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Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name

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Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. This is a winter break week for us,

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Speaker 1: so we have some vault episodes for you. This is

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Speaker 1: going to be part one of our Mystery Cults series

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Speaker 1: from last year, Part one of four. It originally published

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Speaker 1: two twenty seven, twenty twenty five. What is it about, Well,

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Speaker 1: it is a mystery we'll have to experience for yourself.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My

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Speaker 1: name is Robert.

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Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.

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Speaker 1: Now many times on Stuff to Blow Your Mind. When

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Speaker 1: discussing religion and the ancient Greco Roman world, we have

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Speaker 1: referred to the mystery cults, also known as the sacred

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Speaker 1: mysteries or even the mysteries. Watching my stories, we've discussed

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Speaker 1: specific mystery cults and a little more depth. But I

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Speaker 1: was recently thinking about this and I realized that this

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Speaker 1: was a topic that deserved deeper consideration, and indeed, I

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Speaker 1: think more than once I've personally kind of left it

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Speaker 1: at and this deity was also taken up by the

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Speaker 1: mystery cults as if to delve deeper is impossible or

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Speaker 1: somehow forbidden. Now, certainly mysteries surrounding the various mystery cults

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Speaker 1: remain and much as left open to interpretation, but we

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Speaker 1: do know quite a lot whole books have been written

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Speaker 1: on the topic, and we're going to follow along in

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Speaker 1: these episodes to see what we can learn and share

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Speaker 1: about the mysteries.

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Speaker 3: Well, Rob, I am excited to go on a journey

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Speaker 3: exploring the mystery cults of the Greco Roman world, But

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Speaker 3: I kind of like the way that you used to

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Speaker 3: leave it off, you know, just you know, in this

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Speaker 3: deity Yes became a focus of the mystery cults and

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Speaker 3: saying no more, because that is a tradition going all

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Speaker 3: the way back to the ancient world itself. One of

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Speaker 3: the main sources we're going to be using in this

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Speaker 3: series is a great book called Mystery Cults in the

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Speaker 3: Ancient World. They just got a new edition out. I

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Speaker 3: think it was originally published over a decade ago, but

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Speaker 3: it got a new edition in twenty twenty three by

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Speaker 3: an author named Hugh Bowden, who is a professor of

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Speaker 3: ancient history at King's College, London. This is a really

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Speaker 3: great book. But one of the things you mentioned several

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Speaker 3: times is ancient writers bringing up a mystery cult and

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Speaker 3: then saying I've been instructed in a dream not to

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Speaker 3: say any more about this. My lips are sealed, like

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Speaker 3: Paulsenius will be like, then, this really interesting thing happened

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Speaker 3: in Samothrace, of which I can tell you nothing, which

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Speaker 3: itself makes for a very enticing subject.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and and course runs completely counter to our modern

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Speaker 1: understanding of history, like now everything must be revealed, Please

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Speaker 1: reveal it to us.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, everything, except when you have met face to face

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Speaker 3: the terrifying power of a god or a goddess. Now, Rob,

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Speaker 3: I know today you wanted wanted to do some work

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Speaker 3: laying the groundwork establishing a bit about the historical context

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Speaker 3: of broader Greco Roman religion in the ancient Mediterranean world,

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Speaker 3: which is the context in which these mystery cults existed.

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Speaker 3: But before we do that, I thought it might be

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Speaker 3: important just to do a little bit of disambiguation on terminology,

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Speaker 3: because if you are coming into an episode called mystery cults,

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Speaker 3: and you are bringing the normal connotations of the word

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Speaker 3: mystery and cult that modern English speakers would bring with you,

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Speaker 3: that might send your mind off in several different wrong

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Speaker 3: directions at once.

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Speaker 1: That's right. If you were to tell someone I just

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Speaker 1: joined a mystery cult today, you might be it might

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Speaker 1: be accurate to think, oh, this individual joined a book club,

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Speaker 1: or maybe this is a really cool band name. And

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Speaker 1: if someone were to join a mystery cult, say in

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Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties, in say the United States,

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Speaker 1: well it's going to have different connotations and it might

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Speaker 1: read to a certain it might lead to a certain

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Speaker 1: amount of panic. But yeah, we have to differentiate a

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Speaker 1: mystery cult in its ancient application.

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Speaker 3: Here, right, So we need to do work on both

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Speaker 3: of those words, actually, on mystery and on cult. So

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Speaker 3: in modern English, the word cult is typically used to

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Speaker 3: mean a specific type of religious phenomenon, almost always with

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Speaker 3: pejorative connotations. So a cult refers to a marginal, extreme

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Speaker 3: and usually socially harmful form of religion from the point

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Speaker 3: of view of the person choosing this term. So, for example,

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Speaker 3: a cult is a religion that has relatively few adherents

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Speaker 3: compared to major world religions. Maybe one that enforces strict

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Speaker 3: reverence and obedience of a human leader. Maybe a religion

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Speaker 3: that requires adherents to cut off contact with loved ones.

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Speaker 3: And the rest of the outside world things like that.

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Speaker 1: Yes. Indeed, the word cult has often been used by

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Speaker 1: more established religious groups against new religious movements, new religious

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Speaker 1: movements that could potentially have harmful attributes but may not.

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Speaker 1: This was a hallmark, of course, of the Christian countercult

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Speaker 1: movement of the late twentieth century, often targeting Christian groups

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Speaker 1: held as heretical by larger Christian organizations, which of course

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Speaker 1: is a tail almost as old as Christianity itself in

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Speaker 1: many respects.

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Speaker 3: And in some cases what the Christians were saying about

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Speaker 3: those people probably resembled what the Roman Pagans were saying

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Speaker 3: about the early Christians. They meet in secret, and they

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Speaker 3: eat babies alive and stuff.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course all this bleeds over to into

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Speaker 1: fiction and fantasy. You know, if you play Dungeons and Dragons,

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Speaker 1: you have probably noticed that I haven't checked in the

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Speaker 1: new Monster Manual which just came out. I have a

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Speaker 1: copy of it, but I haven't gotten to the cultists yet.

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Speaker 1: But generally, cultists are an enemy type in Dungeons and Dragons.

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Speaker 1: And what do you think of in Dungeons and Dragons.

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Speaker 1: Within the context of Dungeons and Dragons when you encounter

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Speaker 1: a cultist, well, they are just absolute bad guys with

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Speaker 1: no redeeming qualities whatsoever. They're just they're villains that you battle.

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Speaker 1: They see that another fantasy fiction as well.

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Speaker 3: Usually their own proprietary robes and daggers if you loot them.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah. If you get a mini of a cultist,

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Speaker 1: what do you expect to see? A robe and a dagger.

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Speaker 1: Those are the.

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Speaker 3: Hallmarks, right, So that's what cult usually means in English

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Speaker 3: today in general usage. And then of course you get

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Speaker 3: the derivative term, you know, like cult films and stuff

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Speaker 3: that are more ironic usages stemming from that usage. Yeah,

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Speaker 3: But in the context of Greco Roman history, the word

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Speaker 3: cult does not have any of those connotations. It doesn't

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Speaker 3: have any negative implications. It does not imply a marginal

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Speaker 3: or unusual practice either. There were cults of the mainstream

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Speaker 3: gods of the Greek and Roman pantheon, so you'd have

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Speaker 3: the local cult of Apollo, the local cult of Jupiter,

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Speaker 3: the cult of Dionysus, et cetera. So when used by

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Speaker 3: ancient historians, you can think of the word cult as

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Speaker 3: basically just a synonym for the word worship or system

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Speaker 3: of worship. So the cult of Apollo in a particular

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Speaker 3: time and place in the Hellenic world would be the

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Speaker 3: system of beliefs, practices, and social structures under which Apollo

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Speaker 3: was worshiped. In fact, there's a bit of interesting etymology here.

