Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Wednesday, November 07, 2001

Roman Religion

The Roman Empire comprised an agglomeration of disparate peoples bound by the cement of Romano-Hellenic culture and this was reflected in the religions of the Empire. Rome, like the modern USA, wanted to be a melting pot. Conquered people became provinces of the Empire and their religions melted into the Hellenic matrix.

The first religions in the culture that was to dominate the Mediterranean began as separate urban religions of the Greek city states. These Greek myths as we now call them became more family and individually oriented as the city states declined. Though we sophisticates find them amusing and little more than a source of fantasy, they constituted a serious religion practised for over 1000 years which was creedless, flexible, non-dogmatic and this worldly. It was a religion of everyday life, to seek blessings, good crops, health, peace, and so on—comfort in facing the problems of day to day living. The various gods each had their principle attributes and would be sought out by devotees wanting to enhance the quality of their lives in that respect just like the Christian saints. Athena was the goddess of wisdom; Apollo was the “pure one” concerned with morality and became the “divine physician”; Artemis evolved from being a Mother Goddess to being the embodiment of chastity; Tyche was the goddess of chance or fortune, and so on.

Like the Christian communion, worship was an orderly ritual, a procession involving hymns and short prayers often composed by famous poets, the revealing of sacred objects, and sacrifices of different types of animals often then eaten in a ritual banquet. Proper ritual was essential if the worshipper wanted to receive divine favour and this carried over to the Romans—and thence to Christians.

Roman nature was not to build extensive mythologies like the Greeks. They had a simpler basic idea—spirits—everything had its spirit or numen, a power for good or ill. Particularly important ones were those of the home and the hearth. The Genius of a man or the Juno of a woman was a divine spirit, an intuitive essence of the person which translated into the Christian Guardian Angel. On a birthday the Romans would celebrate the Genius of the person whose anniversary it was. The spirits of real men or women of power and influence became strongly favoured by Greeks and later by Romans in the cult of heroes. They believed Herakles to have been a real man, and he might indeed have been, but a complex of myths and legends grew and were attributed to his spirit after he died and ultimately he became a fully fledged god.

Though the Romans themselves did not build mythologies, they were great copiers, and were open minded about religion in a way which we cannot understand. They adopted first the Greek gods then later on Oriental ones. These foreign gods interested the Romans because their spirits were powerful—more powerful than those of everyday things. The worshipper’s object was to get the gods to use them for his benefit. This could only be achieved by addressing the gods with their proper names and titles, and practising meticulously correct rites and liturgy. Indeed Roman religion evolved—degenerated might be a better word—into courses of complicated liturgical formulae, meticulously followed, in services for different purposes. This was all good business for the priests, the pontiffs. They elaborated the ritual further by introducing many lesser gods or “di minuti” akin to angels and demons who could be called upon to help—provided that the ritual was correct! A complex priestly hierarchy evolved, the head of which was the Pontifex Maximus, the model for The Pope.

Roman temples were all built on the pattern of an enclosure with a raised structure containing the alter and statue or image of the god. Some religions preferred simpler shrines. The highlight of their ritual was an animal sacrifice, though gifts were also acceptable. Priests had to be skilled butchers like Jewish priests, and for the same reason—the animal had to be sacrificed “willingly”. Its dispatch had to be quick and unexpected. The best parts of the animal were then eaten while the rest was burnt for the god.

The Roman administration was usually tolerant of the religions of foreign immigrants but, for long under the republic, Roman citizens were forbidden to adopt them. As a consequence cults introduced into Republican Rome were not absorbed without struggle. But from the first century BC religious tolerance for all improved. Suppression did occur spasmodically but usually not for religious reasons but because some scandal outraged the Romans.

Syncretism

Under the Emperors, religious tolerance became policy. To effect greater political stability and to unite a disparate people, the Emperors of Rome attempted to reduce the potential for discord by a policy of syncretism—encouraging the merging of religions—and a policy of religious tolerance. In the tolerant atmosphere syncretism occurred quite naturally amongst the cults proliferating in the Empire through the adoption of rites and doctrine by one religion from another. It was also actively pursued to cement and unite the Empire.

