Hecate Hekate (Greek) This goddess, daughter of Perses and Asteria, was given power from Zeus in heaven, earth, and sea. She was a mysterious divinity, popularly represented as the goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, haunting crossroads and graveyards, wandering only by night and seen by dogs, whose barking told of her approach.

Identified with Artemis and Persephone, she was held to be the same as Selene or Luna in heaven, Artemis or Diana on earth, and Persephone or Proserpina in the underworld; hence she was called Tergemina, Triformis, Triceps, etc. She is the personified moon, whose phenomena are triadic and is one prototype of the Christian Trinity (SD 1:387).

Just as Diana represented the moonlight splendor of night, so Hecate represented its darkness and terrors; and she is best known as a deity of the nether world, sending forth terrible phantoms and presiding wherever sorcery is practiced.

In the Orphic teachings, she was trimorphas (three-formed) "the personified symbol of the various and successive aspects represented by the moon in each of her three phases; and this interpretation was already that of the Stoics, . . . while the Orpheans explained the epithet ((Trimorphos)) by the three kingdoms of nature over which she reigned" (SD 1:396).

(See also: Hecate, Hekate, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Bacchus (Greek) Used by both Greeks and Romans, also called Dionysos by the Greeks, Liber by the Romans, Zagreus in the Orphic mysteries, Sabazius in Phrygia and Thrace; the same as Iacchus (connected with Iao and Jehovah).

Generally represented as the son of Zeus and Semele, he is spoken of sometimes as a solar and sometimes as a lunar deity; for, like many other personifications of cosmic powers, he has both a solar and lunar (masculine or feminine) aspect. As a solar deity he has a serpent for his symbol and is a man-savior, parallel with Adonis, Osiris, Krishna, Buddha, and Christos. He is often called the god of wine, natural fertility, etc.

The original, pure Bacchic rites pertained to high initiation, in which the candidate becomes conscious of his oneness with divinity. Thus Bacchus, with his symbolic serpent and wine, stands for divine inspiration. But when the keys of the sacred science were lost and symbols were interpreted literally, the rites degenerated and often became profligate.

Bacchus-Dionysos also figures as the inspirer of dramatic and representative art, inspiring the individual with the divine afflatus or mystic frenzy. Originally this meant the inner communion of the candidate with his own inner god and the consequent inspiration; on a lower plane it signifies the fleeting inspiration of poet and artist, and finally it degenerated into hysteria and morbid psychic states.

(See also: Bacchus, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Hecate Hekate (Greek) This goddess, daughter of Perses and Asteria, was given power from Zeus in heaven, earth, and sea. She was a mysterious divinity, popularly represented as the goddess of sorcery and witchcraft, haunting crossroads and graveyards, wandering only by night and seen by dogs, whose barking told of her approach.

Identified with Artemis and Persephone, she was held to be the same as Selene or Luna in heaven, Artemis or Diana on earth, and Persephone or Proserpina in the underworld; hence she was called Tergemina, Triformis, Triceps, etc. She is the personified moon, whose phenomena are triadic and is one prototype of the Christian Trinity (SD 1:387).

Just as Diana represented the moonlight splendor of night, so Hecate represented its darkness and terrors; and she is best known as a deity of the nether world, sending forth terrible phantoms and presiding wherever sorcery is practiced.

In the Orphic teachings, she was trimorphas (three-formed) "the personified symbol of the various and successive aspects represented by the moon in each of her three phases; and this interpretation was already that of the Stoics, . . . while the Orpheans explained the epithet ((Trimorphos)) by the three kingdoms of nature over which she reigned" (SD 1:396).

(See also: Hebel de-Germin, Habal de Garmin, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Dionysos (Greek) (from dio from dis old form of Zeus + Nysa)

Also Dionysius. Zeus of Nysa, a mountain variously placed in Thrace, Boeotia, Arabia, India, Asia Minor, and Libya; another name is Bacchos (gk char), a form of Iacchos (from 'iachein to shout)

in allusion to the Bacchic invocation. Among the Romans he is called Liber, which some connect with liber (free), calling him the liberator (cf labarum, the later mystic emblem of the Christ). He was worshiped in Athens at the Dionysia, held a position at Delphi almost equal to Apollo, and appears in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

The son of Zeus and Semele, sun and moon -- hence bisexual in character and so able to be regarded at different times as a solar or lunar deity. His meaning overlaps those of Krishna, Brahma, Christos, Adonai, Mithras, and Prometheus, for he is a savior, mediator between God and man, the celestial and the terrestrial. He was also the god who sprang from the world egg, and from whom mortals in their turn sprang, uniting in himself the nature of either sex.

