“The sinking within the eternal is the end of philosophy, just as the end of religion is the sinking within the Mysteries”

Plutarch, biographer, essayist, philosopher, priest, ambassador, magistrate (AD 46 – AD 120, aged 73–74)

Cretan Mysteries: In Cretan mysteries, people worshiped Mother Earth. By failing to tame the powers of nature, they deified them and worshiped them as deities. Mythologically, the birth of Zeus in the cave “Idaion Andron” and other Greek Gods as well as the conduction of the first mysterious rituals, seem to have catalytically influenced the later Greek mysteries. Characteristic of the importance of the Minoan mysteries is the fact that Pythagoras visited Crete to initiate the Minoan mysteries. The basis of Minoan religion, as well as all primitive religions, is “the cycle of vegetation”.

Kaviria Mysteries: The Kaviria mysteries were the religious ceremonies that honored the Kaviries. There was the division into minor and great holy Mysteries. Contrary to Eleusinian, the Kaviria Mysteries honored the Birth. The mysteries consisted of five parts. The purge, the deliverance of the ceremony, the supervision, the wreathing, the Perfection and the bliss. The initiations were conducted at a certain period every year and lasted nine days.

Dionysian – Orphic Mysteries: Orpheus was the first teacher of Dionysian Worship. The places where he could teach his worship were many in Greece, for example in Thassos, in Tempi in Thrace. The descendants had three classes of initiation for either men or women. The mysteries began with a Hymn to God and then became a celebration of instruments and drums. As they approached the evening, the candidates were preparing for the initiation, which was completed in an underground cave. No one knows what was taking place in the cave, as there are no written testimonies.

Eleusinian Mysteries: Unlike the Kaviria Mysteries, the purpose of the Eleusinian Mysteries was to give knowledge to people about immortality, not of course as a body but as a soul. Eleusinian mysteries were distinguished in minor and great and were held twice a year. The minor mysteries took place in Agra, a suburb of Athens, near Ardittos on the banks of the Ilissos river, in three periods:
A) during the month of Anthousirona (February – March)
B) after seven months (September)
C) one year after the first meeting

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The Greeks from Thira named their colony in North Africa Cyrene from the water source Cyrus, dedicated to the god Apollo, who he gifted the Greeks with the plant Silfio. According to the myth, Vattos A’ disembarked in Cyrenaica and was led by the indigenous people to an area that had a “hole in the sky”, probably because it was raining. There was a sanctuary of god Apollo and Thirai from Greece/ Hellas decided to establish their city by honoring the holy territories of the god of light.

Silfio herb was used by all medics or mystics in the Mediterranean as a medical aid for contraception and abortion, but also as a panacea for almost everything from a sore throat, fever, indigestion, aches and pains, warts, and all kinds of maladies to leprosy. Silfio refers to one of the 500 species of plants recorded in the works of Theophrastus and Dioscorus. Hippocrates applied it as a cataplasm. But its use was not only for medicine. Athenaeus of Naucratis in “Deipnosophistae” (Ancient Greek: Δειπνοσοφισταί, Deipnosophistaí, lit. “The Dinner Sophists/Philosophers/Experts”) reports that they ate salted fish, marinated with wine, oil and silfio. By the Roman era, the herb silfio had become so adorable that it appeared in almost all recipes of the Romans’ cooking “bible” as well as in Apicius Caelius 10 volumes “De re Culinaria”. Julius Caesar acquired large quantities of the plant, which he gave to the treasury of the Roman state. The Romans called the juice of the plant laserpicium and they considered that it “worth its weight in denarii” (silver coins), or even gold.

According to Theophrastus, silfio could not be cultivated. It began to disappear and it is said that the last branches of the plant were offered as a gift to Emperor Nero. Silfio herb was particularly cultivated and consumed in the 2nd and 3rd centuries BC, during which it was considered the favorite plant of the ancient Greeks, Romans and Egyptians. It is believed to have extincted in the 1st century BC. Although humans had tried to cultivate it elsewhere, the plant silfio had nowhere to grow except in the Cyrene. To date, botanists have not been able to identify it.

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