3: that unique. And to me it just sounds kind of
Speaker 3: like a like a slander that one religion says about another.
Speaker 3: And there were plenty of Slanders going the opposite way too,
Speaker 3: Slanders Greek and Roman polytheists accused Christians of being immoral,
Speaker 3: of engaging in cannibalism and incest and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you just wanted to see a sexual act
Speaker 1: or sexual act for performance, there are surely other shows
Speaker 1: in town. So yeah, this does sort of ring of
Speaker 1: some sort of a slander, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: Right, So instead, Clinton argues that the purpose of the
Speaker 3: secrecy was in order to make the experience of the
Speaker 3: solemn rituals feel extraordinary. And I mean this rings true
Speaker 3: to me. That which we that which we receive as
Speaker 3: common knowledge, feels trivial. That which is hidden and is
Speaker 3: specially revealed to us feels like it gets an automatic
Speaker 3: leg up in profundity. You know, it's just so much
Speaker 3: easier to interpret a secret revealed to you as something
Speaker 3: that is meaningful in itself, when in fact it doesn't
Speaker 3: need to be. And you know that got me thinking, like,
Speaker 3: I don't mean to insult the mysteries by this or
Speaker 3: profound religious experiences in general, but I kind of can't
Speaker 3: help make the comparison to a common sort of influencer
Speaker 3: who exists today that I would characterize as like the
Speaker 3: influencer mystic, a person who ostensibly traffics in insights somebody
Speaker 3: who is out there. Maybe they've got media channels or whatever,
Speaker 3: and they do commentary and analysis or life advice. But
Speaker 3: their insights, at least as I judge, might not be
Speaker 3: especially interesting or seem especially valid if they were just
Speaker 3: presented in written form or paraphrased into plain language. But
Speaker 3: this kind of influencer mystic can achieve a fan base
Speaker 3: because they're able to talk in a way that makes
Speaker 3: whatever they're saying feel like a great occult secret is
Speaker 3: being unearthed, and by listening to them you are the
Speaker 3: first witness to an unveiling of truths, which is an
Speaker 3: intoxicating feeling if somebody can pull it off. And so
Speaker 3: of course I'm speaking with a little bit of derision
Speaker 3: about these modern examples. But you could also, at the
Speaker 3: same time use the theatrics of the unveiled secret to
Speaker 3: increase the salience of genuine, profound insights and experiences. So
Speaker 3: I'm not suggesting the Eleusinian mysteries were necessarily hollow at
Speaker 3: their core or anything like that. Again, there's just a
Speaker 3: lot we don't know about their core.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting to think about this too in terms
Speaker 1: of the secular modern world and even the religious modern
Speaker 1: world in many respects, Like we are so accustomed to
Speaker 1: the idea that you can skip to the end and read,
Speaker 1: read the finish, read the conclusion, it would get a
Speaker 1: bullet list of the main things that are important. And
Speaker 1: so the idea that there would be levels to something
Speaker 1: or some sort of a secret reveal that it is
Speaker 1: not for everyone else to know it does kind of
Speaker 1: run counter to sort of the informational DNA that a
Speaker 1: lot of us have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so while I think in the modern world
Speaker 3: this is often used for ill, it wouldn't necessarily have
Speaker 3: to be used for ill. But I think you can
Speaker 3: get you can get a lot of persuasive and attentional
Speaker 3: mileage just by framing your opinion or whatever you're about
Speaker 3: to say as a secret that is being unveiled to someone,
Speaker 3: you know, like I'm going to pull back the curtain now.
