In Eleusis, site of the Eleusinain mysteries my students and I lived out the story of Demeter and Persephone. In ancient Greece, a new form of metaphysics and archetypal psychology emerged, one in which the realms of inwardness came to have as much ontological status as did the external world. Perhaps the deepest and most satisfying aspect of this was in the spread of the mystery religions. These were ecstatic forms of piety that borrowed much from the earlier Goddess religions, but now were transfigured into dramatic inward journeys of anguish, grief, loss, redemption, joy, and ecstasy. Within these dramas often a feminine story or myth like that of Demeter and Persephone could be presented as ways of taking vast numbers of people down into the womb of regenesis. You see while the dark days of Herstory remained buried within the Greek culture, there, in the mystery religions which often were celebrated in caves or in labyrinths beneath the ground, the feminine store met and re-made those who sought meaning and a new consciousness. These mystery religions provided people with an intimate environment and community of the saved, in which one counted as a real person and in which he found a deeper identity. Identifying with the God or Goddess. The rites of the ancient Mysteries provided powerful initiatory journeys of anguish, grief, loss, redemption, knowledge, and ecstatic union with the god or goddess. During the journey one died in some sense to ones old self and was reborn to a higher self or even to identity with goddess or god. One also received special knowledge and training as part of ones initiation into deeper life and its meaning. Often, the journey followed the story of the suffering of gods and goddesses, with the training coming from the representatives of the goddess -- as in the cult of the Triple Goddess in the Eleusinian Mysteries -- in her aspect as Persephone, Demeter, and Hecate; that is, maiden, fertile Mother, and wise old crone. This most renowned of all Mysteries assured a powerful experience as the participant witnessed the tale of Demeter losing her child Persephone to Hades, the god of death and the underworld. Persephone becomes Queen of the underworld whole her mother, Demeter, suffering immense grief, searches everywhere for her, and as goddess of agriculture, causes the crops t die and the world to become a wasteland. But then, aided by Hecate, a goddess of wise magic and of crossroads, Demeter is able to find and recover her child fro part of the year, during which time there is a renewal of life on Earth. What else happened during the initiation into the Mysteries? We know very little, but from what can be recovered from early Christian commentaries, we gather that the initiate underwent a physical and symbolic night descent into the underworld, where the initiatory experience occurred. A fragment of a work by the Greek poet Pindar says of the initiates upon their return: Happy are they who having beheld these things, descends beneath the Earth. They know lifes end but also a new beginning from the gods. In regard to the mysteries, Athens was alive as long as the Eleusinian mysteries were going -- they provided the mythic matrix for Athens’s continuing existence. Demeter and Persephone gave humankind the gift of grain, the gift of substantial food, as well as the gift of spiritual transformation. It is probably true that in ancient Eleusis, on the occasion of receiving the ultimate vision, the initiate ate or drank a psychedelic brew -- know as ambrosia. The recipe seemed to be the same as the drink given to the goddess Demeter when she was welcomed to Eleusis. This imbibing brought the participant into resonance with the Great Goddess, enhancing both their experience and their visionary knowing. This made them for a time immortal too. In the ancient mystery tradition there is the training period, the cleansing, the journey, the jokes, the entrance into the sacred space -- the story -- the things said and told by those who have the beautiful voice; the things done, the dromena, and the things seen. There is the final Epopte -- the revelation, the vision, and with it, a joining with the god, the starry one, the realized one. This is then followed by the return to the so-called real world but with a difference. For what occurred in the ancient mysteries is the giving of meaning to life and the various forms of death. And particularly in the Eleusinian mysteries, is the presence of life beyond death. It is also the journey from ones ordinary diminished condition into extraordinary life wherein participants died to their old selves and were resurrected to eternal life and personal transfiguration.
Posted on: Mon, 16 Jun 2014 04:30:13 +0000
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