Pagan Regeneration: A Study of Mystery Initiations in the Graeco Roman World

by Harold R. Willoughby

Contents: pagan piety in the Graeco-Roman world; greater mysteries at Eleusis; Dionysian excesses; Orphic reform; regenerative rites of the great mother; death & rebirth in Mithraism; Isiac initiation; new birth experience in Hermeticism; mysticism of Philo; social significance of mystery initiation.

Genres: Religion

320 pages, Paperback

First published August 14, 2003

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really an excellent overview of mystery religions, providing both objective summaries of their beliefs & practices and of their profane history, as well as investigation of their underlying similarities and of those impulses that led their popularity. Willoughby is very much a sceptical, secular scholar of his era, but in this second element of this work and in his penetrating conclusion he almost anticipates such luminaries like Eliade or, more specifically, Uzdavinys.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked up for the chapter on the Eleusinian cult. While outdated (first published in 1929), a good compendium of where the cult was mentioned in Classic and Eraly Christian literature. In some cases providing the reader quotations from those texts.
But, he has whitewashed the cult, and made it totally asexual.
Still worth a look, and I believe still being used in some classes.