What were the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Athens?
It's incredible to contemplate that ancient Athens had at its foundation a ritual so profound and so secret that to talk about it was punishable by death. It's incredible because Athens was one of the most "talkative" cities in all of human history, meaning it was so outstanding in arts, sciences, philosophy, that this contrast with a secret ritual at its foundation is difficult to reconcile; it's as if the entire city went through a secret process by which it exploded into the most various forms of genius, supreme talkativeness, yet the secret ritual was not talked about. You had great playwright after playwright, incredible artistic/philosophic feats such as Plato's Symposium, yet with respect to the foundation mystery there was silence.
It's as if the Eleusinian Mysteries were the original school of Athens, a school about which you could not speak but which had in its impact such a profound alteration and development of mind that the entire artistic/intellectual history of Athens was to follow. When I try to place this mystery in the history of Athens itself I find it difficult not to believe it was some sort of psychedelic ritual, that original schooling in Athens was closely associated with psychedelics and that the flowering of Athens was the consequence. But what I wonder about even more is why, if this was the case, the process was lost, and so profoundly so we wonder if this process really occurred at all.
11
Why Roman Pluto? Hades was the Greek god of the Underworld. It really is an awesome site, in the true sense of awesome. I felt the ancient atmosphere here. Delphi and Thermopylae, too.
11
I’m thinking the mystery is that the nomadic people then subsisted on hunting which was finite and sometimes scarce. Wild wheat grew everywhere and was gathered but that, too, was seasonally scarce. Many tried to grow it domestically but it was hit or miss until it was discovered that the seasons had a huge effect on germination. So whomever figured that out was able to grow bumper crops of wheat and became rich by selling it to those who didn’t know how to grow it themselves. Agriculture was being invented. This allowed folks to stop their nomadic lifestyle and populate. Abundance increased health and longevity and made them special. Volcanic activity, war and other natural disasters could definitely darken the skies and destroy crops which would be blamed on the gods’ anger and trickery. This and other agricultural discoveries in and of itself was a valuable secret a community might swear it’s people to in order to preserve their wealth and value. My guess is that domesticating the growing of food from wild seed was an epic moment in human evolution.
4
It's not MINT, it's "Mentha pulegium" also know as pennyroyal.
Ergotism leads to gangrene and will kill you.
If you didn't eat for three days, especially in the ancient world, you'd be closer to death than you would be today, and if you were given a fermented beverage to drink as your first sustenance, well, there it is. You got drunk, very quickly. And probably sick afterwards.
9
I have been to Eleusis and it is an extremely impressive archaeological site. The author got most of the scholarship right, but a more in-depth reading of all ancient Greek literature shows that Demeter and Persephone were the same goddess, and that the planting of seeds was a metaphor about death and burial in this world and rebirth in the spiritual world. The Greeks also had a ritual for young women at Brauron (I visited it in 2009, also very impressive.) on the eastern coast of Attica, where the girls were prepared for adulthood, suffered a symbolic death and were reborn as adult women to care for and run the homes. This was very much in the spirit of Demeter and Persephone. Many believe that Demeter's search for her daughter was a search for her own maiden self, in the tradition of the ritual at Brauron. The two goddesses of Eleusis were about eternal life after death within the Elysian Fields, and the epiphany shown to each initiate somehow demonstrated that. There absolutely was a well-kept secret at Eleusis, and it had a major impact on all initiates. Another fact not mentioned in the article was that Aeschylus, although from Eleusis himself, was never initiated into the mysteries and that was the reason he was acquitted of divulging the secret. Eleusis was all about esoteric wisdom, and the impact of initiation was a major influence throughout the rest of their lives.
24
There is a stronger parallel not mentioned in the article in that if Demeter gives grain, in many senses Persephone is the grain itself "planted" in the lowerworld and returning at what I am guessing is harvest time (=/- September). Would be interested to know what was sacrificed (perhaps grain to demonstrate surplus) or are there objects that have survived and have been excavated. Importantly, we should not attribute our thinking about what life and death are to ancient Greeks. Death is often much closer to live via Ancestors where bones etc. are imbued with life-giving qualities, etc.
5
Greek Orthodox Christians to this day eat Koliva, also spelled kollyva, kollyba or colivă, which is a small bag of boiled wheat that is used for commemorations of the dead. The primary ingredient of koliva is wheat kernels which have been boiled until they are soft and moist, and then sweetened with honey or sugar. Koliva also contains some or all of the following: wheat, sesame seeds, almonds, ground walnuts, cinnamon, sugar, pomegranate seeds, raisins, anise and parsley. Koliva has been eaten by Greeks since before Christianity and I have no doubt something like this was eaten at Eleusis.
