Chapter 39. The Two Goddesses: The Eleusinian Mysteries

The civic gods of the previous chapter guarded the city but promised the individual little beyond the grave. The Mysteries of Demeter and her daughter Persephone (Kore) at Eleusis, west of Athens, filled that gap for close to two thousand years. They were the most famous initiation cult of the ancient world: secret and open to almost anyone, Athenian in administration yet Panhellenic in reach, and admired by Romans and pagan philosophers until the Christian empire closed them. This chapter follows the foundation myth, the ritual sequence and the promise made to initiates. It then sets the scholarly reconstruction beside the entheogen hypothesis and its descendants, and finally considers the politics of the sanctuary.

The foundation myth: the Homeric Hymn to Demeter

The cult’s charter text is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, dated to around 650-550 BCE. Caroline Tully places it at a time of changing attitudes, when Late Archaic Greeks moved “from a general acceptance of death to an outlook expressing greater anxiety about the afterlife and the possibility of post-mortem happiness” [Tully in Huggens (ed.), Memento Mori, #74105]. The Hymn tells how Hades seized Persephone, how Demeter searched for her and caused a famine that deprived the gods of sacrifice, and how Persephone returned. Because she had eaten pomegranate seeds in the underworld, she was bound to spend part of each year there [Wikipedia: Eleusinian Mysteries]. Kearns notes that the Hymn is also an institutional document: “Demeter comes to Eleusis, … giving instruction concerning [her] worship. The priesthood is established (… the lords of Eleusis and—by implication—the family of Keleos…), and a link with the present is suggested” [Kearns in Eidinow & Kindt (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, #66316, ch. 3].

In the Hymn’s central episode, Demeter, disguised as an old nurse in King Keleos’ palace, places the infant Demophoon in the fire to make him immortal and is interrupted by his mother. Tully reads this episode as the key to the rite: “the mortal participant in the Eleusinian Mysteries was identified with the mythical child Demophoon … through ritual processes thought to mimic, echo or refer to Demeter’s treatment of him and this process, while not able to cheat death, nevertheless modified the initiate’s experience of death” [Tully in Huggens (ed.), Memento Mori, #74105]. She also warns against a sentimental reading. Since “the Greek gods were not overly concerned with the activities or individual fates of mortals”, Demeter’s founding of the Mysteries should not be taken simply as “a favour to humankind” [ibid.].

Ioan Petru Culianu places Demeter within a comparative typology of female “trickster” figures. Demeter, he writes, “shows all the traits of a feminine entity whose despair has harmful consequences for the whole world, but whose cultural action, on the other hand, brings major benefits to humanity” [Culianu, Gnozele dualiste ale Occidentului, #87087, ch. I §9].

What is known and not known

Mircea Eliade’s History of Religious Ideas, whose first volume runs “from the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries”, points out a paradox: “Există puţine informaţii asupra Misterelor din Eleusis sau a celui mai vechi orfism; totuşi fascinaţia pe care ele au exercitat-o asupra elitelor europene timp de peste douăzeci de secole…” (“There is little information about the Eleusinian Mysteries or the earliest Orphism; yet the fascination they exercised over European elites for more than twenty centuries…”) [Eliade, Istoria credinţelor şi ideilor religioase I, #44130, ch. 1]. The secrecy was enforced by law. The reference shelf records that divulging the aporrheta (the “unrepeatables”) carried the death penalty. Diagoras was condemned partly on this charge, and Aeschylus was allegedly tried for revealing secrets in his plays but acquitted [Wikipedia: Eleusinian Mysteries]. These cases tie the Mysteries to the impiety law discussed in Chapter 38.

The ritual sequence

The reference shelf gives the standard reconstruction. The Lesser Mysteries at Agrai (February-March) involved a piglet sacrifice and purification in the Ilissos. The Greater Mysteries in Boedromion (September-October) lasted about ten days: the sacred objects were carried to the Eleusinion in Athens, initiates washed in the sea at Phaleron, and the great procession went from the Kerameikos along the Sacred Way, with shouts of “Iakch’, O Iakche!” and ritual obscenities recalling Iambe, who made the grieving goddess laugh. At Eleusis the initiates entered the Telesterion and declared: “I have fasted, I have drunk the kykeon, I have taken from the kiste and after working it have put it back in the calathus.” Inside, the rite is usually described as dromena (things done), deiknumena (things shown) and legomena (things said). The Church Father Hippolytus reports that its climax was “an ear of grain in silence reaped” [Wikipedia: Eleusinian Mysteries].

