Mysticism in Ancient Greece

if I asked you what you thought most people associate with ancient Greece you would probably mention something about philosophy and rationalism the great thinkers of the ancient world such as Socrates Plato Aristotle and these stoics are of course household names that have come to represent the ancient Greek Legacy but this picture is usually incomplete ancient Greece and these thinkers to many represent some kind of pure rationalistic or scientific ever a precursor to our own enlightened age before it was interrupted by the entrance of religion and Superstition which dominated human thinking until the Renaissance or even the enlightenment this image of history is of course criminally Incorrect and oversimplified and for various different reasons not least because the ancient Greeks aren't really what many people assume at least not if we base our understanding on the above narrative that I mentioned in fact while figures like Plato indeed put an emphasis on reason an argument to come to many of their philosophical conclusions this is not the whole picture many of these same philosophers were also deeply involved in things that we would call religious practice or even mysticism and even saw that as a superior way to reach truth than through limited reason and human intellect in fact ancient Greece was filled with different kinds of what we could call Mystical practices and mystical experiences which have been largely ignored at least earlier in history have been largely ignored by many historians working on this topic it doesn't really fit into our Narrative of the ancient Greeks as our sort of uh rational intellectual ancestors and the way that we portray this topic really says more about ourselves in the way that we see ourselves than it does about the actual people we're trying to portray so in this episode we're going to once again look at this more forgotten aspect of ancient Greek culture as we explore very broadly what we could call mysticism or mystical experiences in the ancient helenic [Music] world where does one begin to cover such a broad topic we will of course have to limit ourselves to certain expressions of what we call quote unquote mysticism here what even is mysticism returning viewers will know that it is a contested term and concept and it's of course even more so when we use it outside of a Christian or at least abrahamic framework in this case we have a bit more luck in the sense that the term mysticism or at least Mystic and mystical actually are Greek words originally coming from the term M meaning conceal or mysos meaning in initiate with that said the word doesn't really get the meaning that we associate with it today until the writings of the Christian Theologian pseudo dianus and even more so really during the 16th and 17th centuries when the term mysticism became a thing but keeping in mind what we have said in earlier episodes about it we can here also use a kind of working definition of mysticism or mystical as that which concerns experiences of practices related to and explanations of direct encounters with with the Divine usually also accompanied by Altered States Of Consciousness with this definition we can find it all over ancient gree while the incorrect picture of ancient Greece that I mentioned above is still very prevalent even among academics and historians many have begun to question it and present an alternative history of this culture among them is of course the scholar ER dods who especially with this foundational work the Greeks and the irrational show that we need to take these other what he calls irrational aspects of ancient Greece into serious consideration and this of course includes famous aspects like the prophetic role of the oracles such as the most famous one at Deli who received messages from the gods through ecstatic Altered States Of Consciousness we also have the influence of the amuses on poets and artists what Plato refers to as poetic Mania a poet can never create by his own imagination something as great and beautiful as a work influenced by the Divine Madness imparted by the muses but we should perhaps begin this discussion by exploring one of the most fascinating aspects of ancient helenic culture religion and quote unquote mysticism the mystery Cults this is a category that denotes several different movements that were initiatory in different ways and which promis to their initiates some kind of secret knowledge or wisdom some of the more prominent of these are the ucini Mysteries the bakic Cults of dianis and the so-called orix many would even argue that early py paganism was also a kind of mystery cult and the Elian Mysteries was the largest and most popular or famous of these mystery Cults indeed in ancient times it is thought that the majority of Athenians so citizens of the city of Athens were initiated into the alinan Mysteries this was an annual initiatory event that took place in the town of elus close to Athens on the days of the ritual hundreds or maybe even thousands of people would walk from Athens to elus swinging branches and singing songs once on location they would also fast and then drink a beverage called the Kon before entering a building called the telesterion where the core of the secret ritual took place we actually don't know a lot of details about what went on in the telesterion um this was a secret ritual and people weren't really supposed to talk about what what went on at this ritual and most people seem to have