The secret initiation ceremonies connected with the worship of the corn-goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone, held annually at Eleusis near Athens in ancient times. In origin agricultural fertility rites, they later came to have a moral dimension. Initiation, preceded by ritual purification, was believed to secure happiness in the after-life for those who had led a blameless life.
The Eleusinian Mysteries were annual initiation ceremonies for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance. These myths and mysteries later spread to Rome.
Eleusis (modern-day Elefsina) was a small town located about 30 km NW of Athens. It was an agricultural town, producing wheat and barley.
Mythology
The Mysteries were based on a legend revolving around Demeter, the goddess of life, agriculture and fertility. (Although the dry season is summer in Greece, this catastrophe is often associated with winter.)
During her search, Demeter wandered far and wide, having many minor adventures along the way, including one in which she taught the secrets of agriculture to Triptolemus. while in the underworld she had eaten six seeds of a pomegranate that Hades had given her thus meaning that she had to stay in the underworld for six months of the year (Autumn/Winter) But was allowed by Zeus and Hades to stay on the earth for the other six months (Spring/Summer).
The Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated Persephone's return, for it was also the return of plants and of life to the earth.
The Mysteries
The Mysteries are believed to have been begun about 1500 BC, during the Mycenean Age. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, a King Celeus is said to have been one of the first people to learn the secret rites and mysteries of her cult, as well as one of the original priests, along with Diocles, Eumolpos, Polyxeinus, and Triptolemus, Celeus' son, who had supposedly learned agriculture from Demeter.
Under Pisistratus of Athens, the Eleusinian Mysteries became pan-Hellenic and pilgrims flocked from Greece and beyond to participate. Around 300 BC, the state took over control of the Mysteries;
Participants
There were four categories of people who participated in the Eleusinian Mysteries:
The priests, priestesses and hierophantes. Those who had attained epopteia, who had learned the secrets of the greatest mysteries of Demeter. much of the concrete information about the Eleusinian Mysteries was never written down. The contents, like so much about the Mysteries, are still unknown, and probably will be forever.However, Thomas Taylor writes that this Cista ("kiste") contained a golden mystical serpent, egg, a phallus, and possibly also seeds sacred to Demeter.
Two Eleusinian Mysteries, the "Greater" and the "Lesser."
Taylor has written that "the Lesser Mysteries signified the miseries of the soul while in subjection to the body. The Greater Mysteries obscurely intimated, by mystic and splendid visions, the felicity of the soul, both here and hereafter, when purified from the defilements of a material nature and constantly elevated to the realities intellectual [spiritual] vision." He also quotes Plato who wrote that "the design of the mysteries was to lead us back to the principles from which we descended, that is to a perfect enjoyment of intellectual [spiritual] good".
The Lesser Mysteries were held in Anthesterion (March) but the exact time was not always fixed and changed occasionally, unlike the Greater Mysteries.
The Greater Mysteries took place in Boedromion (the first month of the Attic calendar) and lasted nine days.
Outline – The Greater Mysteries in Five Acts
The first act (14th Boedromion) of the Greater Mysteries was the bringing of the sacred objects from Eleusis to the Eleusinion, a temple at the base of the Acropolis.
On 15th Boedromion, the hierophantes (priests) declared prorrhesis, the start of the rites.
The ceremonies began in Athens on 16th Boedromion with the celebrants washing themselves in the sea at Phaleron and sacrificing a young pig at the Eleusinion on 17th Boedromion.
The procession to Eleusis began at Kerameikos (the Athenian cemetery) on the 19th Boedromion from where the people walked to Eleusis, along what was called the "Sacred Way", swinging branches called bacchoi.
Upon reaching Eleusis, there was a day of fasting in commemoration of Demeter's fasting while searching for Persephone. This was the most secretive part of the Mysteries and those who had been initiated were forbidden to ever speak of the events that took place in the Telesterion.
As to the climax of the Mysteries, there are two modern theories. Others hold this explanation to be insufficient to account for the power and longevity of the Mysteries, and that the experiences must have been internal and mediated by a powerful psychoactive ingredient contained in the kykeon. (See "entheogenic theories" below)
Following this section of the Mysteries was the Pannychis, an all-night feast accompanied by dancing and merriment.
On 23rd Boedromion, the Mysteries ended and everyone returned home.
End of the Eleusinian Mysteries
The Roman emperor Theodosius I closed the sanctuaries by decree in AD 392 in an effort to destroy pagan resistance to the imposition of Christianity as a state religion. The last remnants of the Mysteries were wiped out in AD 396, when Alaric, King of the Goths, invaded accompanied by Christians "in their dark garments," bringing Arian Christianity and desecrating the old sacred sites. The closing of the Eleusinian Mysteries in the 4th century is reported by Eunapios, a historian and biographer of the Greek philosophers. Eunapios had been initiated by the last legitimate Hierophant, who had been commissioned by the emperor Julian to restore the Mysteries, which had by then fallen into decay. According to Eunapios, the very last Hierophant was a usurper, "the man from Thespiai who held the rank of Father in the mysteries of Mithras".
The Mysteries in art
There are a great many paintings and pieces of pottery that depict various aspects of the Mysteries.
The Ninnion Tablet in the same museum depicts Demeter, followed by Persephone and Iacchus, and then the procession of initiates.
Entheogenic theories
Some scholars believe that the power of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from the kykeon's functioning as a psychedelic agent;
This theory remains controversial, as modern preparations of kykeon using ergot-parasitized barley have yielded inconclusive results.
It has been argued by Terence McKenna that the mysteries were focused around a variety of Psilocybe mushrooms, although there seems to be little evidence for this.
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