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Richard August Reitzenstein (2 April 1861, in Breslau – 23 March 1931, in Göttingen) was a German classical philologist and scholar of Ancient Greek religion, hermetism and Gnosticism. He is described by Kurt Rudolph [ 1 ] as “one of the most stimulating Gnostic scholars.”
Despite their mainly Hellenistic origins, the mysteries alluded to beliefs from ancient Egyptian religion, in which the worship of Isis arose, and may have incorporated aspects of Egyptian ritual. Although Isis was worshipped across the Greco-Roman world, the mystery rites are only known to have been practiced in a few regions.
The religion following Cybele (or the Great Mother) came from Phrygia to Greece and then to Egypt and Italy, where in 204 BCE the Roman Senate permitted her worship. She was a healing and protecting goddess, and a guardian of fertility and wild nature. [10] Another mystery religion was focused around Dionysus.
In the Greco-Roman world, the mystery religions were those that required initiation, as distinguished from public rites that were open to all; the Greek word for "mystery", mysterion, comes from mystēs, "initiate." (The contemporary English meaning of "something unknown or hard to know" developed from the secrecy surrounding the arcane ...
The mystery religions, according to Maccoby, were the dominant religious forms in the Hellenistic world of that age and strongly influenced Paul's mythological psychology. Maccoby partially derived his theory from fragments of the writings of opponents of Ebionites , particularly the treatise on Heresies by Epiphanius of Salamis .
Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries (Greek: μυστήρια), were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiates (mystai). The main characteristic of these religious schools was the secrecy associated with the particulars of the initiation and the ritual practice ...
The origins of Western esotericism are in the Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean, then part of the Roman Empire, during Late Antiquity. [85] This was a milieu that mixed religious and intellectual traditions from Greece, Egypt, the Levant, Babylon, and Persia—in which globalisation , urbanisation, and multiculturalism were bringing about socio ...
During the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire, exotic mystery religions became widespread, not only in Greece, but all across the empire. Some of these were new creations, such as Mithras , while others had been practiced for hundreds of years before, like the Egyptian mysteries of Osiris .