Defining the indefinable

Something I’d like to elaborate on in relation to my post on why I don’t think it’s possible to revive the ancient mysteries is that a mystery isn’t just an intensely transformative spiritual experience – it’s a particular intensely transformative spiritual experience.

In some ways I think it’s comparable to baking bread. There’s a lot of different kinds of bread you can make depending on the ingredients you use and what you do with them but your end product has to possess certain characteristics or else you’ve made something other than bread.

What makes a mystery, as I understand it, is the performance of specific ritual actions, the involvement of a set of gods and spirits, a constellation of themes which provide a narrative structure for the progressive alteration of consciousness; all of which culminates in a transformed identity and a more intimate relationship with the aforementioned divinities.

Now as long as you have all of those elements I believe that you are warranted in describing your experiences as an initiation into a mystery. As I’ve mentioned before, I believe that a strong distinction should be drawn between initiation conferred by the gods or spirits and initiation transmitted through a lineaged tradition – though both are still, unquestionably, initiations. Likewise I believe that there is room for variation and innovation. Without doing things exactly as the ancients did (which we can’t) it is still possible for us today to tap into the same current of mysteries that they did, and sometimes, rarely, even the same mystery.

But all of those elements have to be present, and in the proper balance as well, for it to be a mystery. If there’s too much or too little of even one of them it goes off into a different category of religious experience altogether. Which isn’t a bad thing – hell, in my opinion no engagement with the gods and spirits is a bad thing!

If it helps think of mystery like a trope, such as the Girls Underground thread that Dver has teased out from mythology, fairy tales, folklore and pop culture. (An appropriate analogy since the Bacchic Orphics actually referred to Persephone as Kore Katachthonia “the Underground Girl“.) It’s bewildering at times to see all the different ways that this archetype has found expression – and yet there is a coherence to the stories they tell and it takes far more than a strong female protagonist to qualify.

I see the fragmentary sources that have come down to us as indicators of the mystery experience – if you pile them up you’ll get a sense of what the core principles and requirements are by seeing what overlaps and what’s extraneous. Then if your own personal experiences line up with that then I think it’s safe to say that you’ve gone through the mystery and if they don’t, well then I’d say you’ve gone through something else. Another mystery perhaps, or just a totally badass experience. In the end it’s not really my place to say since it’s from the gods and spirits that all mysteries flow.