1. As of December 2022, there were 1.22 million employer businesses in Canada. Of these, 1.19 million (97.8%) were small businesses, 23,395 (1.9%) were medium-sized businesses, and 3,128 (0.3%) were large businesses.
2. Between 2016 and 2020, the average number of small businesses created annually was 100,475, and the average number of small businesses that disappeared annually was 96,548.
3. Between 2001 and 2020, the number of small businesses increased every year, except for three: in 2013, 2016, and 2020 when more businesses disappeared (97,220; 95,408; and 120,344) than were created (95,395; 94,695; and 91,548)

• a small business has 1 to 99 paid employees;
• a medium-sized business has 100 to 499 paid employees; and
• a large business has 500 or more paid employees.

• An opportunity to work within one of the most diverse DC-based organizations
• Generous tuition and professional development reimbursements
• Mentorship opportunities with leaders focused on your growth
• Competitive benefits like 401k matching, 11 federal holidays, etc.
• And more!

• Lead a team in operating HUD’s cybersecurity training and awareness program
• Serve as primary point-of-contact and liaison with HUD staff for program activities
• Work with the client to develop a prioritized list of training and awareness campaign activities
• Manage review and update of CSAT training, awareness campaign, and ISSO training materials
• Maintain program materials, as needed and as directed by the client, to address new requirements and changes in cybersecurity policy, technology, and culture
• Oversee the program’s lunch and learn training sessions and the ISSO forum/training, including speaker identification and coordination
• Coordinate and facilitate the client’s annual Incident Response and Contingency Planning tabletop exercise
• Support reporting activities for training that is not maintained within the LMS (i.e., contractor CSAT, specialized training)
• Work collaboratively with Instructors, Facilitators, Instructional Designers (ISD), Multimedia Designers, Testing Specialists, Programmers, Infrastructure Support, and other team members to develop and/or update Learning objectives and conduct content development tasking.
• Provide draft content input to Instructional Designers for storyboards, flow diagrams, instructor materials, student materials, and other training-related deliverables to assist in designing and developing complex, technically accurate, and instructionally sound learning solutions using a variety of delivery methods.
• Create scenarios and cumulative virtual practical exercise environments that mimic a real-world experience and provide learners an opportunity to demonstrate concepts presented in the course.
• Research, develop, and refine content to be applied in interactive eLearning solutions of a technical nature.
• Participate in course reviews and provide recommendations for course improvements
• Use technologies, techniques, and tools to develop and execute content including, but not limited to, Virtual Machines (VM), XML, Networking, Windows, Unix, Security Concepts, HTML, scripting, Perl, Python, etc.
• Work with subject matter experts to ensure that training content is accurate and up-to-date.
• Generate and develop training content and practical exercises identified to meet the Department's Cybersecurity Training and Awareness program.
• Coordinate with component coordinators to make training content available to component users.
• Generate and develop training content and practical exercises that simulate a phishing attack on Components.
• Manages and administers processes and tools that enable the department to identify, document, and access intellectual capital and information content.
• Perform Task Analysis on newly developed software as required.
• Develop/Design content/courses incorporating technology into the design and delivery.
• Consult with instructors and subject matter experts to determine instructional requirements, collect data, customize design proposals, and implement solutions.
• Collaborate with technical developers/designers to produce media that supports instructional goals and objectives.

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
• Minimum ten (10) years of general work experience and eight (8) years of relevant functional experience
• Familiarity with the following IT security concepts, practices, and tools:
  • TCP/IP
  • Packet Analysis
  • SIEM Operation
  • Understanding of how exploits work and appear within network traffic
  • Intrusion Detection Technology
  • Understanding of rootkits, exploits, and other types of malware
  • Awareness and understanding of popular attack tools (e.g., Zeus, Blackhole, Slowloris, LOIC, Cryptolocker, Pony Loader, etc.)
  • Ability to communicate effectively the actual status of an incident, attack, or other cyber issue.
  • Awareness of tradecraft used by Nation State APT actors
  • Capability to support the following systems: ArcSight SIEM; Splunk; Novetta Cyber Analytics; FireEye MPS Suite; Snort IDS; Bro IDS; Fidelis XPS; CloudShield Trusted Cyber Solution Orchestrator; Microsoft Advanced Threat Analytics; Counterattack Active Defense
  • Ability to use technologies, techniques, and tools to develop and execute content including, but not limited to, Virtual Machines (VM), XML, Networking, Windows, Unix, Security Concepts, HTML, scripting, Perl, Python, etc.
• Minimum four (4) years experience leading a team of training support staff
• Minimum of four (4) years of experience in IT security and awareness training program development and management
• Minimum of four (4) years of experience developing training requirements and training plans
• Minimum of four (4) years of experience planning, preparing, and managing training program communications
• Experience using SCORM for training content development and delivery
• Experience developing new training content, materials, and courses
• Experience with various learning types and training delivery methods
• Experience leading projects for the development of courses and content
• Experience tracking and reporting on training compliance