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Speaker 3: The English word cult is derived through several steps, originally

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Speaker 3: from the Latin cultus, which often literally means worship, but

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Speaker 3: also means care in the sense of taking care of

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Speaker 3: something or tending to the needs of something. So, for example,

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Speaker 3: agriculture is tending to the needs of the fields. To

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Speaker 3: cultivate means to till a field and preparation for planting.

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Speaker 3: So the cult of a particular god is the way

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Speaker 3: of tending to the needs of that God in the

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Speaker 3: form of worship, prayer, festivals, rituals, and sacrifices, the latter

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Speaker 3: of which could take many forms, often agricultural products like

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Speaker 3: grain or the meat of livestock, or could have other forms,

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Speaker 3: you know, maybe a monetary donation purchasing one of the

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Speaker 3: aforementioned products, or things like incense or wine.

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Speaker 1: So when we think of something like the cult of Cthulhu,

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Speaker 1: we're just talking about taking care of Cthulhu. Yes, looking

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Speaker 1: after Cthulhu, tending to the needs of Cthulhu, which sounds

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Speaker 1: far less frightening and threatening.

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Speaker 3: That's true, it's a beautiful thing. And in fact, this

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Speaker 3: highlights something about Greek and Roman pagan religion that is

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Speaker 3: unfamiliar to practitioners of many the major world religions today,

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Speaker 3: people who are primarily familiar with religion through you know,

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Speaker 3: Christianity or Islam or Judaism. The most common form of

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Speaker 3: public religion in the Greek and Roman world was essentially

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Speaker 3: a transactional quid pro quo relationship between the person or

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Speaker 3: the local community and a god. So the person and

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Speaker 3: the community at large performed rituals and sacrifices in honor

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Speaker 3: of the God, and in return, the God was expected

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Speaker 3: to provide blessings to the person. So it was generally

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Speaker 3: understood that, you know, the gods would have power over

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Speaker 3: events that were beyond human control. They can maybe control how,

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Speaker 3: you know, the weather and agricultural outcomes and diseases and

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Speaker 3: things like that, and so in order to get the

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Speaker 3: God to you know, treat you nice as far as

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Speaker 3: those things beyond you and control wind, the thing you

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Speaker 3: would do is take care of the God. You would

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Speaker 3: honor their festivals, you would make sacrifices to them, you

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Speaker 3: would do prayers for them, And in that sense, you

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Speaker 3: can really look at it as kind of a contract.

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Speaker 3: There's a bargain. We do things for you, you do things

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Speaker 3: for us.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the agriculture comparison is quite apt here

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Speaker 1: to think of it almost as like a knowledge of

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Speaker 1: the unseen world that then you of course have to honor. Like, okay,

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Speaker 1: we've discovered this. We are aware of this relationship between

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Speaker 1: these entities we cannot see, but who are quite powerful

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Speaker 1: over human affairs, and of course we have to cultivate

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Speaker 1: this relationship. We have to make sure that they're happy

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Speaker 1: so we can be happy. This is how the world.

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Speaker 3: Works, right, and this is the main way religion is

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Speaker 3: understood among the ancient Greeks and Romans. That way of

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Speaker 3: approaching religion is fundamentally different from the major religion of

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Speaker 3: the world today, like Christianity and Islam, which place emphasis

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Speaker 3: on belief and on a form of mental submission to God.

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Speaker 3: Mainstream Greek and Roman religion was really there was not

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Speaker 3: a lot of discourse about what you believed or like,

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Speaker 3: you know, did you mentally internally honor and love God?

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Speaker 3: That that was just not really a common way of

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Speaker 3: approaching it for the ancient Greeks and Romans. Instead, it

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Speaker 3: was did you do the rituals, did you do the prayers?

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Speaker 3: Did you make the sacrifices, did you celebrate the festivals?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah? Do you know what the gods want? And

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Speaker 1: generally what the gods want are those rituals, are those

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Speaker 1: sacrifices and so forth. It's more transactional.

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Speaker 3: I was thinking about another difference that came to mind

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Speaker 3: for me as I was reading this Abouden book that

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Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about in the series. I

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Speaker 3: can really only speak to my intimate familiarity with Christianity

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Speaker 3: here in America today. But I think a lot of

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Speaker 3: modern Christians, at least in the United States, would today

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Speaker 3: say that God does not need our worship, like he

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Speaker 3: is not left wanting if deprived of it. Rather, I

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Speaker 3: think most would say that say something like, we worship

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Speaker 3: God because it is right to do so, that God

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Speaker 3: is by nature deserving of worship, and so we his

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Speaker 3: followers are simply acknowledging that. I don't get that impression

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Speaker 3: about Greco Roman pagans. I don't get the feeling they

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Speaker 3: would have thought of it this way, the worship and

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Speaker 3: sacrifices that Greco Roman pagans seem to have given the

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Speaker 3: gods were things that the gods wanted and in fact needed.

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Speaker 3: And one piece of evidence for this occurred to me

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Speaker 3: when I was reading Bowden's recounting of the myth of

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Speaker 3: Demeter and Persephone, in which Persephone has stolen a way

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Speaker 3: to the underworld, Demeter is left distraw looking for her.

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Speaker 3: Eventually she can return back to the upper world for

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Speaker 3: part of the year, but it has to return to

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Speaker 3: the underworld for another part of the year, and this

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Speaker 3: ends up relating to understandings of seasonal cycles. But anyway,

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Speaker 3: this myth is related to one of the most important

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Speaker 3: mystery cults in the ancient Mediterranean, the Elusinian Mysteries. More

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Speaker 3: on that later, but there is a part of the

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Speaker 3: myth where Demeter, the Greek goddess of fertile fields and

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Speaker 3: the harvest, is mourning the kidnapping of her daughter into

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Speaker 3: the underworld, and she uses her power over the fields

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Speaker 3: to stop grain from growing over the earth. And it

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Speaker 3: turns out, at least within a common telling of this tale,

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Speaker 3: in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, this is alarming not

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Speaker 3: only to humans who need to eat the grain. You know,

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Speaker 3: that's going to cause famine on earth, but it's also

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Speaker 3: alarming to the gods, because the gods need to receive

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Speaker 3: grain sacrifices from humans, and so Zeus is motivated to

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Speaker 3: do something to fix the situation. And that struck me

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Speaker 3: as very alien to the most common ways of thinking

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Speaker 3: about God that I encounter, at least as the you know,

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Speaker 3: twenty first century American. It seems to me that that

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Speaker 3: to the Greco Roman pagans, not only was the worship

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Speaker 3: of the god's transactional. The gods were not just taking

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Speaker 3: pity on us or doing us a favor by engaging

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Speaker 3: in this deal making. They needed, or at least very

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Speaker 3: much wanted, what we were bringing to the table.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yes, very different from the idea of well, God

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Speaker 1: created you, God wants your love, and you are loved

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Speaker 1: by God and therefore like invited into his arms. No,

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Speaker 1: this is more we need that grain, like there's a

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Speaker 1: there's an economy here and it needs to be maintained.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. So anyway, I guess we got into

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Speaker 3: some digressions there. But that's why the word cult should

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Speaker 3: not mislead you there. We're not talking about the you know,

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Speaker 3: the the cultists of dungeons and dragons. It just means

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Speaker 3: a form of wor worship as understood within the ancient Mediterranean. Now,

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Speaker 3: the other word in a mystery cult is mystery. This

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Speaker 3: is an interesting case too. In common usage today, mystery

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Speaker 3: refers to a sort of puzzle with a hidden solution.