The principal symbols of Dionysos are wine, the vine, and the grape which also typify the double meaning implied in the true Mysteries and their perversion. For wine is a symbol of the spirit of the Christ, as bread is of the body; and both were administered in the mystic rite from which the Christian sacrament is derived. When his inner god becomes manifest to the qualified initiate, his whole nature is illumined and vivified. But one who seeks the afflatus unprepared is driven mad or destroyed by his inner god. The Bacchic orgies and Dionysiac frenzy were a later profanation.

In his cosmic aspect, Dionysos is the demiourgos or world-former. As Dionysos Chthonios, he is the son of Demeter or Persephone, and one of his names is Zagreus; he was torn to pieces and devoured by titans, but his heart was saved and given to Zeus. The same chthonian aspect is seen in the Dionysios Sabazios of Thrace and Phrygia. This allegory parallels the Hindu Padmapani, and his dismemberment by the cosmic titans signifies the processes of evolutive cosmic differentiation into the main hierarchies of the universe. He was likewise a personification of the sun, in its spiritual and material aspects. The esoteric Greek significance of this was taught in the Orphic Mysteries.

See also ZAGREUS

(See also: Dionysos, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

Vedas

Veda is a generic name for the most ancient Indian sacred literature, i.e. the Rg-veda, Yajur-veda, Sama-veda and Atharva-veda. Each of these books is divided into two portions, mantra and brahmana. The term Veda is generally reserved for the mantras or metrical hymns, especially those of the Rg-veda. Sri Aurobindo has translated and/or commented on many of the Vedic hymns. Most of his writings related to the Vedas have been collected in Volumes 10 and 11of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library(SABCL), The Secret of the Veda, and Hymns to the Mystic Fire.

"I propose...that the Rig-Veda is itself the one considerable document that remains to us from the early period of human thought of which the historic Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries were the failing remnants, when the spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race was concealed, for reasons now difficult to determine, in a veil of concrete and material figures and symbols which protected the sense from the profane and revealed it to the initiated. One of the leading principles of the mystics was the sacredness and secrecy of self-knowledge and the true knowledge of the Gods.

The Veda...is an inspired knowledge as yet insufficiently equipped with intellectual and philosophical terms. We find a language of poets and illuminates to whom all experience is real, vivid, sensible, even concrete, not yet of thinkers and sytematisers to whom the realities of the mind and soul have become abstractions.

The Vedic Rishis believed that their Mantras were inspired from higher planes of consciousness and contained this secret knowledge. The words of the Veda could only be known in their true meaning by one who was himself a seer or mystic; from others the verses withheld their hidden knowledge.

Many of the lines, many whole hymns even of the Veda bear on their face a mystic meaning; they are evidently an occult form of speech, have an inner meaning.

Under pressure of the necessity to mask their meaning with symbols and symbolic words...the Rishis resorted to fix double meanings, a device easily manageable in the Sanskrit language where one word often bears several different meanings, but not easy to render in an English translation and very often impossible....The Rishis, it must be remembered, were seers as well as sages, they were men of vision who saw things in their meditation in images, often symbolic images which might precede or accompany an experience and put it in a concrete form, might predict or give an occult body to it. ...The mystics were and normally are symbolists, they can even see all physical things and happenings as symbols of inner truths and realities, even their outer selves, the outer happenings of their life and all around them."

-- Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, SABCL Vol. 10

(See also: Vedas, Hinduism, Vedic Scriptures, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Zeus (Greek) Chief of the manifested gods of the Greek pantheon, represented in poetic and mythologic story as throned in the heavens, gathering the clouds and refreshing the earth with rains and winds, also sending storms and lightning, his chief weapon being the thunderbolt with which he strikes those who work against his will.

