The Muliebral Eleusinian Mysteries & Πάθει Μάθος

But come, you Goddesses, who have charge of the dêmos of Eleusis,

fragrant with incense. And of Paros the island and rocky Antron.

Come, O Lady resplendent with gifts, Queen Dêô [Demeter], bringer of hôrai,

both you and your daughter, the most beautiful Persephone.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's eighth and final version of Proserpine (1882), now in the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

It is said that the Gift of Demeter is the reason why men live not like wild beasts—that Her Mysteries transformed humans from savages to higher, more evolved beings. Agriculture, then, is the Cradle of Civilisation; without the domestication of plants, humanity could not have thrived and thus created societal structures much more complex than that of hunter-gatherers.

The Eleusinian Mysteries, which venerated Demeter and Persephone, transformed all those who beheld Them—thrusting many great men into a higher spiritual realm. Cicero, Plutarch, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Hadrian and many other great men who left their mark on History were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

It is this human culture of pathei-mathos which—at least according to my experience, my musings, and my retrospection—reveals to us the genesis of wisdom: which is that it is the muliebral [feminine] virtues which evolve us as conscious beings, which presence sustainable millennial change. Virtues such as empathy, compassion, humility, and that loyal shared personal love which humanizes those masculous talking-mammals of the Anthropocene, and which masculous talking-mammals have—thousand year following thousand year—caused so much suffering to, and killed, so many other living beings, human and otherwise.

David Myatt,

Some Questions for DWM (2014)

What is the cult of the Eleusisian Mysteries?

The earliest mystery cult of the Classical World was that of the Eleusinian Mysteries. They were the most famous and celebrated in Antiquity. The rituals that the Mysteries entailed and centered around was the worship of the agricultural Goddesses Demeter and Her daughter Persephone (sometimes known as Kore). Therefore, they were built on the cycle of the natural world. Athenians believed they were the first to receive the Gift of grain cultivation from the Goddess Demeter Herself, Who taught them the sacred rites in Her honour, as described in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

The myth itself tells how Hades, the Lord of the Underworld, abducted Persephone whilst She was picking flowers in a meadow. Devastated, Demeter searched in vain for Persephone. In Her grief and anger, the Goddess caused the complete failure of the crops, prompting Zeus to intervene. He ordered Hades to return Persephone, but the cunning Underworld Lord had tricked Her into eating pomegranate seeds, condemning Her to spend part of the year in the Underworld as his wife and the rest with Her mother Demeter among the living. The consumption of food in the Underworld stops one from being able to leave. The amount of seeds Persephone ate dictated the amount of time She was bound to spend in the Underworld.

What did such rituals entail?

The Great Eleusinia, the second and largest of the cults ritual events, reached its climactic public crescendo in a grand procession from the heart of Athens to the sacred site of Eleusis along the Sacred Way. During this event, the initiates' actions and experiences mirrored the sacred drama (δράμα μυστικόν, drama mystikon) of Demeter and Persephone. Along with them they carried piglets for sacrifice along with other sacrificial items and animals. They travelled the way whilst fasting in preparation for drinking kykeon (a possibly psychedelic drink) at the temple in Eleusinia.

In the early 6th Century BC, the festival underwent an evolution. The “Queen of the Underworld” persona of the Goddess Kore was introduced, and a nocturnal initiation rite called katabasis—a simulated descent to Hades and ritual search for Persephone—was added. As the initiates wandered in darkness, they were met at the entrance to the Telesterion—the central sanctuary hall where the secret rites were performed, by priestly figures bearing torches.

The Eleusinian Mysteries were defined by the inherent tension between public and private, conspicuous and secret. Unlike the polis (city-state) religion, participation was restricted to those who chose to be initiated as mystai. Yet, the Cult was far more inclusive, open not only to Athenian male citizens, but to non-Athenians, women—and even slaves.

The climactic moments of the Eleusinian Mysteries likely entailed a profound experience, where worshippers beheld the presence of the Goddess Demeter herself. This likely involved ritual reënactment of the myth of Persephone's abduction and Demeter's subsequent epiphany—complete with a dramatic transition from darkness to light. Some scholars suggest that sacred images were dramatically revealed amidst a dazzling display of torchlight and dancing illumination. Others propose the use of ritualised psychedelics to intensify the visionary, transformative nature of the experience. Regardless, participants emerged from the ceremony forever changed, having undergone a profound spiritual awakening.

Ultimately, we will never know the full extent of the rituals, secrets and gnosis of the Cult as initiates would be punished by death were they to share them.