Speaker 1: I think that the place, weirdly enough, where it is
Speaker 1: often the most respected is in terms of narrative storyteller,
Speaker 1: particularly with movies and the you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: no spoilers, you know, not only don't spoil this for me,
Speaker 1: but I think more profoundly, when you have an experience
Speaker 1: where there's some sort of a film out there and
Speaker 1: either is particularly well crafted or it does involve a
Speaker 1: particularly innovative twist or effective twist or an emotional twist,
Speaker 1: and people will stress, don't read the spoilers, go into
Speaker 1: this without you know, don't watch the trailer, go into
Speaker 1: it so that everything is a surprise. You know.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Outside of that, like, there's not much that we're we're
Speaker 1: we generally engage in where we're open to that sort
Speaker 1: of experience. I mean, I guess in some respects we
Speaker 1: are like like, you know, some one might say, have
Speaker 1: a child, you don't know how this is going to
Speaker 1: turn out, but you're you're in the long run, it's
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a surprise. There's gonna be some twists
Speaker 1: you're not expecting it's true. But you know, the parenthood
Speaker 1: and movies, those are the two examples that come to mind.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to religion, we're more of the mind, well,
Speaker 1: what are they believe in? Give me a list? Is
Speaker 1: there a holy book? All right, I'm going to skip
Speaker 1: to the end. Is maybe there's some cliff notes on
Speaker 1: it and so forth.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, and that goes back to something we
Speaker 3: talked about in the first episode of the series about
Speaker 3: that anthropological framework of the doctrinal religious model versus the
Speaker 3: imagistic or a religious model. Bowden makes reference to these ideas,
Speaker 3: and the short version is that doctrinal modes of worship
Speaker 3: worship tend to be frequent, regular, low intensity, but also
Speaker 3: have clear meaning and function. You can kind of have
Speaker 3: a systematic explanation of what the purpose and meaning of
Speaker 3: the rituals are, versus what's known as the imagistic model
Speaker 3: of religious practice, where you know, rituals tend to be rare, strange,
Speaker 3: high intensity, and more ambiguous in terms of meaning. Maybe
Speaker 3: nobody's even telling you what to make of the experience
Speaker 3: you had. Now, I guess the implication is that mysteries
Speaker 3: such as the mysteries of ill Usis would be much
Speaker 3: more firmly in the imagistic mode of worship. That there's
Speaker 3: something profound, high intensity going on, and it may well
Speaker 3: be very ambiguous, very open to your own contemplation and interpretation.
Speaker 3: Maybe nobody tells you what it means or even what
Speaker 3: it's doing. But that does bring us back to the
Speaker 3: Secret Rights themselves. So what else can we guess about
Speaker 3: the content of the mysteries? And here I'm going to
Speaker 3: synthesize from multiple accounts, including Clinton's and Bowden's and a
Speaker 3: few other things I've read. But it seems that, for
Speaker 3: one thing, the Secret Rights probably involved some reenactment of
Speaker 3: the myth of Demeter and Corey. Now it's questionable to
Speaker 3: what extent it followed the story completely, which parts of
Speaker 3: the story were represented, and what version of the story
Speaker 3: you got, but there are multiple clues pointing to the
Speaker 3: idea that some version of this story is being re enacted,
Speaker 3: at least in part in these rituals. This could include
Speaker 3: wandering around in the darkness, like searching for the kidnapped
Speaker 3: daughter after her disappearance, possibly witnessing or hearing the grief
Speaker 3: stricken cries of Demeter. For at least part of the ritual,
Speaker 3: initiates may have been blindfolded or shrouded with a hood.
Speaker 3: Ancient authors make reference to something about this where they
Speaker 3: would probably be guided by their mystagogue, you know, the
Speaker 3: more experienced guide would show them the way to go
Speaker 3: while they were baffled and you know, and they didn't
Speaker 3: know where to go, stumbling around in the dark, and
Speaker 3: all of this before the initiates were eventually made aware
Speaker 3: somehow of the reunion of mother and daughter of Demeter
Speaker 3: and Corey at the end of the myth, and then
Speaker 3: finally brought into the hall, like coming out of the
Speaker 3: darkness into a hall brightly illuminated by torches for a
Speaker 3: celebration and revealing of things hidden. Now again, those last
Speaker 3: parts are they seem reasonable based on what we know,
Speaker 3: but we don't know for sure. That's the form it took.