kept their mouth shut uh what we do know is that the ritual revolved around certain mythical stories particularly around two goddesses demer and panie also known as Corey and particularly the story when pany is abducted by Hades to the underworld and then demer her mother is is sort of distraught trying to find her she seeks the help of the Gods who help her eventually spoiler alert retrieve pania back from the underworld and so this is a sort of um it's imagery that talks about the changing of the seasons and stuff like this but so this is the the mythical account that is at the center of the elosan Mysteries and this descent into the underworld of prephan is a very key theme a very key feature of this myth that is sort of symbolically um played out in certain ways during this ritual it seems that the initiat were taken through an intense experience involving Altered States Of Consciousness where they would somehow simulate epan descent into the underworld dying to then be reborn once again at the end of the ritual this stuff seems to have been very intense and the initiates are said to have been completely transformed by The Experience many even claiming to lose their fear of death entirely after going through this initiation the initiate would be led by the priests through rituals that induced Altered States Of Consciousness which could reveal truths about the Divine myths or about reality itself these Altered States which are referred to in Greek with terms like Mania and Baka meant an ecstatic transformation of the person that had lasting effects on the rest of his or her life and meant that they were now initiated into the Mysteries parts of the ritual seems to have been quite scary and traumatic as basically they would simulate your death The Scholar Julia OVA writes quote mystery writes were intended to unsettle disturb and horrify as only in absolute contrast to the initial Terror could the initiate arrive at a Prof profound modification of his attitude to life after going through the painful experience of death although not a real death of course the initiate would then ideally enter a state of ecstasy a feeling of immortality and even of uniting with the Divine this peak was often accompanied by a vision of pure light and a feeling of transcendence the proceedings in the telesterion also seem to have involve things like music and ecstatic dancing to induce these Altered States and as we said this wasn't some Fringe sact on the sidelines of society but a prominent aspect of life in ancient Greece and especially in around Athens and many of the philosophers that we know and love so associated with sober rationalism were themselves initiated into the ucan mysteries for example one of my favorite descriptions of the powerful experiences had during the ritual comes from the platonic philosopher plutar quote at first there was wandering and where is some roaming and some fearful Journeys through unending darkness and just before the end every sort of Terror shuddering and trembling in sweat and amazement out of these emerges Marvelous Light and pure places and Meadows follow after with voices and dances and solemnities of sacred utterances and holy Visions among these the completely initiated mes walk freely and without restraint crowned he takes part in rights and joins with pure and Pious people he observes the crowd of people living at this very time uninitiated and unpurified who are driven together and trample each other in deep mud and darkness and continue in their fear of death their evils and their disbelief in the good things in the other world then in accordance with nature the soul stays engaged with the body in close Union thereafter that is some powerful stuff and shows just how intense this initiation ritual and its effects must have been the linian Mysteries was an annual event and once you went through the ritual once you were now an initiate a mysts in Greek meaning initiate which is of course where the term Mystic comes from but like we said the mystery calls are very varied some say that even having this as a general category is is kind of there are issues with this because the different mystery cults look very different from each other so the Elan Mysteries was a an event right it was it was an event that people went through once a year or it happened once a year and people would go through it once of course you could do it multiple times but the purpose was to become initiated through this one event whereas other famous mystery Cults were more similar to what we would associate with the word cult right a sort of group an initiatory group with certain rituals and practices and beliefs in this context we should of course mention Pythagoras and the pythagoreans as another example of this kind of movement now I'm not going to do a thorough dive into that topic since I have dedicated two previous episodes to pythagoreanism in the past but contrary to popular belief Pythagoras himself if he even existed historically was not necessarily associated with mathematics but was rather a kind of wonderwork sage who started an initiatory movement concerned with ritual rules and practices including a strict vegetarianism a hatred towards beans and many other practices it isn't as easy to find rituals of Altered States Of Consciousness with the pythagoreans but they share many features with the other mystery Cults such as a concern with the soul and the afterlife and might have involved similar practices to what we can see