Super Glossary

Mystery Cult

Entertainment / Literature / Mystery Cult: Unlike the official 'public cults' dedicated to the Olympian gods in ancient Greece and Rome, a number of religious practices involved chthonic deities (like Demeter) and imported foreign gods (Ishtar, Osiris, Mithras, etc.). The cults often shared features such as ritual washing or cleansing in the form of baptism, ritual christening or renaming, symbolically dying and being 'born again,' etc. Possibly some may have offered the hope of an afterlife through metempsychosis (unlike standard Greek and Roman belief which emphasized a gloomy stay in the underworld). Others--in the case of Dionysian worshippers--ritually 'slew' the god and ate him or drank his blood symbolically in the form of wine. Regardless of specific varying details, these mystery cults shared a common element of secrecy--a distinction between the uninitiated outsider and the initiated cult member. The cult rituals were held to be so sacred that it was blasphemous to reveal them to outsiders, even to speak of them, describe them, or write them down in any way. The rites were often held in inaccessible areas far from the local city--on mountain-tops or sea-shores or in catacombs. Some, like the mystery cult of Demeter, were open to any prospective members regardless of race, gender, or nationality as long as they spoke sufficient Greek to participate in the rituals. Others were open to certain professions, such as the cult of Mithras which only allowed soldiers to join after an initial baptism in bull's blood. Others were restricted by family (such as local versions of the Lykian wolf cult) or partly restricted by gender (such as the maenads of Dionysus).
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