Julianna 
(What it would genuinely be like to be a member)
At times, we shake our heads when we hear about ancient cults. But these seven cults might put a perspective on things.
1. The Cult of Dionysus
Being in this cult meant leaving your home after dark when respectable people stayed inside, climbing into the mountains with women you’d never speak to in daylight, drinking wine that wasn’t watered down like it should be, and dancing until your feet bled.
You shrieked words you didn’t remember saying. Your hair came loose. You felt something in your chest that wasn’t you. The other women’s eyes looked black in the torchlight as you tore apart raw meat with your hands and ate it; you weren’t pretending anymore. You’d become the maenad, and the god was inside you, was using your throat to scream.
2. The Mithraic Mysteries
Joining Mithras meant descending stone steps into a cave barely tall enough to stand in, the air thick and still. You sat on a stone bench in the dark with men who would never tell their wives what happened here, not even on their deathbeds.
During initiation, they might have bound you, threatened you, made you lie in a pit while they killed something above you and let the blood run down.
You took oaths you couldn’t break. You learned handshakes, passwords, and ranks off by heart. You thoroughly enjoyed the ritual meal by torchlight under the carved scene of Mithras driving his knife into the white bull’s neck; you understood: this was yours now, and you could never speak of it.
3. The Cult of Hecate
To follow Hecate meant walking alone to the crossroads at night—the place where three roads met and anything could be waiting. You set down the food offering: eggs, garlic, fish, cakes shaped like keys. You spoke her name.
Then you walked away without looking back, no matter what sounds you heard behind you, footsteps, breathing, a dog’s low growl. You knew if you turned around, if you looked, the restless dead might see your face and know where you lived. That was not good, so you walked faster. Your neck prickled, your heart pounded, but you kept focused. At home, you barred the door and checked the threshold for muddy footprints that weren’t yours.
4. The Orphic Mysteries
Part of being a member of the Orphic belief was the knowledge that you were immediately different to everyone else. So were the rules. No ‘tall poppy’ syndrome here.
No meat ever touched your lips, not at weddings, not at festivals, not when your family pushed the plate toward you and asked what was wrong with you. You performed purifications with water, sulfur, and sea salt, and you always wore white.
You memorised the lines exactly: “I am a child of Earth and Starry Heaven, but my race is of Heaven alone.” You would speak these words to the guardians of the underworld after death. If you forgot them, if you drank from the wrong spring, your soul would be lost in the dark forever. Recycled, punished and wandering. So you practised and never got it wrong.
5. The Aztec Cult of Huitzilopochtli
Watching priests drag captives up the steps as they screamed for mercy didn’t bother you at all.
The drums would play, shaking your soul bone-deep. You’d smile and be glad that another person was going to take the cut, not you.
You saw the obsidian knife catch the light. You watched the priest cut open the chest and pull out the heart while it was still beating. You felt relief; at least the sun would sit in the sky for another day. You were safe. You walked home happy, down the stairs that gushed blood from the sacrificed person. Probably wondering what was for dinner, or what poem you might write later on in the day.
6. The Ancient Cults of Cybele and Attis
Joining Cybele’s worship meant losing yourself in processions so loud you couldn’t hear yourself think. Drums pounding, flutes shrieking, people spinning and wailing. You whipped yourself until you bled. You cut your arms with knives as offerings, watching your blood drip onto the stones. And if you were a man seized by the goddess during the Day of Blood, you might castrate yourself right there in the street in a frenzy of ecstasy and pain, using a sharp stone or pottery shard.
Afterwards, you’d wear women’s clothing, let your hair grow long, and serve the goddess as gallus, neither man nor woman, but hers. Other men would look away from you in the street. You wouldn’t care. You’d given yourself to something bigger.
7. The Mystery Cult of Isis
Initiation into Isis meant fasting for days until you felt hollow, light-headed, separated from the world.
They blindfolded you and led you down into darkness. You heard chanting in Egyptian, words you didn’t understand. You couldn’t tell how many people were in the room with you. They made you experience a symbolic death where you walked through representations of the underworld, felt heat and cold, and heard terrible sounds.
Some initiates reported travelling to the boundary of death itself, seeing visions of the goddess. When they finally removed the blindfold, you stood before the statue of Isis, crowned with light, dressed in sacred robes, holding sacred objects you’d never touched before. You’d died. She’d brought you back. You weren’t the same person who went down those steps. Everyone could see it in your face.
Some gods asked for prayers. These ones asked for everything.