in the other groups the pythagoreans is an important part of the puzzle when understanding the ancient helenic world and makes apparent to us some of the common misconceptions we have about the period so Pythagoras is a very good example of this we see Pythagoras as the sort of originator of maths almost like he came up with the Pythagorean theorem that we all learn in school he was a sort of rational philosoph phos opher um and while he might have been associated with mathematics you know some of the earlier pythagoreans like a century later do concern themselves with mathematics as a way of understanding the universe looking at the universe as math in some way uh like Phil La for instance we mentioned in the earlier episode but there is no evidence that Pythagoras himself was involved with that at all right that might have been part of the initiatory teachings in this group that he started which we don't know of because they were secret esoteric teachings of course uh but in general the image that we get of Pythagoras from the earlier sources is of a sort of sage a figure who sort of can travel with his soul to different places he does miraculous things almost like a demigod uh and he starts this this sort of group this initiatory almost like a m many would refer to it as a kind of mystery cult similar to what is sometimes referred to as the orix which we will return to uh and that he and his group The pythagoreans were primarily concerned with ritual rules of conduct certain ways of living you were not allowed to do this you were not not allowed to do that that was what the pythagoreans was and what Pythagoras was whereas our common image of Pythagoras is of this rational mathematician which these early sources do not really support moving on another one of the most prominent Mysteries was the aforementioned bakic Cult of dionis dionis was a god associated with wine Mak fertility and indeed Mania or Madness and religious ecstasy he was also known as bakus precisely because he was thought to be able to induce a state of Madness in people called Baka and the Mystery Cult of dianis often called The bakic Cult was associated with precisely this its practitioners going into intense Altered States Of Consciousness and ecstasy often accompanied by being united with God or being possessed by him often when we talk talk about the Bic Mysteries we divide it into the spontaneous frenzied nonorganized cult mostly associated with women on the one hand and a more initiatory organized group in the city environment although both share similar key features in terms of the first category there was a tradition where women known as mids would work themselves into an ecstatic state by different means this cult was almost exclusively associated with women who would leave their homes and go together Into the Wilderness where they would perform rituals involving music and dancing as well as possible intoxicants with the aim of inducing a state of Madness and ecstasy what is again referred to as Baka after which they would start behaving like animals wearing animal skins and roam around the countryside there are even some very dramatic stories of how these manets while in this frenzied state would kill other human beings how true these more dramatic stories are is hard to say but the general characteristics of the cult was probably very much true there are several ceramic vases and other works of art that depict such maned women in a state of ecstasy so what was all this about well as we've seen inducing states of ecstasy in Altered States Of Consciousness is a commonly recurring theme in many different religious Traditions here just like in so many other examples when the person enters the state of baka they disappear from themselves the regular person or self that they associate with in their regular life completely vanishes being taken over by something else in this case the God dianis and His ecstatic Madness as we saw this feeling of dying to oneself is a state sought by many Mystics throughout history as a feeling of release and ecstasy and of being united with higher realities and we seem to find the same thing here at least something very close to it furthermore there are probably psychological and soci iological factors at play too women in ancient Greece and especially in cities like Athens were very limited in their movement and power being essentially confined to the home and under the control of men being able to go out into the Wilderness Escape from regular life and completely lose themselves in frantic unhinged Behavior was probably a kind of psychological release from the constraints of regular life the mads are a really fascinating group that according to some definitions could certainly be considered a kind of mysticism and as we said there seems to have been a more organized initiatory aspect of the Dian cult as well primarily in these cities this cult was popular among both men and women and seems to have been pretty mainstream but in a very similar way it used Altered States Of Consciousness and ecstasy induced by music and dancing as the ritual means for initiation through this bokic ecstasy one becomes United with the Divine and it's imparted with mystical iCal knowledge leading to both a more enlightened life in this world but also a more pleasant afterlife that very much recurring theme in all of the mystery Cults the dionan cult is also often associated with another possible mystery cult the so-called orix now orphism or the orix