The Eleusinian Mysteries

INTRODUCTION

In the 'Story of Gracchus' Faunus, the mysterious and 'otherworldly' character who acts as guardian and advisor to Marcus and his companions, is insistent that during their stay in Athens they should attend the 'Eleusinian Mysteries', which are being held at the time of their visit.
While Faunus will not tell Adonios precisely why they need to do this, he makes it clear that the future holds events that will be so serious that the 'protection' that such rites shall give to the company shall in some way enable them to survive these events, and go on to a further, and fuller life elsewhere.
Adonios does not fully understand the meaning of the advice that Faunus gives him, but like almost all people living at that time, he is well aware of the reputation of the 'Mysteries', even although he does not know what the rituals actually are, as such knowledge is a carefully guarded secret among initiates.
So read on to learn what information we, in our time, have about this aspect of religion and philosophy in the ancient world.

ROMAN MYSTERY RELIGIONS

The outer observances of the Roman religion took the form of popular festivities open to all.
At the same time there were certain other rites of a grave and solemn nature known as the 'Mysteries', reserved only for those specially prepared to receive them.

Isis

Mithras

In contrast to the public festivals, which were celebrated for the welfare of the state, the inner mysteries were meant for the individual and were conducted in secret.
There is much uncertainty about the exact details relating to most of the inner mysteries; the accounts we have of them are not consistent, and in some particulars confused.
Many elements have been forgotten, since they were never put down in writing, but some idea of their character can be pieced together from scattered hints in extant texts.
No one has ever betrayed the mysteries.
Although sceptical and even cynical about many things, the Romans took them very seriously.

 Cybele

Dionysus

The mystery schools of Roman antiquity include the 'Eleusinian Mysteries', the 'Dionysian Mysteries', and the 'Orphic Mysteries'.
Some of the many divinities that the Romans nominally adopted from other cultures also came to be worshipped in Mysteries, for instance, Egyptian Isis, Persian Mithraic Mysteries (see above), Thracian/Phrygian Sabazius, and Phrygian Cybele.

'Mystery Religions', Sacred Mysteries or simply Mysteries, were religious schools of the Roman world for which participation was reserved to 'initiates' (mystai).
The main characterization of this religion is the secrecy associated with the particulars of the initiation and the ritual practices, which may not be revealed to outsiders.
The mystery schools flourished in Late Antiquity; the Emperor Julian, in the mid 4th century, is known to have been initiated into three distinct mystery schools - most notably the Mithraic Mysteries.
Due to the secret nature of the school, the details of these religious practices are derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.
Because of this element of secrecy, we are ill-informed as to the beliefs and practices of the various mystery faiths.
We know that they had a general likeness to one another.
The term 'Mystery' derives from Latin 'mysterium', from Greek 'mysterion' (usually as the plural mysteria μυστήρια), in this context meaning 'secret rite or doctrine'.
An individual who followed such a 'Mystery' was a 'mystes', 'one who has been initiated', from 'myein' - meaning 'to close, shut', a reference to secrecy (closure of 'the eyes and mouth'), or that only initiates were allowed to observe and participate in rituals.
The Mysteries were thus schools in which all religious functions were closed to the uninitiated, and for which the inner workings of the school were kept secret from the general public.
Mystery religions form one of three types of Roman religion, the others being the 'imperial cult' or 'ethnic' religion, particular to the state, and the philosophic religions, such as Neoplatonism.
This is also reflected in the tripartite division of 'theology' by Varro, in 'civil theology' (concerning the state religion, and its stabilizing effect on society), 'natural theology' (philosophical speculation about the nature of the divine) and 'mythical theology' (concerning myth and ritual).
Mysteries thus supplement rather than compete with civil religion.
An individual could easily observe the rites of the 'state religion', be an initiate in one, or several mysteries, and at the same time adhere to a certain philosophical school.
In contrast to the public rituals of 'civil religion', participation in which was expected of every member of society, initiation to a mystery was optional within Roman polytheism.
Many of the aspects of 'public religion' are repeated within the mystery, - sacrifices, ritual meals, ritual purifications, etc., just with the additional aspect that they take place in secrecy, confined to a closed set of initiates.
This is important in the context of the early persecution of Christians.
Christianity was seen as objectionable by the Roman establishment not on grounds of its tenets or practices, but because early Christians chose to consider their faith as precluding the participation in the 'imperial cult' - and so Christianity (as it was later known), was seen as subversive by the Roman establishment.
In addition, the mystery schools offered a niche for the preservation of ancient religious ritual, and there is reason to assume that they were very conservative.

THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES

The most famous mysteries of Greco-Roman antiquity were the 'Eleusinian Mysteries', which were of considerable antiquity, and pre-dated the Greek Dark Ages.
Eleusis was the site of the Eleusinian Mysteries, or the ‘Mysteries of Demeter and Kore’, which became popular in the Greek speaking world as early as 600 BC, and continued to attract initiates during Roman Empire before declining mid-late 4th century AD.

Temple of Demeter - Eleusis

Roman individuals, including a number of Roman emperors, exhibited a personal interest in the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Many were initiated into the cult and some chose to commemorate the event by erecting various monuments to Demeter and Kore in the sanctuary.

The Athenians honoured the Romans in a number of ways connected to Eleusis. 

They set up statues to Romans, elected them into the priestly families and awarded them  honourary Eleusinian titles.

Occasionally, the Eleusinian officials even modified the rules of the cult to accommodate the requests of the Romans.

A mutually beneficial relationship was formed, whereby the Eleusinian sanctuary profited from the privilege of Roman protection and the Romans enjoyed the prestige associated with the Eleusinian cult.

Demeter of Eleusis

These Mysteries revolved around a belief that there was a hope for survival after death for those who were initiated.

Such a belief was cultivated from the introduction ceremony in which the hopeful initiates were shown a number of things including the seed of life in a stalk of grain.

The main initiation, the 'telete' of the Elusian Mysteries included at least three elements:

the things which were enacted, the things which were shown;

and the words which were spoken.

Things enacted were the drama of Demeter and Persphone.

The spoken words and the sacred objects revealed by the Hierophant remain unknown.

Hades
Adapted and published - with permission
from an original image by Peter Crawford 

The mysteries re-enacted in a ritual setting the capture or abduction of Persephone by Hades, God of the Dead, and her subsequent dwelling in the underworld.
Through dramatic re-creations, the initiates learned about the terrifying aspects of the underworld, and realized the importance of living a virtuous life in hopes of an improved or eternal afterlife.

In one sense the underworld is the 'world of matter' in which the soul is born on earth.

Psyche, the soul within, is characterized as Persephone, a maiden in the spiritual realms, undefiled by matter.

The Abduction of Persophene by Hades

Once the soul has built around itself a body of matter - in other words, been incarnated or born - it is no longer free.

It has been 'abducted' to the earthly realm, symbolized by the descent into Hades - the Underworld' - of the body and world of 'matter' which assaults and carries away the 'divine soul'.

Yet the soul soon begins to enjoy its rule, caught up in the trappings of matter, in the same way Persephone came to enjoy being a queen.

Like Persephone, the soul is in Hades only part of the year - incarnation is a cyclic process.

Gates of the Underworld

Adapted and published - with permission

from an original image by Peter Crawford 

Yet the soul does not have to wait for death to begin its ascent.

The mysteries take the view that the soul wants to regain her freedom, and that this is possible on earth through practices such as purification, in initiation – and as a special benefaction from the Gods.

Furthermore, if such practices are not begun by us on earth, the soul will take its desires for material things into the after-death state, and be variously tortured and tantalized by its cravings for tastes and possessions it can no longer acceptably have.

There are no definitive accounts of the ceremony, because of the solemn othas of secrecy sworn bt the initiates.

However there are a few details that are recorded.

Initiants put on a new set of clothes covered with the skin of a fawn, symbolizing their regeneration.
At the conclusion of the ceremonies all lights were extinguished.

In complete darkness, lightning flashed, thunder rolled, and unearthly noises were heard, symbolizing Tartaros, the terrifying hell of those who do not work with nature, and also the world coming out of chaos under the command of the 'Demiurge' who worked the raw forces of nature to fashion a new state.

Gnostic Demiurge

Adapted and published - with permission

from an original image by Peter Crawford 

The word 'demiurge' is an English term from demiurgus, a Latinized form of the Greek δημιουργός or dēmiourgos. It was originally a common noun meaning "craftsman" or "artisan", but gradually it came to mean 'producer', and then eventually 'creator'. The religious usage derives from Plato's Timaeus, in which the Demiurge is presented as the creator of the universe. The Demiurge is the fashioner of the 'perceptible world' after the model of the 'Forms', but is not itself 'the One'. In the various Gnostic and Mystery systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world of Forms is perfect. According to some Gnostic teaching the Demiurge is malevolent, as it is linked to the material world, and in others the Demiurge is simply ignorant or misguided.

