To a certain extent, the Eleusinian Mysteries served to strengthen new views, and their Orphics formulated them even more clearly.
It was a religious sect, which considered its founder the legendary prophet Orpheus. The Orphic religion was mystical monotheism. The gods known from mythology were for Orphics only external forms of a single divine being. Dionysus, whose name was Zagrei, the son of Zeus and Persephone, received control of the world from his father as a child. And the titans wanted to kill him. The little god ran away from them, turning on the road into different animals. Finally, when he turned into a bull, the titans caught him, tore him to pieces, cooked and ate, and buried his heart in the ground. Athena found the heart of Zagreus, brought it to Zeus, and he swallowed it. Later, another Dionysus was born from Zeus, whom the world knows as the son of Semela. Zeus burned the titans with lightning and created people from their ashes. And because the titans before this ate the body of Dionysus, each person consists of two principles: the good-Dionysus and the evil-inherited from the titans. People must be freed from this damned heredity, that is, from the body, because in them from Dionysus there is only a soul. It is necessary to possess the body, to tame it, because only in this way can the soul be freed from bodily bonds.
According to Orphic teachings, after death, the soul goes to hell, where judgment takes place over it. The criminal receives a well-deserved punishment, which, however, does not last forever. Having cleansed, the soul returns to earth and enters a new body in order to atone for the sins of the previous life. Thus, she is constantly reborn and dies. Mysterious in the Orphic mystery receives a merciful sentence in the underworld, and sometimes it is freed from repeated births. But mystery alone is not enough. Only one who has lived his life kindly and honestly deserves the mercy of Dionysus and unites with God forever.
The Orphic Mysteries were a private affair, not a single state did not take care of them. They were performed directly in the open air or in temporary drops. During the mystery, ceremonies of purification, mystery, and symbolic representations were carried out. But the main force of the Orphics was always their literature, various poetic works, and prose. Orphic priests, like sorcerers, walked the streets and houses, preaching the teachings of Orpheus and gave people advice on how to escape from the afterlife. Believers, when they died, put in the grave signs with instructions on how to behave in the next world. The soul had to know the formulas, which were very necessary for salvation .. This is what it had to proclaim when it crossed the threshold of death: “I am a child of the Earth and starry Heaven, but my race is divine.” According to these words, the watchmen of the "source of memory" allowed the soul to quench his thirst. From here, the soul went to the rulers of the underworld and told them that it had escaped from the oppressive circle of life, and they answered her: “You will be a god, not a man,” and they have accepted into the country of eternal happiness.
The Orphic creed, proclaimed by traveling priests and prophets, spread throughout Hellas, especially among the lower strata, who found in it a reassurance and hope for a better fate. And the views of Xenophon received a lot of fans among philosophers. These philosophers attacked religion more and more sharply, and in the end in the 5th century truly atheistic voices sounded. They were opposed by the religiosity of most Greeks, which was fueled by patriotic feelings. At the time of Pericles and at the beginning of the 4th century Athens, seized by patriotic-religious enthusiasm, was decorated with beautiful temples and at the same time began to persecute freethinkers, bringing them to court.
But in the second half of the 4th century, the situation is changing. Greek states are weakening and are beginning to slowly decline, and together with state power, patriotic and religious feelings are also fading. In these troubling times, the Sacred Goddess ascends over other deities. Thanks to the campaigns and conquests of Alexander the Great, Greek civilization receives new possessions in the East.