Arnold van Gennep, in The Rites of Passage, uses Eleusis as a model of initiation structure. He lists the “transportation of the Iakchos and of the sacra to the Eleusinion and numerous stops on the way: in the quarter of the sacred Fig tree, at the palace of Krokon…”. He argues that the showing of sacra, at Eleusis as with the Australian churinga, “is the culminating rite, without constituting, by itself, ‘the mysteries'”. He rejects Foucart’s theory of an Egyptian origin, explaining the resemblances by the universal need to act out “passage from one state to another” [Van Gennep, Riturile de trecere, #10512, “Riturile de iniţiere”].

The promise: a better lot after death

Radcliffe Edmonds notes that “the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (480–2) promises that those who honour Persephone in the mysteries will receive a favourable place in the underworld”. He adds that “while the Eleusinian mysteries had the greatest reputation, particularly within the culture sphere of Athens, participation in such rituals was widely recognized as a means of securing a better afterlife”. He warns that teletai, “often misleadingly translated as ‘initiations'”, established “a closer relation with the god” rather than “entry into an organized group” [Edmonds in Eidinow & Kindt (eds.), Oxford Handbook, #66316, ch. 37]. In Aristophanes’ Frogs the chorus of Eleusinian mystai revel in sunlight, while politicians who exploit the city’s troubles are sent to “the great muck and ever-flowing excrement” [ibid.]. Cicero wrote that the rites taught men “to die with a better hope” [Wikipedia: Eleusinian Mysteries, citing Cicero, Laws II.36].

The entheogen hypothesis and its descendants

In 1977-78 R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann and Carl Ruck proposed that the kykeon, the barley-and-pennyroyal drink of the initiates, was psychoactive. Terence McKenna summarises it: “Wasson’s notion, worked out in collaboration with … Albert Hofmann and Carl Ruck and unveiled at a mushroom conference in San Francisco in 1977, was that Eleusis was a rite of visionary intoxication but mushrooms were not directly involved”. The source, they argued, was ergot, a fungus that “infects edible grains” and produces “powerful alkaloids capable of causing hallucination”. McKenna adds that Demeter’s purple robe “may signify the distinctive purple color of the sclerotia” [McKenna, Food of the Gods, #42710, “The Ergotized Beer Theory”]. He then raises the toxicological objection. Ergotism has “two clinical types…, the gangrenous and the convulsive”, the second culminating “in epileptic-like convulsions”, so “clearly unpleasant experiences may lie ahead for those who set out to prove by self-experiment the Wasson-Hofmann theory” [ibid.]. McKenna’s own book goes on to discuss Robert Graves’s psilocybin alternative [ibid., contents].

Brian Muraresku recounts how the book was written: “Wasson wrote the first chapter. Hofmann wrote the second”. The Road to Eleusis “made a passionate and detailed argument for why the kukeon, the sacramental beverage of the Mysteries, must have” been psychedelic [Muraresku, The Immortality Key, #74770]. Muraresku extends this into what he calls the “pagan continuity hypothesis”. He asks: “Did the Ancient Greeks pass a version of their sacrament along to the earliest, Greek-speaking Christians, for whom the original Holy Communion or Eucharist was, in fact, a psychedelic” experience? His answer is that their “original Eucharist was therefore intensely psychedelic” [ibid.]. He presents the claim as testable by archaeochemistry: “it’s either right, or it’s wrong” [ibid.]. The library’s catalogue summary describes the book as arguing that the Church “suppressed these ecstatic experiences to maintain control over the populace” [ibid., catalogue summary]. The reference shelf records some supporting archaeology. Ergot fragments were found in a vase and in the dental calculus of a young man at a sanctuary of the two goddesses at Mas Castellar (Girona). The same article notes that classicists have “not well received” the drug hypothesis and that sceptics stress “the lack of any solid evidence” [Wikipedia: Eleusinian Mysteries].