is a very complicated topic Scholars have been disagreeing on this for centuries not being able to conclude if orphism as a distinct group actually existed or if it is a historical Mirage so to say the term usually refers to practices and beliefs held by people who Associated these practices with the ancient mythical figure orus a poet and musician to whom is described many famous myths as well as hymns and writings that serve as the basis for much esoteric and mystical interpretation Orpheus is also famous for having travel to the underworld what is known as katabasis a motif that we find in many mystery Cults and myths about the gods which often come to represent and be represented by certain rituals and mystical insights we saw this with the ucan Mysteries we saw this in the dionan um myths and we see it here with orus as well orus is strongly associated with teeli Mysteries generally as the originator of mystery rituals and practices and many do believe that this made up a distinct mystery cult similar to and connected with the pythagoreans and bics for instance and we indeed see many similarities between the practices of these Mysteries and those ascribed to the so-called orics including vegetarianism and particular ritual rules such as the prohibition of burying the Dead with wool the ancient historian Herodotus connects the orphics bakic and pythagoreans by stating that they all somehow originate with the Egyptians while we should be careful to accept such claims too easily since this kind of orientalism was was very common of a Trope in ancient times which didn't always represent reality but at the same time there are other aspects that might point in that direction for example the occupation of many of the mystery Cults with the afterlife including orphic writings giving instructions on how to travel in the afterlife this of course reminds us of very similar traditions in Egypt such as the famous book of the dead or book of going forth by day but orphism as such as we said is a pretty complicated topic because it's not clear at all if there was such a thing as a coherent group or tradition known as orphism it might have been more so the case that orus as a figure was so strongly associated with teet with Mysteries and mystery rights right that many of these actual mystery Cults such as the Bak cult or the pythagoreans perhaps um would sort of ascribe their rituals to to orus as a kind of authority as as a way of legitimizing your tradition by saying these rights originate with orus right so he becomes a kind of a omnipotent um symbol for all these ancient um mystery Cults in that way uh that could have been the case and in that sense there wouldn't be a group that were known as the or the orix or a tradition as known as orphism but that this was a general sort of more abstract um idea that that existed Within These more concrete uh mystery groups or mystery initiations but let's pretend that there was such a thing as the quote unquote orphic mystery cult in ancient times their rituals May then have symbolically involved this descent into the underworld what is known as katabasis it was common in ancient Greece for seeking wisdom to in a ritual way enter into dark caves for extended periods one would go down into a certain cave might be met by a priest or ritual expert and maybe consumed some sort of intoxicant or substance whatever the case people would have intense experiences of Altered States Of Consciousness in these caves which would lead them to higher wisdom and knowledge perhaps this serve as one such example of a ritual or practice associated with katabasis or descent which is again particularly also associated with orphism as the initiatory descent into the cave of mysteries symbolically represents the descent into the underworld and the knowledge gained from this experience in any case these phenomena tell us a few important things it is significant that all three of the mystery calls we have described so far all involved katabasis the again the descent into the underworld as a motif orus is said to have done so dianis is associated with such a journey and even pany in the famous mythical account is abducted by Hades into the underworld before being retrieved by her mother which also serves as the uh mythical basis for the Elian mystery they all also concern to one degree or another giving the initiate a pleasant afterlife so when we look at the the the mystery Cults one of the most recurring themes across these Mysteries is always this seeking of of a pleasant afterlife that we can do things in this life we can become initiated in this life which will lead us to a better afterlife for our soul um and again people like Herodotus connects these groups to the Egyptians and the Egyptians had very elaborate ideas about the afterlife so it isn't impossible that that stuff comes from some sort of Egyptian Source uh but whatever the case this is one of those very much recurring themes in all these mystery calls this was not something that many of you know about the the the the ideas of the afterlife in ancient the ancient Atlantic world you went to Hades everyone basically went to the same place just like in the Hebrew Bible everyone goes to shol um in ancient Greece everyone goes to Hades but the mystery call seems to have another idea that we can sort of affect our afterlife that afterlife can be more or less Pleasant and that things we do in this life in this case particularly becoming initiated into these Mysteries