"What is distinctive about Agamben's presentation of this story is the way he highlights the role of Judaic-Christian concepts like creation and free will in helping to bring about a sense of being–a temporalization and historicization of being–that dissolves the unified grounded cosmos of the pagan tradition. . . . In the course of the six chapters making up this well-designed little book (handsomely illustrated by Ferrando, who also provides a useful selection from ancient sources at the back), Agamben touches on various intertwined topics: the relation of the mystery cults to European painting, to early Hegel, and to the image philosophies of Warburg and Benjamin; the essentially comic, not tragic, character of the Eleusinian rituals; the Dionysian animality or monstrosity of the triple goddess and the Medusan aspect of the kore or divine child in particular; and, finally, the research of Odo Casel, a twentieth-century German Benedictine monk, for whom Christian liturgy was in essence not doctrine but mystery."– "Radical Philosophy"