Sacred mysteries

The term sacred mysteries generally denotes the area of supernatural phenomena associated with a divinity or a religious ideology. The term has two senses, which often overlap:

Although the term "mystery" is not often used in anthropology, access by initiation or rite of passage to otherwise secret beliefs is an extremely common feature of indigenous religions all over the world.

Mysticism may be defined as an area of philosophical or religious thought which focuses on mysteries in the first sense above. A mystagogue or hierophant is a holder and teacher of secret knowledge in the second sense above.

Pre-Christian religious mysteries

The mystery religions of antiquity were religious cults which required initiation of a "initiate" or new member before they were accepted, and sometimes had different levels of initiation, as well as doctrines which were mysteries in the sense of requiring supernatural explanation. In some, parts of the doctrine were apparently only known to priests. They included the Eleusinian Mysteries, Mithraism, the Cult of Isis, and the Cult of Sol Invictus. Mystery traditions were popular in ancient Greece and during the height of the Roman Empire, and as discussed below, parts of Early Christianity used secrecy in the same way.