that will affect our afterlife and if you want to many people have of course connected this to later ideas in um in the abrahamic religions for in in Christianity about heaven and hell and sort of judgment after death and while many might perhaps connect this idea to Zoras anism uh which also has a similar idea about our actions in this life affecting the way we experienc the afterlife there might also be a source in these ideas in these Mysteries like like in quote unquote orphism right and many people have speculated that we can find certain um precursors to things like Christianity in in these Mysteries that is speculation but it is interesting to consider for sure U this might be another one of the the the sources for many of those ideas that would become so prominent in later centuries while these mystery calls are usually considered distinct Traditions or groups some have speculated that they may represent different aspects of a wider quote unquote mystery religion in ancient Greece we're not going to solve that issue today but this certainly helps us understand that such practices and ideas which many of us would deem to be pretty mystical were a very prominent feature of the culture and religion in the ancient helenic world but we can also look at some of the more intellectual features of ancient Greece because these quote unquote mystical aspects include some of those famous philosophers associated with sober rationalism par menes often consider the first metaphysician or at least the first philosopher to deal with ontology in history wrote the famous philosophical poem called on nature where he expounds his shocking idea that everything is in fact one everything is simply being being is one and cannot undergo any change and how did he reach this monistic conclusion on the nature of reality well he was a philos phers so through philosophizing right well that depends on how broadly we defined philosophizing indeed in the opening to his work he tells us that he was thrust into an experience where he traveled and where did he travel to the underworld thus we see here another illusion to katabasis he travels through this underworld in a chariot led by mares escorted by the quote unquote Daughters of the Sun as they leave the House of Night for the light passing through the yawning Abyss before being greeted by an unnamed goddess who imparts on him the secrets of reality many have interpreted this as only a sort of poetic metaphorical ornament at the beginning of the work but that seems to me at least pretty naive what certainly seems to be going on here is that Parmenides is describing a very real to him mystical experience through which he received mystical insight into the truth of reality that truth to Parmenides was a radical monism reality is an undifferentiated whole it is one and without change the mundane reality of change and multiplicity that we experience is only our senses and limited Minds misleading us but through mystical Insight he has been given the truth which he expounds in this famous and influential philosophical work so here we have one of the most influential and important philosophers in history history who influenced some of the great figures like Plato and Aristotle having a kind of mysticism at the very core holding up his philosophy again this is one interpretation of the account at the beginning of paredes's treatise U many will still interpret it in a different way that no this is just sort of metaphor just a way of of opening it in a in a poetic way because it is a poem after all and that you know the bulk of the work is philosophy and it is philosophy when you read the the work you know he is is arguing for his case right so he's a philosopher in that sense but I think we do ourselves a disservice if we discount this very dramatic part the beginning of his poem uh which seems also to connect to ideas of catabasis of descent into the underworld there's all this imagery right that alludes to the mysteries for instance which we will see also in other philosophers I think we can't discredit that as just being some sort of you know poetic metaphor but that it is alluding to this truth through this this um knowledge that he's trying to impart that this was the result in some way of a can of what we would refer to as some kind of mystical experience or at least some kind of altered state of consciousness and later figures such as Plato himself isn't much different of course platonism is strongly associated with mysticism and a lot of what we call mysticism indeed comes from the platonic framework and vocabulary but a lot of this comes from these so-called neoplatonists like like platinus who lived a few centuries ad it isn't as clear in Plato himself unless we project the ideas of platinus onto Plato which many do of course so reading Plato through the lens of platinus but in the dialogues of Plato themselves there are also indications that there's a kind of mysticism at play here and that aside from the importance of reason and argument for arriving at truth there's an even higher source of knowledge that of mania or divine Madness through which we receive wisdom directly from the Divine in general of course Plato is famous for having esoteric or so-called Unwritten doctrines we find references to these Unwritten teachings in Aristotle but they're also important for the later neoplatonist as a source for their particular interpretation of the master that there were teachings or aspects of pl's thought that