Everything about Mystery Religions totally explained
Mystery cults,
Sacred Mysteries or simply
Mysteries, were "religious
cults of the Graeco-Roman world, full admission to which was restricted to those who had gone through certain secret initiation rites."
Definition
The term "Mystery" derives from Latin
mysterium, from Greek
musterion (usually as the plural
musteria μυστήρια), in this context meaning "secret rite or doctrine." An individual who followed such a "Mystery" was a
mystes "one who has been initiated," from
myein "to close, shut," a reference to secrecy (closure of "the eyes and mouth") or that only initiates were allowed to observe and participate in rituals. Mysteries were often supplements to
civil religion, rather than competing alternatives of such, and that's the reason these are referred by many scholars as "mystery cults" rather than religions.
The Mysteries were thus cults in which all religious functions were closed to the non-inducted and for which the inner-working of the cult were kept secret from the general public. Although there are no other formal qualifications, mystery cults were also characterized by their lack of an orthodoxy and scripture. Religions that were practiced in secret only in order to avoid religious persecution are not by default Mysteries.
The old meaning of 'mystery' is also preserved in the expression "
mystery play". These stage performances of medieval Europe were known as such because the first groups to perform them were the craftsmen
guilds, entry to which required an initiation and who zealously protected their trade secrets.
The Mysteries are frequently confused with
Gnosticism, perhaps in part because Greek
gnosis means "knowledge." The
gnosis of Gnosticism is however distinct from the
arcanum, the "secret wisdom" of the Mysteries: while the Gnostics hoped to acquire knowledge through divine revelation, the mystery religions presumed to have it, with
mystes of high rank revealing the possessed wisdom to
acolytes of lower rank.
Mystery cults classified as such
The term 'mystery cult' applies to a few of the numerous religious rituals of the eastern Mediterranean of late
classical antiquity, including the
Eleusinian Mysteries, the
Dionysian Mysteries, the
Orphic Mysteries and the
Mithraic Mysteries. Some of the many divinities that the Romans nominally adopted from other cultures also came to be worshipped in Mysteries, so for instance Egyptian
Isis, Thracian/Phrygian
Sabazius and Phrygian
Cybele.
"
Plato, an initiate of one of these sacred orders, was severely criticized because in his writings he revealed to the public many of the secret philosophic principles of the Mysteries."
[Further Information]
Get more info on 'Mystery Religions'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://mystery_cult.totallyexplained.com">Mystery cult Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
