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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 ...
Greek hero-cults were distinct from the clan-based ancestor worship from which they developed, [3] in that as the polis evolved, they became a civic rather than familial affair, and in many cases none of the worshipers traced their descent back to the hero any longer: no shrine to a hero can be traced unbroken from Mycenaean times.
Dionysian scene on a 3rd-century AD sarcophagus. In ancient Greek religion, an orgion (ὄργιον, more commonly in the plural orgia) was an ecstatic form of worship characteristic of some mystery cults. [1]
A votive plaque known as the Ninnion Tablet depicting elements of the Eleusinian Mysteries, discovered in the sanctuary at Eleusis (mid-4th century BC). The Eleusinian Mysteries (Greek: Ἐλευσίνια Μυστήρια, romanized: Eleusínia Mystḗria) were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Eleusis in ancient Greece.
After the huge Roman conquests beyond Greece, new cults from Egypt and Asia became popular in Greece as well as the western empire. Suppression and decline The initial decline of Greco-Roman polytheism was due in part to its syncretic nature, assimilating beliefs and practices from a variety of foreign religious traditions as the Roman Empire ...
The Lemnian cult was always local to Lemnos, but the Samothracian mystery cult spread rapidly throughout the Greek world during the Hellenistic period, eventually initiating Romans. The ancient sources disagree about whether the deities of Samothrace were Cabeiri or not; and the accounts of the two cults differ in detail.
Unlike the rest of religious life in Ancient Greece, the rituals, practices and knowledge of mystery cults were only supposed to be available to their initiates, so relatively little is known about the mystery cults of Ancient Greece. [18] Some of the major schools included the Eleusinian mysteries, the Dionysian mysteries and the Orphic mysteries.
Greek religion encompassed the collection of beliefs and rituals practiced in ancient Greece in the form of both popular public religion and cult practices. These different groups varied enough for it to be possible to speak of Greek religions or "cults" in the plural, though most of them shared similarities.