11
Here's an interesting bit, "Pluto tricked Persephone into eating pomegranate seeds". This sounds like it could be where the Adam and Eve apple myth came from. Of course, when the Bible was written, nobody in the Middle East knew about apples, so it was likely a pomegranate instead. And Pluto is seen as not just god of the underworld, but a somewhat evil character, opposed to Zeus.
11
It's a fascinating subject. I'm not a purest on the subject of the entheogen, maybe, maybe not, but there is evidence based on the experience recounted to support there was something at Eleusis.
These Mysteries didn't exist in a vacuum, and we can look towards outside sources to understand what was going on within the walls of the Telesterion.
The death and rebirth cycle can also be found in Sumer, and in that case there was a sacred food and plant that brought Inanna back to life, almost in the reverse of the blood like pomegranate that keeps Persephone bound to the underworld. This sacred plant was not unlike Homa, which is an ephedra plant.
In regards to the sacred objects I've been considering the Harpe, a sort of sickle sword that was given to Demeter. It clearly has an agricultural purpose, and fits in with the final revelation. More importantly it has a mythological history that includes the foundations of the universe and divine law. If one has ever seen how the Yezidiz treat their golden peacock standards, one might get an idea of how important a divine object can be to a believer.
3
Neither the writer nor the readers who commented have remarked on the condition of the statues. It is my understanding that the heads and other parts were knocked off by early Christians, to destroy the previous religion and replace it with their own. Same people who burned ancient books.
15
I'm so enjoying this series!
But Poppy must be a very prim lady indeed if she is so convinced there were no psychotropics in that drink. It's funny how people can sometimes be over-protective of the reputations of their distant ancestors...
10
Perhaps the mythic qualities of the legend of the wealth of food out of the return of Spring and summer from the defeat of the god of the underground and death and winter might be extended into modern times when Pluto was so domesticated it could become Mickey Mouse’s dog but its wolfish origins of the nature of death is re-emerging in the growing threats of global weather destruction and a nuclear war which promises a long winter in which agriculture will more or less totally succumb. It’s a weird fantasy but perhaps that might stimulate a proper response to energize real efforts to stop this global attempt to ignore the approaching final catastrophe-
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@Jan Sand
---which requires that we overthrow...the Plutocracy!
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Great read, thanks!
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"We simply do not know" but marvelous speculation anyway.
Fascinating, and so interesting! Thank you!
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"...despite the fact that many thousands of initiates took part in the ritual over so many centuries, no one ever divulged the secrets of what took place."
Or did they? It's amazing to think NO ONE did. Obviously some did, perhaps they were put to death. Perhaps no one believed them. One thing is for sure, those lovely Christians so thoroughly obliterated any remaining traces of evidence that would clue us in on what actually did occur there.
3
Nice to know someone can earn a living by preoccupying himself with speculations about trivia, such as forgotten ancient rituals. Unraveling this “mystery” would fill a much-needed gap in our knowledge. Keep trying.
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@Jeffrey Herrmann
Why? Is concerning oneself and making a living from the study of what collectively makes us who we are less than, say, the design and manufacture of useless goods, the production of edibles that make us ill, the promotion of propaganda to millions?
We are the sum of all the rituals and cultural and material practices that went before us. And this is especially true of the influence of Greece in Western culture. We did not spring fully formed out of last week.
We need our Professor Critchleys and our Poppys to keep our smugness in check if nothing else.
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@ChrisJ We can also benefit from the refreshing perspective of those encouraging our sense of irony, especially when it fosters originality.
1
There were several versions of Kykeon (or Cyceon) in the ancient Greece. For that of Elefsina nobody can say what the composition was. Not even Poppy, not even any archaeologist, because there are no evidences.
Professor Carl A.P. Rack has his own theory (nowadays is not alone) and talks about "entheogens" not for psychedelics or drugs.
Let the scientists continue to work on every theory but our focus must be to save Elefsina and its great Archaeological Site from the neighbouring big pockets.
Co-founder of Cyceon bar-cafe (www.cyceon.gr)
12
"Demeter's reward to her initiates was grain , , , and the possibility of abundance. I think this is the secret." No, no, no. The ultimate secret revealed in the mysteries is that we live again, we are reborn, just as the sheaf of wheat is "reborn" with each growing season. The mysteries were not about tomorrow's loaf of bread! Geez. . . .