• CISSP or PMP certification

Additional Information

• All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.
• Compensation is unique to each candidate and relative to the skills and experience they bring to the position. The salary range for this position is typically $140-150k. This does not guarantee a specific salary, as compensation is based upon multiple factors such as education, experience, certifications, and other requirements and may fall outside of the above-stated range.
• Highlights of our benefits include Health/Dental/Vision, 401(k) match, Flexible Time Off, STD/LTD/Life Insurance, Referral Bonuses, professional development reimbursement, maternity/paternity leave, mobile phone stipend, pre-tax commuter benefits, the opportunity to participate in our mentorship program, and more!
• MindPoint is committed to maintaining a diverse environment. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to sex, race, ethnicity, age, national origin, citizenship, religion, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, pregnancy, family structure, marital status, ancestry, domestic partner status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, veteran or military status, or any other basis prohibited by law.

Self-employment guide: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/t4002/t4002-1.html
Keep track of your revenue and expenses. These will be reported on form T2125 which is part of your personal tax return. (https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pbg/t2125/t2125-21e.pdf)
Business expenses: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/sole-proprietorships-partnerships/business-expenses.html
HST/GST: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses.html
Grants:
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canada-small-business-financing-program/en/find-loan-your-small-business
https://innovation.ised-isde.canada.ca/innovation/s/?language=en_CA
https://www.ontario.ca/page/available-funding-opportunities-ontario-government
https://ontariobusinessgrants.com/grant-search/

Self-employment guide: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/t4002/t4002-1.html
Keep track of your revenue and expenses. These will be reported on form T2125 which is part of your personal tax return. (https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pbg/t2125/t2125-21e.pdf)
Business expenses: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/sole-proprietorships-partnerships/business-expenses.html
HST/GST: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses.html
Grants:
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canada-small-business-financing-program/en/find-loan-your-small-business
https://innovation.ised-isde.canada.ca/innovation/s/?language=en_CA
https://www.ontario.ca/page/available-funding-opportunities-ontario-government
https://ontariobusinessgrants.com/grant-search/

Self-employment guide: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/t4002/t4002-1.html
Keep track of your revenue and expenses. These will be reported on form T2125 which is part of your personal tax return. (https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pbg/t2125/t2125-21e.pdf)
Business expenses: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/sole-proprietorships-partnerships/business-expenses.html
HST/GST: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses.html
Grants:
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canada-small-business-financing-program/en/find-loan-your-small-business
https://innovation.ised-isde.canada.ca/innovation/s/?language=en_CA
https://www.ontario.ca/page/available-funding-opportunities-ontario-government
https://ontariobusinessgrants.com/grant-search/

Self-employment guide: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/t4002/t4002-1.html
Keep track of your revenue and expenses. These will be reported on form T2125 which is part of your personal tax return. (https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/cra-arc/formspubs/pbg/t2125/t2125-21e.pdf)
Business expenses: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/sole-proprietorships-partnerships/business-expenses.html
HST/GST: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/gst-hst-businesses.html
Grants:
https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/canada-small-business-financing-program/en/find-loan-your-small-business
https://innovation.ised-isde.canada.ca/innovation/s/?language=en_CA
https://www.ontario.ca/page/available-funding-opportunities-ontario-government
https://ontariobusinessgrants.com/grant-search/

Orpheus, for instance, brought from Egypt most of his mystic ceremonies, the orgiastic rites that accompanied his wanderings, and his fabulous account of his experiences in Hades. For the rite of Osiris is the same as that of Dionysus and that of Isis very similar to that of Demeter, the names alone having been interchanged; and the punishments in Hades of the unrighteous, the Fields of the Righteous, and the fantastic conceptions, current among the many, which are figments of the imagination – all these were introduced by Orpheus in imitation of the Egyptian funeral customs.

• A story or myth about a deity that goes through some kind of death and rebirth/resurrection or journey to the underworld and back. The deity becomes a prototype or model for the initiates.
  
• A water purification ritual that precedes the main initiation ritual. The initiate had to be put in a pure state before initiation.
  
• A ritual emulation or reenactment of the experiences of the deity by the initiates. The death and rebirth/resurrection of the deity is reenacted or closely related to the initiation ritual that involved a symbolic death and rebirth of the initiate.
  
• A "sacred" meal that integrates the new initiate into the cult and forms a bond between the initiates and the mystery cult deity.
  
• The initiate attaining "perfection" or "completion" through initiation.
  

