Mystery religion in the context of "Proserpina"

Cybele (/ˈsɪbəliː/ SIB-ə-lee; Phrygian: Matar Kubileya, Kubeleya 'Kubeleya Mother', perhaps 'Mountain Mother'; Lydian: Kuvava; Greek: Κυβέλη Kybélē, Κυβήβη Kybēbē, Κύβελις Kybelis) is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest Neolithic at Çatalhöyük. She is Phrygia's only known goddess, and likely, its national deity. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the sixth century BC.

In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She became partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia, of her possibly Minoan equivalent Rhea, and of the harvest–mother goddess Demeter. Some city-states, notably Athens, evoked her as a protector, but her most celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following. Uniquely in Greek religion, she had a eunuch mendicant priesthood, the Galli. Many of her Greek cults included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort Attis, who was probably a Greek invention. In Greece, Cybele became associated with mountains, town and city walls, fertile nature, and wild animals, especially lions.

The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which sometimes used psychoactive substances and other trance-inducing techniques (like dance and music) to remove inhibitions. It also provided some liberation for people marginalized by Greek society, such as slaves, outlaws, and non-citizens. In their final phase the Mysteries shifted their emphasis from a chthonic, underworld orientation to a transcendental, mystical one, with Dionysus changing his nature accordingly. By its nature as a mystery religion reserved for the initiated, many aspects of the Dionysian cult remain unknown and were lost with the decline of Greco-Roman polytheism. Modern knowledge is derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.

Mithraism, also known as the Mithraic mysteries or the Cult of Mithras, was a Roman mystery religion focused on the god Mithras. Although inspired by Iranian worship of the Zoroastrian divinity (yazata) Mithra, the Roman Mithras was linked to a new and distinctive imagery, and the degree of continuity between Persian and Greco-Roman practice remains debatable.The mysteries were popular among the Imperial Roman army from the 1st to the 4th century AD.

Worshippers of Mithras had a complex system of seven grades of initiation and communal ritual meals. Initiates called themselves syndexioi, those "united by the handshake". They met in dedicated mithraea (singular mithraeum), underground temples that survive in large numbers. The cult appears to have had its centre in Rome, and was popular throughout the western half of the empire, as far south as Roman Africa and Numidia, as far east as Roman Dacia, as far north as Roman Britain, and to a lesser extent in Roman Syria in the east.

Cybele (/ˈsɪbəliː/ SIB-ə-lee; Phrygian: Matar Kubileya, Kubeleya 'Kubeleya Mother', perhaps 'Mountain Mother'; Lydian: Kuvava; Greek: Κυβέλη Kybélē, Κυβήβη Kybēbē, Κύβελις Kybelis) is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest Neolithic at Çatalhöyük. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the sixth century BC.

In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She became partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia, of her possibly Minoan equivalent Rhea, and of the harvest–mother goddess Demeter. Some city-states, notably Athens, evoked her as a protector, but her most celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following. Uniquely in Greek religion, she had a eunuch mendicant priesthood, the Galli. Many of her Greek cults included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort Attis, who was probably a Greek invention. In Greece, Cybele became associated with mountains, town and city walls, fertile nature, and wild animals, especially lions.