Good point on Cicero's political affiliations. I'm sure that must have greatly influenced much of his writing.
I'm curious if you are at all familiar with the theories Micheal Hoffman discusses at his website egodeath.com
His ideas are extremely difficult to summarize, but they are of great relevance to the issues we are discussing (Eleusis, Egyptian mysteries, Roman state religion, Plato, myths, mysticism, etc)
http://egodeath.com/emperorworshipjesusfigure.htm
http://egodeath.com/index.html#_Myth-Religion_and_Mystic
http://egodeath.com/#_Entheogen_Diminishment_Fallacies_1
This intro page is his attempt at explaining his theory in broad terms:
http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm
He would probably answer your question "Why did they keep knowledge from groups of people, if not to keep them in the dark as a means of controlling them?" by saying that, while political control was, of course, a real thing in those times, the original function of mystery cults was actually to initiate participants into true knowledge of the transcendent through the use of ritual and entheogenic drugs.
You also might find this interesting:
http://csp.org/experience/experience.html
Have you had a unity/mystical/transcendent type experience with chemicals or other methods?
I'm curious if you are at all familiar with the theories Micheal Hoffman discusses at his website egodeath.com
His ideas are extremely difficult to summarize, but they are of great relevance to the issues we are discussing (Eleusis, Egyptian mysteries, Roman state religion, Plato, myths, mysticism, etc)
http://egodeath.com/emperorworshipjesusfigure.htm
http://egodeath.com/index.html#_Myth-Religion_and_Mystic
http://egodeath.com/#_Entheogen_Diminishment_Fallacies_1
This intro page is his attempt at explaining his theory in broad terms: http://egodeath.com/EntheogenTheoryOfReligion.htm
He would probably answer your question "Why did they keep knowledge from groups of people, if not to keep them in the dark as a means of controlling them?" by saying that, while political control was, of course, a real thing in those times, the original function of mystery cults was actually to initiate participants into true knowledge of the transcendent through the use of ritual and entheogenic drugs.
You also might find this interesting: http://csp.org/experience/experience.html
Have you had a unity/mystical/transcendent type experience with chemicals or other methods?