This podcast features an article from the June 2011 Hermetism issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. Leading esoteric scholar Joscelyn Godwin traces the outlines of the Hermetic Tradition from Thoth to Hermes Trismegistus, and its essential teachings. He demonstrates how the unique character of the tradition has enabled it to influence much of the Western world and its many paths.

This podcast features an article from the June 2011 Hermetism issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. The Staff of the Rosicrucian Digest provides an introduction to one of the most popular and enduring mystical philosophies on Earth—the tradition attributed to Hermes Trismegistus.

This podcast features an article from the December 2010 Mithraic Mysteries issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. In the history of Mithraic scholarship, the paradigm of Mithras’s Persian origins taught by Franz Cumont, which is highly disputed today, was so firmly entrenched that it wasn’t until almost thirty years after his death that scholars began to openly reassess the evidence and present alternative conclusions. Paradigms can be very difficult to dislodge, as Denise Breton and Christopher Largent discuss in this introduction to their work on changing paradigms in life and society.

This podcast features an article from the December 2010 Mithraic Mysteries issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. It is well known that the image of the bull is prominent in the Mithraic Mysteries. However, the actual role of this image is widely misunderstood, and even inverted in the popular imagination, encouraged by decades of confused pedagogy. In order to gain a wider perspective, it will be useful to survey several aspects of the image of the bull in ancient myths and spiritualities, before we return to clarify his place in the Mithraic Mysteries.

This podcast features an article from the December 2010 Mithraic Mysteries issue of the Rosicrucian Digest.In this selection, Jane B. Sellers discusses the precession of the equinoxes, vital to the understanding of the Mithraic Mysteries. Hipparchus may have rediscovered this astronomical phenomenon, however, it is clear that the Egyptians were aware of it centuries before.

This podcast features an article from the December 2010 Mithraic Mysteries issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. David Ulansey, Ph.D., and others propose that the followers of the Mithraic Mysteries worshipped a god who was powerful enough to adjust the positions of the stars, referring to the shift caused by the precession of the equinoxes.

This podcast features an article from the December 2010 Mithraic Mysteries issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. Between the end of the first century CE and the last part of the fourth century, a mystery religion called Mithraism was extremely popular among soldiers, merchants, and civil administrators in the Roman Empire. Today more than four hundred locations of Mithraic worship have been identified in every area of the Roman Empire. Between the second and fourth centuries CE, Mithraism may have vied with Christianity for domination of the Roman world.

This podcast features an article from the December 2010 Mithraic Mysteries issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. One of the pioneering esoteric scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, G.R.S. Mead (1863–1933) brought wider attention to many ancient materials, including this ritual which some scholars dismiss, and others cautiously believe retains some Mithraic elements.

This podcast features an article from the December 2010 Mithraic Mysteries issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. Who was Mithras and what are the Mithraic Mysteries? There was little written about the Mithraic Mysteries. It is only through the inferences drawn from the cave or cave-like Mithraea, the generally present Tauroctony scene and other images, the initiation titles, and the dedicatory stelai erected by primary participants, that we can make any conclusions about the content of the Mysteries. The author provides an overview and introduction to the Mithraic Mysteries.

This podcast features an article from the 2010 No. 1 Isis issue of the Rosicrucian Digest. In this commentary on Chapter 11 of The Golden Ass, John Carey connects Lucius’s experiences with the ancient Egyptian concept of the Amduat, demonstrating the Egyptian tradition contained within the Isis Mysteries.