{"id":7146,"date":"2012-10-01T01:10:47","date_gmt":"2012-10-01T06:10:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paganpages.org\/content\/?p=7377"},"modified":"2012-09-29T17:14:55","modified_gmt":"2012-09-29T22:14:55","slug":"the-homeric-hymn-to-demeter-and-the-mysteria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/2012\/10\/01\/the-homeric-hymn-to-demeter-and-the-mysteria\/","title":{"rendered":"The Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the Mysteria"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mysteries of Eleusis were devoted to the \u2018Two Goddesses,\u2019 Demeter the grain goddess and her daughter Persephone, locally called Pherephatta or just \u2018the Maiden,\u2019 Kore.\u00a0 These mysteries were organized by the polis of Athens and supervised by the archon basileus, the \u2018king.\u2019\u00a0 For the Athenians these were the Mysteries tout court<\/em>, \u00a0and\u00a0 the literary prestige of Athens that ensured their lasting fame.\u00a0 Inscriptions and excavations in addition to literature and iconography provide abundant documentation.<\/p>\n

The well-known myth depicts Demeter searching for Kore, who has been carried off by Hades, the god of the netherworld.\u00a0 Kore finally comes back, if only for a limited period, to Eleusis itself; there the Athenians celebrated the great autumn festival, the Mysteria; the procession went from Athens to Eleusis and culminated in a nocturnal celebration in the Hall of Initiations, the Telesterion, capable of holding thousands of initiates, where the hierophant revealed \u201cthe holy things.\u201d There were two gifts that Demeter bestowed on Eleusis: grain as the basis of civilized life, and the mysteries that held the promise of \u2018better hopes\u2019 for a happy afterlife.\u00a0 These mysteries took place exclusively at Eleusis and nowhere else.<\/p>\n

[AMC, pp. 93-4): We have only some piecemeal information about the details of mystery initiations, which, although it does not add up to form a satisfactory picture, still strikes the imagination with the charm of the fragmentary.\u00a0 For Eleusis we have at least five sets of divergent evidence: the topography of the sanctuary; the myth of Demeter\u2019s advent, as told especially in the Homeric hymn, a relief frieze with initiation scenes, known in several replicas; the synthema, \u201cpassword,\u201d as transmitted by Clement of Alexandria; and the two testimonies of the Naassene, which clearly pertain to the concluding festival.<\/p>\n

The mysteries were eventually open to all who spoke Greek and who were not felons.\u00a0 According to the Christian writer Tertullian:<\/p>\n

\u201cThose who wish to be initiated have the custom, I believe, to turn first to the \u2018father\u2019 of the sacred rites, to map out what preparations have to be made.\u201d (Burkert, p. 11).<\/p>\n

The Mysteries should not be regarded as religions per se; they were rather an optional activity within polytheistic religion, \u201ccomparable to, say, a pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostela within the Christian system.\u201d (Burkert, p. 10).<\/p>\n

\u201cDemeter, the story goes, when received at Eleusis, took the little child of the queen and put it in the fire of the hearth at night in order to make it immortal.\u00a0 Interrupted by the frightened mother, she revealed herself and installed the mysteries instead.\u201d (Ibid, p. 20).\u00a0 The link between the two is underlined by the initiation of a \u201cchild from the hearth\u201d at each festival. (p. 52).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first part of the initiation could take place at various times\u2026above the Agora of Athens.\u00a0 The first act was the sacrifice of a young pig.\u00a0 Each mystes had to bring his piglet.\u00a0 According to one description the mystes took a bath in the sea together with his piglet. He gives the animal in his stead to its death.\u00a0 (Another source mentions that at the start of the Mysteria, all the mystai bathe together in the sea near Athens on a special day.) Myth associated the death of the pig with Persephone sinking into the earth\u2026There follows a purification ceremony for which the Homeric Hymn has Demeter herself set the example.\u00a0 Without speaking a word she sits down on a stool which is covered by a ram fleece, and she veils her head.\u00a0 Thus reliefs show Heracles at his initiation veiled and sitting on a ram fleece, while either a winnowing fan is held over him or a torch is brought up close to him from beneath.\u00a0 In ancient interpretation this would be purification by air and by fire\u2026On the reliefs there follows the encounter with Demeter, Kore, and the kiste [small basket].\u00a0 This probably points to the festival proper\u2026The synthema gives information on successive stages of the initiation rites, yet in veiled terms such as one initiate would use to another to let him know he has fulfilled all that is prescribed: \u2018I fasted, I drank from the kykeion, I took out of the kiste, worked, placed back in the basket (kalathos \u2013 the large basket), and from the basket into the kiste.\u2019\u00a0 There is an allusion in Theophrastus to the tools of working, of grinding corn, that early men \u2018consigned to secrecy and encountered as something sacred,\u2019 evidently in Demeter\u2019s mysteries.\u00a0 This indicates that mortar and pestle were hidden in the basket, the instruments, in fact, for preparing the kykeion.\u00a0 This is a barley drink, a kind of barley-groat broth seasoned with pennyroyal.\u201d (Burkert, Greek Religion<\/span>, p. 286)<\/p>\n

