| Certain Greek myths contain motifs which are associated with the rituals of the Greco-Roman mystery religions. In turn, these motifs have a long and wide history, extending back to pre-Greek origins and reaching throughout time and space into other cultures. The motifs themselves once belonged to a highly organized and systematic cultus embedded in ancient, Near Eastern culture. A comparison of these mythic motifs in the context of ancient religious rites and cosmology provides a new understanding for the purposes and applications of myth.;Ancient cultus was comprised of four things: ritual, sacred space, myth, and symbol. In oral societies these socio-religious constituents become the cultural glue which bonds citizens with society and society with cosmos. Seasonal festivals and rites ensured the renewal of life on earth. Many ancient rites were linked with the cycles of nature, especially the heavenly cycles. The ancient temple was the center of the ancient, Near Eastern city, and was a template of the universe. Rites performed in the temple were an extension of the cosmic model; they helped maintain a calendar, and like modern festival parallels (i.e., Christmas and Easter), were embedded in the economic and cultural psyche of the population.;The origin of Greek drama hales from temple cultus. Perhaps the best example of this relation lies in Sophocles' Oedipus plays, where the motifs of a guardian sphinx, seven gates, wounds, guides, and gardens are thematic allusions to the initiatory rites of the mystery religions. Remarkably, these mythic motifs are rooted in an ancient cosmography where the Underworld was mapped to certain portions of the sky and the journey of the soul in the afterlife was seen as a grand journey through the cosmos.;This work is an examination of ancient cultus and an exploration of the Greco-Roman mystery religions in the context of ancient religious cosmology. Sophocles' Oedipus plays provide thematic parallels between myth and cult. The results of this study show that many myths descend from a complex, cosmographic, cultic schema. |