“Salvation” and “eternal life” are Christian concepts, and we might think that the Egyptian myth can all too easily be viewed through the lens of Christian tradition. Quite the contrary, in my opinion, Christian myth is itself thoroughly stamped by Egyptian tradition, by the myth of Isis and Osiris, which from the very beginning had to do with salvation and eternal life...
This first phase [of the mortuary ritual] was carried out in the name of purification. Everything “foul,” that is, everything perishable that could represent a danger to the goal of achieving an eternal form, was removed from the body. For this reason, in the few representations of the embalming ritual, this phase is represented as a purifying bath. The corpse lay “on” (that is, in) a basin, and water was poured over it. The Egyptian word for such a basin is Sj, “lake,” and such a “lake” is mentioned repeatedly in the accompanying spells...
We now understand why the embalming ritual had to portray the corpse not just as a lifeless body but as a dismembered one... The myth dramatized this condition, telling how Seth slew his brother Osiris, tore his body into pieces, and scattered his limbs throughout all of Egypt. In the embalming ritual, this myth was played out for each deceased person, even if he had in no way been killed and dismembered but rather had died a peaceful, natural death... In Egyptian mortuary belief, Osiris was the prototype of every deceased individual. Everyone would become Osiris in death and be endowed with life by Isis...
The ordinary deceased was a follower of Osiris, was called Osiris and compared to him, and became a member of his following. He came into possession not only of life but also of personal status and recognition. He bore the name of the god, along with his own titles and his personal name, as well as the epithet “justified/vindicated.” He smote Seth, which meant that he had conquered death... In this last stage of the mummification process, the deceased experienced the Judgment of the Dead and received the aristocratic status of a follower of Osiris in the netherworld. He was vindicated against all accusations and absolved of any and all guilt, of any sin that could hinder his transition into the next life... The guilt of the deceased was that which stood in the way of his transformation into the eternal form of a “transfigured ancestral spirit.” It was the Egyptian form of the Pauline concept, “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)...
Perhaps we are to understand this talk about bread that does not grow moldy and beer that does not grow sour quite literally, as an allusion to symbolic and thus imperishable representations of these offering items... The relationship between the offering meal and ascent to the sky, the latter being the sacramental explanation of the former, is one of the fundamentals of the Egyptian mortuary cult. The offering was the ritual framework for the image of death as transition. Spells that mention the deceased's passage from the realm of death, where the conditions of life are reversed, into the Elysian realm, where the order of eternal life prevails, have especially to do with eating and drinking... The nourishment to which he had a claim demonstrated that the deceased no longer belonged to that realm [of death] but rather had been called to life eternal. He strove for a share of this nourishment in the Elysian realm, and he ate of this nourishment in order to belong to it. Means and end intertwined, with the result that the deceased's food became the medium of his salvation from the realm of death (the aspect of salvation is clearly expressed by the verb sdj "to take out, rescue"). The offerings therefore had to be pure, for only thus did they belong to the realm of the gods, into which the deceased was integrated by receiving them. This initiatory, transformative aspect of taking nourishment is familiar to Christians through the ritual of Communion, though the latter rests on different traditions of offerings and sacred meals. The Egyptian rite of provisioning the dead was intended to integrate the deceased into the communal feasting of the gods and the transfigured ancestral spirits...
The concept of completion/perfection, Egyptian nfrw, not only had connotations of beauty, perfection, and imperishability but also, and above all, connotations of virtue and righteousness, of moral perfection and conformance with the norms of maat. From djet-time, there arose a moral perspective. Only good could continue unchangeably; evil, bad, uncleanliness, and imperfection were given over to perishability. The moral qualities of a result, that is, its conformance to maat, decided its imperishability... He who is vindicated in the Judgment of the Dead will “stride freely like the lords of eternity,” he will be accepted among the gods. He will thus not only enjoy continuance on earth but also immortality in the next world...
The text in question deals with the initiation of Lucius into the mysteries of Isis, as related by Apuleius in his novel "The Golden Ass.” The scene is not Egypt but Cenchreae, the harbor of Corinth, where there was an Isis sanctuary. In the Hellenistic Isis religion, the goddess embodied her adherents’ hope for eternal life, and she brought a great deal from her Egyptian past to this role. It was she who had awakened Osiris to new life through the power of her magical spells. And since, according to Egyptian belief, every individual became an Osiris by means of the mortuary rituals, his hope for immortality depended on Isis as well. There is good reason to think that ancient Egyptian burial customs lived on in the Hellenistic Isis mysteries, though in the latter case, they were enacted and interpreted not as a burial of the deceased but as an initiation of the living... By voluntarily experiencing this symbolic death, the mystic qualified himself to be brought back to life by Isis on the day of his actual death... When the day of the initiation finally comes, Lucius is first bathed (baptized), and the priest “expresses the forgiveness of the gods.” The bath thus has the sacramental sense of a remission of sins... Lucius is initiated into the mysteries of the netherworld. He carries out the descensus of the sun god, descending into the netherworld and beholding the sun at midnight. With these sentences, we cannot help but think of the Books of the Netherworld that are to be found on the walls of the Ramesside royal tombs and in the Osireion at Abydos. We may imagine that the mystic was led into similarly decorated rooms—perhaps the crypts—of a temple. In any case, the process seems to be a symbolic journey through the netherworld, in which the netherworld is depicted, in an entirely Egyptian sense, as the subterranean realm of the midnight sun...
In accordance with the image of death as mystery, the deceased not only crossed over, or returned, to the netherworld, he was initiated into it. In their rubrics, many spells of the Book of the Dead identify themselves as initiations into the mysteries of the netherworld... Initiation into the mysteries of a deity entailed the deification of the mystic. “Conducting into the presence of” and “becoming” Osiris comprise precisely these two aspects of initiation into the mysteries of Osiris... In any event, the Egyptian texts say one thing clearly enough: that all rituals, and especially those centered on Osiris and the sun god, were cloaked in mystery. And it is also clear that there is a relationship between initiation into these (ritual) mysteries and life in the next world... The image of death as return has led us to the mystery of the circuit of the sun god and his nightly renewal in the depths of the world... the renewal of the sun god in the depths of the world has to do with a mystery.