Zeus, in the conception of the ancient Greek philosophers who nearly all were initiate-thinkers, was not the highest god. It was because all public mention of the cosmic hierarch was forbidden that Homer omitted to mention this first principle, and even the secondary, the Chaos and Aether of Orpheus and Hesiod, commencing his cosmogony with Night, which Zeus reverences -- Night here being equivalent to the Hindu pradhana-prakriti.

Zeus was not always portrayed as the ineffable cosmic principle, as in the dramas of Aeschylus, especially in his trilogy on Prometheus. "In the case of Prometheus, Zeus represents the Host of the primeval progenitors, of the pitar, the 'Fathers' who created man senseless and without any mind; while the divine Titan stands for the Spiritual creators, the devas who 'fell' into generation. The former are spiritually lower, but physically stronger, than the 'Prometheans': therefore, the latter are shown conquered. 'The lower Host, whose work the Titan spoiled and thus defeated the plans of Zeus,' was on this earth in its own sphere and plane of action; whereas, the superior Host was an exile from Heaven, who had got entangled in the meshes of matter. They (the inferior 'Host') were masters of all the Cosmic and lower titanic forces; the higher Titan possessed only the intellectual and spiritual fire. This drama of the struggle of Prometheus with the Olympic tyrant and despot, sensual Zeus, one sees enacted daily within our actual mankind: the lower passions chain the higher aspirations to the rock of matter, to generate in many a case the vulture of sorrow, pain, and repentance" (SD 2:421-2). This inferior host is the various classes of the lunar pitris; whereas the higher host, collectively represented by Prometheus, is the aggregate of the agnishvatta-pitris or agni-dhyanis.

Again, "between Zeus, the abstract deity of Grecian thought, and the Olympic Zeus, there was an abyss. . . . Zeus was the human soul and nothing more, whenever shown yielding to his lower passions, -- the jealous God, revengeful and cruel in its egotism or I-am-ness" (SD 2:419). In another aspect Zeus is the deity of the fourth root-race, while his father, Kronos, represents the third root-race.

Some of the deities in the Greek pantheon were often represented in a hermaphrodite aspect, thus Zeus is occasionally depicted with female breasts; while one of the Orphic hymns, which was sung during the Mysteries, says: "Zeus is a male, Zeus is an immortal maid."

The Latin Jupiter was equivalent to the Greek Zeus, so that the following citation refers to both deities: "The four-fold Jupiter, as the four-faced Brahma -- the aerial, the fulgurant, the terrestrial, and the marine god -- the lord and master of the four elements, may stand as a representative for the great cosmic gods of every nation. While passing power over the fire to Hephaistos-Vulcan, over the sea, to Poseidon-Neptune, and over the Earth, to Pluto-Aidoneus -- the aerial Jove was all these; for AEther, from the first, had pre-eminence over, and was the synthesis of, all the elements" (SD 1:464).

Zeus, as the Father of the Gods, was Aether itself, and hence by the Greeks was sometimes called Zeus-Zen, precisely as the Latin races called Jupiter Pater Aether (father ether).

(See also: Zeus, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body mind and Soul)

Soma (Sanskrit) In Hinduism, the moon astronomically; mystically, a sacred beverage of initiates, "made from a rare mountain plant by initiated Brahmans" (TG 304).

As the moon, Soma is an occult mystery, for the moon as a symbol stands for both good and evil, yet more often a symbol of evil than of good. Astrologically, Soma is the regent of the invisible or occult moon, while Indu represents the physical moon. "Soma is the mystery god and presides over the mystic and occult nature in man and the Universe" (SD 2:45). Soma or lunar worship was once purely occult and its rites were based upon a minute and profound knowledge of nature.

According to Hindu tradition, Soma as a sacred juice gave mystic visions and trance-revelations, the result of which union was Budha (esoteric wisdom). This sacred beverage was drunk by Brahmins and initiates during their mysteries and sacrificial rites.