Later Christian charges that the kiste contained a phallus could be a case of taking the pestle for a phallus, which it resembles.\u00a0 Or perhaps a phallus was used as a pestle.\u00a0 In classical antiquity the identity of a child was believed to come exclusively from the male seed, with the mother only providing the fertile bed for the foetus\u2019 growth.\u00a0 This would place added religious emphasis on the phallus as the source of new life.<\/p>\n

The Mysteria proper are a major festival which has its fixed place in the calendar, in the autumn month of Boedromion.\u00a0 The main public event is the great procession from Athens to Eleusis along the Sacred Way, a distance of over thirty kilometers.\u00a0 This took place on the 19th<\/sup> of Boedromion.\u00a0 Prior to this, on the 14th<\/sup> day of the month, the \u2018sacred things\u2019 had been brought from Eleusis to Athens.\u00a0 (Greek Religion<\/span>, p. 286)<\/p>\n

\u201cA name for mocking songs on such occasions is Iambos\u2026Iambe was made into a mythical figure, a maid who was able to cheer up Demeter after her sorrow and fasting\u2026During the procession to Eleusis grotesquely masked figures sat at a critical narrow pass just near the bridge\u2026and terrorized and insulted the passers-by \u2026Just as pomp and ceremony contrasts with everyday life, so does extreme lack of ceremony, absurdity, and obscenity,\u2026By plumbing the extremes the just mean is meant to emerge\u2026\u201d (Burkert, Greek Religion<\/span>, 104-5)<\/p>\n

Another source mentions that such songs had as their aim the keeping away of spirits of infertility, for, as everyone knows, they are great prudes.<\/p>\n

After the Iambe, when the procession had reached the boundary between Athens and Eleusis, when the first stars became visible, the mystai broke their fast. The procession arrives at the sanctuary.\u00a0 The temples of Artemis and Poseidon, sacrificial altars, and a \u2018fountain of beautiful dances,\u2019 Kallichoron, could all still be visited freely, but behind them lay the gateway to the precinct which, on pain of death, none but the initiates could enter. (Ibid, p. 287)<\/p>\n

The gates were open to the mystai.\u00a0 We know that immediately beyond the entrance there is a grotto\u2026It was dedicated to Pluto\u2026whom the mystai thus approached.\u00a0 The celebration proper took place in the Telesterion…built to hold several thousand people at a time, watching as the hierophant showed the sacred things\u2026In the centre was the Anaktoron, a rectangular, oblong, stone construction, with a door at the end of one of its longer sides; there the throne of the hierophant was placed.\u00a0 He alone might pass through the door into the interior of this building\u2026The great fire under which the hierophant would officiate\u2026burned o the roof of the Anaktoron\u2026the roof of the Telesterion had a kind of skylight\u2026as an outlet for the smoke.<\/p>\n

Darkness shrouded the crowd thronged in the hall of mysteries as the<\/p>\n

priests proceeded to officiate by torchlight.\u00a0 Dreadful, terrifying<\/p>\n

things were shown until finally a great light shone forth \u2018when the<\/p>\n

Anaktoron was opened\u2019 and the hierophant \u2018appeared from out of the<\/p>\n

