The Eleusinian Mysteries

The ancient Eleusinian Mysteries (or the Mysteries), are believed to be founded by Eumolpos 1400 years B.C.E, or as legend tells by the goddess Ceres (1), and preserved to modern times through the Platonic system of philosophy. I quote Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Teachings of All Ages:

“The initiates of the Eleusinian School were famous throughout Greece for the beauty of their philosophical concepts and the high standards of morality which they demonstrated in their daily lives. Because of their excellence, these Mysteries spread to Rome and Britain, and later initiations were given in both these countries.”

The Mysteries were a recognized public institution, in a way much like modern Freemasonry, in the ancient world and according to Cicero taught men how to live and how to die. Both men, women and children were admitted and the initiates numbered at one point in the thousands which resulted in a necessary division that separated those who showed a superior mental understanding from the those not yet ready. André Nataf writes in The Dictionary of the Occult:

“An initiatory society is an irreplaceable framework for ripening certain ideas in the dark and then distilling them into the fabric of society.”

There were thus two rites of Eleusis, the Lesser and the Greater, the former celebrated in the spring and the latter in the fall. Like most initiatory orders the candidate must swear an oath never to reveal their inner secrets to those not worthy. Since the Mysteries were no different not much information about their rituals and beliefs are available, but what follows is what is known.

Plato called the body of man the sepulchre of the soul and this is precisely what the Mysteries teach. They perceived the physical world as a false and temporary entity out of which all sorrow and suffering emanate. In contrast to that they saw the soul, called the Psyche (2) and symbolized by Persephone (3), as, if freed from the chains of the body, truly alive and self-expressive. In short the dead ruled the living and the birth into the physical world equal only death. The true birth only occurs when the spiritual soul, the Psyche, rises out of the physical state of being.

The Lesser Mysteries, dedicated to Persephone, teaches therefore that man must depart from his desire for material possessions and rise above ignorance or he is doomed to wander forever making the same mistakes again and again. He will pass into death no wiser than how he passed into life and will sleep for all eternity just as he slept through his existence.

The Greater Mysteries, dedicated to their patron Ceres, tells the legend of how Persephone is abducted by Pluto, also known as Hades - or Plouton the Wealthy One, and brought to the underworld to become his queen. Ceres wanders the world in quest for her daughter carrying two torches, one for intuition the other for reason, and when she finally finds her pleads to Pluto, the god of the souls of the dead, to allow her daughter to return to her. Pluto at first refuses because Persephone has eaten of the pomegranate, the fruit of mortality, but then agrees to let her live in the upper world half of the year and in the lower the other half. The solar energy, which in the winter months lives under the earth with Pluto and in the summer returns with the goddess of productiveness was what the Greeks saw Persephone as a manifestation of.

In other words the Soul is abducted and chained to the darkness of the underworld and refused its freedom because it has accepted, tasted, mortality. Freedom can only come if reason and truth is applied to the bondage of material ignorance. The soul need to enter into the light of understanding and, like the teachings of Buddha, end the cycle of rebirth to achieve a nirvana after death and in this life.

It’s only in sleep that we abandon the physical prison and enter a domain where we are free although mostly not in control i.e. we spend our waking hours in the lower world and our sleeping in the upper. Of course dreams and journeys to other worlds and dimensions can be achieved without the need of sleep in a process known as astral travel.

The Eleusinian Mysteries performed many of their ceremonies at midnight because they felt that it was at a time when the invisible worlds were the closest to the visible. Perhaps also because it was at a time when the brain was supposed to be asleep and thus nearer to that state of receptiveness. It is in the dream, and more so in the waking dream, that we are closest to the threshold of our own consciousness.

An initiate who completes the Lesser Mysteries was known as a Mystes, meaning one who saw through a veil or had a clouded vision. Manly P. Hall argues in The Secret Teachings of All Ages:

“The modern word Mystic, as referring to a seeker after truth according to the dictates of the heart along the path of faith, is probably derived from this ancient word, for faith is belief in the reality of things unseen or veiled.”

Interestingly the initiate who successfully proceeds to the final and concluding ceremony in the Greater Mysteries was hailed as an Epoptes, one who has beheld or seen directly, and because of this initiation was termed autopsy. As if the subject has to dissect himself to find the cause of his own death and realise the path towards his rebirth.

Worthy to note is that the Eleusinian Mysteries condemned suicide and warned that only great sorrow would come to those who performed this act since we are all a part of each other the murder of one self is the murder of others.

The official end of the Eleusinian Mysteries came close to 400 years C.E. when suppressed by Theodosius who destroyed all who did not accept the Christian faith. Irony strikes again because Jesus was more a mystic than he ever was a Christian.

Footnotes:
(1) The Roman goddess of grain. In Greek mythology the goddess Demeter, or Grain Mother. Protector of agriculture, in particular corn and poppy, which is sacred to her and represented riding in a chariot drawn by winged serpents.
(2) In Greek mythology a goddess in love with Eros the god of love i.e. a Soul that loves Love.
(3) Goddess and queen of the underworld and daughter of the Roman goddess of grain Ceres. Identified as Kore in Greek mythology and daughter of the goddess Demeter, or Grain Mother.

© deviadah