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The Allure of the Mystery Religions

Another explanation would be less probable: namely, that in the religious communities abroad German: Kultgemeinden des Auslandes; referring to cults practiced outside their original ethnic homeland, such as Egyptian or Syrian cults in Rome, where an appointment of the priest by the king or his representative was legally and factually impossible and the requirement of priestly descent had to be dropped from the start, and likewise in the free cult associations of the motherland, that old "consecration of the king" Königsweihe: A ritual process originally meant for a sovereign, here adapted for individual initiates to signify their high spiritual status was brought in early as a substitute. From among the number of the consecrated German: Geweihten, the god then calls—which is to say, through the co-option Kooptation: The election of a new member into a body by the existing members performed by the officiating priests—the individual to a temporary or lifelong position, depending on the influence of the Roman system of colleges German: Kollegienordnung; referring to the organizational rules of Roman priestly or social associations. In the Phrygian cult The cult of Cybele, the Great Mother, and Attis, we also see a sacrificial act that initially served the community cult, in which the highest-ranking priest participates—the bull-sacrifice Taurobolium: A ritual involving the slaughter of a bull, where the initiate is drenched in its blood to achieve spiritual purification—becoming a consecration for the initiate German: Myste; a person undergoing initiation, a bath of rebirth. Here too, the actual initiates are a "people of the perfect" or a "people of priests."¹⁰ The difference between these personal mysteries and those national or community mysteries is quite clear: the initiate no longer merely observes what Osiris or Horus experienced, but experiences it himself and thereby becomes Osiris or Horus—just as the deceased person himself becomes an "Osiris" In ancient Egyptian funerary tradition, the deceased was ritually identified with the god Osiris to ensure eternal life.

The bond between god and human cannot be imagined as any closer or stronger; a feeling of not only lifelong gratitude but of personal love—which in its expression borders on the sensual—unites them both. Let us add that here, in the diaspora The spread of a faith away from its ancestral homeland, so to speak, each of these deities possesses a specific message of salvation—philologists have spoken, at least with some justification, of a "Gospel of Isis," the text of which we still possess—and that collections intended for liturgical use...