he didn't Express overtly in his dialogues is hard to deny as we seem to find this state in his own writings too particularly in his seventh letter which most Scholars agree to be authentic by Plato himself where he Al also of course speaks as himself rather than through Socrates and the dialogues he seems to say here that there are aspects of his teachings that he won't write down and indeed that can't be written down or expressed in words he says quote there is no writing of mine about these matters nor will there ever be one for this knowledge is not something that can be put into words like other science but after long continued intercourse between teacher and pupil in joint pursuit of the subject suddenly like a light flashing forth when a fire is kindled it is born in the soul and straight way nourishes itself he seems to allude here to some kind of Illumination which quote flashes forth which is pretty mystical language but the details of what this entails he doesn't say of course since the whole point of the quot is to say that he won't do precisely that but I think we can possibly see some hints or pointers toward this idea in the dialogues themselves here of course it is usually Socrates that is the main character through which Plato is speaking and it can be hard to know if what is said represents Plato's own ideas or simply a retelling of his teacher Socrates although I usually tend to lean toward the former option for example in dialogues like the fedo which depicts socrates's last moments with his friends and students before drinking the hemlock and dying we get some interesting contemp ations on the goals and nature of the philosophic life as well as a striking and almost psychedelic Vision toward the end the philosophic life and the way to reach philosophical truths according to Socrates in this dialogue involves a turning away from the body and senses to where the soul is left alone quote and does purification not turn out to be what we mentioned in our argument some time ago namely to separate the soul as far as possible from the body and accustom it to gather itself and collect itself out of every part of the body and to dwell by itself as far as it can both now and in the future freed as it were from the bonds of the body the path that Socrates and Plato is describing here seems to be a kind of aesthetic and spiritual discipline where the soul can Ascend to higher realities and perhaps to interpolate into the text a little bit to unite with Divine realities in this case the forms and the form of the forms you may think this is stretching things a bit and it might be but this theme of mystical illumination and Revelation as a highest form of of wisdom becomes perhaps most clear in the fages and the Symposium two dialogues that both discuss the nature of Love or AOS in the Symposium alabes very tellingly compares the philosophic wisdom that Socrates has um initiated the rest of the company with to the Baka or Mania the Divine Madness associated with the ecstatic rights and aled States Of Consciousness that we mentioned earlier particularly in relation to the theak cult of dianis he says quote well something much more painful than a snake has bitten me in my most sensitive part I mean my heart or my soul or whatever you want to call it which has been struck and bitten by philosophy whose grip on young and eager Souls is much more vicious than a Viper and makes them do the most amazing things now all you people here have all shared in the madness the Bic frenzy of philosophy and in my opinion it is in the fedis that this sentiment is most strongly expressed as the dialogue is a positive celebration of divine Mania or Madness the famous story takes place in the wilderness outside of Athens where Socrates sits down next to fedis reads him a speech that lisius has held about love and friendship at first Socrates seems to agree that erotic love is something dangerous it makes people go mad with desire hindering their moral faculties and clear thinking but then through an intervention of his guiding Dion Socrates changes his mind and instead holds a new speech in Praise of mania or Madness or erotic Madness particularly he makes a clear distinction between human Madness brought on by things like diseases on the one hand and on the other hand a Divine Madness or Mania that is given by the gods and this kind of Madness is the highest and most beautiful of states that the soul can experience at least in this life he furthermore divides Divine Mania into four categories prophetic Mania such as the Oracle Deli being inspired by the god to speak bakic Madness associated with the rituals and initiations of the cult of dianis poetic Mania that is when the muses influence a poets or maybe musicians for instance to create F art and lastly erotic Mania or The Madness of Love which he sees as the most exalted of them all in an absolutely beautiful section Socrates or Plato explains that the soul can become enraptured by Beauty in the world that one becomes mad with Divine Madness and illumination he explains that before we as Souls came into our bodies we knew the true realities in Plato thought the forms intimately and directly but most of us have forgotten now being caught up with the world of matter and Change but there Still Remains a remembrance of that original knowledge within us and when a person that has trained himself probably through aestheticism and contemplations that was talked about in the Ido he can look at Beauty in