Speaker 3: Torches seem to play a role. There are a lot
Speaker 3: There are a lot of mentions of darkness and blindfoldedness
Speaker 3: and agony and struggles in the darkness and then coming
Speaker 3: into the light.
Speaker 1: You know, this brings me back. We talked again talking
Speaker 1: about haunted attractions and how you do encounter some that
Speaker 1: are church affiliated. I have distinct memories of going to
Speaker 1: one as when I was a youth. There's a rural
Speaker 1: Southern church affiliated haunted house. And at the end, as
Speaker 1: you wandered or perhaps rushed out of the darkness pursued
Speaker 1: by chainsaws and the like, where do you enter into
Speaker 1: You enter into a tent where a preacher is then
Speaker 1: going to speak to you and sell you on eternal
Speaker 1: salvation and of course the the alternatives that you just
Speaker 1: witnessed in the haunted house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that that that high contrast creates an intensity,
Speaker 3: like an emotional motivation and intensity of experience that really
Speaker 3: I don't know. In this case, again, we've already noted
Speaker 3: the difference between like the Christian hell House or whatever
Speaker 3: variation there where the goal is to I don't want
Speaker 3: to oversimplify, but I think it's fair to say usually
Speaker 3: at least the goal there is going to be to
Speaker 3: convert you into the doctrinal form of that religion, to say, like,
Speaker 3: you belong to us. Now you've been convinced by witnessing
Speaker 3: these horrors, you need to go to our church. That
Speaker 3: does not necessarily seem to be the goal here. I
Speaker 3: don't detect based on what I've read that the purpose
Speaker 3: of the mysteries is a persuasive one that you need
Speaker 3: to like join the cult of ill usis though, I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess the people who are who go through as
Speaker 3: misdays the first time, and this is a distinction. The
Speaker 3: first time you are initiated the mysteries, you were known
Speaker 3: as misty's or mistace, a term which seems to derive
Speaker 3: from the concept of having one's eyes closed, and then
Speaker 3: you would usually come back second time, and then you
Speaker 3: would be known as epop dase, which means look or viewer,
Speaker 3: So there is a kind of return and the difference
Speaker 3: between those terms is interesting too, by the way, because
Speaker 3: the difference between like mistase meaning eyes closed and a
Speaker 3: pop dase meaning looking or viewing that could of course
Speaker 3: be literal like maybe the first time you do it
Speaker 3: you are blindfolded or hooded and the second time you
Speaker 3: can look, or maybe there are particular elements that two
Speaker 3: time initiates are particular permitted to look upon that first
Speaker 3: time initiates or not. But this difference could also just
Speaker 3: refer to a kind of metaphorical perspective on what is happening.
Speaker 3: The same way that we say to have previous experience
Speaker 3: with something is to go into it with open eyes.
Speaker 1: For anyone out there who's listening with I don't know
Speaker 1: if this is really a listen with the whole family
Speaker 1: sort of episode, but in the case event that you are,
Speaker 1: I'm about to throw out some Christmas spoilers, so feel
Speaker 1: free to skip a bit if you if you wish.
Speaker 1: But this also reminds me of the way that some
Speaker 1: parents approach Santa Claus and Christmas traditions, the idea of
Speaker 1: being that instead of just not doing them or trying
Speaker 1: to keep the myth and the or the fiction of
Speaker 1: Santa Claus going like well beyond it's a healthy phase. Instead,
Speaker 1: you kind of break it down like this, where it
Speaker 1: is kind of treated like a mystery when the child
Speaker 1: is young, and then when the child reaches a certain age,
Speaker 1: it's like, now you were part of the mystery, and
Speaker 1: now you can help create this mystery for perhaps younger siblings,
Speaker 1: other young people you know in the family or in
Speaker 1: the community, and so forth. And perhaps this is like
Speaker 1: a less doctrinal example compared to the Haunted House thing,
Speaker 1: because I guess there's not really a doctrine regarding Santa
Speaker 1: that is being pursued in the long run, though it
Speaker 1: is of course more certainly like narrative and so forth.