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Simon Critchley is a clever, useful fellow. Great article for the Guardian on Heidegger's Augenblick. This is tepid, academic, post-structurally formulaic in its implausible, inevitable discovery of no there there. Ambiguously apt the psychopomp to this anodyne underworld is Poppy. Could have summoned Coleridgean visions. But it seems the Wicked Witch of the West is speaking of tepid academics after all. Poppies will help them sleep.
1
Pluto is the Roman name for the Greek God Hades. He would not be called Pluto in Athens.
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@Libby: Sorry, that's not correct. Plouton Πλούτων and Hades are both Greek. Plouton as the name of the ruler of the underworld first appears in Greek literature of the Classical period. See the Wikipedia article. The native Roman more-or-less equivalent was Dis, or Dis Pater. Please do not make the common but erroneous mistake that the Romans copied the Greek gods under different names. The Romans had their own distinct divinities, but with many similarities to other nations, which is to be expected as they descended from an earlier common Indo-European religion. As the Romans and Greeks came more in contact they naturally both tended to identify the gods with corresponding functions and myths with each other.
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I noticed many comments insisting on hallucinogenic properties to kykeon.
It’s important for non natives to not impose their own interpretations based on their own culture (Americans love their narcotics) or understanding of cultures and allow indigenous scholars who are the legitimate inheritors of these traditions, in this case native Greeks, to drive and lead on our understanding of these ancient rituals.
So perhaps there was some fermentation of this drink that made them drunk but to suggest it was all hallucinogens is way off base.
We in modern western secular societies sometimes cannot understand the religious mind and how imagination and beliefs can induce its own type of spiritual or psychological awareness or even pathology.
It isn’t always about drugs altering states of mind. It’s about community and communion. A shared belief of the material transcending into spiritual.
And yes the Demeter/Persephone myth is deeply feminist and represents a more ancient matriarchal religious understanding of the world and nature based on the females reproductive power, the body and blood, and it’s creative force for humanity.
These goddess religions where primal and existed even before the “traditional” Greek gods familiar to us, like Zeus etc... male gods inhabiting the heavens they were matriarchal Goddess of the power of nature on earth that often for incorporated and changed into newer patriarchal myths.
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The old book Frazer's Golden Bough is a good source for thinking about what was going on.
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Anyone who has participated in an Ayahuasca ceremony -- and I strongly encourage the author to do so -- would know that the only thing that can possibly explain these mysteries was that the Kykeon was hallucinogenic.
Psychedelics have the power to completely alter the way we view the world. It's temporary leaving Platos cave, seeing that reality is actually just shadows on a wall. It can completely alter your perspective. An epiphany to the power of ten.
It's inconceivable that something as powerful as the Mysteries would be anything but a psychedelic experience -- and only the uninitiated would think so.
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@SC
Ayahuasca, and indeed most of the entheogenic substances, are not hallucinogenic. They certainly create illusions, and bend 'reality', but they rarely, in a normal person, cause hallucinations.
This term should be dropped. It is of no value in the continuing effort to use these substances wisely.
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@John good points
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These mysteries were held continuously for well over a thousand years. Attendance was considered the privileged high point of ones life. The effects these rituals had on the participants were profound, revered, life changing.
We are asked to believe that these effects were the result of a mild three day fast, a little dancing, and some mint tea! And further, that the experience resulting from these interventions was sufficient to impose a lifetime of silence on the participants. Please!
In 2019, there are several massive industries, collected loosely beneath the 'personal growth' rubric. Do any of these workshops possess such power?
Yes. But only the rituals that use psychoactive substances. The rest are fluff. Pablum.
Academia, including, I would imagine, this author, do not speak deeply and truly of these topics, and are reluctant to do so, because of fear for their position, tenure and the ridicule of their similarly fearful colleagues. It's of no use arguing about these things with such minds. Or with anyone, really. You can describe Beetoven's Ninth forever, but if you really want to understand it, sooner or later you just have to play the music.
Turn on. Tune in. But for God's sake, don't drop out. Stay. Involve. Educate. Assist your sight challenged fellows emerge from the cave of shadows. Begin by reading 'The Road to Eleusis,' by Hoffman et al., previous referenced in these comments.
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@John "We are asked to believe that these effects were the result of a mild three day fast, a little dancing, and some mint tea! "
Perhaps keep in mind that the people of that age did not have the distractions of today -- movies, cell phones, video games, sound and light pollution -- to separate them from the majesty of the natural world. Most of us cannot even see the stars from where we live, or remember the last time we walked through an untamed forest, tuned in to every small sound. It might take nothing less than a psychedelic to break through the numbing, cynical shell modern people have built around themselves to re-ground them in nature's mysteries. People of that time might only require the endorphins from fasting and dance to put them in the right frame of mind to see deeper, because they were so much closer to nature than we are now. Psychedelics existed of course, and were undoubtedly used, but perhaps it was for the higher initiates or members of the priest/ess class, not for the masses who had already put themselves in the frame of mind to witness deep, spiritual truths, aided by ecstatic dance (witness the Sufis and other traditions).
Thanks for this article!
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@John: read " Not in His Image " by John Lash.
Splendid. These mysteries are still with us. Via Plato, who adopted their language and what soul experienced in them, they entered Judaism with Philo of Alexandria. Philo may have had other sources as well. Paul is feeding on them in his understanding of baptism in the Epistle to the Romans. Via Clement of Alexandria who took what Plato and Philo gathered (and perhaps more) they entered Christian theological - philosophical reflection. These are some of the doors; there is far more of their continues presence to be uncovered.
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The reason Plato's tales of his journeys describe shadows of shadows and are still with us is that you can't get any closer. But you can describe grain, so at least we know that isn't it.
Professor Critchley should stick to soccer (“What We Think About When We Think About Soccer”), as should anyone who continues insisting that the ancients experienced the world the same way we do, except they wore togas and mostly walked. Why can't we allow that those who truly went through the initiatory process gained a transformed relationship to life and death? Why must we insist that departures from our typical mundane modes of experience fall into one or two categories of hallucination and madness?
Given the centrality of these ritual practices and the great secrecy around them, we might entertain that they were profound, important for the progress of human culture, and vulnerable, if treated superficially and profanely, to distortion, error and disaster?
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Interesting. And of course no one would insist that those attending Revival Meetings or even some of our intensely Baptist gospel churches were and are under the influence of hallucinogenic teas.
And yet all experience ecstasy and a sort of transformation.
3
I like the idea about wheat and gratitude, but still find Charles Stein's discussion in "Persephone Unveiled: On Seeing the Goddess and Freeing Your Soul" more convincing. The bread and wine - Demeter and Dionysus - and taking the gods and the sacred into yourself by ritual eating, is of course the root of the Christian Communion ritual. Most valuable then, to us today, in all of these various religious traditions, is to find the sacred in everyday activity, in the earth, the water and wine (and beer), the grain and the work done to provide all these things. Capitalism, as Michael Harrington pointed out in "The Politics of God's Funeral" is the only real structurally atheist system, and it is for that reason wrecking the world, a world where nothing is sacred except profits and debt repayments.
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I think about our current horror of wheat and ascribe to it all manner of ills. Some will tell you it is because we moderns have altered it, and a return to ancient forms of wheat will cure those ills. Maybe so.
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Did the proscription against anyone who had shed blood apply to soldiers? The Greek armies, before Alexander were filled by citizens, which is why wars were only fought when there was no farming to do.
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Dear Simon,
Thanks, best, keep going!
And, while I don't imagine you have forgotten it, but to remind readers that the origins of modern thinking and verbal art themselves remain very obscure: is it not an irony of history that the text of the so-called "Eleusis Fragment" stands as a riddling stele at the beginning of the critical editions of *both* Hegel and Hölderlin from their time as students together at the Seminary in Tübingen, since it would seem that there is still enough uncertainty, as far as I know, about which of them -- both of them? -- is the author, that this text merits inclusion in both authors' corpora. Offhand I am at a loss in trying to think of any other text from as recently as the late eighteenth century which enjoys such a similar twinned, dioscuric position in the works of any two other such signal figures of thinking, madness, poetry, tragedy.
Anyone?
4
I have long believed that for all the advancements in science, technology, travel, mass communication, etc.; the one thing that has never changed since the time of the ancient Greeks is human nature. We still obsess about life, death, learning, knowledge, truth, wisdom, and human folly. As the French are fond of saying, "The more things change; the more they remain the same."
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An entrancing, intriguing essay that, for at least this once-upon-a-time student of the classics, is a welcome distraction from the unrelenting clashes of power, status, income, wealth religion, nationality and class that mark our time. Thanks
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The Telesterion, with its forest of 42 columns, would have made a terrible theater, not a great one as the author suggests. No sight lines! On the other hand, if the vision was something seen within as opposed to on a stage....
The Hymn To Demeter may be read on many levels. One is the struggle between maternal rights and paternal rights over the marriage of the child. Zeus decides to give Persephone to Hades without consulting her mother. She shows him the unwisdom of this move.
On another level, you may read the hymn for clues as to what really went on in the sacred ritual. At the end the hymn states that the person who has undergone the Mystery loses their fear of death forever.
Something happened there that was more than stagecraft.
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There seems to be parallels between the Greek mysteries and Christianity. It's interesting that the earliest Gospels were written in Greek, the ritual meal of communion, and the resurrection, all point to Hellenized Jews seeking a belief which incorporated elements of the pagan world with traditional Judaism.
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@PubliusMaximus; make no mistake, there may be some 'parallels' between the Pagan Mysteries and Christianity but the Telesti, the teachers of the Mysteries rejected COMPLETELY the biblical narrative of creation, any and all notions of salvation, and even the god that the Christians worshipped, called Jehovah " a false god ". and for good reasons...the 'resurrection ' , also a false notion....read Not in His Image by John Lash.
3
A most charming story! My curiosity peaks and my mouth waters to taste Kykeon, without the allegedly hallucinogenic ingredients, but maybe with a good shot of ouzo.
4
@Tuvw Xyz; charming perhaps but I cannot believe the person who wrote this is a ''Professor" of anything. almost all the facts are wrong and it's obvious to me that the writer has no deep understanding of the theurgical rites performed with the Temple. Rest assured, the drink Kykeon was a drink that contained more than mint and water. Pschoactive botanicals were indeed used...the wheat was left to ferment which leads to produce a chemical much like LSD...the laurel leaf was also used in this 'mix'. this article is highly inaccurate.
3
Could the myth told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter really be the "most feminist" of all Greek myths? It's certainly true that the experiences and feelings of two female characters are of central interest, so there's that. On the other hand, those experiences are of betrayal, rape, abandonment, helplessness, deception, and a plainly imperfect restoration of order -- not exactly empowering. The cults of Demeter and Persephone are established through the sufferings that the two have passed through, so at least they are greatly revered. Nevertheless it's clear that they remain in assigned places within a male-dominated cosmos.
Whether we wish to call it "feminist" or not, the Odyssey's array of strong, appealing, intelligent, mostly independent female characters cannot be matched in Greek literature.
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Critchley's relief at coming to the conclusion that Eleusinian Mysteries involved no "supernatural" drama is palpable but all the conceptualizing ignores the effects of altered states on human physiology and experience of consensual reality. The Greeks were no strangers to altered states, as evident from the bacchantes, maenads and the allegory of Dionysus sending his own mother into divine frenzy. The rites of Demeter were the counterpoint to the rites of Dionysus, and no current philosopher can label the latter as 'sane'.
12
@Kai And fishfood wafers with wine are the flesh and blood of Christ? All hierarchical religion involves self-deception embedded in mass hysteria. It is the vitamin R of the human condition.
1
Many thousands, including children, and NO ONE spoke about it? There is only one reasonable explanation. The drink made them forget.
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@JMS Or the experience was one of those things that exists in a different dimension from normal ordinary life. When something like that happens it is vivid at the time and can have a deep impact, but it is terribly difficult to put it into words.
5
Demeter is such a potent force in this myth. Her grief is so consuming that, in spite of the edicts of the culture, she threatens the cosmic order itself to get her daughter back. And this set of rituals then happens every year, with humanities participation should we choose, to re-establish this divine order. Zeus and Hades are put in a never ending cycle of check by Demeter and Persephone in a cosmic rebellion for the ages. The power of grain can not be underestimated.
It's hard not to feel like we are missing this dynamic in our current culture.
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Professor Critchley, you are a modern day Herodotus, as it were, adroitly aiming to reveal secrets that were forbidden to be disclosed. You rely on our all too ready dismissal of those ancient concerns (of the past, really) which enables us to transgress. Perhaps it is a fallacy of historicism to believe we are superior to the past, yet as Herodotus, in writing for a Greek-reading audience, surely understood, we do willingly conspire in such trespassing, paying little mind that we are committing any sort of violation in doing so; it's an ancient culture, not ours.
Herodotus' story of Gyges (Histories, I.7-13) perhaps was comic to the Greeks. It tells a tale of political diremption enclosed in the enigma of a Lydian king's eros for his wife. His servant Gyges is forced to violate ancient Lydian law that "each should look upon one's own, only." Reading about Eleusis we may similarly be induced to think about how we differ from an 'other' culture, or perhaps how we share some important notions with it. What do we hold sacred in democracy, for example, that we have recently found ourselves declaiming about in terms of public observances and ritual beliefs?
I like your conclusion that temples and food at Eleusis reveal something un-mysterious; that their material connection underscores the blessing that life will continue. Yet, what common opinions inherent in revealing this connection, ala Herodotus, which we think we know very well, might actually prove fragile?
5
"...............was packed with locals and the air was thick with the aroma of coffee and enough lush cigarette smoke to make a New Yorker nostalgic.”
Nostalgic? Or disgusted?
If that had been me, it would have immediately made me homesick for Manhattan restaurants, in which smoking has been outlawed.
10
Good article, up until the end. How did you come to the conclusion that there is “no esoteric wisdom here. No secret code...” ??
Every contemporary writer who writes about it seemed to suggest there was, so the author discredits themselves by suggesting otherwise, even if it is philosophical in its stating.
Also, for the archeologist to simply dismiss the psychedelic aspect of the ritual (which we are only now understanding factored into more rituals in more cultures than we previous thought) as a mere drink of mint and barley smacks of the arrogance commonly displayed by academia unwilling to confront the reality that they may not be able to explain everything in the reality based empirical sense.
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@Kristopher I think Michael Cosmopoulos had a good academic perspective on the psychedelic aspect. He said basically it's an unknown, but because we don't have enough evidence we can't include it as a yes... for now.
1
The Mysteries of Eleusis also bear a striking parallel to many New York Mets games I attended in 1969....
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Well, there's Prof. George Mylonas's book "Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries" and, more popularly, ever-trekking Michael Wood's walking trip there from Athens, shown on PBS.
Both enjoyable, informative, and done over 40 years ago.
Ever think, by the way, that while Easter, a 3-day festival of sorts, commemorates the death and resurrection of the son, the Mysteries, much earlier than Christianity, commemorate the death and resurrection of the daughter?
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@B.the Mystery schools, and there were many, were at odds over Christianity over most things....the subject is so long and involved, but know this, the teachers of the Mystery schools, called Telesti ( those who are aimed ) rejected in it's entirety, the Christian narrative that today, we call the bible.
2
Of course. Why wouldn't they? They were there first.
Christianity borrowed from many religious traditions in the ancient world. And when it became a political force . . . .
3
You make me want to visit the land of my ancestors again and more specifically go to Eleusis in search of its mysteries.
6
The kykeon was a grain-based beverage (probably beer/ale) flavored with a mint called pennyroyal, as specified in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Pennyroyal was/is commonly known to induce uterine contractions which can initiate childbirth and menstruation.
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@Agnes
Pennyroyal is an abortifacient. But in doses large enough to produce this effect it can cause organ damage and death.
4
Ergot in barley? Sure. Less likely then in rye, but certainly possible.
https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/1014e/
If the fields in the area once got it, and then were replanted from last year's seeds, it very likely would have become endemic in the local crop. Just add water and stir. Paging Saint Anthony ...
15
Truly wonderful article. Thank you!
2
The best kept secret is none at all.
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Also not mentioned in this analysis is the fact that this duo was a mother and daughter and the story of Persephone’s time in Hades is symbolic of the harvest/seasons. Winter in Hades/the underworld of the dead and Spring back on earth with life, growing and renewal. The mother Demeter sacrificed her daughter it wasn’t just a trick, and some scholars claim Persephone may have been a willing participant in her sacrifice for the good of humanity.
This theme is carried over in Christianity.
The father and son has replaced mother and daughter and the father’s sacrifice of his only son and Christ’s acceptance of this sacrifice, along with his death and resurrection.
You don’t need to be a religious or antiquities scholar to see the parallels.
There is nothing new under the sun.
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@Issy Very good. I also thought of this while reading the article and it is surprising that these ideas were not mentioned by the author.
4
Years ago in a class on the Eleusinian Mysteries at the University of Washington I was very disappointed in what I was taught about was revealed to the participants. Perhaps it is best we never know.
7
An interesting article, but dismissive and unaware of what creates altered states. If a person fasts for three days and then dances all night, that person will be in a highly altered state of consciousness. Also, as others have pointed out, the mysterious drink may very wall have had psychedelic properties.
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Good point. Clearly, leaving the question of the drink aside, the intent of going into an altered state of consciousness is evident from the three day fast.
3
AN interesting piece of evidence for the Eleusinian Mysteries having been revealed to the participants by means of an entheogenic brew is Plato's allegory of the cave. We know that Plato had been to the mysteries, because he discusses them. And, separately from his discussion of the Mysteries is his description of a revelatory experience that is evocative of the awakening that is possible for any one who sets his mind of fire by means of entheogens.
The standing up in the confines of a dark cave, the discovery that all until this moment has been illusion, the exit from the cave into the truth of day, and the palpable reality of that experience, that is to ordinary life as awake mind is to the experience of a dream. Does Plato give away, by means of this coded tale, the actual experience that awaited a participant at the Mysteries? We shall never know. But we can still make that same discovery in person, in our personal Eleusis.
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Fascinating article! I am convinced that there is a direct link between these ancient rituals and the modern Greek Orthodox practice of remembering one’s deceased loved ones with a beautifully decorated tray of boiled wheat, almonds, sugar, and (often) pomegranate seeds, and special prayers.
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@Katina I was thinking the same thing! It made me thing of the koliva, made of boiled wheat because it is a symbol of the Resurrection, as referenced in John 12:24: “Truly I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the death and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit" [very much depending on your translation].
Of course, the Eucharist consists of bread and wine and is observed in Orthodox, Anglican, and Catholic churches regularly. I'm not the only Greek who suspects that many of our saints were the gods from a previous time and that our religious practices from that time are, um, ingrained.
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@CKats. I tnink the saints were real people, but ancient gods and religious practices did sometimes show up in newer religions in slightly modified ways. Anyway, the koliva certainly seem to have come down through the millennia.
6
Given that my mother's name was Aphrodite and that I had paternal aunts named Demetria and Artemis, and that these are also the names of Greek-Orthodox saints, then it's a given that the Greek goddesses morphed. The gods, less so. (Uncle Ari, yes; Uncle Zeus, hmmm.)
Look, you don't win converts by telling them that their old deities are nothing -- you say, See, they're one and the same. Why antagonize the locals when you want them to join you?
And so shrines to Athena became little churches to the Panagia. Hilltop altars to Ilios became churches to the Prophet Elias. And so on.
Religion can be fascinating. But then, ancient Greece certainly is.
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Eleusis does, indeed, remain an enigma--isn't it nice we haven't figured everything out?
But Poppy's dismissal of the ritual drink, kykeon, seems a bit offhanded. We do know the vague outlines of the recipe--it was pennyroyal, not mint, as one of them--but the ergot mold was quite common in wheat and other grains and it is the natural source of LSD. The fact that preparation--brewing?--of the kykeon was a closely-held secret, guarded by two families (for a thousand years!) attests that it wasn't just a refreshing post-fast tipple. As for the rectangular "grain storage" in the heart of the complex--well, why "store" grain if it isn't used? The building was likely the kykeon-brewery--and as ancient brewers knew, you needed some sort of starter (which we recognize as 'yeast') to make the magic happen. So, like starters for sourdough bread, the culture was kept alive for many, many years. It was central to the ritual and the portal to amazing experiences--even the Roman emperor Hadrian partook--and kept his mouth shut.
As for us, we are now, slowly, coming to realize that psychoactive molecules, can be thought of as therapeutic--ketamine the latest example of something that has gone from criminal to helpful. The Greeks still have much to teach us.
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@richard cheverton
Could you please tell us where the pennyroyal reference is documented? Pennyroyal grows in profusion along my walks, and I have always found it a majestic plant, with a singular bloom.
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Interested in your comment, I googled "pennyroyal." Wow!
But I think I won't plant it.
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@richard cheverton
LSD is not natural. It's a synthetic derivative.
Ergot is toxic and will kill you if ingested.
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Evocative piece but the explanation for what was in the Kykeon, the sacred drink at the heart of this experience, is as flat as yesterday's beer. Psychoactive plants played an important part in the visions seen in many ancient ceremonies and rituals. The golden sheaves of wheat found at Eleusis could have related to this. See The Road to Eleusis by Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann, and Carl A P Ruck.
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See Grateful Dead, the golden road to unlimited devotion....
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I would wonder how one would know with certainty that there were not enthanogens in some element of this ritual, paticularly since ergot has been associated with it. It could have been a small ,but adequate dosage, that would probably not be the centerpiece of the ritual - but would have, perhaps, highlighted some element of the ritual.
Lord knows we could use some shared, sacred ritual to help bind this world together.
As always, these essays and explorations on Ancient Greece are a blessing.
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Hi Guy
I, too, suspect that psychoactives were involved. Why I can still remember thinking "Everything's melting!" as the boundaries between ideas dissolved under the benign influence of the legendary Owsley purple...best wishes, skip
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@Guy Gullion: Carl Ruck, along w/ Albert Hoffman did some testing on the found cups that were used in the Mystery Temple...they found residue that they identified as psychoactive. interestingly, they also found some cups...on Samothrace...that contained the residue of psychoactive mushrooms.
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"Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece" by Joan Breton Connelly, is an excellent supplement to this piece, on the power of priestesses -- eye-opening.
Also, Apuleis' The Golden Ass is usually cited as a (weird) reference to the mysteries of Isis.... (the question of the long link between the underground rituals of Inanna (well, those were pretty overground), Ishtar, Astarte, Demeter, is still wide open....)
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Having visited Eleusis a few months ago I can attest to feelings of awe as I had the opportunity to walk that sacred ground. It is not an everyday experience to get transported to a past where celebrations like the great Mysteries were held. This visitor became transfixed in trying to imagine how it all appeared in that geography while walking through the ancient stones and reliefs. Every step taken through Eleusis' ruins now holds the ghosts of ancient Greek religious belief. And the stones do haunt.
The celebration of the Mysteries began in Athens and then on to the Sacred Way toward Eleusis. The procession must have been spectacular for miles as all worshippers had to be infused with soul-stirring expectation of what was to come. At one particular spot on the Sacred Way , which today follows the road with slight changes , initiates to the Mysteries had a yellow woolen thread tied onto their right hand and left foot. This was to ward off the 'evil eye' and bad spirits.
The events at Eleusis had to have been virtually beyond words especially for the initiates. And the secrecy behind it during the ancient periods just make it more powerful being thought about in centuries beyond. We should thank the ancient Athenian Republic for this state of affairs as they proscribed revelation of the Mysteries. It was to accord those 8 days of worship with great respect and renown.
The Acropolis Museum has Eleusis relics to learn more on this stirring ancient Greek site.
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Another fascinating article, Mr. Critchley! Thank you so much. Keep 'em coming!
But isn't that the truth! We've known about the Eleusinian mysteries for thousands of years--we know SOMETHING about what went on--we follow (as in your article) the initiates step by step until they--
--until they WHAT?
No answer. Dead silence. As in those two marvelous lines by Robert Frost--
--"We dance around in a ring and suppose
But the secret sits in the middle and KNOWS."
It does. We don't.
Does not that further question force itself into your mind? The world we live in is different--unimaginably different!--from the world of the Greeks and Romans. Starting with the fact: I am writing this in Ambler. A small town in the New World--the ultima Thule of the Romans. The Greeks may have dimly suspected the existence of such a place. But they didn't know. They could have said (with Vergil):
Ad nos vix tenuis famae perlabitur aura.
"The barest breath of rumor has reached us--no more."
AND YET--
--what happens to us when we die? Where do we go--if anywhere? What has happened to our loved ones? Or those countless millions that have gone before?
Myself, I believe the answer lies in the New Testament. And I am remembering how Paul himself stood in the Areopagus and proclaimed Christ's resurrection from the dead. When death really DID--meet its master.
But he won few converts.
He had better luck elsewhere.
If you call it luck.
And some don't.
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@Susan Fitzwater
I will remember your name and look out for more comments from you.
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"There is a close material connection between temples and food, between religious observance and the most basic ingredients of social and economic life." I read this while standing in a church parking lot in this all-too-typical down and out town in SW Pennsylvania, waiting my turn to descend the steps to a basement called Chapel of the Devotions. I am here to pick up the monthly food donations for an elderly and disabled gay man who is a virtual shut in, and lives in this suburban, and somehow semi-rural, county. Everyone's patient. Even the infants and toddlers. It's a solemn event. I doubt anyone boasts to their neighbors about it. They, too, keep silent about the ritual. Temples and food. How far, exactly, have we come?
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@Jay Kardon Very likely, they took their loaves of bread and went home...
@Jay Kardon
Dear Mr. Kardon,
dear Sir,
"What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?"
Hayden
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