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Speaker 3: So a mystery story is one where the plot is

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Speaker 3: propelled by your desire to have a question answered. There

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Speaker 3: may be a there may be a hidden solution, or

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Speaker 3: there may be no known solution at all. Sometimes a

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Speaker 3: mystery refers to a thing that a question that cannot

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Speaker 3: be answered. Russies yes, So this could imply that a

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Speaker 3: mystery cult is a form of worship where the main

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Speaker 3: goal is to solve some kind of information puzzle, to

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Speaker 3: answer a question, or to access a piece of hidden in.

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Speaker 3: That's not primarily what's going on with mystery cults. While

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Speaker 3: the Greco Roman mystery cults absolutely did have elements of

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Speaker 3: secrecy and privileged information, and we'll get into more of

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Speaker 3: that later as well, the main sense in which the

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Speaker 3: word mystery is used in mystery cults is to refer

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Speaker 3: not to an information puzzle, but to a specific type

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Speaker 3: of secret initiation ritual known in Greek as mysteria, which

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Speaker 3: somewhat overlaps with other Greek concepts of orgea and teleti.

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Speaker 3: A Bowden mentions these three concepts altogether. They seem to

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Speaker 3: sometimes be used interchangeably, or maybe to refer to related

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Speaker 3: but slightly different things orgea and teleti. He translates as

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Speaker 3: mystic rites and initiations. So what are the mysteries? The

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Speaker 3: mysteries are these initiation rites, and they could indeed be

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Speaker 3: described as in many ways mysterious. They were often held

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Speaker 3: at night, They were often conducted in secret, so they

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Speaker 3: might take place inside a kind of a protected building

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Speaker 3: outside of public view. So in the case of the

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Speaker 3: Elusinian mysteries, which we'll describe in more detail later, I'm

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Speaker 3: sure there would be a kind of publicly viewable part

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Speaker 3: of this festival that would take place outside people would

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Speaker 3: be able to see it going on, But eventually the

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Speaker 3: festival would progress into an enclosed area inside a kind

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Speaker 3: of temple complex, where things would happen inside and those

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Speaker 3: not initiated into the secret rights would not be able

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Speaker 3: to know what was going on. Sometimes these rights would

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Speaker 3: also be mysterious in the sense that participants might be

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Speaker 3: blindfolded or hooded so that they couldn't see or understand

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Speaker 3: what was happening. And the rights were often just made

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Speaker 3: up of weird, baffling, frightening, emotionally intense experiences and encounters

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Speaker 3: with the power of the gods. So there are absolutely

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Speaker 3: things about these rights that we might think of as mysterious,

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Speaker 3: and the mystery cults did absolutely have secrets. But the

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Speaker 3: mystery in the name refers to these rights, refers to

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Speaker 3: the strange, powerful, obscure rights of initiation, not so much

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Speaker 3: to an information puzzle mystery in the Sherlock Holmes sense.

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Speaker 3: If that distinction makes sense.

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Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, absolutely. Now I want to add an additional

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Speaker 1: note on the term that you mentioned already, orgia. This

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Speaker 1: term is of course used in the context of religious

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Speaker 1: rights in ancient Greece, and while orgia might entail sexuality,

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Speaker 1: it does not inherently entail sexuality. I was reading a

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Speaker 1: bit about this in a really nice twenty twenty three

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Speaker 1: piece in The Conversation by Christian George Schwinzel. This is

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Speaker 1: a historian, a French historian of the ancient world, and

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Speaker 1: he writes about this, and he points out that the

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Speaker 1: term that we in common usage today org orgy in English,

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Speaker 1: didn't come to mean group sexual activity and excessive food

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Speaker 1: and drink till after eighteen hundred CE, especially during the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century, and especially in French literature of the time. Schwinzel, however,

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Speaker 1: stresses that this doesn't mean that the ancient Greeks and

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Speaker 1: Romans didn't engage in such activities. They certainly did, they

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Speaker 1: just referred to them by different names. Schwenzel, who is

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Speaker 1: again himself French, wrote an entire book on the subject.

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Speaker 3: It's funny how this is one of these terms that

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Speaker 3: has come around kind of like cult in a way,

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Speaker 3: where I use the word orgy all the time, not

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Speaker 3: to refer to anything sexual. I just mean like a

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Speaker 3: sort of an excessive indulgence in something.

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Speaker 1: Right right well, And in fact, he gets into this

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Speaker 1: a little bit like bringing up the film Babylon for

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Speaker 1: the kind of thing came out that same year, which

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Speaker 1: is like a Hollywood Babylon sort of thing, and he

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Speaker 1: points out that some of the that the movie does

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Speaker 1: contain a fictional depiction of a Hollywood orgy in the

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Speaker 1: in the modern sense, but then one might say, well,

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Speaker 1: this movie is an orgy for the senses in the

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Speaker 1: metaphorical sense. But again, when you get back to the

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Speaker 1: use of the of the term or gea, it does

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Speaker 1: not necessarily mean any kind of sexual activity was going on.

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Speaker 1: It could, but it doesn't inherently mean that. So it's

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Speaker 1: just another important footnote about the usage of the usages

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Speaker 1: of the term. The French literature example, you do see

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Speaker 1: works of that in Daring that time period that are

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Speaker 1: portraying the ancient world as engaging in these sorts of

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Speaker 1: rights that putting more of a you know, an erotic

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Speaker 1: sexual spin on the right.

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Speaker 3: So that's kind of an adaptation. But even in the

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Speaker 3: original Greek understanding that we were just talking about, as

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Speaker 3: explained by Bowden, there is the idea that the orgea

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Speaker 3: or orgea, these mystic rights would have been probably extremely

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Speaker 3: emotionally intense and overwhelming to the senses. Ancient writers who

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Speaker 3: do even if they don't describe what the rights themselves were,

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Speaker 3: they often describe the effect of them, which is that

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Speaker 3: they are life changing, an overwhelming experience that leaves one

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Speaker 3: deeply shaken to the core.

