Esoteric and Exoteric, Mostly Recon-Style

More attempts to comb out my brain, meanwhile. This will be written through the haze of horrific headache, so please bear with me if you want to bother reading it at all.

Brief context summary: in ancient times, most mystery traditions were private offshoots of ordinary religious practice, undertaken by the particularly devoted to that set of stuff, the particularly interested, or whatever else. They existed in the context of a surrounding culture that took their raw assumptions as a given and provided what amounts to specialist knowledge.
( So let's run with that. )