It began when Rome became the dominant city in Italy and allowance had to be made for the absorption of the gods of neighbouring tribes and cities as the Roman sphere of influence spread. Later it benefited from the tendency towards monotheism. One god would subsume a lesser god. The lesser god became an aspect of the superior god but could still initially be worshipped independently by his followers. In later generations the hope was that allegiance would be transferred to the superior god and one god would replace two, uniting two sects who might have been, or become, rivals.

One way in which the policy was put into effect was by deification of the Emperor. Everyone had their Genius or Juno but kings and emperors were special because theirs were gods! This led to the Emperors being regarded themselves as gods. Initially it was not the mortal Emperor who was the object of worship, it was his Genius, the god residing within him. Even Nero did not call himself a god but, tongue in cheek, merely a universal Genius. But gods are immortal. When a king is the home of a divinity, what happens to the god when the king dies? The answer had to be that the king did not die—he must also be a god. And so the Emperors eventually claimed to be gods incarnate. But it was not until Domitian (81-96 AD) that an Emperor claimed the title “Lord and God” while he was still alive, and not until Aurelian (270-275 AD) that the title “Lord and God” was adopted officially.

Even today the followers of the Dalai Lamas of Tibet consider them to be gods as well as temporal leaders. The Japanese also considered their Emperor to be a god. Christians are happy to concur: they claim Jesus to be a god.

The Roman Emperors’ purpose in declaring themselves gods was secular rather than some sort of religious egomania (though in some cases egomania played a part). Just as the sun was Lord of the Heavens so the Roman Emperor was Lord of the Earth. As long as everyone could accept this, imperial temporal authority was strengthened, but everyone could continue to revere their own celestial or spiritual god. Most did! The notable exceptions were Jews and Christians.

The Romans were tolerant of religious differences partly because they were indifferent to blasphemy. To a Roman it was absurd for a mortal to take up cudgels to defend a god. Romans sincerely believed that the gods were sensitive, petulant, and ready to intervene in the lives of mortals. If a god were offended by a mortal then the poor fellow had better watch out—at the very least he’d find his luck was out. Romans thought Christians courted disaster by deriding Pagan gods as devils but they did not take personal offence. What did worry them was that vengeful gods might not be too discriminating, and innocent bystanders might suffer. It was this generalised fear of divine anger rather than intolerance of blasphemy that invited Roman displeasure.

So Imperial policy was that, subject to the requirement to honour the Genius of the Emperor, Romans could worship whoever or whatever they liked and how they liked as long as they respected and did not interfere with others and the ceremonies were respectable. However clandestine meetings were not allowed since they could be a cover for subversive plots. The priests and priestesses of the gods of the Empire were generally celibate and even Bacchanialian “orgies”, by the intertestamental period, were merely drunken, not licentious.

Native Roman religion was worthy and pious but totally this worldly. It paid no attention to an after life. Romans originally had no thoughts of survival of the person in any way. On death a Roman simply joined the “Good People” (no singular). As the power of Rome grew and the population became more cosmopolitan, the religion became less attuned to the needs of the worshippers. By the end of the republic Roman religion had ceased to be a religion. Its festivals had become occasions of state ceremony. From the reign of Augustus, astrology became increasingly popular but ultimately failed because knowledge of the stars could not change destinies, particularly death. Only the gods could do that, but they lived beyond the stars and were not therefore subject to their influence. If only there were ways of compelling the gods to help. Theurgy, a type of magic aimed at forcing the gods to do the will of the practitioner, briefly became fashionable but also proved spiritually unsatisfactory.

Before Barabbas became deified Roman religion had ceased to provide any way of satisfying individual spiritual needs. Towards the beginning of Empire Romans began to seek a personal religion which would guarantee them immortality. Worshippers sought direct communion with a suitable god to procure his help in changing their personal destinies. The desire for individual rather than state gods led first the Greeks then the Romans to look to the East and import oriental religions. They filled their spiritual void via the mystery religions, whereby the initiate aimed to join with the god to share his immortality.

Eastern religions began to be introduced into the Roman sphere during the first Punic war (264-241 BC) when the cult of Astarte-Atargatis from Phoenicia became popular. From 204 BC, when Cybele was introduced, a succession of eastern religions arrived. In 186 BC the cult of Dionysus, then Isis worship (c 100 BC), Judaism, Mithraism and finally Christianity followed. Most ideas of the destiny of the soul existed in the Empire amongst this plethora of religions—damnation, oblivion, transmigration, reincarnation and divinity. In the early centuries of this era each of the various mystery religions of Rome were favoured first by one Emperor then by another, until all religions except Christianity were banned at the end of the fourth century AD. Syncretism had triumphed!

Mystery Religions

Because the old Roman religion lacked charisma, by the intertestamental years, the people of the Empire had already begun seeking alternatives. The Roman pantheon of Jupiter, Mars, Janus, Quirinus and Vesta, with the addition of Sol Indiges provided the principles of decent living and brotherly duty to the citizens of Rome and opportunities for worship, but provided no satisfactory concept of life after death, or of the Absolute. Nor did it offer a satisfactory mother goddess. It neglected the mystical and spiritual needs of human nature. Death brought only Hades where the shadows of worn out souls wandered mechanically, unconsciously, like zombies, forever. Something was needed to fulfil the spiritual needs of the Roman people. It was provided by the mystery religions.

The mystery religions were the most popular religions in the Empire when Chrstianity was growing. They were called “mystery religions” because they involved secret ceremonies known only to those initiated into the cult. The Greek word, “mysterion” [†]Mysterion. This word above all is perhaps the key to the foundations of the Judaeao-Christian religions. Mysterion is the Greek word in the Septuagint used to translate a word “raz,” in the Aramaic parts of Daniel, that originates in Persian and meant a decision of the king taken in council with his six loyal princes and his ministers but which has not yet been implemented as law. It is therefore a decision yet to be announced and put into effect with the force of law. Since the Persian kings were the earthly agents of the universal god, the laws he pronounced were the laws of God. So mysterion meant God’s decisions not yet implemented, and that could not be revealed until God (the king) was ready to do so. The most important of these was the decision to end the wicked world, so mysterion came to be almost a synonym for the eschaton. The point about so small a word as “raz” is that it shows the Persian roots of these religions—roots that have been ignored and indeed denied for millennia., means something secret—it could not be told. It particularly applied to the rites of initiation and the secret objects that were “revealed” only to the initiates. In Metamorphoses, which tells of initiation into the mysteries, even Apuleius is not frank when it comes to the highlight of his initiation (as Lucius) into the cult of Isis. But the word “metamorphosis” is the word used in the original Greek of the gospels to describe the “Transfiguration” of Jesus!

Each mystery religion had a specific place of origin. Worship of Demeter, Dionysus and the Eleusinian and Orphic mystery religions came from Greece. Modern Turkey generated the cult of Cybele, the Great Mother, and her beloved, a shepherd named Attis. Worship of Isis and Osiris or Serapis came from Egypt, while Syria and Palestine gave birth to the cult of Adonis. Mithras grew from an angel in ancient Persia to a great saviour in the Roman Empire.

The main difference from Christianity and Judaism was that they were exclusive whereas the mysteries were not. They respected other religions. In other words Christians and Jews recognized only one God and only their own salvation through Jesus Christ or the Mosaic law. The mysteries had no such proscriptions and did not stop anyone from worshipping other gods, if they wished.

An interesting idea denigrated by Jews and Christins is that Judaism, particularly in the diaspora had its own mysteries. E R Goodenough writes:

By Philo’s time, and long before, Judaism in the Greek speaking world, especially in Egypt had been transformed into a mystery.

This Jewish mystery had its own mystic liturgy, initiation and cultic meal. If Goodenough is correct, and few scholars accept it, the likeliest Jewish sect identifiable with the Jewish mystery cult is the Essenes. Many people have described Philo of Alexandria—who knew and wrote about the Essenes and Therapeutae—as a mystic, and he was openly interested in uniting Hellenism and Judaism. Philo alludes to rites, mysteries and sacred meals, but Christians dismiss these allusions as metaphorical! Christians desparately seek to block any hypothesis suggesting a historic basis for their religion before Jesus, so they determine to criticize all such ideas into extinction, and, if they fail at that, they pretend they are not there by ignoring them. Such views therefore often do not get into reviews or encyclopaedia articles written by “committed” Christians—that is, pious liars.

Five Approaches

Tthe mystery religions were personal. People of different psychological dispositions require different routes to religious enlightenment, according to Jocelyn Godwyn, who classifies religion into the five types War, Denial, Magic, Love and Knowledge. In practice few people are dominated by one aspect of their psychology and practical religions have mixed characteristics as we can see from Christianity. The eastern religions of Asia Minor, the Near East and Egypt provided one or more of these and ultimately had millions of devotees.

War.

Followers of this route believe the universe is in perpetual warfare between Good and Evil. The Persian religion placed emphasis on this duality and naturally passed it on to those influenced by it like the Essenes and followers of Mithras. War gods besides Mithras were: Mars, Herakles, Sol Invictus and Jupiter Dolichenus. Soldiers in the early period of Christianity preferred Mithraism to Christianity since it postulated a supreme Lord of Light opposed by a Supreme Lord of Darkness, Ahriman. The creator, Ormuzd, sent Mithras into our cosmos to rally the side of the Good in the battle against Evil. He is therefore the god of battles on earth. But the battle continues even after death. Mithraism and other mystery religions had a hierarchy of ranks of initiation like the Essenes and modern Freemasons. Christianity has taken much imagery from Mithraism and has its own salvation armies.

Denial.

Besides the dualism of the fight between Good and Evil preferred by those of a military disposition, there is the dualism between spirit and matter preferred by the ascetic. Religion’s objective is to free the soul or spirit from the material world which restricts it. The Orphics and Pythagoreans believed we were incarnated on earth to expiate our sins. We are on the lowest plain of the cosmos, the sphere beneath the Moon, which, being imperfect, permits pain, suffering, decay and death. At higher levels, the spheres of the planets are successively purer states leading to perfection in the stars and the realm of the gods.

Though man’s spirit is trapped in the material prison of the body, its natural home is the utmost level of the stars and the ascetic seeks to release it by mortifying the body. Non-spiritual people indulge their bodies spoiling it with food, drink, cosmetics and rich clothing. They pamper the prison of the spirit whereas the ascetic seeks to neglect it. Denial substantiates the idea that the spirit is being released by causing feelings of exuberance and hallucination known as mystical experiences. Sometimes, as in the Essenes and the Cathars of Montaillou, the aged would starve themselves to death.

The ascetics’ attitude to their bodies is the same irrespective of the religion they profess. But sometimes the self-denial was only for a short time. Believers in Isis walked to her shrines on their hands and knees as do some Christians today. According to Appuleius the initiates to the mysteries of Osiris had to do without food and sexual intercourse for ten days before the ceremony. Chastity is especially valued by ascetics because the untapped sexual energy can give insights into higher spiritual plains, though it also can lead to tyranny through sexual frustration. Religious ascetics have been known to go so far as to attempt castration, as did the Church father, Origen. The priests of Cybele and Attis were self-castrated Eunuchs, and even circumcision is a form of symbolic castration suggestive of a denial of sexuality.

Magic.

Followers of this path are those who try to solve the duality of spirit and flesh by trying to unite them. The hierarchies of the universe have influences on each other. Thus man at a low level is made in the image of God; the movements of the planets affect the earth and the human spirit. The Magician attempts to exercise his influence at higher levels. Having offered a sacrifice to the gods, the gods had to return the favour. In the Taurobolium of the rites of Attis and Cybele and other mysteries, the blood of the slaughtered bull soaked the devotee who became “eternally born again”. The animal’s genitals were buried. Blood and sexual energy are the two key elements of magic. The fully evolved Taurobolium lasted from the second century AD to the fourth century AD but vestiges linger until today in the bullfighting and bull running of Spain and France.

Magic also made use of images of the gods to draw them down to the earthly level. The Christian sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist use respectively water, and bread and wine—the image of the flesh and blood of the god—to draw down the spirit of the god, Christ, into the souls of the devotees. The demons who acted as messengers from the gods responded only to meticulously correct ritual. Thus in the Christian magical rites of the seven sacraments, the bread, oil, etc. are treated with a fixed spoken formula that in magic is intended to influence higher planes to the advantage of the communicants.

Seekers after Love.

The fourth path was that of love through which the devotee became part of god. The mystery religions are distinguished by the desire of their adherents to achieve a closer personal relationship with God. The mystery gods had suffered pain, loss or death as mortals do and had compassion for us. Love was thus an element common to the mystery religions. Osiris, Orpheus, Herakles, Christ, Dionysus, Attis and Adonis were all slain and resurrected; they all descended into the underworld to redeem the souls there also.

Ritual also helped especially in the form of a holy communion in which the blood and flesh of the god is consumed, albeit symbolically. Followers of Cybele and Attis had such a ritual and Dionysus was considered to be really present in the wine and flesh consumed by his worshippers. Godwin quotes a Persian Mithraic text that sounds remarkably Christian:

He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation.

Adherents of the path of love often conclude that the human condition is unworthy of God’s love and become ascetics—a blend of adoration and self-denial is a characteristic of Christian saints.

Seekers after Knowledge

The last route to God is through knowledge. Seeking truth about the god, according to Plutarch, is seeking the god. Aspirants meditated and studied the works of higher adepts or masters who had received a higher knowledge inaccessible to reason. For these, studying and seeking truth is more pious than abstinence or service in the church. Jesus was often depicted as a master, a teacher inspiring his followers, rather than the more popular image of suffering Messiah. Isis was also a lover of wisdom, according to Plutarch.

The mystery religions gave knowledge about life after death and instructions for the journey. The soul can eventually leave the visible universe and avoid any further need to be reborn, or it can remain in the visible universe, the Circle of Necessity of the Orphics and the Wheel of Existence of the Buddhists. All creatures eventually become divine. The mystery novitiate knows it and is purposefully stepping on the road to obtain it.

Initiation into a Mystery

These mystery religions were no less spiritually satisfying than modern ones—they offered just as much in ceremonial, indeed more, than modern religions and sought equally to influence people’s lives. Devotees of Dionysus would have been just as intense in their beliefs as pious Christians today. The initiation into one of the mysteries was possibly the highlight of a believer’s life.

Christian critics of any historian that tries to make sense of the sources on the mystery religions accuse them of not making a distinction between their own hypothetical constructs and the primary data, and of formulating a universal mystery religion out of elements of all of them. This was Albert Schweitzer’s criticism of those who had seen Paul as creating Christianity as a mystery religion. Though valid up to a point, the criticism has been gleefully used as a baseball bat by Christians intent on protecting Christianity from any accusation of influence from the Pagan mysteries.

Yet, if the equivalent criticism had been made of Linnaeus, then we might have had no taxonomies of plants and animals. Bats and whales could never have been accepted as mammals, a universal construct for animals with certain characteristics in common. So, there was no “universal mystery religion” any more than there is a universal mammal, but there are characteristics that are common that denote them as being mystery religions, just as there are particular features that distinguish them within the category of mystery religions.