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Speaker 1: Exactly Now, again, that book by Hugh Bowden has been

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Speaker 1: one of our key resources here, and Bowden does a

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Speaker 1: great job as a great approach to the topic, grounding

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Speaker 1: his initial approach in a discussion of what we might

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Speaker 1: refer to as this the mainstream religious ecosystem of the

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Speaker 1: ancient Greco Roman world, and then diving into where the

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Speaker 1: mystery cults fit in and how they generally differed. And

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Speaker 1: we've already been engaging with some of this. You know,

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Speaker 1: we have to exit our modern understanding of organized, top

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Speaker 1: down religion and get into a different ecosystem, a different

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Speaker 1: way that things worked in order to understand then how

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Speaker 1: the mystery cults are sort of set aside even from that,

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Speaker 1: So we're we're largely dealing with the world before Christianity

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Speaker 1: and set apart from its key characteristics, namely, you know,

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Speaker 1: any notion of a centrally organized doctrinal religion. So first up,

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Speaker 1: this is this probably seems like an outrageous overstatement of

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Speaker 1: the obvious, but there were a lot of gods, yes,

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Speaker 1: and by that we don't just mean the standard twelve

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Speaker 1: Olympians set menu that instantly comes to mind. You know,

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Speaker 1: you know your your Zeus, your Apollo, and so forth.

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Speaker 1: You know your your main Greek gods, the ones that

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Speaker 1: you're going to see in a poster. They're the ones

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Speaker 1: that are frequently utilized in Greek mythology themed works of fiction. No,

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Speaker 1: I would say, instead, think of an exhaustive cheesecake factory

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Speaker 1: style menu, one that makes you question whether the kitchen

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Speaker 1: can truly deliver on all of these diverse menu items.

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Speaker 1: Only even that is not a perfect technology, because the

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Speaker 1: cheesecake factory is, as I understand it, centrally organized. The

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Speaker 1: idea is that any cheesecake factory you go to is

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Speaker 1: going to have the same exhaustive menu, right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I'm trying to think of a better analogy,

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Speaker 3: because so you had lots of different gods, and then

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Speaker 3: you had local versions of all these gods, so almost

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Speaker 3: more like how you got McDonald's. But the local McDonald's

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Speaker 3: is a franchise, you know. But that's a little misleading too,

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Speaker 3: because there's top down control like McDonald's corporates, that's rules

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Speaker 3: about what franchise owners can do. So, I don't know.

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Speaker 3: You imagine you've got your basic list of gods, then

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Speaker 3: you've got a lot of other lesser known gods, and

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Speaker 3: then you've also got the local ways or the local

387
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Speaker 3: cult of each of the main gods that are going

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Speaker 3: to be different than how that god is appreciated and

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Speaker 3: understood in a different place.

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Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, any given community or city states, city state

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Speaker 1: is going to have its own caste of deities. They

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Speaker 1: determine the course of people's lives. Individual cult practices are

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Speaker 1: going to vary widely across the inherently fractured populations, a

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Speaker 1: variety that was at times due to actual independence, such

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Speaker 1: as in the post Alexander period where you had a

396
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Speaker 1: very formerly united and now fractured empire, or during Roman rule,

397
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Speaker 1: where you know, everything is is wrapped up under Roman rule,

398
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Speaker 1: but with local religious customs largely left alone. As long

399
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Speaker 1: as they're not interfering with what the Romans are doing, fine,

400
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Speaker 1: go ahead and do whatever you were doing beforehand. So

401
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Speaker 1: you know, as an example, in ancient Greece, you'd likely

402
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Speaker 1: find the major Olympian gods, you know, the Big Twelve

403
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Speaker 1: anywhere you went, as well as the various underworld deities,

404
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Speaker 1: although there again might be regional differences in the way

405
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Speaker 1: any of these are treated. But then you'd also have

406
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Speaker 1: lesser nature deities and especially body of water specific nymphs

407
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Speaker 1: and the like that we depend on where you were.

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Speaker 1: You know, they're they're inherently localized. And then you would

409
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Speaker 1: also have foreign imported gods that were worshiped locally, uh,

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Speaker 1: you know, likely with some sort of localized spin as well.

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Speaker 1: So I hope I don't sound insensitive by continuing to

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Speaker 1: compare all this to food, but it feels like one

413
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Speaker 1: of the better ways to compare it to the modern

414
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Speaker 1: world is to think of all the restaurants in your

415
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Speaker 1: given location. Uh, some very widespread, but perhaps localized to

416
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Speaker 1: some degree, highly localized because cuisines as well, you know

417
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Speaker 1: whatever that you know, the weird local spin on pizza

418
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Speaker 1: happens to be in your city, that sort of thing,

419
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Speaker 1: and then also put a bubble gum on it, and

420
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Speaker 1: then also imports from from other areas that are again

421
00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:56,920
Speaker 1: likely localized to some degree as well. Now there's here

422
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:02,399
Speaker 1: another great question that about explorers early on in the book,

423
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Speaker 1: and that is where did these gods come from? And

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Speaker 1: of course this is a huge question, but he does

425
00:26:08,280 --> 00:26:10,439
Speaker 1: a great job addressing it in brief, you know, for

426
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Speaker 1: the purposes of this work, because naturally one can go

427
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Speaker 1: in all manner of exhaustive skeptical rationales for the emergence

428
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Speaker 1: of belief in gods and human beings, as well as

429
00:26:22,160 --> 00:26:24,480
Speaker 1: more than a few fringe theories leading up to just

430
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Speaker 1: belief in their pre existence. You know, you just can

431
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Speaker 1: go all the way and say, well, zeus is real.

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Speaker 1: That's all there is to it. I'm reminded of the

433
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:35,840
Speaker 1: in sort of looking at the spectrum of different ways

434
00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 1: of thinking about it. Though, I'm reminded of that famous

435
00:26:38,280 --> 00:26:42,600
Speaker 1: Foltaire quote, which I'll adjust for our purposes here. If

436
00:26:42,640 --> 00:26:45,680
Speaker 1: gods did not exist, it would be necessary to invent them.

437
00:26:46,359 --> 00:26:51,199
Speaker 1: And as Balden explains, the gods did prove necessary to

438
00:26:51,280 --> 00:26:54,720
Speaker 1: our ancestors, though they were not created wholesale by spiritual

439
00:26:54,800 --> 00:26:59,120
Speaker 1: leaders or religious committees or anything like that. There't nobody

440
00:26:59,160 --> 00:27:03,679
Speaker 1: said well, we need some sort of invisible figure to

441
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:08,880
Speaker 1: serve this purpose in our culture or life. Now, again,

442
00:27:08,880 --> 00:27:10,800
Speaker 1: that may seem like an overstatement of the obvious, but

443
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:12,640
Speaker 1: I think it's important to sort of draw that out.