Speaker 1: And I guess perhaps the Santa Clause example is better
Speaker 1: than the Haunted House example, because Santa Claus, there's not
Speaker 1: really a doctrine there that we're trying to drive home
Speaker 1: into children, aside from be good or else.
Speaker 3: I guess, yeah, Oh, but I guess I got sidetracked
Speaker 3: there talking about the mystas versus the apoptase from talking
Speaker 3: about how generally it seems like there is a difference
Speaker 3: between the hell house model and the mystery religion model because,
Speaker 3: or at least this particular case, because in the all
Speaker 3: Useenian mysteries, it's like the experience is the point. It's
Speaker 3: not just like a persuasive act to get you to
Speaker 3: do something else different. Right. Another interesting passage that is
Speaker 3: often cited in historical writing about the mystery religions is
Speaker 3: from Plutarch. Or Plutarch characterizes the mysteries generally by way
Speaker 3: of metaphor. What he's actually talking about is what happens
Speaker 3: to the soul at the end of life. But he's
Speaker 3: sort of saying, you know, what happens to the soul
Speaker 3: at the end of life is much like what you
Speaker 3: all know happens after you're iniated into the mysteries. And
Speaker 3: to be clear, he doesn't say specifically he's talking about
Speaker 3: the Eleusinian mysteries, but he probably is. These were the
Speaker 3: most famous. So what Plutarch says is quote, wandering astray
Speaker 3: in the beginning, tiresome walkings in circles, some frightening paths
Speaker 3: in darkness that lead nowhere. Then immediately before the end,
Speaker 3: all the terrible things, panic and shivering and sweat and bewilderment,
Speaker 3: and then some wonderful light comes to meet you. Purer
Speaker 3: regions and meadows are there to greet you with sounds
Speaker 3: and dances and solemn sacred words and holy views. And
Speaker 3: there the initiate, perfect by, now set free and loose
Speaker 3: from all bondage, walks about, crowned with a wreath, celebrating
Speaker 3: the festival together with the other sacred and pure people.
Speaker 3: And he looks down on the uninitiated, unpurified crowd in
Speaker 3: this world in mud and fog beneath his feet. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: So that square somewhat with what we've already talked about,
Speaker 3: like this feeling of lightness and sort of ascension that
Speaker 3: comes with having gone through the mysteries. There is some
Speaker 3: lasting effect on people that they cite that they say
Speaker 3: is very powerful and makes them feel better, makes them
Speaker 3: feel unafraid, set loose in some way, perfected in some way.
Speaker 3: But I also like the first half of this passage,
Speaker 3: where it seems to be more describing, just in general
Speaker 3: and emotional terms, what the experience of going through the
Speaker 3: mysteries is like. And it's one that begins with confusion, bafflement, exhaustion,
Speaker 3: and suffering and ends with hope and cathartic relief. And
Speaker 3: so I guess this brings us to the question of
Speaker 3: what did the mysteries mean to the people who practiced
Speaker 3: them Abouten explores this at length in his book Discuss
Speaker 3: As we've already alluded to the possibility that the meaning
Speaker 3: of the mysteries was not made explicit. Instead, like the
Speaker 3: standard model of the imagistic mode of religion, it's sort
Speaker 3: of left ambiguous. It invites participants to reflect later and
Speaker 3: contemplate to figure out for themselves what it means. And
Speaker 3: that's very interesting to me too, because I mean a
Speaker 3: huge part actually of what religion is, at least in
Speaker 3: my experience, is exegesis on what things mean. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, religions have, or many religions have. You know,
Speaker 3: they have contents, they may have texts and stories, they
Speaker 3: may have physical objects or places, they have rituals, and
Speaker 3: there's just so much effort devoted to clarifying what everything means.
Speaker 3: And that that's what a lot of people want out
Speaker 3: of religion today. You know, they want to understand how, what,
Speaker 3: why we do it? What how to make sense of it?
