The Ceremonies

The celebration of the Mysteries at Eleusis was an elaborate affair which took place over a period of nine days in the month of Boedromion (late September). For each day, there was a prescribed series of ritual actions that initiates were expected to follow in the proper order (Parke 53-72; Simon 24-35).

One day prior to the festival proper, a large crowd of participants would gather in Eleusis and proceed with much pomp to the sanctuary of Demeter in the Athenian agora. On the following day, 15 Boedromion, the actual festival would begin with a formal declaration in the agora announcing the event and inviting initiates to take part. From 16 to 18 Boedromion, the initiates would descend singly to the sea, each bearing a suckling piglet for purification and sacrifice. (Here the connection with the Thesmophoria, another ritual celebration of Demeter featuring a pig sacrifice, is most in evidence.) There would also be major sacrifices in honor of the city of Athens and other public institutions.

On the fifth day of the festival (19 Boedromion) the celebrants would proceed in formal procession from Athens back to Eleusis, bearing the sacred hiera as well as a statue of the boy-god Iacchos. The latter deity, who personified the shouts of exultation that the participants would periodically emit, was identified at least as far back as the days of Sophokles with Dionysos (cf. Antigone, vv. 1115 ff.). This identificiation constitutes prima facie evidence of a very significant connection between the Dionysian and Eleusinian Mysteries. Yet the point remains controversial (see below).

The initiates would then rest, purify themselves, and maintain either a partial or complete fast. It is believed that they would break their fast as evening approached by drinking a special beverage known as the "kykeon," consisting of meal and water mixed with fresh pennyroyal mint leaves (the same brew that Demeter drank, as recounted in the Hymn, lines 210-11). Obviously, the grain in the drink was a symbol of Persephone, the eternal goddess who dies, goes under the ground, and then comes back to life again.

Scholars disagree widely over the significance of the kykeon. Some have maintained that it must have had a sacramental character involving a communion with, or assimilation of, the spirit of the deity (Loisy 69; Jevons 365ff.). On the other hand, Mylonas doubts that it had any such "mystic" significance, although he acknowledges that the drinking of the kykeon was an "act of religious remembrance" involving "an observance of an act of the Goddess" (259f.). Even on this muted interpretation, the similarity to the Christian Eucharist is striking.

As to the composition of the drink, it is generally agreed that it can have had no alcoholic content, since the Hymn expressly states that Demeter did not partake of wine. Yet it has been suggested that there might have been an admixture of some other intoxicating ingredients. Joseph Campbell, for example, has speculated that the grains of wheat may have contained small quantities of ergot, a natural hallucinogen often occurring in cereal products (video: "From Darkness to Light"). This hypothesis is rendered less plausible, however, by the extremely volatile character of ergot infections (as in Saint Anthony's fire), which would have been difficult if not impossible to control safely.

When the mystai entered the sacred precincts of the Telesterion, they may have been required to utter a special, formulaic password, or "synthema," to confirm their readiness to participate in the rites. Clement of Alexandria has reported the contents of such a synthema as follows: "I fasted; I drank the kykeon; I took from the kiste [a cylindrical reliquary]; having done my task, I placed in the basket, and from the basket into the kiste" (Protreptikos, II, 18; Loeb 43). These obscure, but suggestive words have given rise to a plethora of imaginative interpretations; yet scholars are divided about the reliability of Clement's testimony.

What next transpired in the ceremonies remains hidden behind veils of piously enforced secrecy. Most scholars believe, on the basis of testimony from Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian, that the Mysteries comprised three main components, known as the deiknymena ("things shown"), the legomena ("things said"), and the dromena ("things done"). We have already discussed aspects of the first two and will return to them again later. As for the dromena, these are believed to have included a ritual reenactment of the story of Demeter and Persephone, including the latter's abduction by Hades; Demeter's grief; her long, desperate search throughout the world for the departed goddess; the anguish of all living creatures as famine and death engulfed them. Very likely the initiates gained a sense of direct participation in Demeter's travail by searching with her and calling for her daughter in the same hallowed precincts which, according to tradition, actually witnessed these events. Then finally, perhaps illuminated in a sudden blaze of torchlight, there would have been the joyous moment of Persephone's resurrection, as she emerged from the underworld and returned to the loving arms of her mother. The dramatic intensity of this pageant, heightened (in all probability) by music and chanted invocations of the gods, would surely have created an awe-inspiring spectacle, whose memory the initiates would cherish for the rest of their lives.

Foucart has proposed, on the basis of a passage from Plutarch (cited by Themistius and preserved in Stobaeus), that in addition to representing the separation and reunion of the two goddesses, the Mysteries may also have led the initiates through gloomy infernal regions, with horrible images and ghostly shapes in order to recreate a grim foreshadowing of what awaits the uninitiate (Stobaeus, "Agra" 107). Then, as Foucart also suggests, subsequent representations of a blissful afterlife in the company of the goddesses and other initiates would have produced a profound sense of relief and spiritual rebirth (392ff.). Other researchers have objected to this scenario on the grounds that the ruins at Eleusis include no remains of a stage installations, underground chambers, or any theatrical machinery such as would have been necessary in order to render the experience of a trip to the underworld (Noack 236ff.; Mylonas 268). Yet the absence of full-fledged stage equipment surely does not preclude the possibility of dramatic representations in some manner of an "underworld"--achieved through a judicious use of darkness, sound, and atmosphere. (Besides, a great deal could have been done with wooden props and settings, which of course would since have disappeared.) Foucart's hypothesis, though speculative, cannot be ruled out.

