Ekstasis
conceptThe experience of standing outside oneself, the Greek term for mystical transport and altered consciousness.
The Myth
Ekstasis means "standing outside" — ek (out) and stasis (standing). The soul leaves its normal position within the body and enters a state beyond ordinary consciousness. Greek religion cultivated this experience deliberately. The Eleusinian Mysteries promised initiates a moment of ekstasis in which they saw something — the sources are maddeningly vague about what — that permanently transformed their understanding of death. The Dionysian rites used wine, music, and ecstatic dance to shatter the boundaries of individual identity. The Corybantes whirled until they collapsed into prophetic trance. Plato treated ekstasis with characteristic ambivalence. In the Phaedrus he praised the lover's ekstasis as a path to the Forms. In the Republic he worried about poetry's power to draw audiences out of rational self-control. Plotinus, centuries later, described his own mystical unions with the One as ekstasis — the mind stepping beyond itself into direct contact with ultimate reality. The medical writers also used the term: Hippocratic texts describe ekstasis as a symptom — the displacement of bones, the wandering of the mind in fever.
Parents
Greek religious tradition
Symbols
Fun Fact
The street drug "ecstasy" borrowed a word the Greeks reserved for the highest mystical experience — union with the divine.
Words We Inherited
English words and phrases that trace back to this myth:
Explore Further
Corybantes
conceptEcstatic male dancers and drummers associated with the worship of Cybele and Rhea, whose frenzied...
Dionysia
conceptThe major Athenian festival honouring Dionysus, featuring dramatic competitions that gave birth to...
Eleusinian Mysteries
conceptThe most famous secret religious rites of ancient Greece, held annually at Eleusis in honour of...
Mysteries of Samothrace
conceptSecret rites on the island of Samothrace that promised initiates protection at sea, attracting...
Achlys
conceptThe personification of the mist of death that clouded the eyes of the dying, one of the most...
Actaeon's Transformation
conceptThe hunter who accidentally saw Artemis bathing naked and was transformed into a stag, then torn...
Adamantine Sickle
conceptThe unbreakable sickle forged by Gaia and given to Cronus to castrate his father Uranus, an act...
Aegis
conceptThe aegis was a divine shield or breastplate belonging to Zeus and wielded by Athena, fringed with...
Agape
conceptSelfless, unconditional love — the highest form of love in Greek philosophical and theological...
Ages of Man
conceptHesiod's five successive races of humanity — Gold, Silver, Bronze, Heroes, and Iron — each worse...
Agoge
conceptThe brutal Spartan education system that transformed boys into warriors through collective living,...
Aion
conceptThe Greek personification of unbounded, cyclical time, distinct from the linear time of Chronos.