It is only with the appearance of the Pyramid Texts, where this god [Osiris] is associated with the deceased king and treated as an important model for his afterlife aspirations (along with the sun god), that the Osirian doctrine assumes a major role in Egyptian religious beliefs... Osiris and Re together play a central role in this corpus, as far as the eschatological expectations of the pharaoh are concerned... Ultimately, (ritual) purity was a necessary condition for being reborn, and for this reason it is often connected with the notion of the (initiatory) journey of the deceased through the Duat... In particular, many spells of the Book of the Dead are texts of initiation of the deceased into the mysteries of the beyond...

However, there was one important difference between these gods and Osiris. Unlike them, he had triumphed over death, and the ability to do likewise could be conferred upon his followers. The colophon of Pyramid Text Spell 561B states that whoever worships Osiris will live forever, showing that already at this date those who devoted themselves to the god might expect to share in his resurrection...
Osiris is one of the few ancient Egyptian deities of whom it is possible to write even the outline of a biography. More personal details about him are extant than about any other god or goddess. This is not simply an accident of preservation. The Egyptians considered some deities important because of their impersonal attributes and powers, the roles they were believed to play in the maintenance of the cosmos. But the crucial significance of Osiris for them lay in what he personally had done and undergone. His life, death, and resurrection were perceived to be particularly momentous in relation to their own fates, and thus they figure more prominently in the textual record than do accounts of the exploits of other divinities. Moreover, because so much importance was invested in the fact that these were events actually experienced by a real individual, and not merely abstractions, personal detail was essential in recounting them.
To understand why the life, death, and resurrection of Osiris were so significant, one must first grasp how the ancient Egyptians conceived of the human being. Their conception was essentially a monistic one. They did not divide the person into a corruptible body and an immortal soul. They did, however, perceive each individual as having a ‘corporeal self’ and a ‘social self ’... Osiris provided a model whereby the effects of this rupture could be reversed, for the god underwent a twofold process of resurrection. Just as the mummification rites restored his corporeal integrity, so too justification against Seth and the events that followed it restored his social position and reintegrated him within the hierarchy of the gods. In the same way that Osiris was restored to life and declared free of wrongdoing, so all who died hoped to be revived and justified...
As we have seen, the colophon of Pyramid Text Spell 561B states that whoever worships Osiris will live forever (section 3.9.1). Moreover, since the worshippers of Osiris were, in the first instance, divine beings themselves, the deceased, by participating in his worship, acquired the same status as them. So it was not just eternal life, but eternal life in divine form that Osiris bestowed upon his followers. This link between worshipping Osiris and attaining the status of a god is made explicit in Coffin Text Spell 789...
As many have noted, the myths of Persephone and Osiris share a number of common features. Both protagonists experience death unwillingly but are restored to life through the intervention of others. As a result, the fertility of the earth is renewed and crops are enabled to grow. Moreover, both hold positions of authority in the underworld. These similarities undoubtedly account for the fact that episodes from their respective myths are juxtaposed in tombs 3 and 4 at Kom el-Shoqafa. But what does this juxtaposition tell us about the religious views of those responsible? Did they believe equally in both deities? Or did they simply see in these scenes two different but complementary ways of evoking the grander overarching concept of victory over death?... The equation of Osiris with Dionysos is already mentioned in Herodotus (II, 42); thus it pre-dates the start of the Ptolemaic dynasty and the equation of Osiris with Sarapis. The latter god could be identified with Dionysos as well, and this could have been an additional factor that contributed to his identification with Osiris.