Interestingly, Wilamowitz and Kerényi have used the same argument about the absence of theatrical installations, underground chambers, and so on to contest even the prevailing theory concerning the enactment of Demeter and Persephone's story. According to these scholars, the supposition that the dromena at Eleusis took the form of a stage-play is absurd (Wilamowitz 481; Kerényi 141). But this is not to say that they would necessarily deny the occurrence of any dramatic representations whatever. Instead, Kerényi proposes (134) that the dromena may have been a sacred dance, perhaps similar to the labyrinthine rope-dances that were performed on the island of Delos. By means of stylized gestures and ritual moves in which the initiates themselves participated, it would have been possible to evoke a profound, even trance-like sense of union with the divine.

Yet another controversy concerns the question whether or not an ieros gamos, or Sacred Marriage, also featured in these rites. There are three or four pieces of circumstantial evidence, most of them originating in the statements of early Christian Fathers, which have been used to infer the existence of an ieros gamos: (1) According to Clement of Alexandria, Demeter was sometimes referred to as "Brimo" (the Mighty, the Raging), on account of her anger toward Zeus (Protreptikos II, 14; Loeb 35). (2) Hippolytus of Rome (third century) reports that "At night in Eleusis, [the Hierophant] appearing in the midst of many fires, proclaims the great and secret mystery, saying, 'The Holy Brimo has borne a sacred child, Brimos,' that is, the mighty (f.) [has borne] the mighty (m.)" (Philosophoumena V, 38-41; Migne 3150). (3) Asterios of Amaseia (fourth century), in a diatribe against the pagans' barbaric and obscene rituals, asked the following rhetorical questions: "Are not the height and culmination of your religion those Eleusinian Mysteries, whose vanities the people of Attica, and indeed all Greece, gather to celebrate? Is there not in that place a dark underground chamber [katabasion], where the Hierophant meets with the High Priestess alone? Are not the torches then extinguished, and do not the vast multitudes believe it is for their own salvation--what those two do together in the darkness?" (Asterios, in Migne 324) (4) In his commentary on Plato's Timaeus, Proklos Diadochos (fifth century) recounts the following: "In the ceremonies of Eleusis they would cry, raising their eyes to the heavens, 'rain' [hye], and then, lowering them to the earth, 'be fruitful' [kye]" (Timaios 293C; Festugiére 34).

On the basis of this evidence, many investigators have concluded that some form of Sacred Marriage probably took place at the Mysteries, and that this ceremony culminated in the symbolic birth (or rebirth) of a son. There are various proposals as to who that child might have been: possibly Iacchos, the tutelary deity whose statue accompanied the dual goddesses on the pilgrimage from Athens to Eleusis; Ploutos, the god of wealth who sprang, according to Hesiod and Homer, from the union of Demeter and the mortal Iasion of Crete; Dionysos-Zagreus, a Cretan deity, who according to Orphic tradition was the offspring of Persephone and Zeus; Triptolemos, an early prince of Eleusis much represented on vases and urns; or even Persephone herself. Perhaps, indeed, the "child" represents a mystical merging and identification of all these together.

Mylonas, however, followed by Brumfield, denies that any Sacred Marriage, or any birth of a Sacred Child, took place (Mylonas 270, 311 ff.; Brumfield 203). Mylonas's arguments are too complicated to discuss here in detail, but in essence they are: (1) that Clement mixed up and confused elements from Phrygian, Orphic, and even Alexandrian cults with the Eleusinian Mysteries (288-305); (2) that Hippolytus could not have had any information about what was actually said in the most esoteric ceremonies at Eleusis, hence he filled in the gaps in his knowledge with plausible-sounding phrases of his own invention (305-10); that Asterios came too late in history to have had any reliable data available, and besides he was writing for an audience that also lacked first-hand knowledge (311-15); that the words alleged by Proklos to have been an unutterable secret ("hye, kye") could not possibly have been, since they were inscribed for all to see on a well beside the Dipylon gate of Athens (270, 310). Mylonas's primary concern throughout his book is to avert what he conceives as the "error" of theokrasia, the intermingling of distinct deities and religious traditions. Whether this is always an "error" may, however, be open to question--a question to which this article will return below.

In any case, after the performance of the dromena, the Hierophant would withdraw alone into the Anaktoron (the sacred, secret chamber of the Telesterion) and reemerge with the Hiera, those most mysterious and holy relics of Demeter and Persephone. In the full splendor of his sacerdotal dignity, he would reveal these to the initiates, who doubtless accepted them as objects that the two goddesses had personally consecrated and passed on to humankind. This culminating moment of the Mysteries was surely that which inspired the profoundest feelings of awe. Yet we have no idea today what the contents of the Hiera actually were. Theories have ranged from stalks of cut wheat, serpents, specially blessed bread, a stylized phallus or female pudendum (or both), ancient Mycenaean artifacts, or neolithic statuettes. In the final analysis, what the Hiera physically were is perhaps less important than how they were presented and the spirit in which they were received.

As the festival wound down, the participants would dedicate special services in honor of the dead. Ritual libations would be poured on the ground, the consecrated liquid flowing in the eastward and westward directions. The initiates (probably exhausted at this point) would then return to Athens singly or in small groups. There does not appear to have been any organized procession. This was a time for reflection and meditation.

http://users.erols.com/nbeach/eleusis.html