444
00:27:13,080 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 1: So rather, the gods emerged out of a variety of

445
00:27:17,119 --> 00:27:21,280
Speaker 1: factors in human evolution and cognition, including Balden points out,

446
00:27:21,280 --> 00:27:25,400
Speaker 1: our predisposition to have strong reactions to the potential presence

447
00:27:25,640 --> 00:27:29,040
Speaker 1: of a predator or a corpse. In this, I was

448
00:27:29,080 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 1: reminded of one of the great quotes from Cork McCarthy's

449
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:37,560
Speaker 1: The Crossing, where he writes, deep in each man is

450
00:27:37,600 --> 00:27:41,320
Speaker 1: the knowledge that something knows of his existence, something knows

451
00:27:41,680 --> 00:27:45,719
Speaker 1: and cannot be fled nor hid from, which is kind

452
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:48,879
Speaker 1: of a fancy way of saying it feels like something's

453
00:27:48,920 --> 00:27:51,960
Speaker 1: watching you. What is watching you might be a god

454
00:27:52,560 --> 00:27:56,840
Speaker 1: who knows. And indeed, Balden brings up the ancient tradition

455
00:27:57,000 --> 00:28:00,000
Speaker 1: of the evil Eye in this, which I hadn't quite

456
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:03,200
Speaker 1: thought of as a predatory presence before, but that's pretty

457
00:28:03,240 --> 00:28:05,920
Speaker 1: dead on. You can think of the evil eye roughly

458
00:28:06,040 --> 00:28:11,120
Speaker 1: as an invisible supernatural entity. You see some ancient traditions

459
00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:14,280
Speaker 1: regarding the evil Eye from, you know, especially throughout the

460
00:28:14,320 --> 00:28:18,280
Speaker 1: Mediterranean world. Jewish superstition in particular holds that it lurks

461
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:21,560
Speaker 1: in the world at large, ready to afflict individuals with

462
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:26,120
Speaker 1: malign force if provoked, and it's particularly provoked by good luck,

463
00:28:26,400 --> 00:28:30,320
Speaker 1: by boasting and so forth. So if such an entity

464
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:34,119
Speaker 1: is watching you, then what else is watching you? And

465
00:28:34,480 --> 00:28:36,639
Speaker 1: in fact, we've discussed this on the show. Before you

466
00:28:36,680 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 1: get into traditions like the Hamsa. This is like a

467
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:42,680
Speaker 1: hand eye symbol toward off the evil eye. You get

468
00:28:42,760 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: into Gorgonian traditions, you know, some sort of terrifying head

469
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:51,800
Speaker 1: to scare away evil. And sometimes things like the Haamsa

470
00:28:51,920 --> 00:28:56,880
Speaker 1: are also connected to the idea of independent supernatural entities.

471
00:28:57,440 --> 00:29:02,959
Speaker 1: So you're potentially using one unseen entity against another in

472
00:29:03,040 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 1: order to protect yourself.

473
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 3: Right the way you might use the demon Pazuzu to

474
00:29:07,560 --> 00:29:10,280
Speaker 3: protect yourself against Lamashetu or something like that.

475
00:29:10,520 --> 00:29:13,960
Speaker 1: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, we discussed that at length back in October,

476
00:29:14,400 --> 00:29:16,720
Speaker 1: and it's interesting to you have to connect these ideas

477
00:29:16,760 --> 00:29:21,680
Speaker 1: like these, at least in part, like the rough forms

478
00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:24,960
Speaker 1: that would be fleshed out into these traditions of deities

479
00:29:25,400 --> 00:29:29,280
Speaker 1: might be in some way connected to just our hardwired

480
00:29:29,440 --> 00:29:32,080
Speaker 1: nature to be on the lookout for things that are

481
00:29:32,120 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 1: watching us and might not you know, might might wish

482
00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 1: us no harm, but also might be hungry.

483
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:41,800
Speaker 3: Yeah. So this is the kind of thing where, of course,

484
00:29:41,840 --> 00:29:44,800
Speaker 3: it's impossible to know for sure where our original where

485
00:29:44,840 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 3: our religious impulses originally come from. We can only come

486
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:52,000
Speaker 3: up with more or less plausible stories about how we

487
00:29:52,040 --> 00:29:54,480
Speaker 3: think it may have happened. I find that the kind

488
00:29:54,520 --> 00:30:00,240
Speaker 3: of predator consciousness agent detection theory is a fairly strong

489
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:03,360
Speaker 3: candidate in my view. It seems pretty plausible to me.

490
00:30:03,960 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 1: Right right, you know, at least for some of like

491
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:08,360
Speaker 1: the initial broad strokes. But obviously you end up having

492
00:30:08,400 --> 00:30:11,920
Speaker 1: a lot of additional cultural influences and just basic human

493
00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 1: needs that get woven into that, things like you know,

494
00:30:15,920 --> 00:30:20,000
Speaker 1: veneration of ancestors and personal loss. I mean, the list

495
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:20,680
Speaker 1: goes on and on.

496
00:30:21,000 --> 00:30:23,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like the way religions develop. It's

497
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:25,280
Speaker 3: like chess games, you know, It's like they can all

498
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,200
Speaker 3: start off kind of similar and then branch off into

499
00:30:28,360 --> 00:30:30,560
Speaker 3: everything is a unique game in the end.

500
00:30:30,880 --> 00:30:36,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the gods about and stresses are invisible and

501
00:30:36,360 --> 00:30:39,280
Speaker 1: for the most part unheard. At least, they're not heard

502
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: through their voices at least by most people, but rather

503
00:30:42,200 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 1: through their actions. But unless these actions actually occur inside

504
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:49,840
Speaker 1: a temple devoted to a particular god, it's left up

505
00:30:49,920 --> 00:30:53,520
Speaker 1: to our interpretation which deity spoke and what they were

506
00:30:53,520 --> 00:30:57,720
Speaker 1: trying to say, And that interpretation was often a state duty.

507
00:30:58,400 --> 00:31:01,360
Speaker 1: Various forms of divination were employed to see what the

508
00:31:01,360 --> 00:31:05,600
Speaker 1: gods wanted. Rather again, distinct from simply putting one's faith

509
00:31:05,720 --> 00:31:08,800
Speaker 1: or trust in a deity, but rather figuring out what

510
00:31:08,840 --> 00:31:12,320
Speaker 1: they want. And again, what they generally want is appeasement

511
00:31:12,640 --> 00:31:14,240
Speaker 1: the rights and sacrifices.

512
00:31:14,880 --> 00:31:16,720
Speaker 3: Now we've already alluded to the fact that a lot

513
00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:20,520
Speaker 3: of these sacrifices were agricultural products, but they could take

514
00:31:20,520 --> 00:31:21,200
Speaker 3: a lot of forms.

515
00:31:21,200 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, he brings up treasure from conquest. You know,

516
00:31:25,400 --> 00:31:28,120
Speaker 1: we just got this bunch of gold in and it

517
00:31:28,240 --> 00:31:31,040
Speaker 1: seems me prisoners, Yeah, in me prison, it seems right

518
00:31:31,120 --> 00:31:34,440
Speaker 1: to give you some of this gods. Also, how about

519
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:38,560
Speaker 1: some meat and the smoke from the burning fat. This

520
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:42,120
Speaker 1: of course is another hallmark of you know, of offerings

521
00:31:42,160 --> 00:31:44,960
Speaker 1: to the gods. But I found it really interesting what

522
00:31:46,040 --> 00:31:49,120
Speaker 1: he brings up here, pointing out that bone was often

523
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: part of the sacrifice that was given to the gods,

524
00:31:52,920 --> 00:31:58,640
Speaker 1: bone being long lasting, bone being you know, under in

525
00:31:58,880 --> 00:32:02,560
Speaker 1: a certain way for our here eternal. So you offer

526
00:32:02,600 --> 00:32:05,960
Speaker 1: the bones up to the eternal gods. While the meat

527
00:32:07,080 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 1: off the bones, well that's not going to last in

528
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:11,800
Speaker 1: neither a week, and so that's why we will feast

529
00:32:11,880 --> 00:32:14,040
Speaker 1: on that, and we will offer the bones to the gods.

