ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the embodied mystery experiences of individual initiates. Various mystery initiations were very popular: the majority of adult Athenians were Eleusinian mustai. Alteration of the initiate's state of consciousness, mania, was a major element of mystery rites. All of them promised the mustai contact with the divine, either in the form of possession by the god or as a revelation of the divine truth about life and death. There are two categories of telestic mania: the first one, most obvious and straightforward, consisted of excitement or even trance interpreted by the ancients as divine possession and characteristic of ecstatic initiations. In the Corybantic, Sabaziac, and some Bacchic rites, attaining the state of divine mania was the main purpose for the participation in the ceremony. The second category was more complex and is difficult to ascertain on the basis of the incomplete evidence at the disposal.
