Mystery cult

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As a mystery cult or mystery religion one is a cult or a religion called whose religious teachings and rites from outsiders secretly held and therefore also as a secret cult is called. Admission to such a cult community usually takes place through special initiation rites .

The word mystery goes back to ancient Greek μυστήριον mysterion ("secret" ) and this in turn goes back to ancient Greek μύειν myein "close" . The mystery cult was “closed” to non-initiated people. The members were initiated mystics (to ancient Greek μύστης mystes called).

understanding

Such ancient and late ancient , spiritual cults were not religions in the modern understanding. They emerged as part of the prevailing Greco-Roman polytheism as well as early Christianity and Judaism . Objectively, a definition is difficult because the mystery cults have largely kept their secret ( arcane principle ). Their myths and rites can usually only be reconstructed with great uncertainty and a lot of guesswork on the basis of ancient writings and archaeological finds .

Features of such cults are:

  • Exclusivity of the spiritual experience: with the initiation ( initatio ) into the cult, special insights and secrets are revealed to the adepts ;
  • the cults coexist with the widespread official cult for the same deity ;
  • Syncretism , that is, the mixing of deities and the integration of other beliefs and religious or cult practices.

Large parts of the Greek and Roman population were followers of mystery cults. The usual ancestral cult (i.e. the fictional descent from ancient gods ) was no longer sufficient at certain times. In the mystery cults, the revered deities were not divine from birth; they had experienced pain and death like humans and then overcome them. As a result, they were closer to humans than the gods of the old polis religion .

Basically, the experience of the mysterious was characteristic of the mystery cults, whereby a cult deity was the focus and a diverse ritual practice was practiced at appropriately equipped cult sites. Priests and followers came from a wide variety of social groups.

The most famous mystery cults of the ancient world are the mysteries of Eleusis , the Samothracian mysteries , the Dionysus cult, the cult of Liber Pater in Rome and in southern Italy, the Mithras cult , the Cybele and Attis cults , the Isis and Osiris cults . Some of these cults are obviously from the Orient ; however, it is uncertain whether they are all of oriental origin, as is sometimes claimed. The Eleusinian Mysteries, the Samothracian Mysteries, and the Dionysus Cult are widely considered to be national Greek.

General motifs of mystery cults are the dying and resurrecting God, the mother cult, and rebirth and immortality . These three phenomena have been brought into a system by declaring the mystery god as a vegetation god who dies and rises with the seasons . The god of vegetation is naturally closely connected with mother earth , but the view that in the cycle of existence the promise of eternal life in the hereafter should be recognizable is less obvious . In any case, it is certain that the dying and resurrecting God and the Great Mother created and set life in motion in a circle.

Mystery Cults in the Roman Empire

In principle, the Imperium Romanum gave religious cults wide opportunities to develop. The Isis cult from Aegyptus spread through the military, but also traders . The Cybele and Attis cults , which originated in Asia , and the Mithras cult , which originated in the Iranian-Persian cultural area, were able to extend over large parts of the Roman provinces . The Greek cult of Dionysus also found supporters and gave the Roman administration the occasion for one of the few early state interventions. In 186 BC The Dionysian Bacchanalia were forbidden on the grounds that the initiation took the form of sexual debauchery.

Spread of some mystery cults and other religions in the Roman Empire during the 3rd century .

Mystery Cults and Gnosis

Wilhelm Bousset (1907) saw a close connection between the ancient mystery cults and Gnosis . In his view, mystery cults were part of the Gnostic understanding of the 'world'. Hans Jonas (1964) also saw a connection, but he weighted the influences differently and considered the Hellenistic mystery cults in particular as part of the Gnostic worldviews. D. H. Wiens (1982), on the other hand, saw gnosis in no direct connection to the mystery cults, even if some of the terms used seem to suggest this.

literature

Overview representations
Introductions, general presentations and investigations
  • Walter Burkert : Ancient mysteries, functions and content . Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-34259-0 .
  • Konrad Dietzfelbinger: Mystery Schools . Diederichs, Munich 1998, ISBN 978-3424013559 .
  • Thorsten Fleck: Isis, Sarapis, Mithras and the spread of Christianity in the 3rd century . In: Klaus-Peter Johne et al. (Ed.): Deleto paene imperio Romano. Transformation processes of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century and their reception in modern times . Steiner, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-515-08941-1 , pp. 289-314.
  • Marion Giebel : The Secret of the Mysteries. Ancient cults in Greece, Rome and Egypt . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2003, ISBN 3-491-69106-0 .
  • Hans Kloft : Mystery Cults of Antiquity. Gods, people, rituals . 3rd, revised edition, Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-406-44606-X .
  • Will-Erich Peuckert : Secret cults. Heidelberg 1951.

Web links

  • Max Ortner: Greco-Roman understanding of religion and mystery cults as building blocks of the Christian religion. Dissertation, University of Vienna, October 2009 ( [1] on othes.univie.ac.at)

Remarks

  1. ↑ Hans Kloft : Mystery Cults of Antiquity. Gods, people, rituals. CH Beck, Munich 2019, ISBN 978-3-406-73659-9 , p. 10
  2. ^ Wilhelm Bousset : Hauptprobleme der Gnosis (= research on religion and literature of the Old and New Testaments , issue 10). Göttingen 1907, p. 274 f.
  3. ↑ Hans Jonas : Gnosis and late antique spirit. First part: The mythological gnosis (= research on religion and literature of the Old and New Testaments , volume 33). 4th edition, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1988 (first edition 1934; 3rd edition 1964, FRLANT 51), p. 80.
  4. ^ Devon H. Wiens : Mystery Concepts in Primitive Christianity and in Its Environment. Rise and Fall of the Roman World II, 23.2 Berlin / New York 1982, pp. 1248–1284