Anaktoron in the radiant nights of the mysteries\u2019\u2026Yet it was not<\/p>\n

terror, but the assurance of blessing that had to prevail.\u00a0 The<\/p>\n

blessings of the mysteries are expressed in three ways.\u00a0 The mystes<\/p>\n

sees Kore, who is called up by the hierophant by strokes of a gong; as<\/p>\n

the underworld opens up, terror gives way to the joy of reunion.\u00a0 Then<\/p>\n

the hierophant announces a divine birth: \u2018The Mistress has given birth<\/p>\n

to a sacred boy, Brimo the Brimos.\u201d\u00a0 Finally, he displays an ear of corn<\/p>\n

in silence. (Ibid, pp. 287-8)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults<\/span>, p, 24): [Quoting Plato, Republic 365a] \u201c\u2026purifications through joyous festivals \u2026[that are good] both for the living and for those who died.\u201d The two belong together because disturbances in the beyond are felt so grievously in this life; hence ritual that has the effect of eliminating grief and sorrow and establishing a \u2018blessed\u2019 status immediately has its repercussions on the other side.\u00a0 This is why the deceased are imagined to join in the mystery festival, to continue blissful teletai [mysteries] in the netherworld\u2026in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter..Persephone will release those who honor her through ritual.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Burkert, Greek Religion<\/span>, 277-8): The special status attained through initiation is claimed to be valid even beyond death: the orgiastic festival of the mystai continues to hold in the afterlife\u2026Yet if the chance of initiation has been let slip in this life, it is impossible to make up for the omission after death.\u00a0 Impressive mythical images bring home this impossibility: Oknos, hesitation personified, is an old man who sits in Hades plaiting a cord which his ass immediately eats away.\u00a0 The uninitiated are carrying water in sieves up to a leaking vessel, aimlessly and endlessly.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Burkert, AMC, 77): The Eleusinian mystai abstain from food, as Demeter did in her grief, and they end their fast when the first star is seen, because Demeter did the same; they carry torches, because Demeter lit them at the flames of Mount Aetna; [however,] \u2026they do not sit on the well [as]\u2026Demeter sat there, mourning for her daughter.\u00a0 The hymn to Demeter makes the goddess perform what must have been part of the initiation ritual: sitting down on a stool covered with a fleece, veiling her head, keeping silence, then laughing and tasting the kykeion.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to being the seat of the mysteries of Demeter, Eleusis was also a great votive center. (AMC, 20) \u201c\u2026There are rich collections of votive objects from the site [Eleusis].\u00a0 The favor of the Two Goddesses was not restricted to the mystery nights\u2026Even healing miracles are not absent from Eleusis: a man who had been blind suddenly would behold the sacred exhibition; mysteries are to be \u2018seen\u2019 at Eleusis.\u201d<\/p>\n

(Burkert, AMC, 75): \u201cThe grief of Demeter ends with the return of Persephone, and \u2018the festival ends with exaltation and the brandishing of torches.\u2019 (Lactantius).<\/p>\n

Bibliography<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BURKERT, Walter, Ancient Mystery Cults<\/span>, Cambridge, MA and London;<\/p>\n

