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Unlike the rest of religious life in Ancient Greece, the rituals, practices and knowledge of mystery cults were only supposed to be available to their initiates, so relatively little is known about the mystery cults of Ancient Greece. [18] Some of the major schools included the Eleusinian mysteries, the Dionysian mysteries and the Orphic mysteries.
“Like many ancient New Year’s festivals, (Akitu) lauded creation and fertility on both an agricultural and cosmic scale,” Moss said. “The mythic origin of the feast was the creation of the ...
Festivals in ancient Rome were a very important part in Roman religious life during both the Republican and Imperial eras, and one of the primary feat of "holy days"; singular also feriae or dies ferialis) were either public (publicae) or private . State holidays were celebrated by the Roman people and received public funding.
The Heracleia were ancient festivals honouring the divine hero Heracles. The ancient Athenians celebrated the festival, which commemorated the death of Heracles, on the second day of the month of Metageitnion (which would fall in late July or early August), at the Κυνοσαργες (Kynosarges) gymnasium at the demos Diomeia outside the ...
[8] In his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (1889), Smith draws a distinction between ancient and modern religion: in modern religion, doctrine is central; in ancient religion, ritual is central. [1] On the whole, Smith argues, ancients tended to be conservative with regard to rituals, making sure to pass them down faithfully.
The Bacchanali were unofficial, privately funded popular Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They were almost certainly associated with Rome's native cult of Liber, and probably arrived in Rome itself around 200 BC. Like all mystery religions of the ancient world, very little is known of their ...
The Romans also celebrated hilaria as a feria stativa, on March 25, the seventh day before the Calends of April, in honor of Cybele, the mother of the gods; and it is probably to distinguish these hilaria from those mentioned above, that the Augustan History [2] calls them Hilaria Matris Deûm. The day of its celebration was the first after the ...
In Germanic religion, one distinguishes between household worship and community worship. This was similar to religious worship in Roman religion. In household worship the male head of the household would act as the "priest". [26] Spiritual rituals frequently occurred in consecrated groves or upon islands on lakes where perpetual fires burned. [28]