"The 'Soma' plant is the asclepias acida, which yields a juice from which that mystic beverage, the Soma drink, is made. Alone the descendants of the Rishis, the Agnihotri (the fire priests) of the great mysteries knew all its powers. But the real property of the true Soma was (and is) to make a new man of the Initiate, after he is reborn, namely once that he begins to live in his astral body . . .; for, his spiritual nature overcoming the physical, he would soon snap it off and part even from that etherealized form. . . .

"The partaker of Soma finds himself both linked to his external body, and yet away from it in his spiritual form. The latter, freed from the former, soars for the time being in the ethereal higher regions, becoming virtually 'as one of the gods,' and yet preserving in his physical brain the memory of what he sees and learns. Plainly speaking, Soma is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge forbidden by the jealous Elohim to Adam and Eve or Yah-ve, 'lest Man should become as one of us' " (SD 2:498-9&n).

"A 'soma-drinker' attains the power of placing himself in direct rapport with the bright side of the moon, thus deriving inspiration from the concentrated intellectual energy of the blessed ancestors. . . .

"This which seems one stream (to the ignorant) is of a dual nature -- one giving life and wisdom, the other being lethal. He who can separate the former from the latter, as Kalahamsa separated the milk from the water, which was mixed with it, thus showing great wisdom -- will have his reward" (BCW 12:203-4).

"This Hindu sacred beverage answers to the Greek Ambrosia or nectar, drunk by the gods of Olympus. A cup of kykeon was also quaffed by the mysta at the Eleusinian initiation. He who drinks it easily reaches Brahma, or the place of splendor (Heaven). The soma-drink known to Europeans is not the genuine beverage, but its substitute; for the initiated priests alone can taste of the real soma; and even kings and rajas, when sacrificing, receive the substitute. . . . We were positively informed that the majority of the sacrificial priests of the Dekkan have lost the secret of the true soma. It can be found neither in the ritual books nor through oral information. The true followers of the primitive Vedic religion are very few; these are the alleged descendants from the Rishis, the real Agnihotris, the initiates of the great Mysteries. The soma-drink is also commemorated in the Hindu Pantheon, for it is called King-Soma. He who drinks of it is made to participate in the heavenly king, because he becomes filled with it, as the Christian apostles and their converts became filled with the Holy Ghost, and purified of their sins. The soma makes a new man of the initiate; he is reborn and transformed, and his spiritual nature overcomes the physical; it gives the divine power of inspiration, and develops the clairvoyant faculty to the utmost. According to the exoteric explanation the soma is a plant, but, at the same time it is an angel. It forcibly connects the inner, highest 'spirit' of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical soma, with his 'irrational soul,' or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven.

"Thus the Hindu soma is mystically, and in all respects the same that the Eucharist supper is to the Christian. The idea is similar. By means of the sacrificial prayers -- the mantras -- this liquor is supposed to be transformed on the spot into real soma -- or the angel, and even into Brahma himself" (IU 1:xl-xli).

The mystical drink has been known in all ages and among all peoples. The ancient Teutonic tribes, whether of the Germanic or Anglo-Saxons, spoke of their divine mead, the drink of the gods. The Hindus spoke of Soma, the direct distillation from the moon and from the overseeing and guiding eye of the sun; the Greeks of the Homeric age spoke of ambrosia or nectar, a drink of the gods which renewed their understanding and gave them inspiration as well. Another branch of the Greeks belonging to the Dionysian and Orphic branches of mystical thought, spoke equally mystically of the mystic wine, and also of the mystic cereal, partaken of during the Mysteries, and it is from this last that the mystical wine and cereal or bread of the Christians was taken over almost completely from the Dionysian Eucharist, only among Christians even from quite early times it became degraded into actual blood and flesh of Jesus.

The evident meaning must be connected with the old occult thought that wine, or the mead of the northern peoples where the grape and soma were unknown or uncultivated, all had the meaning of the inspiration of initiation, a kind of ecstasy of vision and knowledge brought about through initiation, of which the physical intoxication of wine, mead, or the soma juice has all the lower and materialized aspect, every spiritual thing having its material counterpart, every right-hand thought or rule in occultism having its left-hand or sorcerer perversion or counterpart. Thus in the highest initiation, even today and from immemorial time, the holy drink or potation was entirely mystical, and had a dozen of these significances, all bound up together; yet despite this fact, for some of the lower initiations where a student found difficulty in throwing off the physical and astral influences, a harmless -- when administered rightly -- drug or drink was given which temporarily stupefied the lower quaternary; but it is to be noted that this substitute of the physical drink came about when neophytes began to find it very difficult to do what their more spiritual forerunners had done: raising themselves solely by inner aspiration up to inspiration, by inner insight up to the epopteia or vision.

