Stages of A Mystery Religion

[From "The Mystery Religions & Christianity" by S. Angus]

I. Preparation and Probation

Studying and receiving teachings
Vows of Secrecy
Submission to a cathartic process to remove defilement of the flesh and ritual uncleanness, to expiate sin
Confession
Baptisms or lustral purification
Sacrifices
Ascetic preparations of all kinds - prolonged fasts, sexual abstinence
Pilgrimages of penitential nature-undergoing hardship to return to the site as an act of devotion
Reception of a new name
Reading of scriptures
Mastery of some foreign expressions or secret formulae
Enthusiastic pantomimic dancing
Enforced silences
Veiling
Wearing new robes
Wearing white
Offering incense
Roaring like an animal
Wearing masks
Drinking, imbibing mind-altering substances
Crowning of Initiate
Enthroning of Initiate


II. Initiation and Communion

Initiation:

Invocation of the Gods
Things exhibited, acts done and things said
Exhibition of the Sacra
Regeneration (Becoming 'Twice Born')
Entering the abyss
Passing from death into life
Experiencing a voluntary death, symbolic burial
Enacting one's own death
Sacred Meal
Gaining the sign of having been initiated
Giving thanks

Communion and Identification with God/Gods:

Altered states-Ecstasy and enthusiasm-Induced by vigil, fasting, tense religious expectancy, whirling dances, physical stimuli, contemplation of sacred objects, chanting stirring music, inhalation of fumes, revivalist contagion, hallucination, suggestion
Ecstasy-abnormal consciousness of an exhilarating condition in which the body ceased to be a hindrance of the soul (Ecstasy may be passive, as in a trance, or of an orgiastic character of excitement, i.e. Divine Frenzy)
Entrance of the Holy Spirit

Ascent of the soul:

Enthusiasm-the 'immediate inspiration' or replenishing of the personality by the deity
All forms of Prophecy or Revelation, dreams, visions, oracles
Revelations: embodying the God, becoming like the God, identifying with the God, calling the God into one
The Sacred Marriage: (considered by some to be the most profound symbol of the most intimate union known to religious experience) sometimes literally enacted by the Priest-literal enactment of a symbolic wedding
Sympathia (with the Mystery God) participating in the sorrows and suffering of the God; repetition of the deity's passion:
Divine Services-public services regularly repeating the experience of initiation
Sacramental Meals-eating the totem sacrifice-taking in the God
Contemplative Adoration or Meditation

III. Epopteia of the Mystery-God and Blessedness

The immediate result of Initiation was to behold an Epiphany of the Deity, whether through vision, dreams, trances, ecstasy, or hypnotic conditions.

Blessedness and Salvation in General:

Mystery-Gods were primarily Savior Gods, offering atonement for the past, comfort in the present, a participation in the Divine Life, and assurance of an after-life or immortality 'Beautiful, indeed is the mystery given to us by The blessed Gods: Death is for mortals no longer an evil, but a blessing.' (Glaucus, Eleusinian Heirophant)

These mysteries-and all the paths of initiation-have a common characteristic, they are preoccupied with the 'flight of the one to the one' that is man's exit from the world in which he as an individual is 'alone' to achieve union of his whole being with the universal being.
But what of the 'Mysteria'? This name designates a festival in the sense of a time filled with sacred events...the mystes suffers the mysteries, he becomes their object, but he also takes an active part in them. What was kept secret in ancient religion?...what is nature itself?: a sacred open secret. What was concealed in the Greek cult must have certainly been known to all those who lived in the vicinity of the cult sites, but it was unutterable. It possessed this character...for in the profoundest sense it was ineffable: a true mystery.

The Mysteries were so essentially nocturnal that in them every aspect of the night was experienced even that power residing solely in the night, the power to engender the light as it were to help it come forth. They were not merely a nocturnal festival, they actually solemnized the feeling of being shut in by the night, culminating in a sudden great radiance. Surely it is no accident that the Mysteria took place at the waning of the moon.

It is a threefold darkness-the darkness of the veiling, that of the sacred nights in Agrae and Eleusis, and their own inner darkness-that the Mystai find their way back to their own suffering and conceiving motherliness. And at the same time they are filled with wonder at the eternal and common element in their lives beginning, the archetypal in that unique conjugal union which was their origin as they see it in the persons and destinies of the gods.

C. Kerenyi, The Mysteries of the Kabeiroi