• All reflected the annual vegetation cycle of renewal each spring and death each winter, the origin of the dying and rising god. The mystai saw deep significance in way Nature was manifest in growth, death, decay, and rebirth, and took it that their individuality would be no less subject to such a cycle.
• The mystai sought union with their god and a mystical or psychological experience to confirm it. The psychological or mystical feeling of betterment sought was induced and maintained by an initiation ritual, seasonal processions, cleverly staged and subtly lit dramas, acts of purification, fasting and arcane ceremonies or mysteries. The initiation rite into a mystery was the religious peak of a person’s life. The initiate received the secret of union with the cult’s god or goddess which gave them a sacred reward. To reveal the secret vitiated the reward.
• The sacred reward was some kind of redemption or salvation and immortality. The mythology of the mysteries uniformly included the belief that the god triumphed over his enemies or death, returning to life to redeem the earth. A dramatic mystery play revealed the psychological meaning of the myth, putting the mystai into a religious ecstasy from which they felt born again.
• The mysteries left people feeling uplifted, holier and better citizens and sought to keep them in this way, thus getting recognition from the Roman authorities. Christians like to imagine that there were no moral benefits in the mystery religions but that is typical special pleading.

Christians try to confuse the issue further by claiming that there were even differences within the same mystery, in different cities and at different times. Such typically empty-headed critics cannot see that their criticisms are true of Christianity, but they are still able to identify a Christian church when they see one, even though there must now be more varieties of Christianity than there were ever varieties of Isis worship.

If we can legitimately talk about Christianity then we can legitimately talk about the mystery cults, bearing in mind the caveats. Still, here the whole question can be avoided by concentrating our attention on one account of initiation into one mystery—that of Isis by Apuleius in the book mentioned already, Metamorphoses.

The Isis cult was, like early Imperial Christianity, highly syncretistic, taking on aspects of other mysteries, notably the Eleusinian mysteries devoted to Demeter (though arguably, the Eleusinian mysteries were indebted to the openly practised cult of Isis in Egypt around 600 BC). Apuleius calls Isis, “the single form that fuses together all gods and goddesses.” Some of the romances popular in Hellenistic times might have been “roman a clef” showing cultic practices in a veiled way. Joseph and Aseneth has been cited as one such.

Stages of Initiation

Apuleius describes the stages of initiation into the cult of Isis as follows. Note, he does not distinguish the stages as we have here, so, it is not clear whether some of the stages are necessary or merely incidental matters and rejoicing.

1. A period of abstinence from certain profane food
2. A nocturnal call by the Goddess, Isis. No one dare say they had been called unless the “Sovereign Mistress” had done so according to Apuleius. Pausanius says:

   No one may enter the shrine except those whom Isis herself has honoured by calling them in dreams.

3. The candidate appears before the priest who agrees to undertake the ritual, hears the requirements and costs to be incurred and has the procedure read to him from a sacred book written in an unknown script (one might guess was Egyptian hieroglyphics, though the priest would not understand them but merely repeat the procedure by rote memory)
4. The candidate purchases the necessary items
5. The candidate follows the priest and devotees of the Goddess to the ritual baths
6. The candidate experiences a ritual lustration, sprinkling and blessing
7. They return to the temple where the priest reveals to the candidate instructions “too holy to be uttered”
8. The candidate seeks greater purity by abstaining from meat and wine for ten days
9. The candidate is showered with gifts by the devotees of Isis. The initiated devotees then leave and the candidate appears in a new white linen garment. In the most holy place, the candidate undergoes the initiation in which they ritually die and revive, journey through the elements, and lastly encounter the sun and the gods face-to-face
10. Emerging from all this the candidate is “adorned like the sun” in fine clothes of gold, blue and white, and emerges to the assembled crowds before the statue of Isis
11. This is considered the candidate’s birthday and the birthday is celebrated with banquets and festivities
12. On the third day(!) from the birth, the candidate participates in a sacred meal to “consummate the initiation” perhaps suggesting also a ritual union, as in marriage, between the candidate and the Goddess.