530
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:16,959
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you'd have a common way of dividing up

531
00:32:17,000 --> 00:32:19,840
Speaker 3: the animal sacrifice so that, yeah, the humans eat the

532
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:22,400
Speaker 3: meat and the bones and the fat are burned for

533
00:32:22,800 --> 00:32:26,360
Speaker 3: the gods. And one way bout in frames this, which

534
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:28,080
Speaker 3: I thought was interesting, is it's kind of a way

535
00:32:28,120 --> 00:32:30,400
Speaker 3: for the humans and the gods to enjoy a meal together.

536
00:32:30,440 --> 00:32:33,280
Speaker 3: It's a shared festival. So we get the meat and

537
00:32:33,520 --> 00:32:36,160
Speaker 3: the gods get to enjoy the smoke rising up from

538
00:32:36,160 --> 00:32:39,440
Speaker 3: the burned bones and fat, and the organs that smoke

539
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:42,200
Speaker 3: is rising up into the air where it will be

540
00:32:42,480 --> 00:32:45,120
Speaker 3: enjoyed by the gods. And this point of view, by

541
00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:48,680
Speaker 3: the way, is not unique to Greek and Roman paganism.

542
00:32:49,080 --> 00:32:51,120
Speaker 3: You find this, for example, in the Hebrew Bible. There

543
00:32:51,120 --> 00:32:54,560
Speaker 3: are multiple passages in the books of I think Exodus

544
00:32:54,560 --> 00:32:58,200
Speaker 3: and Leviticus that talk about the burnt offering being a

545
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:01,880
Speaker 3: pleasing aroma to the Lord rises up and God enjoys

546
00:33:01,920 --> 00:33:02,360
Speaker 3: the smell.

547
00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I also really like the way about and

548
00:33:05,960 --> 00:33:08,840
Speaker 1: discuss this here. The idea that when these rights were held,

549
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:14,280
Speaker 1: the gods were invited and present, they were enjoying the

550
00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:18,160
Speaker 1: food alongside us and other festivities as well, like the

551
00:33:18,200 --> 00:33:21,560
Speaker 1: gods were present there. And of course I guess it's

552
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:24,200
Speaker 1: worth noting that you see echoes of this, you know,

553
00:33:24,240 --> 00:33:28,440
Speaker 1: throughout other organized religions, like even today, in like modern

554
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:30,880
Speaker 1: Christian churches, you may hear some form of like well,

555
00:33:30,880 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 1: when you know, when we gather together and worship God,

556
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:37,360
Speaker 1: God is present, at least in a spiritual.

557
00:33:36,880 --> 00:33:39,600
Speaker 3: Sense, right, Yeah, that's right, though I do get the

558
00:33:39,600 --> 00:33:43,480
Speaker 3: feeling there's a difference in that a lot of Christians today,

559
00:33:43,760 --> 00:33:49,120
Speaker 3: I would say, probably feel they enjoy a more intimate

560
00:33:49,280 --> 00:33:53,800
Speaker 3: connection with God as a person. Then you get from

561
00:33:53,840 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 3: the idea of at least the public transactional forms of

562
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:00,720
Speaker 3: Greco Roman paganism.

563
00:34:00,800 --> 00:34:02,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I guess it's also worth noting that in

564
00:34:03,080 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 1: like a lot of modern Christian traditions is the idea

565
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:08,839
Speaker 1: that like God is always with you, He's always there

566
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:12,759
Speaker 1: watching what you're doing. You can always speak to him,

567
00:34:12,880 --> 00:34:15,799
Speaker 1: even if you don't necessarily hear him speak back to you.

568
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,279
Speaker 1: And it's and to put that, at least some of

569
00:34:19,320 --> 00:34:22,839
Speaker 1: the ways it's described in other monotheistic religions, is it

570
00:34:22,880 --> 00:34:27,800
Speaker 1: like God is closer than your own breath, but another place,

571
00:34:27,840 --> 00:34:30,560
Speaker 1: And this is perhaps an interesting example. And then it's

572
00:34:30,760 --> 00:34:34,160
Speaker 1: drawing on you know, so called pagan religions and its

573
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:39,440
Speaker 1: fictional treatment. You get into these accusations of the witch's Sabbath,

574
00:34:39,760 --> 00:34:43,960
Speaker 1: where witches are gathering together and having their big festival,

575
00:34:44,200 --> 00:34:46,880
Speaker 1: and then who shows up, Oh, it's the hornet goat himself.

576
00:34:46,920 --> 00:34:51,480
Speaker 1: It's Satan who appears physically, which you know, kind of

577
00:34:51,560 --> 00:34:54,920
Speaker 1: like matches up to a limited degree with some of

578
00:34:54,960 --> 00:34:59,919
Speaker 1: these ancient Greco Roman ideas that when you celebrate the God,

579
00:35:00,040 --> 00:35:02,959
Speaker 1: when you make offerings to the gods, the gods may appear.

580
00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:05,359
Speaker 3: Though in the public festival. I mean, Bowden very much

581
00:35:05,440 --> 00:35:08,560
Speaker 3: makes the point that in his view, in the public festivals,

582
00:35:08,640 --> 00:35:11,279
Speaker 3: that appearance would be indirect like that it would just

583
00:35:11,480 --> 00:35:13,719
Speaker 3: be the understanding there would be like a cult statue

584
00:35:14,239 --> 00:35:17,320
Speaker 3: of the God there, and there would be the understanding

585
00:35:17,360 --> 00:35:19,600
Speaker 3: that by making the sacrifice, you're kind of sharing a

586
00:35:19,640 --> 00:35:22,960
Speaker 3: meal with the gods. But it's very much at least

587
00:35:23,320 --> 00:35:26,680
Speaker 3: as as this book argues, very much not the feeling

588
00:35:26,719 --> 00:35:32,040
Speaker 3: with the public religions, the transactional ones, that God's presence

589
00:35:32,200 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 3: is felt intimately, because that's kind of the difference that

590
00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 3: makes the mystery cults so appealing. That's when you actually

591
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:42,440
Speaker 3: have what feels like a more direct encounter with the

592
00:35:42,480 --> 00:35:43,480
Speaker 3: presence of the God.

593
00:35:44,040 --> 00:35:45,640
Speaker 1: Yes, this is this is This is a really good

594
00:35:45,680 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: distinction to make. Yes, So the modern Christian Church example,

595
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: a God is spiritually present, the totally made up, which

596
00:35:53,520 --> 00:35:59,000
Speaker 1: is Sabbath example, the divine or infernal force is physically present.

597
00:35:59,480 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 1: And in the Greco Roman examples we're discussing here, according

598
00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:07,000
Speaker 1: to Bowden, the gods are still very much invisible. We

599
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:11,000
Speaker 1: don't see them, we don't hear them. But again, their

600
00:36:11,040 --> 00:36:14,200
Speaker 1: presence is known not by anything they're doing, you know,

601
00:36:14,560 --> 00:36:17,600
Speaker 1: they're at the festivities, but what they are doing in

602
00:36:17,640 --> 00:36:22,400
Speaker 1: the world at large that affects humans, like causing natural

603
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:25,799
Speaker 1: disasters and so forth, affecting the crops and so forth.

