The Melchizedek Teachings in the Occident

98:4.1The ma­jor­ity of peo­ple in the Greco-Ro­man world, hav­ing lost their prim­i­tive fam­ily and state re­li­gions and be­ing un­able or un­will­ing to grasp the mean­ing of Greek phi­los­o­phy, turned their at­ten­tion to the spec­tac­u­lar and emo­tional mys­tery cults from Egypt and the Lev­ant. The com­mon peo­ple craved promises of sal­va­tion—re­li­gious con­so­la­tion for to­day and as­sur­ances of hope for im­mor­tal­ity af­ter death.

98:4.2The three mys­tery cults which be­came most pop­u­lar were:

98:4.31. The Phry­gian cult of Cy­bele and her son At­tis.

98:4.42. The Egyp­tian cult of Osiris and his mother Isis.

98:4.53. The Ira­nian cult of the wor­ship of Mithras as the sav­ior and re­deemer of sin­ful man­kind.

98:4.6The Phry­gian and Egyp­tian mys­ter­ies taught that the di­vine son (re­spec­tively At­tis and Osiris) had ex­pe­ri­enced death and had been res­ur­rected by di­vine power, and fur­ther that all who were prop­erly ini­ti­ated into the mys­tery, and who rev­er­ently cel­e­brated the an­niver­sary of the god’s death and res­ur­rec­tion, would thereby be­come par­tak­ers of his di­vine na­ture and his im­mor­tal­ity.

98:4.7The Phry­gian cer­e­monies were im­pos­ing but de­grad­ing; their bloody fes­ti­vals in­di­cate how de­graded and prim­i­tive these Lev­an­tine mys­ter­ies be­came. The most holy day was Black Fri­day, the “day of blood,” com­mem­o­rat­ing the self-in­flicted death of At­tis. Af­ter three days of the cel­e­bra­tion of the sac­ri­fice and death of At­tis the fes­ti­val was turned to joy in honor of his res­ur­rec­tion.

98:4.8The rit­u­als of the wor­ship of Isis and Osiris were more re­fined and im­pres­sive than were those of the Phry­gian cult. This Egyp­tian rit­ual was built around the leg­end of the Nile god of old, a god who died and was res­ur­rected, which con­cept was de­rived from the ob­ser­va­tion of the an­nu­ally re­cur­ring stop­page of veg­e­ta­tion growth fol­lowed by the spring­time restora­tion of all liv­ing plants. The frenzy of the ob­ser­vance of these mys­tery cults and the or­gies of their cer­e­mo­ni­als, which were sup­posed to lead up to the “en­thu­si­asm” of the re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity, were some­times most re­volt­ing.