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By Root 2088 0

at Eleusis, providing an etiology for the great mystery rites enacted there in the fall, which linked the continuity of the cycle of sowing and reaping with human mortality and immortality.25 There were also lesser rites celebrated in the spring, when trees were tended for their fruits. The connections between the agricultural rites and the story are suggestive, allowing us to conclude that the stories which we have are somehow the script for rites of immortalization that are still largely mysterious to us.

Since the Eleusinian mysteries were held in express secrecy and also held in the highest regard, no ancient initiate openly spoke of them and, consequently, no one today knows exactly what happened in the Eleusinian temple. Of the external rites and the pilgrimage from Athens to Eleusis, we have a great many details. But the secret rites-which were enacted within the telesterion, a giant rectangular, windowless building near a cave thought to be an entrance to the underworld-have still remained what they were designed to be, a mystery.

We do know that the the temple was completely unlike any other Greek temple that we recognize. There were no graceful columned facades with friezes, triglyphs, metopes, or pediments, no forest of columns enclosing the god’s sacred room and cult statue. In fact, there was only one opening of note in the walled structure, its door. The telesterion was designed for a secret, dark show, with a floor plan that suggests nothing so much as a contemporary movie theater.

There is some evidence that the initiation was a kind of “rave,” complete with rampant drug experiences. As part of the evening’s service, the initiates drank a barley brew called the kykeon, which might have been ritually prepared in such a way as to deliver a controlled dose of ergot poisoning and hence a significant psychedelic experience.26

Aristotle emphasized that the initate does not learn (mathein) anything but is made to experience (pathein) the mysteries that change his or her state of mind.27 There was a representation of the myth in some form and also the details of the episode of Demeter’s attempt to immortalize Demophoön at Eleusis. But exactly how the yearly return of the wheat and human immortality were related by the rite is unknown. On the other hand, those who had been initiated felt that they had conquered death and been reborn in some way. The mysteries guaranteed a better life and a different and probably better fate after death.28 The Hymn to Demeter asserts that initiates were fortunate (olbioi) but that non-initiates did not have the same lot after death (lines 480-82):

Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is unititate and who has no part in them never has a lot of good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom.

Plutarch, drawing on the mysteries, describes the soul at the moment of death:

The soul suffers an experience similar to those who celebrate great initiations…. Wandering astray in the beginning, tiresome walkings in circles, some frightening paths in darkness that lead nowhere; then immediately before the end all the terrible things, panic and shivering and sweat, and amazement. And then some wonderful light comes to meet you, pure regions and meadows are there to greet you, with sounds and dances and solemn, sacred words and holy views; and there the initiate, perfect by now, set free and loose from all bondage, walks about, crowned with a wreath, celebrating the festival together with the other sacred and pure people, and he looks down on the uninitiated, unpurified crowd in this world in mud and fog beneath his feet.29

For Plutarch, then, the mystery religions anticipated death itself, transforming the initiate and turning death into a kind of rebirth. The mystery religion presents the soul with the opportunity to train for the trip to the afterlife and hence to defeat death.

M. L. Lord points out some interesting relationships between The Hymn to Demeter and the epics of Homer.30 The hero Odysseus and the goddess Demeter undertake a