Ancient Greek Religion
The Eleusinian Mysteries: Demeter and her daughter Percephone
Classical Greece, Eleusis, near Athens, Greece.
Perhaps all believing that they were seeing the true risen Percephone and identifying themselves with her through the sacrament of the pomegranate seed.
‘No one knows what took place inside the Telesterion,’ said Miranda.
‘Telesterion?’ asked Quintin.
‘The main building in the temple at Eleusis near Athens where all the people gathered behind closed doors during classical times to be initiated into the mysteries,' replied Miranda. 'There were: "Things, said, things shown and things done," according to later, Christian writers. Most believe that it involved a re-enactment of the story of Percephone's descent into the underworld, with priestesses taking the parts of the goddess Demeter and her daughter Percephone.’
‘Like a sort of play?’
‘Yea, I guess so. The initiates may all have been on some sort of drug, since drinking the ‘kykeon’ at the outset of proceedings was obligatory, although there is no consensus as to what it might have been. They might all have been required to take part in the play themselves, to believe they were really there with the goddess Demeter, to re-enact the frantic search for Persephone, feel Demeter's anguish, perhaps to see a baby put into a fire, taken out unharmed, put in again, taken out again unharmed. Perhaps they all received a sacrament of a pomegranate seed to identify themselves with Percephone when she emerged from the gloomy halls of Hades back into the light of day. Perhaps a priestess playing the part of Percephone reappeared at the end in a blaze of theatrical glory, with the initiates, in their heightened mental state, all believing that they were seeing the true risen Percephone and identifying themselves with her through the sacrament of the pomegranate seed which they took as a personal assurance of their own return to Earth after death.’
‘It's caught your imagination, hasn't it!’ said Quintin.
‘It has,’ replied Miranda. ‘And it's very interesting that when Demeter searches for her lost Percephone, and she disguises herself as an old woman, she claims, in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Doso is my name, for my stately mother gave it me. And now I am come from Crete over the sea’s wide back...
’.
'When were the Homeric Hymns written?' asked Quintin.
'Seventh century BC,' replied Miranda. 'Eight hundred years after the collapse of the Minoan civilisation.