Thus the question whether the mystical drink was an actual drink, or merely a mystical one, cannot be answered by a simple yes or no. Originally it was entirely mystical, later it remained as mystical as ever, but the body with its grossness, and the astral influences with their terrible power over the men and women of the time, were temporarily reduced to quiescence by a preparation known to initiates to have the power of bringing about the condition required, without any permanent or even long after-effect, very much as a sedative will be given by a physician today. It is of course true that if this drink, however relatively innocent in a single instance, were to be constantly repeated, it would have developed into a drug habit.

Some of the later peoples in their initiations actually did use a kind of physical soma which had the effect of bringing about a dulling of the restless brain-mind for the time being, so that the inner powers were temporarily freed from the clogging influences of the astral light and the body.

The use of drugs in initiatory ceremonies of any kind, however, is a relatively late and degenerate practice, and has never at any time been, nor will it ever be, introduced by the Mother-Lodge coming down to us even from the middle of the third root-race. With it the old tradition burns more brightly than ever that the true soma, the true mead of the gods or wine of the spirit, is the raising of the human into the spiritual by aspiration, training, and strict following of the traditional laws of discipleship, so that finally the neophyte feels the sunlight from above stealing through the moon of his mind.

So strongly is this the case, that even today in theosophical occult studies, drug taking of any kind is strictly forbidden, including alcohol, for alcohol is a drug, a product of natural decay and decomposition, and while less spectacular and violent as a rule than drugs such as opium and its derivatives, it is far more easily procurable and is therefore more specifically pointed to as objectionable. The idea of the occult student is to have the body absolutely normal, healthy, clean, and functioning in the smoothness of health, so that even overeating is seen to be a harmful thing, because it clogs the body, dulls the mind, and could even actually lead to physical disability.

There is and has been a great deal of confusion, not only at present but throughout the ages, about these matters, and several mystical schools have even chosen the language of the tavern and drinking house as the cloak for conveying occult or semi-occult teaching. A noted example is the Sufi school with its poems lauding the flowing bowl and the joys of the tavern and the bosom friends therein, and the beloved's breast. Here the tavern was the universe, the flowing cup or wine was the wine of the spirit bringing inner ecstasy, the bosom of the beloved was the raising oneself into inner communion with the god within, of which the Jewish bosom of Abraham is a feeble correspondence. The friends of the tavern are those perfect human relations brought about by a community of spiritual and intellectual interests, and the associations of the tavern are the mysteries of the world around us with their marvels and arcana. Nevertheless in various countries as the fourth root-race ran toward its evil culmination, the mystic became translated into the material, the spiritual degenerated into the teaching of matter, so that indeed in later Atlantean times the drugging of initiates was common, and the results always disastrous, this being one of the sorceries for which the Atlanteans in occult history have remained infamous. Yet even in the fifth root-race, due to the heavy Atlantean karma still weighing on us, many nations as late as historic times employed more or less harmless potations to bring about a temporary dulling or stupefying of the brain and nervous system -- a procedure always vigorously opposed by the theosophic occult school which has never at any time allowed it.

(See also: Soma, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary)

A large number of Greek religious poems in hexameter were attributed to Orpheus, as they were to similar miracle-man figures like Bakis, Musaeus, Abaris, Aristeas, Epimenides, and the Sybil. Of this vast literature, only two examples survive whole: a set of hymns composed at some point in the 2nd or 3rd century AD, and an Orphic Argonautica composed somewhere between the 4th and 6th centuries AD. Earlier Orphic literature, which may date back as far as the 6th century BC, survives only in ...

