Then (1978), The Road to Eleusis
The Prohibition of the Mysteries: Political Religion
The suppression of the Eleusinian Mysteries by Theodosius in 392 CE was not because they had failed but because Christianity could not coexist with a competing institution that offered direct, experiential contact with the divine.
confirmed
The historical record is clear: Theodosius's Edict of Thessalonica (380 CE) mandated Christianity for all Roman citizens; his 392 CE decrees specifically banned non-Christian sacrifice and worship. The Mysteries were active and well-attended until political prohibition ended them. The parallel with contemporary drug prohibition, suppression of direct experience of altered states by institutional religion or government, is the political argument Ruck and Wasson embedded in the scholarship, and it maps directly onto current debates about psychedelic legalization.
Sources
- Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum; Theodosius Codex
- Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (1961)
- Ruck, The Road to Eleusis (1978)