Mithras, the focus of the cult The Mysteries of Mithras was a prominent mystery religion in the Roman Empire from early A.D.  to the 4th century. In theory, it came from Persia, being the roman version of the Persian fire/sun god Mithra. This theory was espoused by Franz Cumont, though there is much debate about this. Plutarch claims that it was started by the pirates of Cicilia in Asia minor and, because of archeological evidence showing that the most important cult in this area was dedicated to Perseus, David Ulansey, in his The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, takes this to mean that Mithras is a version of Perseus and uses this to develop his theory on the astrological focus of Mithraism. Because of the nature of a mystery religion, the adherents wrote nothing down, at least, nothing that survived. There exists a text referred to as the “Mithras Liturgy” from the Greek Magical Papyri and it should be taken into account, but its legitimacy is questioned. The only information ...

Circe, the female entity that attempted to trap Odysseus on his journey home, is an interesting figure who seems to occupy two worlds. The Oxford Classical Dictionary specifically calls her “powerful sorceress” 1 and she is called “goddess” a few times ( Odyssey 11.9 and 12.21). This sets her apart from other goddesses in the story because most of her actions come from the sorceress aspect, not the goddess. The nature of her magic, with it requiring touch to work and it being the only time in the Odyssey where this concept is used, lets her be viewed in a different light than, for example, Athena. For Circe, sorcery is her drugs and potions, which are called “bewitching” several times( Odyssey 10.339, 349) and her wand, which is called “magic”( Odyssey 10.314). Hermes also refers to what she does with drugs as a “magic spell”( Odyssey 10.311) when he gives Odysseus the herb. She does with sorcery what other goddesses would simply do as a result of them being goddess...

A moon. Technically a stone. Not a moon stone . Moon stone is one of the birthstones associated with the month of June. There is some debate about the specific stone this word refers to. In Roman times, it was considered to be made from frozen moonlight. 1 Today it is most commonly associated with a kind of feldspar but in the past has also referred to a stone called selenite , a kind of gypsum whose name literally translates to moonstone. In both cases, it comes in pretty much every color. No single color seems to be most common. Various properties are associated with both the feldspar and gypsum varieties. It's a protective stone that glows under certain circumstances and according to Lecouteux"it preserves the virtues of the body, protects from storms, heals lunatics, and help win honors." 2 The properties of selenite are somewhat different, though still largely related to bodily protection. Among other attributes "it safeguards pregnancy and gives women a goo...

Not being one of the 12 Olympians, Nyx is a relatively unknown goddess with little lore or legends about her. Most of what we have are descriptions of her from other deities, though what we do know is fascinating. Even for a goddess, she was ancient, being among the first children of Chaos and the mother of many who unfortunately ended up more well known than her. That is perhaps why she was such a powerful goddess. Her age and her legacy made her fearsome. While we don't know much, what we do know is that she was strong. Strong enough to terrify Zeus, who was himself obviously exceedingly powerful and feared. In Homer's Illiad 8.15-20 it explicitly states about Zeus' strength: ἐξάπτεσθε θεοὶ πᾶσαί τε θέαιναι: ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἂν ἐρύσαιτ᾽ ἐξ οὐρανόθεν πεδίον δὲ Ζῆν᾽ ὕπατον μήστωρ᾽, οὐδ᾽ εἰ μάλα πολλὰ κάμοιτε. ἀλλ᾽ ὅτε δὴ καὶ ἐγὼ πρόφρων ἐθέλοιμι ἐρύσσαι, αὐτῇ κεν γαίῃ ἐρύσαιμ᾽ αὐτῇ τε θαλάσσῃ: σειρὴν μέν κεν ἔπειτα περὶ ῥίον Οὐλύμποιο δησαίμην, τὰ δέ κ᾽ αὖτε μετήορα πάντα γένοι...

Apples feature in a lot of stories and folklore. The most famous one is probably the golden apple that started the Trojan war. Eris, goddess of discord, took a golden apple, wrote " τῇ καλλίστῃ" (to the most beautiful) on it, and threw it into a group of goddesses: Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They all wanted it, claiming the title of "most beautiful" for themselves, so they had this sort of ancient beauty contest, for lack of a better term. The judge was a man named Paris, a prince of Troy. Each goddess promised him various things in order to be declared the most beautiful. Aphrodite won. She promised him a woman, Helen, the most beautiful woman of the ancient world. Aphrodite took Helen and gave her to Paris. Whether this was a choice on Helen's part or whether she was taken against her will varies by source. There was a problem, aside from the obvious issues with kidnapping. Before she was "Helen of Troy", she was "Helen of Sparta", marrie...

There are more than four Gospels, historically speaking. Many more 1 . "Gospel" literally translates to "good news", and there were lots of them floating around in the early centuries of Christianity. The ones that made it into the New Testament are considered canon by the major branches of Christianity, but "canon" really only means that they were accepted by the Synod of Hippo in the year 393. Before that, a few of the Apostolic Fathers in the early church had proposed accepted lists of canon works but I'm unaware of any being very influential outside of certain circles. And even after that, the canonical books changed multiple times and today can vary across Christian groups. There is this idea that the Bible as it exists today fell from the heavens in its current form and never changed. That's simply not true. Catholics, for example, hold the deuterocanonical books to be authentic scripture. Protestants do not. Some books are considered canon...

