bacchoi

{{Short description|Initiates of the Eleusinian mysteries}}

In the Eleusinian Mysteries, the bakchoi were the branches of initiates that carried out the procession along the Sacred Way, the twenty-one kilometer hike from Athens to Eleusis.Walter Burkert, Homo necans: interpretationen altgriechischer Opferriten und Mythen (Berolini: DeGruyter, 1972), pp. 306–307. The term is sometimes distinguished from mystai (initiate), specifically the Eleusinian initiate, only for the purpose of emphasis since the two words are considered synonymous.{{Cite book|title=Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets|last1=Graf|first1=Fritz|last2=Johnston|first2=Sarah Iles|date=2013|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9780415508025|location=Oxon|pages=121}} The bacchoi was considered a transformed state after performing initiations and this was described by Euripides in the case of his Cretans, who proclaimed they were made holy – mystai and bacchoi – after cleansing themselves through initiation.{{Cite book|title=Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the 'Orphic' Gold Tablets|last=III|first=Radcliffe G. Edmonds|date=2004|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=0521834341|location=Cambridge|pages=105}}

Bacchoi is sometimes attached to other terms. For instance, there is Iacchoi-Bacchoi, where Iacchos served as a synonym for Bacchus.{{Cite book|title=The holy rites of Eleusis were Archaic Wisdom-Religion dressed in Greek garb|last1=Blavatsky|first1=Helena|last2=Pococke|first2=Edward|last3=Taylor|first3=Thomas|last4=Wilder|first4=Alexander|date=2018|publisher=Philaletheians UK|isbn=|location=|pages=49}}