604
00:36:25,760 --> 00:36:29,040
Speaker 3: Or communicating through divination maybe exactly. You know, Apollo might

605
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 3: communicate through his priestess at Delphi or something. But yeah,

606
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:37,040
Speaker 3: like you said, largely in affecting the outcomes of events

607
00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 3: beyond our control.

608
00:36:38,360 --> 00:36:40,400
Speaker 1: Yeah. So they were invisible, but that doesn't mean they

609
00:36:40,400 --> 00:36:42,600
Speaker 1: were absent. They were thought to be very present in

610
00:36:42,640 --> 00:36:45,120
Speaker 1: human affairs, and it came when it came time to

611
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:48,200
Speaker 1: engage in these special feats and sacrifices. They were understood

612
00:36:48,239 --> 00:36:52,319
Speaker 1: to be present, but were invisible and yeah, and when

613
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:55,359
Speaker 1: I say they're present, though, we should also point out

614
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:59,040
Speaker 1: there would be likenesses as well, so there would be statues,

615
00:36:59,080 --> 00:37:03,000
Speaker 1: idols and whatnot carry through the streets or situated within

616
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:06,239
Speaker 1: a temple. At any rate, these various cults, as we've

617
00:37:06,239 --> 00:37:10,640
Speaker 1: been discussing, engaged in activities that were concerned with maintaining

618
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:14,440
Speaker 1: proper relations with the gods and about and indicates you

619
00:37:14,440 --> 00:37:20,040
Speaker 1: can roughly divide such rights into two modes of religiosity,

620
00:37:20,600 --> 00:37:25,920
Speaker 1: imagistic and doctrinal. So the doctrinal is more like regular

621
00:37:26,000 --> 00:37:29,600
Speaker 1: low key maintenance. So you know, you bring your car in,

622
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:32,640
Speaker 1: you know, every for so many miles whatever the sticker

623
00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:34,680
Speaker 1: tells you. It's generally what you know, a certain amount

624
00:37:34,719 --> 00:37:36,719
Speaker 1: of time or certain amount of miles, bring it in,

625
00:37:36,920 --> 00:37:39,319
Speaker 1: get some low key maintenance, and that's all you really

626
00:37:39,360 --> 00:37:41,759
Speaker 1: need to do. And you can also compare this, he

627
00:37:41,800 --> 00:37:45,120
Speaker 1: points out to modern weekly Christian religious services. You know,

628
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:48,160
Speaker 1: like you're going to go. It's not going to necessarily

629
00:37:48,280 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 1: knock your socks off, but it's you know about regularly

630
00:37:52,840 --> 00:38:00,000
Speaker 1: engaging in the top down information and rights and value

631
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:01,200
Speaker 1: use of a given religion.

632
00:38:01,600 --> 00:38:04,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, he describes the doctrinal approach to religion as one

633
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:09,400
Speaker 3: in which the rituals are frequent, low intensity, and usually

634
00:38:09,440 --> 00:38:14,839
Speaker 3: also they have the element of being semantically clear, like

635
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:19,279
Speaker 3: their meaning is well explained and commonly understood.

636
00:38:19,480 --> 00:38:21,800
Speaker 1: Right, And he points out that some of the various

637
00:38:21,880 --> 00:38:25,640
Speaker 1: ancient examples of like the city states carrying out rituals

638
00:38:25,920 --> 00:38:29,640
Speaker 1: on a regular basis, these might fall under that classification,

639
00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:33,280
Speaker 1: and I was also wondering, well, maybe it would. Also

640
00:38:34,200 --> 00:38:36,719
Speaker 1: you could also throw in like minor acts of household

641
00:38:36,800 --> 00:38:39,560
Speaker 1: or personal protective right, though I guess that would violate

642
00:38:39,600 --> 00:38:43,120
Speaker 1: the general top down organization model involved with the doctrinal.

643
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:48,000
Speaker 1: Now coming back to the imagistic, this is more important

644
00:38:48,000 --> 00:38:52,360
Speaker 1: to our discussion of mystery cults. This is the infrequent, intense,

645
00:38:52,840 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 1: and often nonverbal. It is a high key experience engaging

646
00:38:59,520 --> 00:39:03,640
Speaker 1: about points out episodic or flash buld memory rather than

647
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:07,960
Speaker 1: semantic memory. So we're talking high levels of arousal, an

648
00:39:08,000 --> 00:39:13,120
Speaker 1: experience a roller coaster ride. And while this latter classification

649
00:39:13,320 --> 00:39:16,080
Speaker 1: is not unique to the nature of mystery cults, it

650
00:39:16,120 --> 00:39:19,200
Speaker 1: does seem to be a defining factor as we'll be exploring.

651
00:39:19,520 --> 00:39:23,320
Speaker 1: So you're talking about engaging in a just jaw dropping

652
00:39:23,480 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 1: experience of the gods and or the unseen world of

653
00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:28,759
Speaker 1: these ancient religions.

654
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:33,560
Speaker 3: Right, So, under this system of classification, the imagistic is

655
00:39:33,719 --> 00:39:39,520
Speaker 3: something that happens rarely, is extremely emotionally intense and powerful,

656
00:39:39,640 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 3: leaves a lasting memory, and often is not clearly explained,

657
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:47,440
Speaker 3: and is left for the person experiencing it to figure

658
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:51,520
Speaker 3: out what it means by themselves exactly. Now, one of

659
00:39:51,520 --> 00:39:53,439
Speaker 3: the things that's interesting in the book when he brings

660
00:39:53,520 --> 00:39:57,640
Speaker 3: up these concepts of these concepts from the anthropology of religion,

661
00:39:57,680 --> 00:40:02,920
Speaker 3: doctrinal religions versus imagistic ones, is that they seem to

662
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 3: often arise in different systems of social organization. That doctrinal

663
00:40:08,239 --> 00:40:13,160
Speaker 3: religions are more common in large, large social groupings, maybe

664
00:40:13,200 --> 00:40:15,640
Speaker 3: in say cities or towns, you know, places where there

665
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:18,479
Speaker 3: are lots of people gathered together, and places that tend

666
00:40:18,520 --> 00:40:21,880
Speaker 3: to be more socially hierarchical, where you've got levels of authority,

667
00:40:22,280 --> 00:40:26,200
Speaker 3: whereas more often we find imagistic forms of religion in

668
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:29,759
Speaker 3: people that live in smaller groups, smaller social systems of

669
00:40:29,840 --> 00:40:34,239
Speaker 3: organization that are less hierarchical, more egalitarian. And one can

670
00:40:34,360 --> 00:40:36,520
Speaker 3: kind of think of reasons that may be the case,

671
00:40:36,680 --> 00:40:39,560
Speaker 3: Like it just occurred to me that you know, in

672
00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:43,440
Speaker 3: smaller societies with less hierarchy, you know, you say you're

673
00:40:43,480 --> 00:40:46,240
Speaker 3: living in a tribe of you know, a few dozen

674
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 3: people instead of in a big city full of strangers,

675
00:40:50,200 --> 00:40:52,480
Speaker 3: a lot more of your existence is probably governed by

676
00:40:52,480 --> 00:40:57,960
Speaker 3: individual relationships between people, and that might affect like how

677
00:40:58,040 --> 00:41:01,560
Speaker 3: the meaning of experience needs to be managed. There's maybe

