04/04/2024
Eleusinian Mysteries
Since the most remote times, the entire long history of the European, Mediterranean and Near Eastern religious experience has been characterized by the presence and diffusion of mystery cults. These cults generally characterized by a common order, by a common basic rule, consisting in the fact that the set of beliefs or foundations of the cult, of the founding myths, of the religious practices, and the true nature of the teachings and the revelatory message of the Deities should be reserved, to different degrees, for the Initiates, for those who were admitted and entered a particular community of new men. The Initiates were distinguished from the profane, from those who had not had access to the Mysteries (by choice, by impediment or for other reasons of a legal or social nature), and swore a solemn oath and had the obligation to remain silent, not to reveal or profane the secret, which had to remain ineffable.
The most famous – and at the same time the longest-lived – of the mystery cults of antiquity was that of the Eleusinian Mysteries, in honor of the Two Goddesses, the Mother and the Daughter, Demeter and Kore-Persephone.
The Eleusinian Mysteries, established by the Goddess Demeter herself in 1216 BC, take their name from Eleusis (today’s Eleusina), a town in Attica about twenty kilometers from Athens. Here, according to the Tradition, the Goddess arrived at the end of her long wandering in search of her Daughter, kidnapped in Sicily, near Enna, by Hades, the God of the underworld, by will of Zeus, who wanted to prevent the completion of the his mission of redemption and liberation of humanity. Demeter, in the guise of an old woman, was welcomed at court by King Celeus and Queen Metanira and was entrusted with the task of acting as nurse to the last-born of the royal family, Demophoon. She later revealed herself in her true form, she commanded that a temple be built for her and proclaimed, with the Discourse of Revelation, the institution of the Sacred Mysteries. At the same time, she obtained the return of her daughter, but only for part of the year, as Hades had tricked her into eating the seeds of a fairy pomegranate which bound her to the Underworld.
The Eleusinian Mysteries offered initiates a path of elevation and awareness and, above all, the gift of the immortality of the soul.
The Little Mysteries were held in the month of Antesterion (February). The initiates-to-be, after a long preparation, were subjected to purifying ceremonies. Once they received the initiation, they became Mystai, becoming part of the community of the faithful ones. The Great Mysteries were held in the month of Boedromion (September-October). They were reserved for the Mystai who, after adequate preparation which included fasting and purifications, underwent a real death ritual, a journey to the Underworld which allowed them to access the second degree of initiation, the Epopteia, which means ” contemplation”. The Epopte is in fact “he who has seen”, who can contemplate himself and the Gods, who he can see with the eyes of the soul.
The Eleusinian Mysteries rapidly spread throughout the Mediterranean area, becoming, in the imperial Roman age, the main mystery. The Mother Sanctuary of Eleusis, on which numerous Temples and Sanctuaries depended throughout the Empire, became an essential beacon of Knowledge. Eleven Emperors, from Octavian Augustus to Hadrian, from Marcus Aurelius to Gallienus, up to Julian, were initiated there, as well as great figures such as Pausanias, Marcus Tullius Cicero, the philosophers Plotinus, Porphyry and Proclus and the great scientist and philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria.
The Mother Sanctuary of Eleusis was formally closed in 380 AD. from the Pritan of the Hierophants Nestorius, following the Christian persecutions which culminated with the infamous Edict of Thessalonica. From that moment on, the Eleusian Mystery Tradition, with its teachings and rituals, went underground, surviving like a karst river through the dark centuries of the Middle Ages and reaching the modern and contemporary age.