Historically, the understanding of women labeled as witches differed drastically from what it came to mean when Christianity became the dominant force in Europe. Historian P.G. Maxwell-Stewart notes: In the world of late antiquity or the early Middle Ages, it is impossible to define someone as a witch (as opposed, for example, to an amateur herbalist, a heretic or a scold), and none of the legislation of the time attempted to do so. Offenders were designated offenders by virtue of their performing various actions or wearing certain objects declared by the legislation to be condemned or forbidden. For all practical purposes, the “witch” had not yet been invented. There were only practitioners of various kinds of magic, both male and female, who might belong to any rank of ecclesiastical or lay society, and whose actions might, or might not, bring them within the compass of canon or secular law, depending on external factors that were usually local but could, from time to time, be more ...

Humans like shiny things, so much so that English has expressions like "all that glitters is not gold" to remind us that those shiny things may not be valuable. I'm sure other languages have an equivalent expression. So it really shouldn't be a surprise that we have a lot of lore and legends surrounding the various gemstones. Most legends about gems tend to be positive and focus on their healing or protective aspects. Claude Lecouteux notes in his lapidary of sacred stones that "A statistical analysis of the specific powers of stones reveals that these are unevenly distributed between two poles, one consisting of purely magical properties (5%) or protective properties (30%), and the other of therapeutic properties (65%)" 1 (the Hope Diamond is a notable exception. It is said to be cursed, though this has been thought to be a marketing campaign for publicity rather than an actual legend). These purported powers are pulled from the gem by various methods, i...

Genesis 3 is probably one of the most famous parts of the Old Testament. It's where the devil convinced Eve to eat an apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Except not. The Hebrew is pretty clear. The נָחָשׁ mentioned in the first verse is just the Hebrew word for "serpent". It has nothing to do with the figure who would later become identified as the Christian Satan. And it wasn't an apple.          Again, the Hebrew text is reasonably clear. The word used is פְּרִי which literally just means "fruit". Like in English, this can be an actual fruit or metaphorical for the "fruit of ___". Hebrew has a separate word for "apple" תַּפּוּחַ which does not show up (as far as I'm aware) in Genesis. So how did we get the whole "Apple" thing? Because languages are fun! The "apple" translation comes from people working with and getting confused by the Latin translation of the Old Testament. In Latin, the word...

Let's talk about the book of Revelation, because I'm sick of it. It has been used as a fear-mongering tool for televangelists and shady preachers for generations and people think that it's some grand prophecy of the end times. The reality is interesting though much more banal. Revelation is an apocalypse, but that word doesn't mean what you probably think it means. Apocalypse is Greek in origin (ἀποκάλυψις), and just means "revealing". Specifically the revealing of some truth by a higher power to humans. It has nothing to do with prophecy or eschatology, per se . While Revelation does talk about the end of the world, and does so with language and imagery that sounds like a drug-trip, it's less literal and more of a coded rebuke against Rome. Here's why: An apocalypse typically comes from a people in some sort of peril. Revelation is commonly dated to 81 AD/CE, which is the period immediately following the first Jewish-Roman War, where the Romans capt...

Let’s talk about Satan, because why not? The entity that became the Satan of the New Testament and Christianity as a whole has its basis in the Old Testament. Note: basis. But it didn’t exist there in anything resembling the form that it took in later centuries. In the Old Testament, Satan is not a name like it tends to be used today. It’s just a word meaning “adversary”. In Hebrew, this is שָׂטָן and does not refer to this entity specifically. It is used multiple times thoughout the Old Testament to refer to multiple things. At one point, an angel of the lord was explicity referred to as שָׂטָן (Numbers 22:22). It seems like a general word for anything in the way. So, it is not necessarily clear what the entity is, though it is implied that it has some relation to the בְּנֵי הָאֱלֹהִים, the sons of God (Job 1:6). The text does not specify exactly what it is, but makes it sound like a sort of cosmic pest in a celestial court, something under complete control of the Elohim. Everything i...

The Malleus Maleficarum ( Hexenhammer in German) is a witchhunting manual from the 1400s. It is a disturbingly evil book that has lead to the death of thousands during the witchhunts (though some sources do debate its impact). It was written by Dominican clergymen Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, though Kramer appears to have written the bulk of it. Allegedly, Sprenger’s name was attached to give it more credibility, because Kramer was a known pest in his area.  It was the first book to deal with witchcraft, though an earlier work, the Formicarius , touched on the topic. The story goes that the entire existence of the book was is the result of Kramer being angry at not being allowed to ask probing, inappropriately sexual questions to a woman during a heresy trial. So he went back to Cologne and wrote an entire book to explain his views.  It is almost three separate books in one, and each section isn’t really related to any of the others. They were intended for d...