Psytrance parties are often seen as a brand new phenomenon. As the original creation of our particular age, but, at a closer look, many are the resonances we can identify with events and situations from the previous ages, disclosing to our eyes the fascinating view of history as a series of ever recurring cycles…

In the past decades we have witnessed the birth of the psytrance movement (and of electronic dance music culture in general), which is now a phenomenon involving tens of thousands of people from all over the world. Such a successful emergence is the result of specific characteristics that make this cultural movement particularly “suited” to satisfy the needs of the socio-political context and historical phase in which we are living. But what could these characteristics be? To give an answer it could be useful to look at what happened more than 2000 years ago, when, under the influence of Hellenistic culture, people experienced what is now considered the first example of globalisation.

The Hellenistic Age started at the end of the “Classical” period of Greek history, with the unification of the formerly separated and autonomous city-states. Starting from the third century BC the newly formed union, led by Alexander the Great, extended its cultural and political influence over an extremely vast territory, covering the whole Mediterranean area and central Asia, all the way to India. Soon Greek became the first international language, giving rise to a new multi-cultural cosmopolitan attitude, which was shared by a network of very distant city-states, nations and tribes.

As a consequence, society underwent a tremendous and rapid transformation and many people started posing serious doubts over the belief-systems of the previous period, perceived as unable to interpret the new reality. In Greece the existence of Olympian gods were questioned and were regarded, to use the words of the philosopher Critia, as “the invention of politicians who wish to control their citizens by putting the fear of god into them”. For the first time the culture of origin was not the only reference to define one’s identity and people felt the need to search for new and more satisfying religious experiences able to supply the missing sense of contact with the foundations of life.

In this newly born cross-cultural environment the practice of Mystery Cults seemed to satisfy fully the needs of the day and became incredibly popular and widespread in the whole area under Hellenistic (and subsequently Roman) influence, until when, in 392 AD, following the proclamation of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all temples and statues related to pagan worship, thus marking the beginning of monotheism in the west.

These cults, also called Mysteries or Mystery Religions (even if they did not have any official credo, dogmas or central hierarchy), were secret initiation rituals into the profound truths of deities of different origins, like the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, the Anatolian Kybele and Attis, the Cretan Demeter and Persephone celebrated in the Mysteries of Eleusis, and the near-eastern Dionysus. Despite the variety of origins, Mystery Cults were actually very homogeneous. We do not have detailed descriptions of the rituals, since it was strictly prohibited to reveal what happened during the ceremonies, but we know that the mythologies functioning as the “storyboard” of the rituals are all strikingly similar: a mother (Demeter, Isis, Kybele) mourns in profound grief and despair the death or disappearance of her daughter (Persephone) or brother/son/lover (Osiris, Attis), who eventually resurrects or reappears (yet temporarily) to join again with the mother and joyously celebrate this reunion.

The reason for these curious similarities rests in the very ancient common origins of the Mysteries in the Fertility Rituals of primitive times, celebrating the cyclical reunion of Nature (the Mother) with humans and the whole of creation (the dieing and resurrecting “vegetation gods”), a reunion which was usually celebrated in spring when the seasonal rebirth of life was seen as a miraculous materialisation of the triumph of the vital forces of nature over death. From this point of view the Mystery Cults were none other than a Hellenised version of the primitive Cult of Nature, which had developed with different names in various cultures.

From a ritualistic point of view, we know that initiations into the Mysteries often consisted of joyful nocturnal dance-festivals (especially for the cults of Dionysus and Kybele), where the loud and compelling rhythms of drums, tambourines and tympanums, the clash of bronze cymbals, together with the “maddening unison” of low toned flutes and the ingestion of wine and other mind-altering substances, excited the worshippers into wild ecstatic dancing, in a state of jubilation and extreme exaltation, which we would now call an “altered state of consciousness”. Such enthousiasmos was held to be a “divine madness”, a “heaven-sent folly”, able to produce a peak of mystical and visionary joy, in which the most predisposed initiates became possessed by the gods, “happy as the gods”, one with those gods who resurrected from death in celebration of the triumphant powers of life.

Even if we don’t know the exact unfolding of rituals, we can however read the enthusiastic comments on the benefits and blessings received with the initiation. According to the Latin orator Cicero, Mysteries generated laetitia vivendi et spes melior morendi (ability to live with joy and to die with better hopes), while the Greek poet Pindar declares: “Blessed is he who goes under the earth after seeing these things. That person knows the end of life and its god-given beginning”. In other words the Mysteries seem to have granted the concrete possibility to regain the joy of life despite the fatigues of everyday routine, but also to overcome the fear of death, by seeing it as the beginning of a new natural cycle. In fact, when initiates were able, even for the temporary moment of the initiation night, to enjoy to the full, assimilate and identify with the triumphant power of life, they could experience a profound personal transformation and become, as the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes, “more just and better in every respect, than they were before”.

It is not difficult to imagine that sharing such an “extraordinary experience” resulted in what Plato defined “an unusually tight bond among initiates”. The day of initiation was seen as a second birthday, the moment of the integration in a group of like-minded people, forming egalitarian communities of symmistai (fellow worshippers) which were open to men and women, free and slaves, Greek and foreigners of all ages and social conditions, who could celebrate together as brothers and sisters in spirit. The profound familiarity deriving from sharing the initiations, referred to as “syngenia psychon kai somaton” (kinship of bodies and souls), also found expression in the typical way for initiates to refer to each other as adelphos (brother). Also when travelling, it was common to go look for the company of those initiated into the same cults, recognisable by symbola, or signs, like wrist or ankle bands of specific colours, which contributed to extended this sense of fraternity also to strangers.

On a social level, according to the American researcher on history of religions David Ulansey, the initiations into the Mysteries, as ritualised experiences of death and rebirth, produced a personal transformation, which mirrored, on an individual level, the tremendous and rapid metamorphosis happening at a collective level. In other words it is as if thousands of people unconsciously sought for the most readily available way to die and be reborn on a regular basis, in order to keep up with the cultural shift, which was sweeping away at record speed all previous belief systems.

Returning to our contemporary cultural intermingling, this time on a global scale, the resonance between our times and the Hellenistic age is so strong that it triggers what has been defined an “overpowering sense of déjà vu”. If we compare the Mysteries with psytrance parties, as cross-cultural gatherings involving wild ecstatic dances and ingestion of mind-altering substances, we can see that the reasons for their popularity appear extremely similar.

In fact, in both cases, they seem to satisfy some of the most compelling necessities experienced by people going through the complex and challenging phase of cultural mixing. Not only do they provide a renewed, more personal and direct contact with the sacredness of life and nature, but they also offer the possibility for people of the most diverse origins to share profound life changing experiences. As a result a new trance-cultural global tribe is rising, away from obsolete religious institutions and old belief-systems, through the spontaneous celebration of a space-age version of the Cult of Nature.

Chiara Baldini

For more info:

Walter Burkert: “Ancient Mystery Rituals”
Even if Burkert belongs to the “old school” Academia and refuses to admit the use of mind-altering substances in the Mystery rituals, his book remains one of the best sources on this subject.

Marvin Meyer: “The Ancient Mysteries: a Sourcebook of Sacred Texts”
A complete and inspiring collection of original Latin and Greek texts on the Mysteries.

David Ulansey: “Cultural Transition and Spiritual Transformation: from Alexander the Great to Cyberspace”
Online at http://www.well.com/~davidu/cultural.html
Extremely interesting essay on the cultural context of the Mystery Religions, their relationship with the origins of Christianity and with our own age.