Dionysos, like Jesus, was the son of the divine ruler of the world and a mortal mother, appeared in human form among mortals, was killed and restored to life... a secret of the mystery-cult was that dismemberment is in fact to be followed by restoration to life, and this transition was projected onto the immortal Dionysos, who is accordingly in the myth himself dismembered and then restored to life... this power of Dionysos over death, his positive role in the ritual, makes him into a saviour of his initiates in the next world... Dionysos could be called 'Initiate' and even shares the name Bakchos with his initiates, but his successful transition to immortality - his restoration to life and his circulation between the next world and this one - allows him also to be their divine saviour. Plutarch (Moralia 364) compares Dionysos to the Egyptian Osiris, stating that 'the story about the Titans and the Night-festivals agree with what is related of Osiris - dismemberments and returns to life and rebirths'...The restoration of Dionysos to life was (like the return of Kore [Persephone] from Hades at Eleusis) presumably connected with the immortality obtained by the initiates...
The fundamental sequence of dismemberment followed by restoration to life belongs to a type found elsewhere expressing the extreme ordeal of imagined death and eventual restoration to life in initiation. Dionysiac (or ‘Orphic’) mystery-cult had inherited a myth that projected onto Dionysos the imagined bodily death and restoration to life of the initiand... Not inconsistent with this is the possibility that the dismemberment myth was related to the drinking of wine that we have seen to be common in the mystic ritual...wine is earlier identified with Dionysos himself (e.g. Bacchae 284), more specifically with his blood (Timotheos fragment 780)... One such interpretation regards the myth as signifying the harvesting of the grapes in order to make wine, with the new life of Dionysos signifying that the vine then produces new fruit (e.g. Diodorus 3.62.6–7). As suggested in Chapter 5, this interpretation may have been present in the actual practice of drinking wine in the mystery-cult... as the sophist Prodikos (a contemporary of Euripides) puts it – ‘the ancients considered all things that benefit our life gods because of their benefit... and for this reason bread was considered to be Demeter and wine Dionysos’.

A central concern in the Dionysiac mysteries was one's condition in the afterlife, secured through a ritualized death in initiation. This view of the mysteries is well attested throughout the ancient world... Of particular importance for their close verbal parallel to the Bacchae are two late-fourth-century BCE gold leaves from a woman's sarcophagus in Pelinna. These are inscribed with a ritual formula: "Now you have died and now you have come to be, O Thrice-born one, on this very day. Tell Persephone that the Bacchic one [= Dionysus] himself has set you free." (Orph. frag. 485 = Edmonds D1-2)... the deliverance by Dionysus is understood to be a rebirth into life by way of death... Elsewhere, Plutarch offers a related explanation of the connection between the mysteries and the afterlife. He compares the wandering and confusion of the soul at the point of death to the experience (pathos) of “those initiated into the Great [Eleusinian] Mysteries”.
Like Judaism, Christianity was at times variously conflated with the religion of Dionysus. Indeed, the numerous similarities between Christianity and Dionysiac myth and ritual make thematic comparison particularly fitting: both Jesus and Dionysus are the offspring of a divine father and human mother (which was subsequently suspected as a cover-up for illegitimacy); both are from the east and transfer their cult into Greece as part of its universal expansion; both bestow wine to their devotees and have wine as a sacred element in their ritual observances; both had private cults; both were known for close association with women devotees; and both were subjected to violent deaths and subsequently came back to life... While the earliest explicit comments on Dionysus by Christians are found in the mid-second century, interaction with the god is evident as early as Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians (ca. 53 CE). The Christian community founded by Paul in Corinth was comprised largely of converts from polytheism (1 Cor 12:2) in a city that was home to many types of Greco-Roman religion... Perhaps most important for the development of Christianity in Corinth are mystery cults. Not only does Paul’s epistle employ language that reflects these cults, his Christian community resembles them in various ways. They met in secret or exclusive groups, employed esoteric symbols, and practiced initiations, which involved identification with the god’s suffering and rebirth. Particularly Dionysiac is the ritualized consumption of wine in private gatherings (1 Cor 11:17–34).