Initiates were then conducted to the inner 'adytum'  (innermost sanctuary) which was illuminated intensely.

There they saw a resplendent statue of Demeter in an epiphany called ‘autopsia’, a seeing with one's own eyes.

The Sanctuary at Eleusis - Roman Period

It was a re-creation of heaven, with harmonious tones and dazzling light, to prepare for the experience of the highest heaven after death.

This is reminiscent of Apuleius' comments about the mysteries of Isis in his ‘Metamorphoses’ (also known as ‘The Golden Ass’:

‘I approached the very gates of death and set one foot on Persephone's threshold, yet was permitted to return, rapt through all the elements.
At midnight I saw the sun shining as if it were noon; I entered the presence of the gods of the underworld and the gods of the upper-world, stood near and worshipped them.’

The connection of initiation with death was also expressed by Plutarch:

'At first there is wandering, and wearisome roaming, and fearful travelling through darkness with no end to be found.

Then there is every sort of terror, shuddering and trembling and perspiring and being alarmed.

But after this a marvellous light appears, and open places and meadows await, with voices and dances, and the solemnities of sacred utterances and holy visions.

In that place one walks about at will, now perfect and initiated and free.'

 Quoted in ‘Stobaeus’, Anthology 4.52.49

Sanctuary at Eleusis - Athens

The successful candidate in the Eleusinian mysteries had been purified, initiated, and ultimately had a change of consciousness, in which a perception of the divine was achieved.

One who has perceived some of the mysteries of life and death was called an ‘epoptes’, which originally meant an ‘eyewitness’, one who perceives things as they really are. 

In the mysteries an ‘epoptes’ attains that stage of divine clairvoyance when everything pertaining to this earth disappears, and earthly sight is paralysed, and the soul is united free and pure with the ultimate reality.

This is the action of the noetic or intuitional part of our consciousness.

Proclus wrote, ‘the initiation and epopteia are symbols of ineffable silence, and of union with mystical natures, through intelligible, noetic visions.’ 

The goal of the mysteries was to activate the ‘higher mind’.

One who succeeded in shifting his consciousness truly experienced a perceiving and a revelation, and could call himself ‘one who sees.’

The Eleusinian mysteries undoubtedly included mystic visions.

There are various artificial means of inducing these, including fasting, an overflow of intense information, and potions.

Part of the Eleusinian ritual may have involved the use of an ‘entheogen’ or plant alkaloid in a drink called kykeon.

In the Iliad and Odyssey the base of the kykeon was "barley-meal, grated cheese, honey" and a strong red wine.

Its consistency was like a thick soup.

In the Homeric ‘Hymn to Demeter’ it contained no wine, but was rather a thin porridge of barley, water, and pennyroyal mint. 

Thus, ‘epoptes’ have a revelation by no human agent, but through the receiving of the sacred drink.

Those who were  initiated in the ‘Eleusinia’, were shown,  in silence, the mighty, marvelous and most complete ‘epoptic mystery’, an ear of cut-wheat.

But this ear of wheat was also considered to constitute the perfect illumination that has descended from the ineffable One.

Part of the reverence may be directed to the source of the generative power within the seed, for that power of reproduction is a mystery even to us today who know the mechanisms of DNA and RNA and the transmission of genes, but who do not understand how such interdependent processes originated.

Perhaps by undergoing a type of conscious death the initiate became inwardly transformed, just as the dying grain of wheat was.

INITIATION

So what might have actually occurre during the mysteries ?
The following is an attempt to reconstruct the events of the ritual of initiation:

Death held the key to all the greater mysteries.
The candidate for the highest grades appears to have been given a form of 'divine experience' through the 'death experience', which was often very convincingly enacted.
The candidate participated, as it were, in a rehearsal of his own death.
Hence initiation was known as 'telete', a word related to 'teleute', meaning 'death'.
The experience in some cases was apparently communicated with such realism that it is thought likely that the candidate, after his long vigils and fasts, may have been put into some form of 'hypnotic sleep' or other xenophrenic state, and his 'subtle body' was then helped to exteriorize in full 'astral consciousness'.

