Eleusinian Mysteries

The Eleusinian Mysteries (Greek: Ἐλευσίνια Μυστήρια, romanized: Eleusínia Mystḗria) were initiations held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at the Panhellenic Sanctuary of Eleusis in ancient Greece.

[17] The word mystikós (μυστικός), source of the English mystic, means "connected with the mysteries", or "private, secret" (as in Modern Greek).

Because of her distress, and in an effort to coerce Zeus to allow the return of her daughter, she caused a terrible drought in which the people suffered and starved, depriving the gods of sacrifice and worship.

Before Persephone was released to Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, Hades tricked her into eating pomegranate seeds (either six or four according to the telling), which forced her to return to the underworld for some months each year.

[22] However, a scholar has proposed a different version,[23] according to which the four months during which Persephone is with Hades correspond to the dry Greek summer, a period during which plants are threatened with drought.

[26] One line of thought by modern scholars has been that the Mysteries were intended "to elevate man above the human sphere into the divine and to assure his redemption by making him a god and so conferring immortality upon him".

[32] In the cave of Amnisos at Crete, the goddess Eileithyia is related with the annual birth of the divine child, and she is connected with Enesidaon (The Earth Shaker),[33] who is the chthonic aspect of Poseidon.

[36] The myth was represented in a cycle with three phases: the "descent", the "search", and the "ascent" (Greek anodos) with contrasted emotions from sorrow to joy which roused the mystae to exultation.

Hippolytus of Rome, one of the Church Fathers writing in the early 3rd century AD, discloses in Refutation of All Heresies that "the Athenians, while initiating people into the Eleusinian rites, likewise display to those who are being admitted to the highest grade at these mysteries, the mighty, and marvellous, and most perfect secret suitable for one initiated into the highest mystic truths: an ear of grain in silence reaped.

According to Thomas Taylor, "the dramatic shows of the Lesser Mysteries occultly signified the miseries of the soul while in subjection to the body, so those of the Greater 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 of intellectual [spiritual] vision."

According to Plato, "the ultimate design of the Mysteries ... was to lead us back to the principles from which we descended, ... a perfect enjoyment of intellectual [spiritual] good.

In order to qualify for initiation, participants would sacrifice a piglet[citation needed] to Demeter and Persephone, and then ritually purify themselves in the river Illisos.

The Greater Mysteries took place in Boedromion – the third month of the Attic calendar, falling in late summer around September or October – and lasted ten days.

On the 15th of Boedromion, a day called the Gathering (Agyrmos), the priests (hierophantes, those who show the sacred ones) declared the start of the rites (prorrhesis), and carried out the sacrifice (hiereía deúro, hither the victims).

[52] At a certain spot along the way, they shouted obscenities in commemoration of Iambe (or Baubo), an old woman who, by cracking dirty jokes, had made Demeter smile as she mourned the loss of her daughter.

Discovery of fragments of ergot in a temple dedicated to the two Eleusinian goddesses excavated at the Mas Castellar site (Girona, Spain) provided legitimacy for this theory.

Before mystai could enter the Telesterion, they would recite, "I have fasted, I have drunk the kykeon, I have taken from the kiste (box) and after working it have put it back in the calathus (open basket).

Some hold that the priests were the ones to reveal the visions of the holy night, consisting of a fire that represented the possibility of life after death, and various sacred objects.

[65] The closing of the Eleusinian Mysteries in 392 AD by the emperor Theodosius I is reported by Eunapius, a historian and biographer of the Greek philosophers.

Triptolemus is depicted receiving seeds from Demeter and teaching mankind how to work the fields to grow crops, with Persephone holding her hand over his head to protect him.

[74] Vases and other works of relief sculpture, from the 4th, 5th and 6th centuries BC, depict Triptolemus holding an ear of corn, sitting on a winged throne or chariot, surrounded by Persephone and Demeter with pine torches.

He is standing near the omphalos while an unknown female (probably a priestess of Demeter) sat nearby on the kiste, holding a scepter and a vessel filled with kykeon.

[77] Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) borrowed terms and interpretations from the late 19th and early 20th century classical scholarship in German and French as a source of metaphors for his reframing of psychoanalytic treatment into a spiritualistic ritual of initiation and rebirth.

[78] Dimitris Lyacos in the second book of the Poena Damni trilogy With the People from the Bridge, a contemporary, avant-garde play focusing on the return of the dead and the revenant legend combines elements from the Eleusinian mysteries as well as early Christian tradition in order to convey a view of collective salvation.

[82] In opposition to this idea, skeptical scholars note the lack of any solid evidence and stress the collective rather than individual character of initiation into the Mysteries.

These include the ergot species Claviceps paspali [fr],[9] a fungal parasite of paspalum, which contains the alkaloids ergotamine, a precursor to LSD, and ergonovine.

[85][86] Discovery of fragments of ergot (fungi containing LSD-like psychedelic alkaloids) in a temple dedicated to the two Eleusinian Goddesses excavated at the Mas Castellar site (Girona, Spain) provided some legitimacy for this theory.

[92] To be active orally (like in ayahuasca) it must be combined with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor such as Syrian rue (Peganum harmala), which grows throughout the Mediterranean.

Alternatively, J. Nigro Sansonese (1994), using the mythography supplied by Mylonas, hypothesizes that the Mysteries of Eleusis were a series of practical initiations into trance involving proprioception of the human nervous system induced by breath control (similar to samyama in yoga).

Similarly, the seed-filled chambers of a pomegranate, a fruit associated with the founding of the cult, esoterically describe proprioception of the initiate's heart during trance.