The initiatory experience prepares us for death, and in death there is a repetition of what was experienced in initiation. The result for the initiate, both in initiation and in death, is the passage to a state of felicity, coinciding with identification with the god... Dionysus fulfills a purificatory function in a personal and eschatological sense: he assists the initiate at the junction of the limit between life and death, between the human and the divine. Liberation after death is a consequence of initiation in the mysteries, carried out during life...
In the Gurob Papyrus there is an explicit mention of the fact that the initiate drinks to ease his thirst during the ritual, and wine is even mentioned, also in a context of liberation in which Dionysus appears as a savior god... In support of the interpretation of seeing in our text an echo of initiatory practices, we may mention several texts and figurative representations that inform us on the use of wine in this type of rite. Here, wine drinking was no simple pastime or pleasure, but a solemn sacrament, in the course which the wine was converted into a liquor of immortality... In a sense, drinking wine entails drinking the god: thus, Cicero (Nat. deor., 3, 41) does not consider it an exaggeration that some should believe they were drinking the god when they brought the cup to their lips, given that the wine was called Liber. Among figurative representations, we may cite an Italic vase in which Dionysus is carrying out a miracle: without human intervention, the wine pours from the grapes to the cups... Wine, a drink related par excellence to the mysteries of Dionysus, must have formed an essential part of the initiatory ceremonies that the deceased carried out during his life... Another representation that deserves to be mentioned in this context is a relief from the Farnesina in Rome, in which wine plays an eschatological and mystical role. The scene represents the Bacchic initiation of a boy; on the initiate’s right, a satyr pours wine into a crater and begins to drink: integration within the new group is manifested by the feast of wine.

The Eleusinian Mysteries focused upon themes of death and the afterlife, in reference to the myth surrounding the two deities: Demeter, the goddess of harvest and fertility; and her daughter Persephone (known also as Kore or ‘maiden’), who was abducted by Hades and taken to the Underworld. The Homeric Hymn remains the most extensive account of the myth and details the capture of Persephone, the following search for her by the grief-stricken Demeter and the eventual reunion of mother and daughter, all themes that are prevalent throughout the ceremonies held at Eleusis (Clinton 2007; Mylonas 1961). In celebrating these myths, initiates were also promised the secrets of the Mysteries, which involved an unveiling of the perceived realities of death and the afterlife. Pursuit of this knowledge was gained through the initiation ceremonies, which culminated in the moment of attainment or enlightenment, a transformational experience that gave initiates a new perspective on life and death: "Blessed is he of men on earth who has beheld them, whereas he that is uninitiated in the rites, or he that has had no part in them, never enjoys a similar lot down in the musty dark when he is dead." (Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 480–2)...
The next day would involve a salt-water bath in the ocean at Phaleron, along with sacrificial piglets (Mylonas 1961: 249). This act allowed the cleansing and purification of the body and such rites were customary in other mystery cults (Graf 2003: 244)... The walls of the sanctuary guarded the Mysteries within, and before initiates could cross the sacred threshold, they must first be suitably prepared... In preparation for the main ritual ceremonies—the telete—initiates would spend the day fasting, both as an act of purification and in echo of Demeter’s fasting following Persephone’s abduction (Homeric Hymn, lines 197–201).
Kykeon was a drink mentioned periodically in Greek literature that consisted of a mixture of ingredients with some key components, although slight variations can be found in different accounts. The main ingredients were water and barley, which were then flavored through the addition of a selection of herbs, often including pennyroyal. The drink was presumably consumed in emulation of Demeter in the Homeric Hymn, who requests the beverage from the queen of Eleusis in place of the wine originally offered to her (206–10)... It is thought that in the context of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the kykeon may not have included wine, so that initiates would mimic the experiences of Demeter in refusing the wine and drinking kykeon instead...
The intensity of the taste of kykeon and its close ties to the aetiological myth would allow initiates to access the psyche and emotions of Demeter and Persephone for the next stage of initiation. The sacred rites of the Greater Mysteries consisted of three elements: the dromena (things enacted), the deiknymena (things shown) and the legomena (things spoken), which together formed the secrets of the Mysteries (Mylonas 1961: 261). The dromena is thought to involve a re-enactment of the founding myth of the Mysteries, where initiates took on the role of the goddess Demeter, searching for her abducted daughter, Persephone. This would have taken place at night time, likely assisted by torches (Mylonas 1961; Noack 1927). Such an experience would have led initiates through a range of emotions, mirroring those experienced by Demeter in the Homeric Hymn, from the panic and anxiety of Persephone’s abduction to the grief-stricken search for her, followed by mourning and loss. The extremes of these emotions would have heightened the feeling of jubilation when Persephone was finally “found”... Chryssanthi Papadopoulou (2019) suggests that the initiates remained silent throughout the search for Persephone as they were (for the sake of the re-enactment) “dead”. In this way, they would experience Persephone’s fear, confusion and descent, and thereby acquire their own bodily knowledge of the Underworld...
In the same way that Persephone returned from the Underworld, the initiates emerged from their death-like experience, with a newfound knowledge of the intricacies of life and death. In this sense, they were reborn as the initiated. The fear they may have suffered prior to the ceremonies would have dissolved, replaced by epiphany and ecstasy in facing death at the borders of the Underworld and overcoming their fear.