See also:

Orpheus, Orpheus - Overview, Orpheus - Etymology, Orpheus - Genealogy, Orpheus - The Argonautic expedition, Orpheus - Death of Eurydice, Orpheus - Death of Orpheus, Orpheus - Orphic poems and rites, Orpheus - The post-classical Orpheus, Orpheus - Spoken-word myths - audio files

Read more here: » Orpheus: Encyclopedia II - Orpheus - Orphic poems and rites

The figure of Persephone is a well-known one today. Her story has great emotional power: an innocent maiden; a mother's grief at the abduction and the return of her daughter. It is also cited frequently as a paradigm of myths that explain natural processes, with the descent and return of the goddess bringing about the change of seasons. But the Greeks knew another face of Persephone as well. She was also the terrible Queen of the dead, whose name was not safe to speak aloud, who was named simply "The Maiden". Her central myth, for all ...

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Persephone, Persephone - Overview, Persephone - The Abduction Myth, Persephone - Modern Scholarship on Persephone, Persephone - Persephone Before the Greeks?, Persephone - Life-Death-Rebirth, Persephone - Consorts/Children, Persephone - The 1911 Britannica's account of the myth

Read more here: » Persephone: Encyclopedia II - Persephone - Overview

Persephone - Persephone Before the Greeks?. Many modern scholars have argued that Persephone's cult was a continuation of Neolithic or Minoan goddess-worship. Among classicists, this thesis has been argued by Gunther Zuntz (Zuntz 1973) and cautiously included by Walter Burkert in his definitive Greek Religion. More daringly, the mythologist Karl Kerenyi has identified Persephone with the nameless "mistress of the labyrinth" at Knossos. On the other hand, the hypothesis of a universal cult of the Earth Mother has come under increasing criticism in recent years. ...

See also:

Persephone, Persephone - Overview, Persephone - The Abduction Myth, Persephone - Modern Scholarship on Persephone, Persephone - Persephone Before the Greeks?, Persephone - Life-Death-Rebirth, Persephone - Consorts/Children, Persephone - The 1911 Britannica's account of the myth

Read more here: » Persephone: Encyclopedia II - Persephone - Modern Scholarship on Persephone

The sacred loci of the Dionysian Mysteries have varied over time and place, just like the rites themselves. The earliest rites took place in the wilderness - in the forests and woods, the marshes, and particularly high in the mountains, where the lower oxygen content was suitable for trance induction. Later the 'priest' would simply cast their staff into the ground, at any suitable location, and hang a mask and an animal skin from it, the circle drawn around this centre becoming the sacred precinct for however long the staff remained. This p ...

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Dionysian Mysteries, Dionysian Mysteries - The Mysteries Unveiled, Dionysian Mysteries - A Brief History of the early Dionysos Cult, Dionysian Mysteries - The Emergence and Evolution of the Dionysian Mysteries, Dionysian Mysteries - The Mystery Rites, Dionysian Mysteries - The Public Rites, Dionysian Mysteries - The Temple and its Officers, Dionysian Mysteries - Ritual Miscellanies, Dionysian Mysteries - Some primary texts on Dionysianism, Dionysian Mysteries - Secondary texts

Read more here: » Dionysian Mysteries: Encyclopedia II - Dionysian Mysteries - The Temple and its Officers

Apart from this basic outline the Mysteries remain largely just that, a mystery, as very little knowledge of them has been passed down to us. Our current knowledge is largely based on the speculation of various scholars (notably Carl Kerenyi and W F Otto), drawing on contemporary descriptions and imagery and comparative cross cultural studies. The sophisticated Dionysian Mysteries of mainland Greece and Rome are generally thought to have evolved from a more primitive initiatory cult that was widespread in the Mediterranean region by t ...

