ABSTRACT
Mystic initiation is a rite of passage. That is to say, it is a ritual that changes fundamentally the state or status of one or more people. A rite of passage with which we are familiar is the wedding, which achieves the transition to the married state. Mystery-cult involves the incorporation (or ‘initiation’) of an individual into a real or imagined group which belongs at least in part to the next world. The initiand chooses to undergo a secret and frightening ritual that consists of a transition from the anxious ignorance of the outsider, through an experience that might be like death and that involves revelation (sometimes of sacred objects), into a new blissful state as an insider (initiate). As a pre-enactment of death, it might remove (as do modern near-death experiences) the fear of death.