the physical world such as a beautiful young boy in this case or perhaps a sunset or a tree and through seeing that beauty is reminded of the true real beauty of the Divine when this happens Socrates says the wings of the Soul begin to grow back and we become mad with that contemplation we receive Divine Mania which orients our soul to leave this world and experience or contemplate the true realities on high he says quote for just this reason it is fair that only a philosopher's mind grows Wings since its memory always keeps it as close as possible to those realities by being close to which the gods are divine a man who uses reminders of these things correctly is always at the highest most perfect level of initiation and he is the only one who is perfect as perfect can be he stands outside human concerns and draws close to the Divine ordinary people think he is Disturbed and rebuke him for this unaware that he's possessed by a god notice here that he uses the language of initiation once again pointing to the mystical rituals of the mystery cults when the philosophers enters this state other people see him as mad but this madness is a Divine Madness a divinely inspired alteration of Consciousness where true wisdom is achieved he later says quotes but Beauty was radiant to see at that time when the souls along with the Glorious chorus saw the blessed and spectacular vision and were ushered into the mystery that we may rightly call The Most Blessed of all and we who celebrated it were holy perfect and free free from All the Troubles that awaited Us in time to come and we gazed and raptured that secret revealed objects that were perfect and simple and unshakable and Blissful that was the ultimate vision and we saw it in pure light because we were pure ourselves not buried in this thing we are carrying around now which we call a body locked in it like an oyster in its shell clearly this is not your regular logical deduction or rational epistemology that we associate with the philosophers rather it seems here that Plato or Socrates is talking about some kind of mystical experience or altered state of consciousness Madness or Mania not reason deduction using logic the ultimate knowledge is a pure knowledge of recollection where we through contemplative practice and thus then being possessed by the Divine Madness escape from the body and our soul can recollect the true realities that it knew before Incarnation and even become maybe once again United to those pure Divine realities thus receiving knowledge directly through a kind of Revelation or illumination this is perhaps what Plato referred to earlier as that which is quote like a light flashing forth when a fire is kindled being born in the soul erer dods wrote in his classic work that AOS had a special importance in Plato's thought as being the one mode of experience which brings together the two Natures of man the Divine self and the tethered Beast for Eros is frankly rooted in what shares with the animals the physiological impulse of sex yet AOS also supplies the dynamic impulse which drives the soul forward in its quest for a satisfaction transcending Earthly experience with that said this doesn't mean that reason doesn't have a place of course it does as Plato is very clear about but I think we can see here that he recognizes multiple sources of wisdom or knowledge that can be balanced Julia ustinova writes this Revelation interpreted as a recollection ction of the ideal forms seen by the philosopher soul in the past life is to be checked by reason and reason alone cannot lead to the transcendental reality therefore both the philosophers Mania and reason are necessary preconditions for his perception of Truth on top of this there are stories of Socrates behaving in Peculiar ways in several accounts Socrates seems to become completely Frozen in place for long periods of time on one occasion for a whole day and night occupied with some quote unquote problem well this is of course a certain level of speculation this certainly sounds like a kind of altered state of consciousness a mystical experience that he would become en raptured in from time to time a good example to show that this Mania or Baka didn't have to be the frenzied crazy behavior that was most associated with the term but could also be a kind of inner contemplation or Rapture finally in the famous dialogue The Republic Plato seems to argue that knowledge of the true reality or realities comes from a kinship with them on part of the soul and through becoming United with that Divine reality so to say quote then won't it be reasonable for us to plead in his defense that is the nature of the real lover of learning to struggle toward what is not to remain with any of the many things that are believed to be that as he moves on he neither loses nor left his erotic love until he grasps the being of each nature itself with the part of his soul that is fitted to grasp it because of its kinship with it and that once getting near what really is and having intercourse with it and having begotten understanding and Truth he knows truly lives is nourished and at that point but not before is relieved from the Pains of giving birth if we read this through the lens of someone like platinus and the neoplatonist we can of course interpret many of these words and phrases as referring to a kind of mystical experience in ontology that I've alluded to before the soul has a kinship with these realities could be read as referring to the idea that the