Luke Myers, in Gnostic Visions, gives Eleusis its own sections (“The Greek Eleusian Mysteries”, “The Sacred Drinking Cup”, “Claviceps Paspali”) within his chapter on the Hellenistic mysteries. He notes that “even later in early Christian times when the Great Olympian Zeus had lost his ancient supremacy, and the Delphic Oracle … was reduced greatly in influence, Demeter and the Eleusinian mysteries still enjoyed a high reputation” [Myers, Gnostic Visions, #70923, ch. 2]. In “Claviceps Paspali” he distinguishes the toxic “non-water soluble peptide alkaloids” from the “water soluble Lysergic acid derivatives with psychedelic effects more pronounced and far less toxic”. In his account this is how a visionary drink could have been prepared without poisoning initiates [ibid.].

Other authors propose other agents. Brian Jackson links the question to the soma debate and reports Hofmann’s hypothesis that contaminated barley gave “a psychedelic drink, possibly a form of beer” [Jackson, Mushroom Medicine, #66219]. Mark Ferrara, writing a spiritual history of cannabis, states that “Eleusinian, Dionysian, and Mithraic Mysteries employed entheogens during secret rituals” and that “the ingestion of entheogens, such as kykeon, at Eleusis occurred annually, and only in sacramental contexts” [Ferrara, Sacred Bliss, #66945, ch. 5]. The library’s study guide to his book summarises his position as treating the kykeon as “likely cannabis” [ibid., guide §42]. The reference shelf lists ergot, psilocybin, Amanita, opium and DMT as proposed candidates, “without consensus or conclusive evidence” [Wikipedia: Eleusinian Mysteries].

Esoteric readings

Healer Rosalyn Bruyère treats Eleusis as a stage in a universal initiatory path. “The Temple of Eleusis was regarded as, in some sort, the common sanctuary of the whole earth… Prospective initiates prepared themselves for seven years… There they experienced the mystery of Demeter, whose name means ‘to measure.'” She contrasts it with “the initiation within the pyramids”, saying it “did not involve astral projection” [Bruyère, Wheels of Light, #48514]. Demetra George, writing on lunar and goddess spirituality, states that “the ancient Eleusinian Mysteries tell us that the Divine Child is conceived in the underworld” [George, Mysteries of the Dark Moon, #46459]. Albert Pike’s Scottish Rite manual draws Eleusis into Masonic symbolism as an example of wisdom conveyed “through symbols” (per the library’s guide to the book) [Pike, Morals and Dogma, #378717, guide §155].

Politics: Athens, Rome and the end

The reference shelf records that under Peisistratos the Mysteries “became pan-Hellenic”. It also reports that around 300 BCE “the state took over control”, with the priesthoods held by the Eumolpidae and Kerykes families. The requirements for initiation were freedom from blood-guilt and the ability to speak Greek, and “men, women, and even slaves were allowed” [Wikipedia: Eleusinian Mysteries]. Muraresku reports an interlocutor’s remark that “every city of Greece sent part of its production of grain to the Sanctuary of Demeter, because … Demeter was the one who taught the people” agriculture. This is the economic and diplomatic side of the cult’s prestige [Muraresku, The Immortality Key, #74770]. Under Rome the sanctuary was rebuilt by Marcus Aurelius after the Sarmatian raid of 170 CE. Julian tried to restore the rites and was the last emperor initiated. According to Eunapius, Theodosius I closed them in 392, and Alaric’s Goths looted the shrines in 396. The historian Hans Kloft holds that peasants transferred Demeter’s agrarian role to Saint Demetrius [Wikipedia: Eleusinian Mysteries].

Key points

• The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is both myth and charter. It founds the rite and its priesthood in Keleos’ family (Kearns).
• Tully argues that initiates were ritually identified with Demophoon, a process that “modified the initiate’s experience of death” without abolishing it.
• Eliade stresses how little is known against the fascination Eleusis held for “over twenty centuries”. Divulging the secrets was a capital offence.
• The Hymn promised initiates “a favourable place in the underworld”. Edmonds notes that teletai created a bond with the god, not membership of a sect.
• Wasson, Hofmann and Ruck (1977/78) proposed an ergotised kykeon. McKenna objects on toxicological grounds, and Myers answers with water-soluble ergot alkaloids.
• Muraresku extends the thesis to a psychedelic proto-Eucharist later suppressed by the Church. Ferrara and Jackson propose cannabis or mushroom variants; the reference shelf records no consensus among the proposed agents.
• Esoteric authors (Bruyère, George, Pike) recast Eleusis as a universal initiatory school.
• Politically, Eleusis was a Panhellenic sanctuary run by Athenian families, patronised by emperors and closed under Theodosius in 392.