/lit/ - Literature

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>>12645314
Read the book Missing 411 west coast edition by former police officer David Paulides to read about the supernatural entity that has been abducting and killing people without a trace all along the west coast and Rockies for over a hundred years (true story and it's still happening), remember while you are there to not wear bright colors (especially red) and to always stay inside with the doors and windows firmly locked whenever there is a storm going on or the radio says one is approaching (that's when it abducts people to hide its tracks)

>>11100521
>Is the idea then that the Greek strains were under-developed or that they didn't properly congeal into a unified body?

Both but also more broadly that they were not part of an established tradition dating back to a widely agreed-upon original non-human origin (Muhammad and Gabriel, the Sruti etc)

>Did the typical Roman citizen have ready access to salvation? Did his religious practices have a body of doctrine and ritual. Did they have an esoteric core? How meaningful a comparison can we even draw between the Greeks and the Muslims?

From what I understand the formal Roman religious practices were somewhat ritualistic and devoid of profound metaphysical teachings, hence the immense popularity of mystery cults in the Roman Empire as people searched for something that fulfilled that need. I don't believe there was much of an established esoterism outside of the mystery cults. The difference with Islam is that there is an established esoterism in Islam (to a large extent but not entirely limited to Sufism) that is an orthodox part of the larger tradition and fairly widespread; along with various sects that blur the distinction between esoterism and exoterism like Ismailis etc.