(continued from last post)
E.) The Orphic Mysteries of Pythagoras

As a descendant of Dionysios, Orpheus is the intellectual image
of a demi-god, raised to deity by his sufferings in the underworld. His
is a perfect symbol for all who follow the paths of the mysteries:
imperfect, deficient Humanity raised to sufficiency and perfection by
self-sacrifice and the superior knowledge of the priestly caste.

Orpheus has the lyre and the gift of music from Apollo, yet ends up
like Dionysios, torn apart by Thracian bacchantes. The suffering of
Orpheus, who loses Euridice (through fear, the first pitfall of all
mystery knowledge -- rational fear has its roots in the instinct for
self-preservation and therefore runs counter to the self-sacrificial
leitmotif of all Mystery Religions) and is then dismembered by the
Maenads; a paradigm of the suffering and rebirth of the sleeping soul.

The Orphic mysteries are complex in the extreme. The most important
aspect of the Orphic Mysteries was that humanity and the gods are
related. At a most subtle and sensitive level a blurring of the
edges occurs, an overlapping of human consciousness and divine
awareness. "Everything that lives is Holy" becomes a reality in
the interaction of the divine and the mundane. It is interesting that
as the suffering "imperfect" human becomes "perfected" and "divine,"
the realization that is at the core of the old Shamanic lifeways comes
to the fore: There is no separation between human and divine, Nature is
not fallen, but the very body of the Great Mother, and that all life
matters.

III. CHRISTIANITY VIEWED AS A MYSTERY RELIGION

A.) The Foundation of Christianity
Christianity is not a single entity, but a hodgepodge of various
ideas brought together in a syncrete. There are numerous sects of
Christianity, from the elaborate, ritualized Roman Catholic, Eastern
Orthodox and Anglican traditions; to the less formal Protestant sects;
down to the ultra-liberal Unitarian-Universalists and mystic Anthro-
sophists, Gnostics, and Swedenborgians.

Then, there are also the stricter, more legalistic groups (usually
Protestant in origin) that are collectively known as Evangelicals and
include, most ominously, Fundamentalists, Christian Identity Churches
with their anti-Semitism and Racism fused completely within their
dogma, and the Reconstructionists (not to be confused with Reconstruc-
tionist Judaism and Reconstructionist Neo-paganism such as Wicca) who
believe that the Bible should replace the Constitution and the canon of
US Law as the guiding principle of America, to be administered by
clergy. Their uniting tenet is that the Bible is to be taken literally,
and is to be considered inerrant and directly inspired by the Christian
God.

There are also Neo-Christian groups, considered by most Christians
to be beyond the pale of Christianity, like the Christian Scientists,
Mormons, The Native American Church, and the Unification Church of
Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Even the Black Muslims quote extensively from
the Old and New Testaments along with the Qur'an.

These various sects of Christianity disagree far more than they
agree. Wars have been fought over even the smallest minutiae of
differences in dogma, and even now rival sects blast each other with as
much gusto as Sunni Moslems blast Shia Moslems in Beirut. The only
thing that truly unites them is a single document: the New Testament of
the Bible.
(continued next post)