Xenophrenic - Xeno- from greek: xenos; xeno - different; foreign; alien; strangephrenic from New Latin, Greek: phrenicus - of or relating to the mind or mental activity

The most important part of the rite took place in a section of the shrine especially designed for the purpose.
The candidate was brought into an antechamber, his mouth was bound, he was blindfolded, his head further encased in a hood, and his hands tied behind his back.
This symbolized his state of dumbness, blindness, ignorance and general benightedness.
He was then led into the main chamber, and laid down on the ground as if dead, and his obsequies conducted.
After that he was made to stand up and was placed in the charge of a mystagogue representing the god Hermes, who is the 'conductor of souls' (psychopompos) responsible for guiding the dead through the underworld.
A mystagogue (μυσταγωγός "person who initiates into mysteries") is a person who initiates others into mystic beliefs, an educator or person who has knowledge of the Sacred Mysteries.
Another word is Hierophant.
In ancient mystery religions, a mystagogue would be responsible for leading an initiate into the secret teachings and rituals of the cultus.
The initiate would often be blindfolded, and the mystagogue would literally 'guide' him into the sacred space.

Hermes - Psychopompos

'Psychopompos' (ψυχοπομπός - 'psuchopompos', literally meaning the 'guide of souls') are beings in many religions whose responsibility is to escort newly deceased souls to the afterlife. Their role is not to judge the deceased, but simply provide safe passage. In Jungian psychology, the psychopomp is a mediator between the unconscious and conscious realms. It is symbolically personified in dreams as a wise man or woman, or sometimes as a helpful animal.

The ensuing journey entailed a descent (kathodos) into a subterranean chamber echoing to harsh and threatening voices, then turnings and gropings through perilous labyrinthine passages which, according to Plutarch, 'create amazement, trembling and terror'.
Origen, quoting an earlier account, speaks of a terrifying 'masque of phantoms', perhaps representing the denizens of the underworld.
Then, following an ascent (anodos) to an upper chamber, his hands were untied and the blindfold suddenly removed, and he found himself in a brilliantly lit and richly decorated hall, filled with his fellows.
All voices swelled in the great Eleusinian cry: 'Give rain ! Give life !' (Hue ! Cue !).
Plutarch describes his own experience:
'A wonderful light burst forth, friendly landscapes received us, and by song and dance the splendour of sacred things was revealed to us.'
The neophyte to whom these final revelations were made was now known as the witness ('epoptes'), and welcomed as one fully initiated into the mysteries.

The Agora at Eleusis

Initiation into the ancient mysteries, for those who took it solemnly and seriously, was a preparation of the initiate for the post death states of consciousness.

Thus the Elusian Mysteries featured  an initiation which involved one's consciousness or soul temporarily passing into other states of being, such as experiencing death and the underworld while still living.

In this way, the purpose of the teleté (illumination attained through initiation) is to bring the souls to reascend to the region from which they have descended in the very beginning, when Dionysus first placed them on the throne of his father Zeus: the ethereal condition.

The initiated thus remains in the realms of the gods, under the guidance of the god through whom he was initiated.

The initiations are of two kinds: those which are performed here below, and which are preparatory, and those which take place beyond.

In other words,  those pertaining to the ‘tunica pneumatica’ (the ethereal vesture), and those appertaining to the tunica luminosa (the spiritual vesture). 

CONCLUSIONS

We don't know in detail how the Eleusinian initiations were actually practised - these were, after all, mysteries protected by vows of secrecy, but we do know that the object of the Mysteries was to re-establish the soul in its primordial purity, or that state of perfection from which it had fallen and which enabled it to forestall death - and move on to other forms of life.

The rituals and beliefs of the Elusian Mysteries are not to be taken lightly.

The Elusian mysteries were celebrated for over two thousand years, and remarkably no one ever fully revealed the secret of the Mysteries.

Many of history’s greatest minds, philosophers, playwrights, mathematicians, and politicians were initiates of the school.

It taught them new ways of understanding the world, in a method that reading and writing simply could not.

To experience the lesson left a pure understanding.

We cannot recreate the Eleusinian Mysteries, their secrecy has been sealed away, but we can try and understand them through the material we have.

Perhaps over time, new secrets will be revealed and greater truths unlocked.

DEMETER

sections of this article have been edited and republished from
'The Roman Principate'
(with permission)

for the full article on Mystery Religions in the blog 'The Roman Principate' go to:
'Mystery Religions'

Adapted and published - with permission

from an original image by Peter Crawford