Speaker 3: But this version of religion may have been a kind
Speaker 3: of different one where it's like, instead, you witness something
Speaker 3: and you go through something is strange and overwhelming and powerful,
Speaker 3: and then you're kind of just sent home to make
Speaker 3: your own sense of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean it's kind of like abstract art and
Speaker 1: abstract cinema at its best, right where there's you go
Speaker 1: into it without any kind of expectations, you leave it
Speaker 1: without any i would say, prescribed interpretations. You know, you're
Speaker 1: left to try and figure out what it possibly meant
Speaker 1: all on your own, and maybe it meant nothing, but
Speaker 1: you won't forget it.
Speaker 3: Kevin Clinton in his chapter writes, relying in part on
Speaker 3: his own hypothetical reconstruction of the rituals. So the following
Speaker 3: passage does include some assumptions based on guesses, but reasonable guesses,
Speaker 3: so Clinton writes, quote, the mysteria revealed simple things like
Speaker 3: the return of a lost daughter to her mother, a
Speaker 3: goddess insight, differing parentheses, an extraordinary state for a Greek
Speaker 3: god or goddess, joy that accompanies the appearance of grain,
Speaker 3: the grain that is plutos, meaning wealth, the agrarian prosperity
Speaker 3: that sustains family and clan, all simple things that at
Speaker 3: the same time had profound significance. The impact lay in
Speaker 3: part in the dramatic presentation, which was an essential aspect
Speaker 3: of the experience. And that kind of takes me to
Speaker 3: another place, which is it makes me think I've been
Speaker 3: thinking about this primarily from the point of view of
Speaker 3: the new initiate, the mistas or the apoptes, you know,
Speaker 3: who's for the first or second time going through the
Speaker 3: greater mysteries and experiencing it and seeing what it means.
Speaker 3: But this kind of makes me think about it from
Speaker 3: the point of view of the priesthood. Say you are
Speaker 3: a hierophant or you're one of the people whose job
Speaker 3: it is to put on the show of the Eleusinian mysteries.
Speaker 3: It seems actually there's quite a bur there's quite a
Speaker 3: burden to put on a good show, because are people
Speaker 3: are sort of relying on the fact that you put
Speaker 3: on a good show in order to find meaning in
Speaker 3: their life, to escape their fear of death, to feel
Speaker 3: like their life will have blessings yet to come, and
Speaker 3: they fit in a divine order, which is fascinating. And
Speaker 3: I guess something that people I don't know religious performers
Speaker 3: and in other situations probably do feel a similar kind
Speaker 3: of obligation. But it again made all the more alluring
Speaker 3: in this case because of the power of the secrecy,
Speaker 3: because there thing we still don't know. There's some things
Speaker 3: we don't know. We don't know exactly what they were doing,
Speaker 3: and it's like it's agonizing. You want to know, but
Speaker 3: we can't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we want it all laid out, like from a
Speaker 1: historical standpoint, from an anthropology of religion standpoint, we want
Speaker 1: to know, like what were the things that were believe,
Speaker 1: what were the things that were enacted, and what was
Speaker 1: the import of those things? And for varying reasons. We
Speaker 1: have a lot of holes, all right. Well, on that note,
Speaker 1: we're going to go ahead and close out this episode,
Speaker 1: but we have decided we will come back with at
Speaker 1: least a fourth episode on the mystery cults, and it
Speaker 1: may not be the next episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind. It may occur after that. So in the
Speaker 1: not too distant future you will encounter a fourth episode
Speaker 1: and we'll continue this fascinating discussion. There are so many
Speaker 1: different mystery cults and we're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to discuss all of them, and we're of course not
Speaker 1: going to get into everything that Balden discusses in his book. Again,
Speaker 1: we do highly recommend you check that out if you
Speaker 1: are interested in the topic. The title of that book
Speaker 1: again is Mystery Cults in the Ancient World by Hugh Bowden.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we'd like to remind everyone that's Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast,
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We have a
Speaker 1: short form episode 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 things, As always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.