Lecture 1 from Mystery Religions

2. What was religious experience
prior to organized religion?

3.  “religious experience” means:
 Encounter something “numinous” (Lat: numen)
 A moment when time “stops” (eternal Now)
 The “all at once” awareness of birth-death-life
 “awesome” – literally “full of awe”
 “sacred” or separate from everyday routine
 Non-ego awareness of connecting to others

4.  Immersion versus hearing about
 Participant versus spectator
 Disneyland versus watching cartoons
 Avatar DVD versus 3D Imax
 Opinion versus evidence
 Belief versus gnosis (“getting it”)

5.  “organized religion” means:
 Having a defined dogma (Greek: fixed belief)
 Having a system of communication
 Having internal political arrangements (hierarchy)
 Allied with powers of enforcement (state police)
 Building its own places of worship, running
schools, promoting itself (proselytizing)

6.  We are looking at a historical process
 The process seems to have phases
 The process touches the foundations of
evolutionary psychology (our own culture)
 The process may also reflect personal
psychology (individual as a fractal of whole)
 Timelines may be useful, but don’t assume
the process had to go the way it went

7.  Mystery religions: post-Olympic Greek-
Mediterranean religion prior to consolidation
of Christian teachings [primal phase]
 Consolidation phase when world scriptures
were edited and selected (Library at
Alexandria) [emergent phase]
 The launching of official (organized)
Christianity, Pauline mission [consolidated]

8.  Mediterranean with main focus on Greece
(Athens and Greek colonies), 300 BC, but
including Turkey (Anatolia) and Egypt
 Alexandria (northern Africa), Egypt, 10 CE,
founded by Alexander in 332 BC, Great
Library
 Remains of Roman Empire, 300 CE, Rome
and Constantinople

10.  Ancient mysteries: Burkert, Turcan, Meyer
 Gnostic gospels: Freke, Pagels
 Unifying Greek philosophy: Plotinus, Pseudo-
Dionysius (into the Middle Ages)
 Contemporary questions: Pope Benedict, Bart
Ehrman

11.  Ancient mysteries: development of
experiential, immersive theater experience
 Gnosis: Personal experience (insight) about
big truths (“Life is an incredible miracle!” “All
is one!” “It’s great to be alive!”)
 Unifying philosophy: The experience of
oneness is the highest value in art, religion,
and politics. Constantine unifies Empire in
330 CE under one religion (325 CE bishops at
Council of Nicaea)

12.  The ancient mysteries created a shared space for
an intense private experience (epiphany, gnosis)
of life’s big truths.
 Gnosis (English: “know,” realize, taste); Personal
realization was the point of parables, stories,
and descriptions of the life of Christ.
 Philosophy: truth can be stated in words and
organized in a set of principles. Stories, pictures,
and drama are merely myth, less reliable than
concepts.

13.  The ancient (pagan) mysteries provided the
component myths for Christianity.
 The life of Christ was written as a parable for
personal realization, not as a literal history of
facts. Biblical statements are not an accurate
historical chronicle or even logically consistent.
 The achievement of political and social unity in
the revived Roman Empire required religious
experience to be formulated in a universal way
so that it could become equivalent to affirming
or denying of a set of propositions (“X is true” –
“Y is false”). Faith became a system of beliefs.

14.  Realization through stories, pictures, and
theater is radically different from asserting a
general truth.
 Spreading a realization through government
and its policies presents major challenges for
religious belief.
 Thoughts may change as they are realized
through institutions.

15.  We are looking at a historical process
 The process seems to have phases
 The process touches the foundations of
evolutionary psychology (our own culture)
 The process may also reflect personal
psychology (individual as fractal microcosm)
 Timelines may be useful, but don’t assume
the process had to go the way it went

16.  Use timelines where possible (locate which
phase: primal, emerging, consolidated)
 Understanding through images & stories is
more basic than conceptual understanding
and explanations
 In consolidated phase, the images and stories
generate symbols or become symbols [a
symbol suggests a larger social-cultural
accretion of meaning and understanding]

17.  Scholars of ancient mysteries: Walter Burkert,
Robert Turcan, Marvin Meyer, Angus
 Clement of Alexandria (Apostolic Father of
Church), Tertullian (first theologian) – in Loeb
Library
 Plotinus, founder of Neo-Platonism (O’Neill and Loeb
Library)
 Scholars of Gnostic Gospels: Elaine Pagels, Bart
Ehrman
 Scholars of early Church formation (behind the
official myth): Tim Freke and Peter Gandi,
Doherty

18.  1945 discovery of “Gnostic Gospels”
 Most complete find in 2,000 years
 Buried in Egypt
 Proto-orthodox documents
 Orthodoxy was stabilized circa 325 CE
 Formation of canon (“measure”)
 Q: What was canonized and why?
 Forgeries and “apostolic succession”

19. This stash of papyrus documents – hidden in
the desert – opened many questions about
the formation of early Christian experience
and the organization of the early Church.
There is much, much controversy about the
meaning of the documents and there has
been serious political scholarly wrangling
about the translation and publication of these
texts, including the “Gnostic Gospels.”

20.  Gnostic gospels and Gnostic ideas in St. Paul
 Religious experience poured into Greek
concepts of unity (the One)
 Plotinus and Neo-Platonism (Greek Philos.)
 Dionysius the Areopagite (Greek pseudo-
disciple of St. Paul) but 8th century CE
 Pope Benedict XVI reflects on Dionysius and
the need for ecclesiastical humility

21.  Teleste, initation, (initium = beginning)
 Telesterion, chamber or theater
 Myestes, initiate, “person with closed mouth”
 Mysterion, mysteria, secret things
 Incubation, dream chamber, visitations
 Hades, unseen world, invisible, under earth
 Dios, theios, daylight, splendor
 Demeter, Persephone, Orpheus

22.  Men’s movement: (Franciscan retreat master)
Richard Rohr’s Quest for the Grail: non-clerical
myth, story over fixed dogma, initiation
ritual, prescription for silence (don’t talk
about it)
 Women’s movement: (Jungian psychiatrist)
Jean Shinoda Bolen’s Urgent Message from
Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World

23.  Find a key concept
 Trace it in our texts
 Research it for images and web ideas
 Write it up on a single page
 End it with a thesis statement
 Short declarative sentence
 Provocative, non-trivial (arguable) sentence
 Share your page in class or via email
(Thursday noon prior to next meeting)

24.  Burkert’s Ancient Mystery Cults
 Pp. 4-10