Demeter's Dark Ride - an Attraction
Research Material
Extract from "The Once and Future Goddess" by Elinor W. Gadon describing the Mysteries at Eleusis.
We know somewhat more about the Eleusinian ritual than the Thesmophoria. There was no teaching, no esoteric doctrine at Eleusis. Pilgrims came for the emotional experience, their mood shifting from anxiety to rapture as they re-enacted the passion of Demeter, the descent of Kore into the underworld, and the fate of the dead. The final illumination led to personal transformation, a profound revelation of the mystery of life and death.
What was such an extraordinary experience in ancient Greece was probably ordinary for the Neolithic worshipper. In an age that no longer had faith in the gods as immanent beings fully present in everyday life, the mysteries were journeys into a consciousness that had been lost, one in which all of life was interconnected and death was part of life.
There were several degrees of initiation at Eleusis. The Mysteries were divided into two parts, the Lesser and the Greater. The Lesser Mysteries were preparatory, usually celebrated once a year in the spring, and probably included the re-enactment of the mythic narrative of Persephone's abduction and Demeter's search. The Greater Mysteries were celebrated the following fall. The ceremonies continued for nine days, the same number as those of Demeter's agony when she searched in vain for her lost daughter. "From bits and pieces of evidence that have survived - artistic representations, architectural designs and scattered literary testimonies," it is possible to reconstruct some idea of what went on.
The evening before the first day, the cult symbols, the sacred objects of Demeter, were brought to Athens from Eleusis by priestesses who walked the fourteen miles in solemn procession carrying the sacra in large, beautifully decorated baskets on their heads. The official opening was on the first day when all who were clean of hands and spoke Greek were invited to participate. On the second day the initiates were called together in Athens by the heraldic cry "To the sea, initiate!" and they went to purify themselves in the nearby Aegean.The purification was an essential feature of the Mysteries. The procession to the sea was known as "renewal" or "banishment", ritually separating the initiate from previous profane life, a crossing over. Each initiate took along a young pig with whom the purifying bath was taken. Later the pig would be sacrificed and eaten.
The Third Day was given over to prayers for the city, the Fourth Day for latecomers. On the Fifth Day, the mystai, as the initates were now called, crowned in myrtle and carrying torches, proceeded the fourteen miles from Athens to Eleusis where they entered the sacred grounds of Demeter, enclosed by high walls built to conceal the sacred events within. The myste is "one who has not seen and will not speak of the things revealed. As such, distinguished from the epote, who has seen but equally may not speak; the two words indicate successive grades of initiation."
At nightfall, the pilgrims, with lighted torches, were led into the outer court of the sanctuary. There was singing and dancing in honor of the Goddess. The playwright Euripides wrote that on this night even the goddesses in the stormy heaven of Zeus danced to honor the golden-crowned maiden and her holy mother.
On the following day, the Sixth, the aspirants fasted and offered sacrifices. The Seventh and Eighth Days were the high point, the "nights of the Mysteries." Not all mystai took the final initiation. Those who did entered the temple of Demeter for the central enactment of the Mysteries, "what was said," "what was enacted," and "what was shown."
The initiation took place at night, Many have tried to reconstruct what happened from the scanty and fragmentary evidence. We do know the password of the epotai. "I fasted, I drank the kykeon, I took from the chest ... after manipulating, I placed in the basket, then removing from the basket, I replace in the chest." Several scholars have identified the contents of the chest and basket as "a replica of the womb, or a phallus, or a snake, or cakes in the shape of genital organs. It is possible that the receptacles contained objects that were relics from archaic times bound up with sexual symbolism characteristic of agricultural societies."
What was enacted may have included a retelling of the myth, a singing of the poet's Hymn to Demeter, or a more elaborate dramatisation.
Sometime during the final two days of initiation, before the beginning fo the night's ceremonies and the lighting of the great fire, the mystai drank kykeon, barley water flavoured with mint ... Perhaps the barley was fermented and the drink intoxicating; the barley may have contained ergot, a fungus with hallucinogenic properties; we do not know. Probably the fasting prayers and anticipation of the initiates helped clarify their inner vision. We are told the initiates experienced a special seeing, the "opening of the eyes."
[Perhaps] the vision [was] the epiphany of the goddess as Earth Mother; or Persephone returning from Hades; or the reunion of Mother and Child.
In another ritual, pregnant with meaning, the epotai were said to cry after looking skyward, "rain," then, looking to the earth, excalim, "conceive." Some believe that this ritual formula may have been connected with the heiros gamos enacted by the chief preistess and the hierophant.
Ancient authors speak of the great fire burning on the roof, the smoke and flames visible from a distance, the sound of a thunderlike gong. Hippolytus writing in the third century said that "during the night, in the midst of a brilliant fire celebrating the great and inexpressible mysteries, the chief priest cries out 'Holy Brimo has borne a sacred child, Brimos.' ... The goddess has acquired another name which means 'the strong one'." The mother is probably Demeter and the child, her son. New life is Mother Demeter's gift to human beings. She is said to have introduced grain agriculture. According to Homeric hymn, in her youth she bore a son, named Pluton, the personification of wealth and abundance. Her son, now called Triptolemus, "Thrice-plowed," will become the one who introduces grain and Demeter's rites to the world in her place. Associated with immortality, he is frequently represented on funeral vases. The relation between Pluton and Triptolemus is not clear; both represent treasures greatly prized - the one worldly wealth and pleasure, the other lasting life. The changing identity of Demeter's son suggests a shift in spiritual values in keeping with the changing role of the Goddess and her Divine Child in the mysteries of the Hellenistic Age. That it is Demeter's son, not daughter, who passes on her mysteries, reflects an even more fundamental change from a woman-centred world to a patriarchal one.
Some scholars say there was a viewing of the rescued Persephone in dramatic form. An epiphany of Persephone and her reunion with her mother may have been the decisive religous experience.
We do now know how this reunion was realized or what took place afterwards. Nor do we know why such a vision was believed to make a radical change in the postmortem situation of the initiates. But there can be no doubt that the epotes perceived a divine secret which made him 'familiar' to the goddesses; he was in some way 'adopted' by the Eleusinian divinities. The initiation revealed both closeness to the divine world and continuity between life and death.
Immanence of the divine and the continuity between life and death were core ideas of the Goddess religion, part of the common worldview. Suppressed by the Olympians, the mysteries preserved and made this wisdom accessible only to those initiated.
The culmination of the mysteries was the display in silence of two ears of grain by the hierophant.
The most profound vision of all, the actual experience of immortality came in deep silence, when a mown ear of ... [grain] was held up and seen by the initiate. Nor can words every accompany such an experience. The ancients said that at this point the idea of immortality "lost everything confusing and became a satisfying vision."
The mown ear of ... [grain] is a perfect symbol of immortality, of eternal rebirth. It is the fruit of life, the harvest which feeds and nourishes, it is the seed which must sink into the earth and disappear in order to give birth again. It was mown down in the moment of its ripeness, as Persephone was mown down and torn from her mother.
The experience of immortality at Eleusis was linked then with the harvest and Persephone's return. The next day the initiates returned to Athens and normal life.
More information about the Eleusinian Mysteries: