Half 1 was posted yesterday. You’ll be able to learn it right here.
The Eleusinian Thriller Rites derived from early planting and harvest festivals, agricultural rites from the late Neolithic. They celebrated the expansion of the plant from a seed within the floor, however their objective was additionally to convey a brand new approach of seeing, a gap of the eyes, the Epotopia. The golden grain signified the alchemical gold of a brand new consciousness, the miracle of a plant turning to gold. By way of fasting, initiates skilled a ritual identification with grief and loss, adopted by a return of life and pleasure, a rebirth, Persephone’s triumphant return from Hades. Demeter was a giver of agricultural rites, however she laid down non secular legal guidelines as properly, therefore her title of Thesmophoria, or Lawgiver.
Some harvest themes, like separating the wheat from the chaff, which we’re conversant in from Christianity, little doubt have their origin right here. Joseph Campbell mentioned that Christianity derived way more from the pagan custom than it did from Judaism. The identify Eleusis means “introduction,” a theme the Christians adopted for the approaching of the divine little one.
At Eleusis (and elsewhere) the divine little one was born in a winnowing basket to indicate purity and better consciousness. Robert Graves noticed the notion that Jesus was born in a manger as originating on this custom, additionally that of Moses present in a basket among the many rushes. The Welsh hero Llew Llew (or Llew Llaw) was present in a chest, and Welsh bard Taliesin was found in a basket introduced in by the ocean.
Some students see the Rites as an try to acquire immortality for the initiates, like Demeter passing Demophoon by the fires, when his mom Metaneira interrupts her. Plato, an enthusiastic participant within the Rites, thought that life after dying can be markedly totally different for the initiated. They might be shielded from dying’s ravaging results and would enter Hades as gods.
Scholar Iordanis Poulkouras sees the story of Persephone’s rape and abduction into the underworld as a mirrored image of the patriarchy’s incursion on Goddess worship and the standing of girls. The chronological timeline bears out this interpretation, for the reason that Rites of Eleusis started c. 1450 BCE, the identical date as the autumn of Knossos, their level of origin. Knossos was a late-surviving matriarchal theocracy that had been overrun by Mycenian warfare lords. How have been goddesses, priestesses, and girls to outlive on this new order? The Rites protect and have a good time ladies’s energy, at the same time as they take care of the truth of the upheaval of the patriarchy. Ultimately, not less than within the fantasy, Demeter’s energy over nature is such that the patriarchal gods should honor it and a compromise is introduced into being. Persephone will return to her mom however return to Hades for one third of every 12 months.
In Return to the Goddess, Jungian analyst Edward Whitmont noticed the violence achieved to the Female by the patriarchy because the Wasteland, and the return of the Female because the Holy Grail and Messianic Liberation sought in non secular custom. The Female is the component of magic, play, and psychic consciousness. In line with him, the brand new Female will cooperate with the Masculine relatively than be dominated by it, and be capable to affirm within the face of ache, battle, and despair, like Persephone returned from Hades.
The classicist Karl Kerenyi thought that the which means of Demeter discovering Persephone associated to the reintegration of the feminine character along with her roots and virgin self, after the various sacrifices of motherhood. This mirroring theme reveals itself in a number of the friezes the place the 2 seem extra as sisters than mom and daughter.
Others see Persephone, choosing narcissus when kidnapped into the underworld, as one who has overcome the restrictions of the ego, by venturing into the shadow realm, and returns psychically enriched, a hierophant, past the daylight realm of Demeter. Persephone is a determine who has identified excessive self-sacrifice, however has survived it, her integrity intact.
The parable bears apparent similarities to the story of Isis and Osiris, from which it little doubt advanced. Crete was a long-time buying and selling accomplice with Egypt, and significantly influenced by its tradition. Egypt was the agricultural and creative powerhouse of the area for over a thousand years.
The Roman Empire below Constantine shut down the Rites in 329 CE and the temple was later destroyed, however the Christian church adopted lots of their precepts. Warfare and hostilities have been suspended in honor of the Rites, and solely as soon as in virtually 2,000 years have been they ever cancelled, upon the information that Alexander the Nice had burned down town of Thebes.
Of their time, the Rites of Eleusis afforded initiates a chance to develop their minds and their world by a heightened expertise of nature, group, artwork, fantasy, the cosmos, and the realm of the Goddesses. The expertise was extremely prized by luminaries of the traditional world and was additionally open to kids and slaves. Initiates have been sworn to secrecy about their content material, upon ache of dying. We’re left with these haunting questions: What was mentioned? What was eaten? What was proven?
Sources
Dashu, Max, Girls in Greek Mythology: Pythias, Melissae, and Titanides, Secret Historical past of the Witches, Vol. II, E book I, Veleda Press, 2023, Richmond, CA.
Gimbutas, Marija, The Goddesses and Gods of Previous Europe, College of California Press, 1982, Berkeley and Los Angeles.
Graves, Robert, The White Goddess, Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1948, New York.
Keller, Mara L., “The Ritual Path of Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries,” in Rosicrucian Digest, No. 2, 2009, pp. 28-49.
Poulkouras, Iordanis, “The Eleusinian Mysteries,” paper introduced on the 7th Esoteric Quest Convention on the Mysteries and Philosophies of Antiquity, Samothrace, Sept., 2008.
Ruck, Carl P., Albert Hoffman, R. Gordon Wasson, “The Highway to Eleusis, Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries,” in The Classical World, 1979, pp. 1-22.
Whitmont, Edward C., Return to the Goddess, Crossroads Publishing Firm, New York, 1983.
