mystery cults

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.

121:5.1Through­out pre­ced­ing ages re­li­gion had chiefly been an af­fair of the tribe or na­tion; it had not of­ten been a mat­ter of con­cern to the in­di­vid­ual. Gods were tribal or na­tional, not per­sonal. Such re­li­gious sys­tems af­forded lit­tle sat­is­fac­tion for the in­di­vid­ual spir­i­tual long­ings of the av­er­age per­son.

121:5.2In the times of Je­sus the re­li­gions of the Oc­ci­dent in­cluded:

121:5.31. The pa­gan cults. These were a com­bi­na­tion of Hel­lenic and Latin mythol­ogy, pa­tri­o­tism, and tra­di­tion.

121:5.42. Em­peror wor­ship. This de­ifi­ca­tion of man as the sym­bol of the state was very se­ri­ously re­sented by the Jews and the early Chris­tians and led di­rectly to the bit­ter per­se­cu­tions of both churches by the Ro­man gov­ern­ment.

121:5.53. As­trol­ogy. This pseudo sci­ence of Baby­lon de­vel­oped into a re­li­gion through­out the Greco-Ro­man Em­pire. Even in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury man has not been fully de­liv­ered from this su­per­sti­tious be­lief.

121:5.64. The mys­tery re­li­gions. Upon such a spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry world a flood of mys­tery cults had bro­ken, new and strange re­li­gions from the Lev­ant, which had en­am­ored the com­mon peo­ple and had prom­ised them in­di­vid­ual sal­va­tion. These re­li­gions rapidly be­came the ac­cepted be­lief of the lower classes of the Greco-Ro­man world. And they did much to pre­pare the way for the rapid spread of the vastly su­pe­rior Chris­tian teach­ings, which pre­sented a ma­jes­tic con­cept of De­ity, as­so­ci­ated with an in­trigu­ing the­ol­ogy for the in­tel­li­gent and a pro­found prof­fer of sal­va­tion for all, in­clud­ing the ig­no­rant but spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry av­er­age man of those days.

121:5.7The mys­tery re­li­gions spelled the end of na­tional be­liefs and re­sulted in the birth of the nu­mer­ous per­sonal cults. The mys­ter­ies were many but were all char­ac­ter­ized by:

121:5.81. Some myth­i­cal leg­end, a mys­tery—whence their name. As a rule this mys­tery per­tained to the story of some god’s life and death and re­turn to life, as il­lus­trated by the teach­ings of Mith­ra­ism, which, for a time, were con­tem­po­rary with, and a com­peti­tor of, Paul’s ris­ing cult of Chris­tian­ity.

121:5.92. The mys­ter­ies were non­na­tional and in­ter­ra­cial. They were per­sonal and fra­ter­nal, giv­ing rise to re­li­gious broth­er­hoods and nu­mer­ous sec­tar­ian so­ci­eties.

121:5.103. They were, in their ser­vices, char­ac­ter­ized by elab­o­rate cer­e­monies of ini­ti­a­tion and im­pres­sive sacra­ments of wor­ship. Their se­cret rites and rit­u­als were some­times grue­some and re­volt­ing.

121:5.114. But no mat­ter what the na­ture of their cer­e­monies or the de­gree of their ex­cesses, these mys­ter­ies in­vari­ably prom­ised their devo­tees sal­va­tion, “de­liv­er­ance from evil, sur­vival af­ter death, and en­dur­ing life in bliss­ful realms be­yond this world of sor­row and slav­ery.”

121:5.12But do not make the mis­take of con­fus­ing the teach­ings of Je­sus with the mys­ter­ies. The pop­u­lar­ity of the mys­ter­ies re­veals man’s quest for sur­vival, thus por­tray­ing a real hunger and thirst for per­sonal re­li­gion and in­di­vid­ual righ­teous­ness. Al­though the mys­ter­ies failed ad­e­quately to sat­isfy this long­ing, they did pre­pare the way for the sub­se­quent ap­pear­ance of Je­sus, who truly brought to this world the bread of life and the wa­ter thereof.

121:5.13Paul, in an ef­fort to uti­lize the wide­spread ad­her­ence to the bet­ter types of the mys­tery re­li­gions, made cer­tain adap­ta­tions of the teach­ings of Je­sus so as to ren­der them more ac­cept­able to a larger num­ber of prospec­tive con­verts. But even Paul’s com­pro­mise of Je­sus’ teach­ings (Chris­tian­ity) was su­pe­rior to the best in the mys­ter­ies in that:

121:5.141. Paul taught a moral re­demp­tion, an eth­i­cal sal­va­tion. Chris­tian­ity pointed to a new life and pro­claimed a new ideal. Paul for­sook magic rites and cer­e­mo­nial en­chant­ments.

121:5.152. Chris­tian­ity pre­sented a re­li­gion which grap­pled with fi­nal so­lu­tions of the hu­man prob­lem, for it not only of­fered sal­va­tion from sor­row and even from death, but it also prom­ised de­liv­er­ance from sin fol­lowed by the en­dow­ment of a righ­teous char­ac­ter of eter­nal sur­vival qual­i­ties.

121:5.163. The mys­ter­ies were built upon myths. Chris­tian­ity, as Paul preached it, was founded upon a his­toric fact: the be­stowal of Mi­chael, the Son of God, upon man­kind.

121:5.17Moral­ity among the gen­tiles was not nec­es­sar­ily re­lated to ei­ther phi­los­o­phy or re­li­gion. Out­side of Pales­tine it not al­ways oc­curred to peo­ple that a priest of re­li­gion was sup­posed to lead a moral life. Jew­ish re­li­gion and sub­se­quently the teach­ings of Je­sus and later the evolv­ing Chris­tian­ity of Paul were the first Eu­ro­pean re­li­gions to lay one hand upon morals and the other upon ethics, in­sist­ing that re­li­gion­ists pay some at­ten­tion to both.

121:5.18Into such a gen­er­a­tion of men, dom­i­nated by such in­com­plete sys­tems of phi­los­o­phy and per­plexed by such com­plex cults of re­li­gion, Je­sus was born in Pales­tine. And to this same gen­er­a­tion he sub­se­quently gave his gospel of per­sonal re­li­gion—son­ship with God.

98:3.6The emerg­ing Ro­man state con­quered po­lit­i­cally but was in turn con­quered by the cults, rit­u­als, mys­ter­ies, and god con­cepts of Egypt, Greece, and the Lev­ant. These im­ported cults con­tin­ued to flour­ish through­out the Ro­man state up to the time of Au­gus­tus, who, purely for po­lit­i­cal and civic rea­sons, made a heroic and some­what suc­cess­ful ef­fort to de­stroy the mys­ter­ies and re­vive the older po­lit­i­cal re­li­gion.

195:3.3Chris­tian­ity came into fa­vor in Rome at a time when there was great con­tention be­tween the vig­or­ous teach­ings of the Sto­ics and the sal­va­tion promises of the mys­tery cults. Chris­tian­ity came with re­fresh­ing com­fort and lib­er­at­ing power to a spir­i­tu­ally hun­gry peo­ple whose lan­guage had no word for “un­selfish­ness.”

98:7.74. The mys­tery cults, es­pe­cially Mith­ra­ism but also the wor­ship of the Great Mother in the Phry­gian cult. Even the leg­ends of the birth of Je­sus on Uran­tia be­came tainted with the Ro­man ver­sion of the mirac­u­lous birth of the Ira­nian sav­ior-hero, Mithras, whose ad­vent on earth was sup­posed to have been wit­nessed by only a hand­ful of gift-bear­ing shep­herds who had been in­formed of this im­pend­ing event by an­gels.

98:5.1The Phry­gian and Egyp­tian mys­ter­ies even­tu­ally gave way be­fore the great­est of all the mys­tery cults, the wor­ship of Mithras. The Mith­raic cult made its ap­peal to a wide range of hu­man na­ture and grad­u­ally sup­planted both of its pre­de­ces­sors. Mith­ra­ism spread over the Ro­man Em­pire through the pro­pa­gan­diz­ing of Ro­man le­gions re­cruited in the Lev­ant, where this re­li­gion was the vogue, for they car­ried this be­lief wher­ever they went. And this new re­li­gious rit­ual was a great im­prove­ment over the ear­lier mys­tery cults.

98:3.9The last stand of the dwin­dling band of Salem be­liev­ers was made by an earnest group of preach­ers, the Cyn­ics, who ex­horted the Ro­mans to aban­don their wild and sense­less re­li­gious rit­u­als and re­turn to a form of wor­ship em­body­ing Mel­chiz­e­dek’s gospel as it had been mod­i­fied and con­tam­i­nated through con­tact with the phi­los­o­phy of the Greeks. But the peo­ple at large re­jected the Cyn­ics; they pre­ferred to plunge into the rit­u­als of the mys­ter­ies, which not only of­fered hopes of per­sonal sal­va­tion but also grat­i­fied the de­sire for di­ver­sion, ex­cite­ment, and en­ter­tain­ment.

98:2.10But the av­er­age men of these times could not grasp, nor were they much in­ter­ested in, the Greek phi­los­o­phy of self-re­al­iza­tion and an ab­stract De­ity; they rather craved promises of sal­va­tion, cou­pled with a per­sonal God who could hear their prayers. They ex­iled the philoso­phers, per­se­cuted the rem­nants of the Salem cult, both doc­trines hav­ing be­come much blended, and made ready for that ter­ri­ble or­gias­tic plunge into the fol­lies of the mys­tery cults which were then over­spread­ing the Med­i­ter­ra­nean lands. The Eleusinian mys­ter­ies grew up within the Olympian pan­theon, a Greek ver­sion of the wor­ship of fer­til­ity; Diony­sus na­ture wor­ship flour­ished; the best of the cults was the Or­phic broth­er­hood, whose moral preach­ments and promises of sal­va­tion made a great ap­peal to many.

98:2.11All Greece be­came in­volved in these new meth­ods of at­tain­ing sal­va­tion, these emo­tional and fiery cer­e­mo­ni­als. No na­tion ever at­tained such heights of artis­tic phi­los­o­phy in so short a time; none ever cre­ated such an ad­vanced sys­tem of ethics prac­ti­cally with­out De­ity and en­tirely de­void of the prom­ise of hu­man sal­va­tion; no na­tion ever plunged so quickly, deeply, and vi­o­lently into such depths of in­tel­lec­tual stag­na­tion, moral de­prav­ity, and spir­i­tual pov­erty as these same Greek peo­ples when they flung them­selves into the mad whirl of the mys­tery cults.

98:3.5This for­mal and un­emo­tional form of pseu­dore­li­gious pa­tri­o­tism was doomed to col­lapse, even as the highly in­tel­lec­tual and artis­tic wor­ship of the Greeks had gone down be­fore the fer­vid and deeply emo­tional wor­ship of the mys­tery cults. The great­est of these dev­as­tat­ing cults was the mys­tery re­li­gion of the Mother of God sect, which had its head­quar­ters, in those days, on the ex­act site of the pres­ent church of St. Pe­ter’s in Rome.