The ritual [Christian baptism] is said to have cleansed the ritual participants from the state of being that existed prior to the ritual. By means of the ritual they have acquired a state of purity categorically different from the one that characterised their previous state of being, i.e. they have been transferred from a state of impurity to a state of purity. It is certainly not coincidental that the cleansing metaphor precedes the next two metaphors which serve to make it clear to the recipients that the Corinthian Christ-believers have been initiated into a new form of being...
We do not need to enter into the discussion whether Paul in 1 Cor 6:11 is quoting from a pre-Pauline tradition or not. It suffices to note that in one of the earliest strands of what later became known as Christianity we find an amalgamation of elements pertaining to rituals of purification as well as rituals of initiation. Apparently, the two do not exclude each other... In fact I will argue that a ritual of initiation cannot be separated from the element of cleansing irrespective of whether that element is merely present in the form of a metaphorical formulation or as an independent, preparatory rite of purification... Although a rite of purification may not be part of the ritual of initiation per se, it does play a prominent role in the preparatory rites that precede Lucius’ initiation into the mysteries of Isis as recounted in the eleventh book of the Metamorphoses or The Golden Ass by Apuleius... Thereupon Lucius is taken to the bath. After he has taken a habitual bath, the priest prays for the favour of the god and cleanses Lucius most purely by sprinkling him with water all around (23:2)... Even though the rite of cleansing represents a pre-stage to the actual ritual of initiation, it is indispensable for transferring Lucius into the state in which he is ritually pure and, thereby, fit to undergo the subsequent initiation into the mysteries of the goddess...
The two examples document, on the one hand, the difference between rituals of initiation and rituals of purification but, on the other hand, they also point to their commonality. To undergo initiation, one has to be in a ritually pure state... From all we know about the Eleusinian mysteries, water also played a prominent role in this cultic context. Both at the occasion of the Lesser Mysteries taking place in February/March and at the occasion of the Greater Mysteries performed in September lustration rites were involved. As part of the Lesser Mysteries the ritual participants bathed themselves in the river of Illisos outside the city walls of Athens. As part of the Greater Mysteries the ritual participants on the third day took a bath in the sea on the way between Athens and Eleusis.

A comparison between the Gospel of John and the myth of Demeter according to the Homeric and the Orphic Hymns to Demeter reveals a number of parallels. Throughout the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess is praised as the provider of food and life... Barley plays a distinct role in the myth of Demeter. The “kykeon”, a mixture of barley, water and herb, is the only drink that the grieving goddess accepts: "Metaneira made and gave the drink to the goddess as she bid. Almighty Deo [Demeter] received it for the sake of the rite" (Homeric Hymn to Demeter). The drinking of the kykeon is very likely part of an instituted rite in the mysteries at Eleusis, as is indicated by "for the sake of the rite". The existing rite is legitimized by the goddess’s acts. She is the one who founded the rite and who enacted it first. The initiates then copied this act... Initiation into her cult is deemed necessary to attain eternal life, and correspondingly in John 6, adhering to Jesus’ teachings, believing in him, and demonstrating this belief by the consumption of his flesh and blood are the precondition for attaining eternal life...
Demeter is often closely related to Dionysus. In the Bacchae, the two are mentioned together as providers of food and drink... Dionysus not only offers a parallel to Demeter but also to Jesus as providers of food... Dionysus is associated with the production and consumption of wine and, as early as the fifth century bce, he is even identified with wine... This source—along with others—also indicates that Dionysus is envisioned as inhabiting the wine. Similarly, Bacchus is present within the wine and he gets poured into a cup... The notion of calling the juice of grapes blood is well known in many traditions, Jewish and pagan alike (for example: Gen 49:11; Dtn 32:14; Rev 17:6; Achilles Tatius 2.2.4). Unsurprisingly, wine also appears as the blood of Dionysus (Timotheos Fragment 4). The idea of Dionysus being torn apart and pressed into wine appears in songs that are sung when grapes are pressed.

All these data indicate the important role the cultic meals played in the mystery religions and cults. The meals were connecting links between the deities and the worshippers and a platform to express their devotion and experience the divine reality. In the mystery religions, initiates underwent secret ceremonies to attain membership into the cult and it was believed that through these ceremonies they became recipients of salvation. Here also the essential element of the mystery was a fellowship meal which was considered as sacred in nature. By participating in the meal the initiate got a new status and identity and the sacred meal acted to enhance the bond between the initiate with the deities, in whose fate the partaker receives a share. A good example of this kind can be seen in the cult of Serapis. The union was achieved through the means of the fellowship meals and thus the meals came to be denoted as "couch of Serapis." This sacramental feature associated with the fellowship meals was common to many of the religious groups. One of the popular cults in the Greco-Roman world, the Eleusinian mysteries, held their annual festival which consisted of rites and a festive meal that were considered sacramental in nature. The cult of Dionysus and the Mithraic mysteries which were widespread in the ancient world also show that there were feastings.