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Dionysian Mysteries, Dionysian Mysteries - The Mysteries Unveiled, Dionysian Mysteries - A Brief History of the early Dionysos Cult, Dionysian Mysteries - The Emergence and Evolution of the Dionysian Mysteries, Dionysian Mysteries - The Mystery Rites, Dionysian Mysteries - The Public Rites, Dionysian Mysteries - The Temple and its Officers, Dionysian Mysteries - Ritual Miscellanies, Dionysian Mysteries - Some primary texts on Dionysianism, Dionysian Mysteries - Secondary texts

Read more here: » Dionysian Mysteries: Encyclopedia II - Dionysian Mysteries - The Mysteries Unveiled

The Essenes are discussed in detail by Josephus and Philo. Many scholars believe that the community at Qumran that allegedly produced the Dead Sea Scrolls was an offshoot of the Essenes; however, this theory has been disputed by Norman Golb and other scholars. Some suggest that Jesus was an Essene, and that Christianity evolved from this sect of Judaism, with which it shared many ideas and symbols. According to Martin A. Larson, the now misunderstood Essenes were Jewish Pythagoreans who lived as monks. As vegetarians, celibates, and s ...

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Essenes, Essenes - History, Essenes - Beliefs, Essenes - Rules and Customs, Essenes - Dissolution, Essenes - Parallels and Influences, Essenes - Modern Essenes

Read more here: » Essenes: Encyclopedia II - Essenes - Parallels and Influences

The Kabeiroi in myth bear many similarities to other fabulous races: the Telchines of Rhodes, the Cyclopes, Idaian Dactyls, Korybantes, Kuretes. There was often a confounding or identification of these different groups with one another since many of them, like the Cyclopes and Telchines, were also associated with metallurgy. Diodorus Siculus said of the Kabeiroi that they were Idaioi dactyloi, "Idaian dactyls". The Idaian Dactyls were a race of divine beings associated with the Mother Goddess and with Mount Ida, a mountain ...

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Kabeiroi, Kabeiroi - Name, Kabeiroi - Myth, Kabeiroi - Cult

Read more here: » Kabeiroi: Encyclopedia II - Kabeiroi - Myth

The First International Congress of Mithraic Studies was held in 1971 at Manchester, England. Franz Cumont (1868 - 1947) was the main proponent of the theory that Mithraism came originally from Persia. Cumont's student, Maarten J. Vermaseren, author of Mithras, the Secret God (1963), was very active in translating Mithraic inscriptions. Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, Harvard University Press, 1987. A book, based on his Jackson Lectures at Harvard University in 1982 ...

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Mithraism, Mithraism - Principles of Mithraism, Mithraism - The mithraeum, Mithraism - Mithraic ranks, Mithraism - The iconography of Mithraism, Mithraism - History of Mithraism, Mithraism - Mithraism In Persia Iran, Mithraism - Mithraism in early Rome, Mithraism - Mithraism in the Roman Empire, Mithraism - The demise of Mithraism, Mithraism - Connections, Mithraism - Parallels to Christianity, Mithraism - Mithraic studies, Mithraism - Places to see

Read more here: » Mithraism: Encyclopedia II - Mithraism - Mithraic studies

The poetry of Hölderlin, widely recognized today as one of the highest points of German and Western literature, was quite forgotten very soon – his illness and reclusion made him fade from his contemporaries' consciousness – and, even though selections of his work were being published by his friends already during his lifetime, it was largely ignored for the rest of the 19th century, Hölderlin being classified as a mere imitator of Schiller, a romantic and melancholy youth. (He would be rediscovered, by Norber ...

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Friedrich Hölderlin, Friedrich Hölderlin - Life, Friedrich Hölderlin - Work, Friedrich Hölderlin - Influence

Read more here: » Friedrich Hölderlin: Encyclopedia II - Friedrich Hölderlin - Work

The idea of a Mystery Religion was essentially of a series of initiations which benefited the individual or their society in some way. Initially associated with the passage from childhood to adulthood and maturity, they later became seem as what we might call an evolutionary rite. And it was in the form of a Mystery Religion that the Dionysos Cult was first channelled in a more civilised way, probably first in Minoan Crete. The notion behind the Dionysian Mysteries seems to have been of not only the affirmation of the primeval bestial ...

