Greco-Roman mysteries

Due to the secret nature of the schools, and because the mystery religions of Late Antiquity were persecuted by the Christian Roman Empire from the 4th century, the details of these religious practices are derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.

Beginning in the third century, and especially after Constantine became emperor, components of mystery religions began to be incorporated into mainstream Christian thinking, such as is reflected by the disciplina arcani.

The mystery schools offered a niche for the preservation of ancient religious ritual, which was especially in demand by the time of the late Roman Empire, as cultic practices supported the established social and political orders instead of working against them; numerous early strands of Judaism and Christianity, for instance, appeared in opposition to such conditions, whereas the mystery cults, by their very nature, served to strengthen the status quo.

[8] The basis for the Eleusinian Mysteries can be found in a myth concerning the kidnapping of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the goddess of agriculture, by Hades, the god of the underworld, as told in the Homeric Hymns.

However, because the Fates decreed that whoever ate or drank in the underworld was doomed to spend eternity there, Persephone was still forced to remain in the realm for either four or six months of the year (depending on the telling),[9] as she was tricked by Hades into eating pomegranate seeds of a corresponding amount.

If so, the first night may have concerned the kidnapping of Persephone by Hades and ended with the goddess's return, whereas the second night concerned the epopteia (the higher degree of the Mysteries) which was a performance that included singing, dancing, potentially the showing of a phallus, a terrifying experience for the audience by the skilled Eleusinian clergy, and the climax of the event which must have included displaying a statue of Demeter and showing of an ear of wheat and a "birth" of agricultural wealth.

[10] The day of the completion of the initiation was called the Plemochoai (after a type of vessel used to conclude a libation), and the new members could now wear a myrtle wreath like the priests.

[8] The second most famous Mysteries were those on the island of Samothrace and promised safety to sailors from the perils of the sea, and most participants would come to be initiated from the neighboring regions.

This makes it difficult to reconstruct who they were, though comparisons between the "gods of Samothrace" and the Cabeiri, chthonic deities of an indeterminate amount (sometimes twins, or multiple distinct beings) from comparable, pre-Greek or entirely non-Greek cultures such as Thrace or Phrygia have been made.

The cultic acts of adherents were new and distinct, involving underground initiation rituals reserved exclusively for soldiers and complex, allegorical rites only vaguely understood today due to an absence of written sources.

Feasting was the primary religious experience of initiated members, along with reenactments of core Mithraic imagery, such as the meal shared between the god Sol Invictus and Mithras, or the bearing of torches by men representing the twins of the rising and setting sun, Cautes and Cautopates.

[14][15] Traditionally, scholarship surrounding Mithras' mythological beginnings purport that followers believed the common image of the god emerging from a rock, already a young man, with a dagger in one hand and a torch in the other, was representative of his birth and nativity.

New perspectives have appeared in light of continuous study which suppose that this scene instead displays the popular Roman religio-philosophical theme of ascent, whereby the god's emergence from the stone serves to depict his divinity and power over "earthly mundaneness".

A system of grades or levels was present in the hierarchical structure of Mithraic religion, the first of these being the rank of Corax (raven), followed by Nymphus or Gryphus (bridegroom), Miles (soldier), Leo (lion), Perses (Persian), Heliodromus (sun-runner), and finally Pater (father) as the highest.

Though precise details are difficult to determine and certainly varied between locations, one general depiction of an initiation ritual at Capua has it that men were blindfolded and walked into the subterranean chamber known as a Mithraeum where the rites and practices of the cult would be performed.

Initiates were naked, bound with their arms behind them, and knelt before a priest, whereupon they would be released from their bondage, crowned, but not permitted to rise until a particular moment.

[19] Little is known about the cult's practices subsequent to initiation, as the highly secretive nature of the religion as well as a substantial absence of written texts makes it difficult to determine what precisely took place in regular meetings, beyond the payment of a membership fee.

[20] The attitudes of scholars began to change as Egyptology continued emerging as a discipline and a seminal article published by Arthur Nock in 1952 that noted the near absence of mystery terminology in the New Testament.

Non-Christians in the Roman Empire in the early centuries CE, such as Lucian and Celsus, thought Christianity and the mystery cults resembled each other.

[25] The seventeenth-century Protestant scholar Isaac Casaubon brought up the issue again by accusing the Catholic Church of deriving its sacraments from the rituals of the mystery cults.