The celebration of the Mysteries took place in autumn, in the month Boedromion. It lasted nine days and had various phases. On the first of Boedromion, a procession left Eleusis for the Eleusinium in the Agora at Athens. On the next day, the fifteenth of Boedromion, the hierophant officially declared the festival open. In the interval spanning the sixteenth to the eighteenth Boedromion, all initiates who had not previously been presented at the Mysteries bathed communally at Phaleron to purify themselves. This was followed by a sacrifice of pigs, symbolizing the disappearance of Persephone into the bowels of the earth. (The pig sacrifice was also a basic ingredient in another festival of Demeter and Persephone - the Thesmophoria). |
 |
But the most important event was the grand procession from Athens to Eleusis. Its function was to bring the 'sacred things' - the objects used in the rites - hidden in sealed boxes. As the crowd went on its way there were movements of ecstasy and invocations to Iacchus.
When the procession reached the shrine, both the initiated and the uninitiated had access to the temple of Artemis and Poseidon; to the altars; and to a spring. Behind these lay the precinct, off limits to the uninitiated. The first area the initiates encountered on passing the precinct gateway was a cave, sacred to Pluto. By going into this cave they symbolically approached the entrance to the nether world.
 |
The arrival of the initiates at Eleusis was followed by a ritual of purification and fasting. The initiates had (we are told by ancient writers) to transfer the 'sacred things' (mystical objects) from one container to another. The fast ended with the swallowing of a posset called kykeon. This was a cereal gruel (but we do not know exactly what went into it, nor what it symbolized). For Aristotle, the initiation procedure was not so much a matter of conveying information as of providing tests whereby the initiate reached the desired spiritual condition: the object being participation in the secret rites. No details of the way the initiation was carried out are known. But the initiate will somehow or other (and most probably covertly) have understood that the requirements had been fulfilled. |
The rite proper took place in the Telesterium: it was here that the hierophant displayed the objects known simply as the 'sacred things'. The ear of corn, Demeter's sacred plant, was one of the nuclear symbols of the cult. Ritually harvested every year by the female priest (or by some temple servant), from the god's sacred field, it was kept safe in the shrine, to be exhibited by the hierophant during the culminating rite of the Eleusinian Mysteries - the moment when it was announced that 'Brimo' had divinely given birth to 'Brimus'. There are numerous views about wthe identification of this mother and child. Were they Persephone and Iacchus-Dionysus, perhaps? Demeter and Pluto? As for the symbolism of the ear of corn, there is general agreement that it had to do with the life-cycle and the hope of a life after death. This symbolism was recapitulated in the life-cycle of the corn itself. |
 |
 |
 |
|
| |
|||
| |||