The final appearance from the central point of the initiation is declared to be the candidate’s birthday (natalis) and suggests the procedure is a ritual rebirth into the new life in Isis, and the sacred meal partaken of after three days completes the initiation and is plainly essential to it, though the previous festivities seem to show that no one thought the procedure would not be completed once the actual rebirth ceremony had been finished.

Christian scholars convince themselves, if no one else, that the sacred meal is not a sacrament akin to the Christian communion and holds no promise of immortality. For Christians, the whole procedure of a ritual birth finally consummated by the sacred meal is merely a rebirth into this life at the same point in time that the candidate just left it! Plainly that is, in truth what it is but, for the devotee, it is no less a rebirth into communion with the deity thus conferring immortality than the Christian mass is. What is the point of a rebirth if it is merely into the life that you were already living? There has to a be a cosmic benefit, and immortality is what everybody wants.

Salvation and Rebirth

The reward of these practices must have been some kind of salvation or eternal life. Why should anyone doubt it when we have a tomb inscription of 376 AD that declares the dead man, a Roman aristocrat, to be “born again into eternity” through his many initiations? This man had hedged his bets by being initiated into many mysteries, just as Apuleius says he had been initiated into “a large number of mysteries.”

Christians deny that anything can be deduced about mystery religions in general from this one late inscription. That might be true, but historians are not making deductions about the benefits of mystery religions only from this one inscription. The inscription explicitly says what other evidence would oblige us to accept, if the Christians were not so scared it might detract from their own unique conceit.

The death and rebirth also makes good sense in the context of Isis worship since she resurrected her dead husband Osiris in the Egyptian myth. Admittedly this is conjecture only and Apuleius himself declares that the initiation into the mysteries of Osiris were different. That might mean however that the procedures were different and not the intent—to confer immortality. If Isis could do it for Osiris, then she could do it for anyone that was devoted to her. Equally, if Osiris could be resurrected, then he too could pass on the gnosis he had received to his devotees. Whatever the distinction between the two cults, we have it from Apuleius himself:

The very rite of dedication itself was performed in the manner of a voluntary death and a life gained by grace.

The Goddess has the titles, “Mother of the Universe,” “Mistress of the Elements,” “The First Born of Time,” “The Highest of Deities,” “The Queen of the Dead,” and “The Foremost of Heavenly Beings,” so she can certainly confer any gifts she choses on to her initiates. Having allowed them to traverse the elements, face the gods and rise from the dead into the realm of the sun, the initiates were plainly rendered immortal. Christians tell us all it did was give them good luck, because at one point in “Metamorphoses” we read:

Hostile fate has no powers over those whose lives have been claimed by the majesty of the goddess.

Christians want to persuade us that what Apuleius calls “salus” or salvation is simply protection from the powers of fate. Yet, whatever else fate decrees for any of us, it is that we shall die! So, when the initiate’s life is claimed by “the majesty of the goddess” thus giving them salvation from the hostile powers of fate, it means they need have no fear of death because fate no longer has the power to impose it! This is the significance of the whole “renatus” context of the initiation ritual.

For totally blind or dishonest Christians, all of this is metaphor, but to be a “born-again” Christian is not metaphorical—the “born-again” Christian must therefore have really been reborn. Since it is not metaphorical they must have real mothers to effect this rebirth. Where did they go? Where is the real after-birth of this non-metaphorical rebirth? Did they eat it, as most animals do when they give birth—really, not metaphorically. They are being silly, as ever.

Apuleius himself has no such problems about his initiation into the cult of Isis. He freely admits that initiates are “re-born in a sense” or are “as it were, re-born.” He is not as foolish as modern day “born-again” Christians because he realises and clearly states that the mystical or spiritual re-birth that Isiac initiation conferred was only “in a sense rebirth.” It is only “in a sense re-birth” because all such religious ceremonies are psychological in their effects, not physical reality. Apuleius knows this but modern day Christians evidently do not, and confuse ritual and reality. Or is it that they want to pretend that Christian mumbo-jumbo is real,to fool children and the simple minded?