Soul's home is in the Divine world of the news it is the news and her having intercourse with it also certainly smells of a kind of unom mystica the Soul becoming United with the higher realities again this is reading it through a neoplatonic lens and it isn't at all clear if this is what Plato himself self means but statements like the ones we have quoted seems to suggest to many at least that Plato was familiar with some kind of un mystica or mystical Union which could be what he refers to in the letter as those things which cannot be put into words but which he found the closest our best way of expressing through the language of erotic love and Madness this is of course very interesting as it reminds us of many other mystical Traditions that similarly used erotic language of love longing and sometimes even sex to express the ineffable experience of longing for and uniting with the Divine from the suies to Christian Mystics and shites in India but like I said not everyone agrees that we can find these mystical themes in Plato and Socrates and this discussion has involved certain levels of you could say educated speculation on my part and on part of the scholars that I've used as Source but I think it's at least definitely worth considering seriously since so many parts of the dialogue seems to point to this idea that the highest wisdom is somehow uh achieved through Divine Madness what's known as Mania as a kind of Revelation that is then checked by reason and so these two aspects of epistemology work together in the true in the true philosopher both Divine Mania and reason and logical deduction from these examples I hope I have shown that the um IM image of the ancient helenic world as a purely rational culture devoid of any quote unquote mystical content is simply false in fact once we start to look a little deeper we find a whole plethora of such practices and ideas from the practices of the religious cults that were so popular to the mainstream population all the way to the writings and ideas of those famous philosophers that we all know and love who are usually portrayed as paradigms of rationalism and science but as we've SE there is a whole other side to their lives and works that make many modern enthusiasts uncomfortable but which is impossible to ignore once you start seeing it of course as always this has just been a very general overview of a few examples of what we could call you know mysticism or mystical experience in ancient Greece um you know that word mysticism we all know it's it's it's a word that has issues um and using it in this context like this sort of you know the academic inside me is sort of screaming at me but I think if we base it on this working definition that we've had that we established at the beginning of the episode I and we're all also aware of the problems with the term that we've discussed both here and in previous episodes I think we can sort of get away with it uh and so with that in mind this has been just a few examples of what we might be able to call mysticism in ancient Greece or at least examples of some kind of um altered state of consciousness uh as a means to wisdom in the ancient helenic world there is of course a lot more that we could discuss so please uh let me know in the comments if you there's any particular topic within this wider subject that you would like me to cover in the future uh like I said there's plenty of stuff to to get into there so so yeah uh feel free to leave me uh suggestions uh as always I would like to thank all my patrons who keep this channel going um this really is the best way to support this channel as you probably know the YouTube algorithm can be very unpredictable and so to have people support me monetarily like that is uh truly so appreciated and I I'm very thankful for that um I would highly of course appreciate if anyone else wanted to become a patron too so we'll leave links to that in the description and in the pin comment you can also support the channel by a one-time donation through PayPal there are links to that there too um what else uh if you want to find me on my socials I I'll leave some links here I have I'm on Instagram I'm on Tik Tok I'm all over the place so uh go follow me there if you're interested in some of my work including some of my music as well as as the work I do here on let's talk religion and speaking of music I also have another channel that is dedicated to primarily to music so many of you will know that uh I make the majority of the music for the videos on this channel myself and so on my other channel which is called Philip Palm I post music my own music as well as music content generally so if you're interested in that go check that out for now I hope this has been an educational and interesting video on quote unquote mysticism in ancient Greece uh look forward to more videos on similar topics in the future and I will see you next [Music] time

Channel: Let's Talk Religion

Views: 117,126

Keywords: Ancient Greece, mysticism, mysticism in ancient greece, greek mysticism, mystical history, ancient wisdom, spirituality, esotericism, esoteric beliefs, eleusinian mysteries, pythagoras, bacchic, dionysus, orpheus, orphism, mystery cults, ancient mysteries, oracle at delphi, greek philosophy, philosophy, mystery religions, ancient civilization, hellenistic cultre, plato, platonism, pythagoreanism, parmenides, monism

Id: stUXFuN-6T4

Length: 46min 24sec (2784 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 21 2024