The Eleusinian
Mysteries:
Healing and
Transformation
The Secret of The
Mysteries
The secret of the Eleusinian
Mysteries lies in connection between ritual itself and the dim
historical record of the shift from hunting cultures of the Late
Glacial Period (8,000B.C.) to the beginning of the agricultural
societies of the Near East (approx. 6,000 B.C.) - although there is
evidence that uncultivated grain gathering took place as early as
15,000 B.C. and probably earlier. The shift to agriculture was marked
by the gathering of cereal grains (mostly barley) and the slow
development of cultivation of these grains by conscious seasonal
sowing of seeds and harvesting. With this gathering came settlement
and thus "civilization" as we have come to use the term. The profound
change in society which resulted marks a critical point in religious
history as well.
The settling process broke a
pattern of intimate communion with divine presence and shifted the
relationship with that presence to one of sacrificial appeasement and
distance. The historical patterns (after 6,000 B.C.) of ritual all
reflect a longing to be reunited with lost gods, with apprehension
that such loss was caused by the very process of human settlement.
When human beings ceased to wander, they ceased to trust in the
magical powers of the earth and sky to meet their needs. Settlement
brought trust in human skills instead. Civilization meant that
existence itself was now in the hands of human power. Offended, the
gods withdrew, only to be invoked to come to the aid of men by
sacrifice, first human, and then animal.
In the myths of the Greek peoples,
Demeter (as Mother Earth) gave the secret of agriculture to mankind.
This myth established the gift of divine aid and suggested tangible
presence. It is through this myth that a connection to divinity is
maintained, and the hope remains that man may yet become reunited
with all of his gods. There is in the myth reference to barren
conditions that wiped out the natural fruits of the earth upon which
life depended. Certainly the last glacial period and numerous
droughts remained in human memory to fuel such myths.
The Demeter myth describes these
events quite accurately. After Demeter successfully wins the return
of her daughter from Hades and settles for keeping her for eight
months out of twelve as a lawful expression of Nature, mankind is
able to see the connection between the natural law and the divine
presence for which it longs. Therefore, the Eleusinian Mysteries were
established to provide a ritual through which men could reenact the
shift from nomadic to agricultural life, to include the real loss of
their gods in a period of glacial darkness, and to be reunited (or
forgiven) once again. This ritual pattern is the source of all
initiation mysteries.
The secret of the Mysteries is the
moment of the reunion, the appearance of Persephone as she emerges
from the underworld. At this moment the initiate feels the emotional
release from the dark night of the soul and is reborn to the light.
The journey of the maiden is the human journey from it's
grain-gathering nomadic ways to the paralyzing darkness and cold of
the underworld only to return again to the light and fecundity of his
earthly paradise, a garden of Eden still occupied by God. Man needs
to know that he has not sacrificed union with the gods for the
seeming comforts of civilization. Demeter is the forgiving mother,
nurturing her children and providing for the them the means to return
to her bosom after life is over.
These facts help explain why, in
A.D. 364, when the Roman Emperor Valentinian ordered the Mysteries
stopped, he was persuaded to allow them to continue on the grounds
that life would cease for the Greeks without them. To fail to reenact
the ritual would be to bring darkness back to the earth once more.
The guilt for having created civilization (a state of being known
only to the gods before Prometheus stole fire for men) could be
assuaged by this ritual. To offend Athena might result in the
destruction of Athens, but to offend Demeter would destroy life
itself...forever.
The Nature of the Secret. In the
ninth discourse of the Bhagavad-Gita, it is said that the Great
Secret of the universe, of life itself, had several characteristics,
which marked it as a true secret. First, the secret had to be
intuitional, that is, capable of being known by anyone wishing to
know it and not dependent upon outside teaching or being revealed by
an adept. Second, it had to be righteous, that is, lawful, within the
bounds of the cosmos, according to universal principles. And third,
it had to be pleasant beyond measure, that is, the secret had to be
life-enhancing and exceed the pleasures of earthly
existence.