Plutarch describes the events and process as well as he could—without facing the death penalty for transgressing the sacred secrecy:

First there was wandering and tiresome running about alongside apprehensive and endless journeys through darkness. Then, before the final stage, there were all sorts of terrors: shivering, trembling, sweating, and terrible awe. After that a wondrous light confronted them, and purified landscapes and meadows received them, with voices and songs and rites of sacred harmonies and holy visions. In the midst of these the wholly fulfilled and initiated person has become liberated and free to roam about, celebrating the mysteries with a crown atop their head and communing with blessed and pure people. They look back at the impure and uninitiated multitude back on earth, who stampede and squabble with one another in dense mire and mist, clinging onto their sufferings because of their fear of death and lack of faith in the good things the next world holds.

Initiates

Initiates to the Mysteries were commonly found in the ancient world. The Cult was by no means small, it was the most popular mystery cult to exist. A very large percent of Athenians became initiates and even foreigners, who could speak Greek, were allowed to become initiates. From emperors to the notorious philosopher Plato, many major historical figures were transformed and inspired by the Great Cult. So profound was the experience that the initiated Cicero wrote:

Through them we have been tamed from a savage and base way of life and civilised towards a state of humanity. Just as they are called initiations, so in truth we have learned [from them] the fundamentals of life and received the groundwork not only for living with happiness but also for dying with better hope.

Initiates often wrote how they had come to accept death and the true nature of life through the Goddesses’ guidance. Death, love, honour and nature are intimately intertwined within the Mythos and the Praxis of the Cult. Once again, many important men were completely transformed by their experiences, they came to truly understand the nature of life, death, rebirth and everything in-between.

Despite the truly chthonic and and corybantic nature of the Cult, the “rationalist” Plato would write positively on the Mysteries. In the Socratic dialogue Symposium, the final arc—philosophical truth—mirrors the intense revelation at the climax of a mystery ritual. In the Symposium, Plato makes reference to the Eleusinian Mysteries in a dialogue between Socrates and the priestess Diotima. Diotima, in explaining her philosophy of love, uses the word telea in referring to the Eleusinian rites and epoptika, the ultimate revelation in the final stage of initiation, when she questions whether Socrates could become initiated into the Highest Mysteries of Love and Sex:

Perhaps even you, Socrates, could become an initiate in these mysteries of love. But when it comes to the ultimate rites [telea] and highest stage of initiation [epoptika]—these being the end goal if someone progresses correctly—I do not know whether you would be able to do this.

By weaving philosophical enlightenment into mystery initiation, Plato suggests that aspiring philosophers ought to have a transformative experience akin to the religious climax of the Eleusinian Mysteries, if they seek the highest truth(s). Pathei Mathos, learning by suffering, is then once more proclaimed as one of the most effective tools for transcendence. Perhaps Pathei Mathos is our most important tool to be closer to the Numinous, to transcend ourselves and this causal realm.

Over millennia, the accumulated pathei-mathos of individuals—often evident in Art, literature, memoirs, music, myths, legends, and often manifest in the ethos of a religious-type awareness or in spiritual allegories—has produced certain insights, certain intimations of wisdom, one of which was the need for a balance, for ἁρμονίη, achieved by not going beyond the numinous limits; an intimation evident in Taoism, and in Greek myths and legends where this unwise 'going beyond' is termed ὕβρις—hubris—and well-described by, for example, Sophocles in Antigone and Oedipus Tyrannus.

Another intimation of wisdom—and perhaps one of the most significant—is pathei-mathos, with Aeschylus writing, in his Agamemnon, that the Immortal, Zeus, guiding mortals to reason, provided we mortals with a new law, which law replaces previous ones, and which new law—this new guidance laid down for mortals—is pathei-mathos. That is, that for we human beings, pathei-mathos possesses a numinous, a living, authority; that the wisdom, the understanding, that arises from one’s own personal experience, from formative experiences that involve some hardship, some grief, some personal suffering, is often or could be more valuable to us (more alive, more meaningful) than any doctrine, than any religious faith, than any words one might hear from someone else or read in some book.

Pathei-mathos thus, like empathy, offers a certain understanding, a knowing; and, when combined, pathei-mathos and empathy are or can be a guide to wisdom, to a particular conscious knowledge concerning our own nature, our relation to Nature, and our relation to other human beings. Or, expressed philosophically, they can reveal the nature of Being and beings.

David Myatt,

“II. Wisdom, Pathei-Mathos, and Humility”,

The Numinous Way of Pathei-Mathos (2018, 5th Ed.)

The Temple of the Stars wishes you a happy upcoming Spring Solstice, we hope you shed the darkness of winter and are reborn again filled with new life!

Demeter and Proserpine (1891), by John D. Batten (1860-1932).