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By Root 1222 0

to death made the mysteries appealing to men. Instead, I think something else caused both these effects: in the cosmopolitan empires of the end of the ancient world, men grew powerless. When the women were powerless alone, they reached for “other powers” alone, too, and they took the opportunity of being considered irrational to go off and indulge their wild desires. Now, as men were no longer citizens of the polis, but were now subjects of emperors, they, too, were powerless; they, too, were no longer the bearers of gravitas and decorum. Now they, too, could go throw their heads back and roll their eyes. Only a wealthy culture worries more about death than birth. Like the people of late antiquity, we today have a cosmopolitan assumption that life will get itself born and that food will be on the table. It is a good spot to be in. The presence of men at the Eleusinian mysteries, and the switch from the mysteries’ being in honor of birth to being in honor of rebirth after death, makes it worth learning one or two details about this party.

The myth behind these nocturnal rituals was taken from an aspect of Demeter’s story. As I mentioned, when the goddess Demeter was waiting for the return of Kore and was hiding out from the gods, she lived with the mortal king and queen of Eleusis, minding their baby boy. One night the queen was spying on Demeter and saw her putting the baby in the fire! Goddesses should not be judged as you might any other nanny: she was in the process of making the baby immortal. But the queen didn’t know that, and she screamed bloody murder. Demeter was interrupted; and it ruined the trick, which couldn’t be redone. Furious, the goddess told the king and queen of Eleusis they would have to build a shrine to her on their own lands, where she had searched and wept for her daughter. They would also carry out a series of secret gestures in the dark. This became the heart of the Eleusinian cult. The celebrations took place twice a year; the more important of the two went on for nine days and nights. The crowd acted as had Demeter, desperately searching for Kore, weeping and calling, there on the very ground where it all was supposed to have happened. But Dionysus was there, too, and he set the tone, with wine, theater, sexuality, and dancing. One of the most distinctive things about what went on was the secrecy. You were not supposed to reveal to anyone what happened at the initiation. That has made historians feel they do not know what went on there, but that is missing the forest for the trees. What went on there was: shared secrets. These secrets referred to the lost Kore and her return as Persephone, but focused most on what the goddess of grain, Demeter, was doing to the child of the king and queen of Eleusis. I can’t help but wonder if the queen didn’t have it right the first time. What a curse to saddle your son with! That he should outlive everyone over and over, and never get to rest. But most people do not feel as I do on this; they want Demeter to make them immortal. And these mystery initiates found the hook to hang their hopes on in the tiny part of the Demeter story that seemed to them to give evidence that if the goddess Demeter wanted to, she could make a mortal live forever. This was serious stuff. We have a letter from the writer Plutarch, who lived in this period, to his wife, written to console her because they had lost their beloved child. Plutarch says that their membership in a mystery religion ensured that they would all be together again someday.12 What is crucial here is to note that whether they are dancing for birth or rebirth, these frenzied parties are dancing for something. Group wishing is not enough without group dancing, and group dancing is not enough without group wishing. The great happiness tonic is a large group of people who are both dedicated to a hope and willing to do some frenzied celebration and other festive ritual. The actual secrets in the Greek “mystery” religions were things like baskets being paraded around containing “no one but the high priest knows what.