lieved in a dying and rising god and in the hope of life after death. “Their whole way of life is framed with a view to following God; this is the rationale of their philosophy” (Ferguson 92). In conjunction with their beliefs in reincarnation and transmigration, the Pythagoreans would not eat meat and were therefore vegetarians. The Pythagoreans also practiced many rituals such as local vegetation rituals. They believed that their founder, Pythagoras, was a semi-divine being (a theos aner) basically considered a shaman and forced this recognition through traditional rituals. “Pythagoreanism, which was not just a social movement but also a mystical world vision of the attunement and correspondence of all things, had its meaning and its end in an effort to assimilate existence to the divine, immortal life” (Encyclopedia of Religion Vol. #12 pg. 114). The belief in the doctrine of the immortal soul was the cornerstone to the beliefs on the soul, transmigration, initiation and the rituals and secrecy of the school.Greek mystery cults focused much of their attention on the soul. The mysteries supposedly founded by Orpheus (Eleusinian, Dionysian and Samothracian) usually devoted their existence to the theme of the immortal soul and its deliverance from the present world (Encyclopedia of Religion Vol. #10 pg. 234). They believed that the soul was a divine element located in the body, and that life was a gift from the gods. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, the members believed in a “kingdom of souls below the earth” (Rohde 218). The only way to the blessed kingdom was to worship Demeter and to keep the soul pure. The members of the cult held the Eluesinian Festival where the religious purification of the worshippers preceded and accompanied the holding of the festival. “To many of the believers it may have appeared that the whole festival itself was principally a great purification and religi...
