I am curious if anyone has researched this before. Supposedly a religious initiation ceremony by a secretive group that predates the greek dark ages. Their goal was to elevate man above the human sphere into the divine and to assure his redemption by making him a god and so conferring immortality upon him. That sounds a lot like satanism to me. After their temple was destroyed in 170CE by Sarmatians it was rebuilt by Marcus Aurelius who was the only lay person allowed to enter. Also Julian the last pagan emperor of rome was the last emperor to be initiated into the group.

Just something I stumbled on during my research of the asteroid Persephone who was a goddess the cult revered.

I apologize to bump the thread with no answers, but I do have more questions. When you mentioned the Greek dark ages, all I could think about was the sea people that ravaged the ancient civilizations at the time, until Ramses III waged successful campaigns against them. Ramses III wrote “They desolated its people and its land was like that which has never existed." These wars were talked about as cataclysmic and apocalyptic events . I wonder who the sea people were and what their purposes were.

You know how the Egyptian civilization managed to last for thousands of years is a feat in of itself.