This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed human.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

My name is Robert Lamb.

Today is a Saturday.

So we have a Vault episode for you.

This is part three of four in our mystery cult series.

It originally published 3-6 2025. Let's dive in.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

My name is Robert Lamb.

And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part three in our discussion of the mystery cults of the ancient Mediterranean.

Mystery cults are religions that are differentiated from the mainstream public cults of the Greco-Roman world,

because instead of focusing on the regular transactional tending to the needs of the gods through

ritual and sacrifice, mystery cults were centered around the performance of secret mystic

rights, which were usually revealed only to the cult's initiates, and which

were often described as intense sensory experiences involving direct contact with the power

of the gods.

In part one of this series, we talked mainly about the historical context of the mysteries and how they differed from the most common religious practices of Greek and Roman polytheism.

And then in part two, we looked at a couple of specific examples.

We looked at Mithraism, a mystery cult that flourished in the Roman Empire, especially among members of the Roman army,

from roughly the first through the 4th century CE. And then also we started talking about

...