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Dionysian Mysteries, Dionysian Mysteries - The Mysteries Unveiled, Dionysian Mysteries - A Brief History of the early Dionysos Cult, Dionysian Mysteries - The Emergence and Evolution of the Dionysian Mysteries, Dionysian Mysteries - The Mystery Rites, Dionysian Mysteries - The Public Rites, Dionysian Mysteries - The Temple and its Officers, Dionysian Mysteries - Ritual Miscellanies, Dionysian Mysteries - Some primary texts on Dionysianism, Dionysian Mysteries - Secondary texts

Read more here: » Dionysian Mysteries: Encyclopedia II - Dionysian Mysteries - The Emergence and Evolution of the Dionysian Mysteries

"Our own myths we call reality" is one of the axioms with which Carl A.P. Ruck and Danny Staples commence The World of Classical Myth; to the Greeks, mythology was a part of their history; few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks used myth to explain natural phenomena, cultural variations, traditional enmities, and friendships. It was a source of pri ...

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Greek mythology, Greek mythology - Nature and sources of Greek mythology, Greek mythology - An overview, Greek mythology - The age of gods, Greek mythology - The age of gods and men, Greek mythology - The age of heroes, Greek mythology - Theories of origin, Greek mythology - Did the Greeks believe their myths?, Greek mythology - Hellenistic rationalism, Greek mythology - Syncretizing trends, Greek mythology - Belles and Beaus of Greek Mythology, Greek mythology - Modern interpreters, Greek mythology - Greek cosmology, Greek mythology - Related subjects, Greek mythology - Sources

Read more here: » Greek mythology: Encyclopedia II - Greek mythology - Did the Greeks believe their myths?

In the Olympian pantheon, Persephone is given a father: according to Hesiod's Theogony, Persephone was the daughter produced by the union of Zeus and Demeter. "And he [Zeus] came to the bed of bountiful Demeter, who bore white-armed Persephone, stolen by Hades from her mother's side". Unlike every other offspring of an Olympian pairing, however, Persephone has no stable position at Olympus. Persephone used to live far away from the other gods, a goddess within Nature before the days of planting seeds and nurturing plants. In th ...

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Persephone, Persephone - Overview, Persephone - The Abduction Myth, Persephone - Modern Scholarship on Persephone, Persephone - Persephone Before the Greeks?, Persephone - Life-Death-Rebirth, Persephone - Consorts/Children, Persephone - The 1911 Britannica's account of the myth

Read more here: » Persephone: Encyclopedia II - Persephone - The Abduction Myth

"Our own myths we call reality" is one of the axioms with which Carl A.P. Ruck and Danny Staples commence The World of Classical Myth; to the Greeks, mythology was a part of their history; few ever doubted that there was truth behind the account of the Trojan War in the Iliad and Odyssey. The Greeks used myth to explain natural phenomena, cultural variations, traditional enmities, and friendships. It was a source of pri ...

See also:

Greek mythology, Greek mythology - Nature and sources of Greek mythology, Greek mythology - An overview, Greek mythology - The age of gods, Greek mythology - The age of gods and men, Greek mythology - The age of heroes, Greek mythology - Theories of origin, Greek mythology - Did the Greeks believe their myths?, Greek mythology - Hellenistic rationalism, Greek mythology - Syncretizing trends, Greek mythology - Modern interpreters, Greek mythology - Greek cosmology, Greek mythology - Related subjects, Greek mythology - Sources

Read more here: » Greek mythology: Encyclopedia II - Greek mythology - Did the Greeks believe their myths?

It is possible that Dionysian mythology would later find its way into Christianity. There are many parallels between the legends of Dionysus and Jesus; both were said to have been born from a mortal woman but fathered by a god, to have returned from the dead, and to have transformed water into wine. The modern scholar Barry Powell also argues that Christian notions of eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Jesus in order for individual followers to feel Jesus within them was influenced by the cult of Dionysus. Certainly the Dionysus myth ...

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Dionysus, Dionysus - Worship, Dionysus - Bacchanalia, Dionysus - Appellations, Dionysus - Birth, Dionysus - Childhood, Dionysus - Midas, Dionysus - Other stories, Dionysus - Consorts/Children, Dionysus - Parallels with Christianity, Dionysus - Modern interpretations, Dionysus - Dionysus in Neopaganism, Dionysus - names with the origin Dionysus, Dionysus - Bibliography

Read more here: » Dionysus: Encyclopedia II - Dionysus - Parallels with Christianity