Initiation (τελετή) from τελεῖν (accomplish, finish), originally meant ‘accomplishment’, ‘performance’. The term is characteristically used to denote initiation in the mysteries, and in plural to mystic rites practised at initiation, such as the festival accompanied by mystic rites. This term covers a wide semantic field. Meanings include ‘initiation in the mysteries’ but also ‘accomplishment’, ‘fulfilment’, ‘perfection’ and ‘completion’, terms that express the spiritual weight that mystery initiation had for the Greeks in terms of the spiritual state of the individual.

A similarly playful combination of cognate forms such as τελέω, τελειόω, τελευτάω, and τὸ τέλος also occurs in the Gospel of John, not only with regard to the pupils who are perfected and initiated into one, and with regard to Lazarus, but also with respect to Jesus himself: he loves his pupils “till the end” (εἰς τέλος), as the author notes in his description of the last symposium (13:1), and it is at this symposium that he talks about his pupils’ perfection and initiation into one (17:23) before he finishes his life by exclaiming, again in marked difference from the Synoptic Gospels: “It has been finished, it has been perfected” (Τετέλεσται; 19:30). Both Lazarus’s and Jesus’s deaths are described in the ambiguous terminology of finishing, perfection, and initiation, and thus understood as initiations into a death that is followed by a resurrection, just as in the mystery religions. It seems that Jesus’s final exclamation, “It has been finished” (Τετέλεσται), signals the end of such an initiation, thus putting the event of his death on a par with the place of initiation at the Eleusinian mysteries, which—as becomes clear in Plutarch’s description of the building of the Eleusinian sanctuary—is called a τελεστήριον, a place for initiation...
This is by no means the only allusion to the Eleusinian mysteries in John’s Gospel. Just before his death, at the beginning of the last festival that he attends in the Jerusalem temple, it is the very Greeks who wish to see Jesus whom he answers with a reference to his approaching death, cast in a hidden allusion to the Eleusinain mysteries, which revolve around the contemplation of an ear of wheat that was seen as the fruit of the resurrection of Aphrodite/Kore [Persephone]: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (12:24)

Two sayings attributed to Jesus in the Synoptic tradition seem to use the word baptism metaphorically to mean death, especially the death of Jesus. In these sayings, the operative symbol has shifted from cleansing that leads to a pure and holy life to death that leads to new life. These sayings are close to Paul's interpretation of baptism in Romans 6, one of the most important passages on baptism in the NT... In Romans 6: 1-14 the ritual of baptism is explicitly interpreted as a reenactment of the death and resurrection of Jesus in which the baptized person appropriates the significance of that death for him or herself. In this understanding of the ritual, the experience of the Christian is firmly and vividly grounded in the story of the death and resurrection of Christ. These qualities of reenactment of a foundational story and the identification of the participant with the protagonist of the story are strikingly reminiscent of what is known about the initiation rituals of certain mystery religions, notably the Eleusinian mysteries and the Isis mysteries.

Two cultic activities of early assemblies would easily be recognized by members of Greco-Roman religious associations. The first was baptism, the ritual of initiation that marked entry into the community... The second cultic activity was the meal. Some version of "breaking bread in houses" (Acts 2:42, 46) that Paul calls the "Lord's Banquet" (1 Cor 11:20) was celebrated in the gathered assembly, probably on the day of resurrection, the first day of the week (1 Cor 16:2; see Rev 1:10). The rituals of initiation and meals were occasions for enacting the presence of the risen Lord in the assembly and for remembering the words and deeds of Jesus in the context of his continuing powerful presence... And over all these, Paul says, they should put on agape, which is the bond of perfection (teleiotetos, or maturity)... Paul's language of "perfection" echoes that used for the Mysteries; see Phil 1:6; p2; Gal 3=3; 2 Cor 8:6, 11; Rom 15:28...

• Power: Parents hold the most power (as they are putting in the money 💰). Depending on the parents in your cohort, this can leave you vulnerable to their attacks, which admin may or may not back you up on. Teachers are essentially powerless and fully depends on your direct supervisor, as there isn’t protection built in.
  
• Trust: Leaders have varying degrees of trust in their staff. I’ve seen them believe parents/students more than teachers (the people they hired! I don’t get it). At some schools, entitled students know how to “Get rid” of a teacher with enough complaining. How do I establish trust with leaders who I personally feel aren’t trustworthy? I feel dependent on their references for my actual livelihood. Agencies like SA, Schrole seem to perpetuate this system which favors the employer.
  
• Vanity: “As long as it looks good” 🤮 Emphasis on the product over process seems rampant particularly in the lower tier schools fighting for admissions goals. How do I sacrifice my educational beliefs of rejecting perfectionism and celebrating the process when my job depends on a shiny product? I feel conflicted to send my own children the schools where I work. DEI/inclusion is more of a badge to wear than something practiced. BICOP and or local teachers are given less power, lower wages, less trust.