https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=FyWhAtB_tfo
The very essence of Greek civilization, which so much of our civilization, was rooted in these hallucinogenic mysteries, essentially, or at least in the hallucinian mysteries. And so please elaborate on the mysteries and their significance. There were lots of mysteries in the ancient world, the mysteries of Eleusis, the mysteries of Dionysus, the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, but Eleusis, which today is this relatively small town of only about 30,000 people, 13 miles northwest of Athens, for about 2,000 years it was kind of the epicenter of the Mediterranean spiritual universe. It was not a sideshow. I sometimes referred to it as the real religion of the ancient Greeks and the best and brightest among them. It called to initiates like Plato, Pindar, Cicero, who actually called it the most divine thing that Athens ever produced. The most divine thing. So not democracy, the arts and sciences and philosophy, but Eleusis. Marcus Aurelius famously rebuilt Eleusis when it was almost destroyed. So it mattered to these people.