Harvard University Press, 1987.<\/p>\n

_____________, Greek Religion<\/span>, Cambridge, MA; Harvard University<\/p>\n

Press, 1985.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mysteries of Eleusis were devoted to the \u2018Two Goddesses,\u2019 Demeter the grain goddess and her daughter Persephone, locally called Pherephatta or just \u2018the Maiden,\u2019 Kore.\u00a0 These mysteries were organized by the polis of Athens and supervised by the archon basileus, the \u2018king.\u2019\u00a0 For the Athenians these were the Mysteries tout court, \u00a0and\u00a0 the literary prestige of Athens that ensured their lasting fame.\u00a0 Inscriptions and excavations in addition to literature and iconography provide abundant documentation. The well-known myth depicts Demeter searching for Kore, who has been carried off by Hades, the god of the netherworld.\u00a0 Kore finally comes back, if only for a limited period, to Eleusis itself; there the Athenians celebrated the great autumn festival, the Mysteria; the procession went from Athens to Eleusis and culminated in a nocturnal celebration in the Hall of Initiations, the Telesterion, capable of holding thousands of initiates, where the hierophant revealed \u201cthe holy things.\u201d There were two gifts that Demeter bestowed on Eleusis: grain as the basis of civilized life, and the mysteries that held the promise of \u2018better hopes\u2019 for a happy afterlife.\u00a0 These mysteries took place exclusively at Eleusis and nowhere else. [AMC, pp. 93-4): We have only some piecemeal information about the details of mystery initiations, which, although it does not add up to form a satisfactory picture, still strikes the imagination with the charm of the fragmentary.\u00a0 For Eleusis we have at least five sets of divergent evidence: the topography of the sanctuary; the myth of Demeter\u2019s advent, as told especially in the Homeric hymn, a relief frieze with initiation scenes, known in several replicas; the synthema, \u201cpassword,\u201d as transmitted by Clement of Alexandria; and the two testimonies of the Naassene, which clearly pertain to the concluding festival. The mysteries were eventually open to all who spoke Greek and who were not felons.\u00a0 According to the Christian writer Tertullian: \u201cThose who wish to be initiated have the custom, I believe, to turn first to the \u2018father\u2019 of the sacred rites, to map out what preparations have to be made.\u201d (Burkert, p. 11). The Mysteries should not be regarded as religions per se; they were rather an optional activity within polytheistic religion, \u201ccomparable to, say, a pilgrimage to Santiago di Compostela within the Christian system.\u201d (Burkert, p. 10). \u201cDemeter, the story goes, when received at Eleusis, took the little child of the queen and put it in the fire of the hearth at night in order to make it immortal.\u00a0 Interrupted by the frightened mother, she revealed herself and installed the mysteries instead.\u201d (Ibid, p. 20).\u00a0 The link between the two is underlined by the initiation of a \u201cchild from the hearth\u201d at each festival. (p. 52). \u201cThe first part of the initiation could take place at various times\u2026above the Agora of Athens.\u00a0 The first act was the sacrifice of a young pig.\u00a0 Each mystes had to bring his piglet.\u00a0 According to one description the mystes took a bath in the sea together with his piglet. He gives the animal in his stead to its death.\u00a0 (Another source mentions that at the start of the Mysteria, all the mystai bathe together in the sea near Athens on a special day.) Myth associated the death of the pig with Persephone sinking into the earth\u2026There follows a purification ceremony for which the Homeric Hymn has Demeter herself set the example.\u00a0 Without speaking a word she sits down on a stool which is covered by a ram fleece, and she veils her head.\u00a0 Thus reliefs show Heracles at his initiation veiled and sitting on a ram fleece, while either a winnowing fan is held over him or a torch is brought up close to him from beneath.\u00a0 In ancient interpretation this would be purification by air and by fire\u2026On the reliefs there follows the encounter with Demeter, Kore, and the kiste [small basket].\u00a0 This probably points to the festival proper\u2026The synthema gives information on successive stages of the initiation rites, yet in veiled terms such as one initiate would use to another to let him know he has fulfilled all that is prescribed: \u2018I fasted, I drank from the kykeion, I took out of the kiste, worked, placed back in the basket (kalathos \u2013 the large basket), and from the basket into the kiste.\u2019\u00a0 There is an allusion in Theophrastus to the tools of working, of grinding corn, that early men \u2018consigned to secrecy and encountered as something sacred,\u2019 evidently in Demeter\u2019s mysteries.\u00a0 This indicates that mortar and pestle were hidden in the basket, the instruments, in fact, for preparing the kykeion.\u00a0 This is a barley drink, a kind of barley-groat broth seasoned with pennyroyal.\u201d (Burkert, Greek Religion, p. 286) Later Christian charges that the kiste contained a phallus could be a case of taking the pestle for a phallus, which it resembles.\u00a0 Or perhaps a phallus was used as a pestle.\u00a0 In classical antiquity the identity of a child was believed to come exclusively from the male seed, with the mother only providing the fertile bed for the foetus\u2019 growth.\u00a0 This would place added religious emphasis on the phallus as the source of new life. The Mysteria proper are a major festival which has its fixed place in the calendar, in the autumn month of Boedromion.\u00a0 The main public event is the great procession from Athens to Eleusis along the Sacred Way, a distance of over thirty kilometers.\u00a0 This took place on the 19th of Boedromion.