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040			_aUtSlPG
041		7	_aen _2iso639-1
050		4	_aHS
100	1		_aHenne am Rhyn, Otto, _d1828-1914
245	1	0	_aMysteria
264		1	_aSalt Lake City, UT : _bProject Gutenberg, _c2025
300			_a1 online resource : _bmultiple file formats
336			_atext _btxt _2rdacontent
337			_acomputer _bc _2rdamedia
338			_aonline resource _bcr _2rdacarrier
500			_aRelease date is 2025-12-24
505	0		_aMysteries of the East and of barbarous nations -- The Grecian mysteries and the Roman Bacchanalia -- The Pythagorean League and other secret associations -- Son of man; Son of God -- A pseudo-Messiah; a lying prophet -- The Knights Templar -- The Femgerichte -- Stonemasons' lodges of the Middle Age -- Rise and constitution of Freemasonry -- Secret societies of the eighteenth century -- The Illuminati -- Secret societies of various kinds.
508			_aRichard Tonsing, Peter Becker, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
520			_a"Mysteria" by Otto Henne am Rhyn is a historical study written in the late 19th century. It surveys esoteric doctrines, temple mysteries, and secret orders from antiquity to modern times, explaining their rites, symbols, aims, and social influence in a unified comparative narrative. The opening of the work frames humanity’s enduring fascination with the hidden, arguing that curiosity, fear, and ambition give rise to mysteries and to secret societies that pursue power, reform, charity, art, or even destruction. A translator’s note outlines the book’s sweep—from Egyptian and Greco-Roman rites through medieval orders to Freemasonry and the Illuminati—praising the author’s synthesis. The first chapters trace religion’s roots in the personification of nature and show how priests reserved rational, allegorical interpretations for initiates while the populace kept literal myths. A substantial section on Egypt covers priestly and warrior castes, an astronomy-based cult, animal symbolism, the rise of solar theology (Re, Horus, Osiris), Akhenaten’s Aten reform and its reversal, beliefs about the soul (ka, ba), judgment after death, and a likely monotheistic core taught in secret. Brief surveys of Babylonia/Assyria (Sumerian–Semitic blend, planetary gods, priest-astronomers, creation and flood epics, Istar’s descent), Persia (Zoroastrian priestly dominance and dualism), and India (Brahman pantheism, popular polytheism, Buddhist reform and later esoteric turns) follow, along with examples of secret leagues among so‑called “barbarous” peoples. The narrative then turns to Greece—adogmatic civic worship, seers and oracles, and the inward, un‑Hellenic cast of the mysteries—leading into the Eleusinian cult’s myth (Demeter–Persephone) and the structure of its festivals and processions, where the excerpt breaks off. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
534			_pOriginally published: _cChicago: Stockham Publishing Company, Inc., 1895
653			_aMysteries, Religious
653			_aSecret societies
700	1		_aFitzgerald, J. _q(Joseph), _d1837-1908
856	4		_uhttps://archive.org/details/mysteriahistoryo00hennuoft
856	4	0	_uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77541
999			_c118261 _d118261