Now a rebirth requires a re-birthday, just as the Isiac initiates had. Even a rebirth into the life of good fortune, that Christians prefer to see it as, still must have a birthday—a “natalis.” No, not for Christians. The “natalis” was not a birthday at all but simply a “first day.” Christians always like to move the goalposts and there could be few clearer examples. The day on which someone is re-born is certainly a first day in their new life, but it is also their birthday. That is the meaning of “natalis.”

Christian scholar, R D Chesnutt (RDC-FDL), has a particular interest in all this because he wants to prove that Aseneth in the romance of Joseph and Aseneth is not being initiated into a mystery, but he is totally confused. At one point he admits that:

If the precise form of these rituals is irrecoverable, at least their soteriological significance seems evident.

It does indeed. Such an authority as M Dibelius thought the process was one of “apathantismos” or immortalization. Chesnutt however feels the need now to deny it, while writing that the initiate only lives:

…happily under her favour and protection throughout his life and in the Elysian Fields hereafter.

As anyone will know, this is quite different from the eternal life that Christians experience! In fact, it is not eternal life at all. He does not explain, though, how it differs from the Christian concept of immortality, once the Elysian Fields are translated as “heaven” for the sake of the ignorant of the flock.

It is hard indeed to imagine how a religion that had its origins in ancient Egypt, where people were concerned with their own welfare after death, could not have some soteriological ritual that conferred an assurance of immortality on to the initiate. Though there are plenty of hints that immortality is what we are dealing with, because there is no explicit statement to that effect, Christians deny it. They conveniently forget that these were mystery religions and the promise of immoertality was the highest of the mysteries involved.

They also forget their own mantra, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Here in Apuleius there is no absence of evidence, it is simply that the frightened rabbits calling themselves Christian scholars are so scared that by admitting the soteriological benefits conferred here they will forgo their own eternal existence in the Christian heaven, they will claim that a rabbit is a saint.

Everything we see in Lucius’s initiation in “Metamorphoses” is best explained as a rebirth into an eternal life under the protection of the goddess, and it ties in with what we know of the sources of the religion of Isis and the religious desires of people in the Hellenistic period. The tendentious criticisms of Christians are valueless, because they have the ulterior motive of trying to preserve their own religion as uniquely revealed.

Hellenes thought nothing of gods, or men favoured by gods, being returned to life. Asklepios, the healing god, raised among others Lycurgus, Capaneus, Tyndareus, Glaucus, Hyppolytus and Orion. He was so good at it that after some of the latter ones had escaped death, Hades complained to Zeus that he would become redundant, and Zeus killed Asklepios with a thunderbolt. Later Zeus restored Asklepios to life and placed him in the heavens as a god. Thus Asklepios was also a god who died and rose. Since he was a son of Coronis, he obviously was a solar god, and in his birth legend was responsible for the crow (coronus) being turned black, suggesting he is the dark sun.

The Benedictine monks, who compiled Migne, the works of the Church Fathers, make this comment in a footnote:

This dramatic representation, in which a dead man was mourned and was honoured in the dark, with chanted lamentations, until, the lights being lit, the mourning turned to joy, we find in different forms in almost all the mysteries.

J McCabe, citing Migne 12:1032

Today Christian scholars deny what their predecessors were sure about. They try to tell us that people who lived while the mysteries were still practiced were wrong, but they, restricting themselves to sources BC on the grounds that later sources were influenced by their preferred religion, pretend that the Church fathers were projecting Christianity into Pagan ceremonies. These are the same Christians that, we are told at other times, would have preferred to have been fed to a lion than to see anything Christian in any Pagan religion. Augustine and Jerome lived in the fourth century, but neither they nor any other Christian Fathers dreamed of saying that the Pagans had copied Christianity. They had to defend their own church from the charge of copying the Pagans.

“Heads we win, tails you lose” is typical Christian contrickery. Do not be conned by them.

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