\u00a0 Prior to this, on the 14th day of the month, the \u2018sacred things\u2019 had been brought from Eleusis to Athens.\u00a0 (Greek Religion, p. 286) \u201cA name for mocking songs on such occasions is Iambos\u2026Iambe was made into a mythical figure, a maid who was able to cheer up Demeter after her sorrow and fasting\u2026During the procession to Eleusis grotesquely masked figures sat at a critical narrow pass just near the bridge\u2026and terrorized and insulted the passers-by \u2026Just as pomp and ceremony contrasts with everyday life, so does extreme lack of ceremony, absurdity, and obscenity,\u2026By plumbing the extremes the just mean is meant to emerge\u2026\u201d (Burkert, Greek Religion, 104-5) Another source mentions that such songs had as their aim the keeping away of spirits of infertility, for, as everyone knows, they are great prudes. After the Iambe, when the procession had reached the boundary between Athens and Eleusis, when the first stars became visible, the mystai broke their fast. The procession arrives at the sanctuary.\u00a0 The temples of Artemis and Poseidon, sacrificial altars, and a \u2018fountain of beautiful dances,\u2019 Kallichoron, could all still be visited freely, but behind them lay the gateway to the precinct which, on pain of death, none but the initiates could enter. (Ibid, p. 287) The gates were open to the mystai.\u00a0 We know that immediately beyond the entrance there is a grotto\u2026It was dedicated to Pluto\u2026whom the mystai thus approached.\u00a0 The celebration proper took place in the Telesterion…built to hold several thousand people at a time, watching as the hierophant showed the sacred things\u2026In the centre was the Anaktoron, a rectangular, oblong, stone construction, with a door at the end of one of its longer sides; there the throne of the hierophant was placed.\u00a0 He alone might pass through the door into the interior of this building\u2026The great fire under which the hierophant would officiate\u2026burned o the roof of the Anaktoron\u2026the roof of the Telesterion had a kind of skylight\u2026as an outlet for the smoke. Darkness shrouded the crowd thronged in the hall of mysteries as the priests proceeded to officiate by torchlight.\u00a0 Dreadful, terrifying things were shown until finally a great light shone forth \u2018when the Anaktoron was opened\u2019 and the hierophant \u2018appeared from out of the Anaktoron in the radiant nights of the mysteries\u2019\u2026Yet it was not terror, but the assurance of blessing that had to prevail.\u00a0 The blessings of the mysteries are expressed in three ways.\u00a0 The mystes sees Kore, who is called up by the hierophant by strokes of a gong; as the underworld opens up, terror gives way to the joy of reunion.\u00a0 Then the hierophant announces a divine birth: \u2018The Mistress has given birth to a sacred boy, Brimo the Brimos.\u201d\u00a0 Finally, he displays an ear of corn in silence. (Ibid, pp. 287-8)   (Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, p, 24): [Quoting Plato, Republic 365a] \u201c\u2026purifications through joyous festivals \u2026[that are good] both for the living and for those who died.\u201d The two belong together because disturbances in the beyond are felt so grievously in this life; hence ritual that has the effect of eliminating grief and sorrow and establishing a \u2018blessed\u2019 status immediately has its repercussions on the other side.\u00a0 This is why the deceased are imagined to join in the mystery festival, to continue blissful teletai [mysteries] in the netherworld\u2026in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter..Persephone will release those who honor her through ritual.\u201d (Burkert, Greek Religion, 277-8): The special status attained through initiation is claimed to be valid even beyond death: the orgiastic festival of the mystai continues to hold in the afterlife\u2026Yet if the chance of initiation has been let slip in this life, it is impossible to make up for the omission after death.\u00a0 Impressive mythical images bring home this impossibility: Oknos, hesitation personified, is an old man who sits in Hades plaiting a cord which his ass immediately eats away.\u00a0 The uninitiated are carrying water in sieves up to a leaking vessel, aimlessly and endlessly.\u201d (Burkert, AMC, 77): The Eleusinian mystai abstain from food, as Demeter did in her grief, and they end their fast when the first star is seen, because Demeter did the same; they carry torches, because Demeter lit them at the flames of Mount Aetna; [however,] \u2026they do not sit on the well [as]\u2026Demeter sat there, mourning for her daughter.\u00a0 The hymn to Demeter makes the goddess perform what must have been part of the initiation ritual: sitting down on a stool covered with a fleece, veiling her head, keeping silence, then laughing and tasting the kykeion.\u201d In addition to being the seat of the mysteries of Demeter, Eleusis was also a great votive center. (AMC, 20) \u201c\u2026There are rich collections of votive objects from the site [Eleusis].\u00a0 The favor of the Two Goddesses was not restricted to the mystery nights\u2026Even healing miracles are not absent from Eleusis: a man who had been blind suddenly would behold the sacred exhibition; mysteries are to be \u2018seen\u2019 at Eleusis.\u201d (Burkert, AMC, 75): \u201cThe grief of Demeter ends with the return of Persephone, and \u2018the festival ends with exaltation and the brandishing of torches.\u2019 (Lactantius). Bibliography   BURKERT, Walter, Ancient Mystery Cults, Cambridge, MA and London; Harvard University Press, 1987. _____________, Greek Religion, Cambridge, MA; Harvard University Press, 1985.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7146"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6942,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7146\/revisions\/6942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paganpages.org\/emagazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}