678
00:41:01,600 --> 00:41:05,680
Speaker 3: a lot more room for ambiguity and trying to understand

679
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:10,560
Speaker 3: the uh, you know, what life means? What was the

680
00:41:10,600 --> 00:41:14,080
Speaker 3: meaning of a powerful emotional experience you had that has

681
00:41:14,200 --> 00:41:18,160
Speaker 3: something to do with your role in this society and

682
00:41:18,160 --> 00:41:20,960
Speaker 3: and you're you know, attaining of age within it and

683
00:41:21,000 --> 00:41:24,560
Speaker 3: things like that, versus in a big culture, like say

684
00:41:24,600 --> 00:41:26,719
Speaker 3: you live in a city state with a lot of

685
00:41:26,800 --> 00:41:31,160
Speaker 3: strangers around. There is a lot less social trust and

686
00:41:31,239 --> 00:41:35,799
Speaker 3: a lot less based on individual relationships that will be

687
00:41:35,880 --> 00:41:39,239
Speaker 3: maintained over time. You're going to be doing economic transactions

688
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:41,799
Speaker 3: with strangers and things like that, and thus you really

689
00:41:41,920 --> 00:41:45,120
Speaker 3: might need you might get more comfort from the idea

690
00:41:45,160 --> 00:41:49,080
Speaker 3: of a system of clearly explained rules. You know, does

691
00:41:49,120 --> 00:41:51,000
Speaker 3: that make sense? Like that you want to kind of

692
00:41:51,080 --> 00:41:55,120
Speaker 3: legal doctrine there where things are explained and you don't

693
00:41:55,120 --> 00:41:58,719
Speaker 3: have to worry about not understanding what the religious experience

694
00:41:58,800 --> 00:42:02,280
Speaker 3: means anyway. So there's that kind of distinction about where

695
00:42:02,400 --> 00:42:05,520
Speaker 3: you find these different modes of religion most often. But

696
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:08,880
Speaker 3: it's not a strict rule here because clearly one of

697
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:10,720
Speaker 3: the things that's going to come up in this book

698
00:42:11,640 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 3: is that while you've got these public forms of ancient

699
00:42:14,640 --> 00:42:17,920
Speaker 3: cults in the Greco Roman world that are you know,

700
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:21,799
Speaker 3: you can argue about which category they fit better in,

701
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:25,480
Speaker 3: but they probably fit better into the doctrinal version. You know,

702
00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:29,319
Speaker 3: they're more about kind of clearly explained relationships. They're more

703
00:42:29,400 --> 00:42:32,399
Speaker 3: kind of low intensity than high intensity. So you've got

704
00:42:32,400 --> 00:42:34,440
Speaker 3: those going on in the ancient city states. But then

705
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 3: you also have this parallel form of religion, which are

706
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:40,799
Speaker 3: the mystery cults, which I think you can very much

707
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:44,160
Speaker 3: argue are more like the imagistic religions. They are based

708
00:42:44,200 --> 00:42:50,440
Speaker 3: on these rights that are powerful, extreme emotional experiences that

709
00:42:50,560 --> 00:42:54,719
Speaker 3: people not only are not allowed to fully explain to

710
00:42:54,840 --> 00:42:58,840
Speaker 3: people who have not been initiated, they probably, as Bouten argues,

711
00:42:59,080 --> 00:43:02,480
Speaker 3: could not explain lane if they tried. So you've essentially

712
00:43:02,560 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 3: got both forms within the same general culture, within the

713
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:06,720
Speaker 3: same time and place.

714
00:43:07,600 --> 00:43:12,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, so, yeah, this is the basic concept of

715
00:43:12,080 --> 00:43:16,040
Speaker 1: the mystery cult. This is the religious ecosystem in which

716
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:19,800
Speaker 1: you will find it. And uh yeah, in the following

717
00:43:20,040 --> 00:43:23,080
Speaker 1: episode or episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind, we're

718
00:43:23,080 --> 00:43:25,000
Speaker 1: gonna dig in a little deeper and look at some

719
00:43:25,080 --> 00:43:30,319
Speaker 1: of these specific examples of mystery cults. What we think

720
00:43:30,320 --> 00:43:32,760
Speaker 1: they were up to, what is what is written and known,

721
00:43:32,880 --> 00:43:35,839
Speaker 1: what is presumed? Uh, it should be a fun ride,

722
00:43:36,440 --> 00:43:39,840
Speaker 1: a high intensity ride. Oh no, it'll be lowkey.

723
00:43:39,880 --> 00:43:43,160
Speaker 3: It'll be low key, I'm kidding, but hopefully of high interest, yes,

724
00:43:43,280 --> 00:43:45,840
Speaker 3: low key of high interest, yes, But we're not going

725
00:43:45,920 --> 00:43:49,680
Speaker 3: to subject to you to like blindfolded beatings and ritual

726
00:43:49,719 --> 00:43:51,960
Speaker 3: mockery and things like that like you might get on

727
00:43:52,000 --> 00:43:54,239
Speaker 3: the on the way to the Lusinian mystery yeah, or

728
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:56,680
Speaker 3: on other podcasts, other podcasts, maybe end of that, but

729
00:43:56,719 --> 00:43:58,040
Speaker 3: that's not really our vibe here.

730
00:43:58,960 --> 00:44:01,080
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we hope that you'll join us in

731
00:44:01,080 --> 00:44:04,759
Speaker 1: those subsequent episodes. The next one should come out the

732
00:44:04,800 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 1: following Tuesday. In the meantime, though, we'd love to hear

733
00:44:08,040 --> 00:44:13,000
Speaker 1: from you if you have any feedback, personal experience and

734
00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:15,920
Speaker 1: so forth regarding what we've talked about already. Right in

735
00:44:16,400 --> 00:44:17,840
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from you. A reminder of the

736
00:44:17,840 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and

737
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:24,040
Speaker 1: culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though

738
00:44:24,040 --> 00:44:26,360
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays we do a short form episode and on

739
00:44:26,400 --> 00:44:28,759
Speaker 1: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk

740
00:44:28,760 --> 00:44:31,680
Speaker 1: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you

741
00:44:31,680 --> 00:44:34,120
Speaker 1: want to follow us on social media, well, we're on

742
00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:37,560
Speaker 1: different social media's. Whatever you use, you may find us

743
00:44:38,160 --> 00:44:42,239
Speaker 1: and we'll just leave the mystery there. We're probably there.

744
00:44:42,280 --> 00:44:46,120
Speaker 1: If you're looking for us on Instagram, we're stvy and podcast,

745
00:44:46,320 --> 00:44:48,000
Speaker 1: And if you use letterboxed and you want to keep

746
00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:51,360
Speaker 1: up with Weird House Cinema, we're Weird House on there.

747
00:44:51,719 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

748
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:57,440
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

749
00:44:57,520 --> 00:44:59,880
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

750
00:45:00,080 --> 00:45:02,319
Speaker 3: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you

751
00:45:02,360 --> 00:45:05,000
Speaker 3: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

752
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:13,720
Speaker 3: Mind dot com.

753
00:45:13,800 --> 00:45:16,759
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

754
00:45:16,840 --> 00:45:19,600
Speaker 2: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

755
00:45:19,760 --> 00:45:36,120
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