On our second full day in Greece, our group of twenty ventured to the ruins of Eleusis. In preparation for this particular day, I had tried to find information about it. However, my mass produced guidebooks only said that Eleusis was an industrial suburb of Athens and should be avoided. I could find no mention of these ruins or the role of the Eleusian Mysteries. A quick Wikipedia search offered more information, but I was mostly in the dark about what we would see and experience.
The Mysteries of Eleusis were secret re-enactments and rituals of the myth of Demeter and Persephone that drew people in antiquity from all over the known world. The mysteries that were imparted to the pilgrims were rigorously guarded so that very little details about the rites are available to us today.
Demeter, sister of Zeus, was the goddess of the harvest. As warrior civilizations overpowered agrarian ones, earth goddesses were supplanted by the pantheons of powerful male gods and their less important sibling and consort goddesses. Demeter was probably a demoted Mother Earth goddess, but still held an important role in the lives of the people in classical Greece.
Demeter’s daughter, Persephone, is often depicted sitting on her mother’s lap, as they were always together. Even when Demeter walked upon the earth, planting grain for humanity and tending the fruit trees and fields, Persephone danced alongside her. One day, Hades, another of Zeus’ siblings and god of the underworld, decided he wanted Persephone as his bride, so he opened a hole in the earth, and she was swallowed into his dark world. Persephone was very sad in this cold, silent, and lonely world, and her mother, Demeter, was distraught at the loss of her beloved daughter. Because of Demeter’s grief, the land stopped producing and became barren. Zeus intervened at Demeter’s behest and demanded that Hades release Persephone. Demeter and Persephone were reunited with overwhelming joy, but because she had eaten the fruit of the dead while in the underworld, Persephone would have to return every year. When mother and daughter were together, the world was fruitful and plentiful, but when Persephone returned to Hades, the barrenness of winter overtook the land.
On one level, this myth is a beautiful story of the mother and daughter connection. The bonds are strong, each individual a part of the other. We mothers have to learn to let our daughters leave at some point, and that leaving can take many forms—marriage, a move, addiction, death. We fight to keep them safe and near, we rejoice when we are reunited, and we despair when the tie is severed. We also have to let go of our own mothers as they age away from us, or as they become separated from us for other reasons. The myth reminds us that the cycle will always continue. We will always be connected to those who come before and after us. The connection cannot be severed.
To the people who traveled to Eleusis and partook of the rites and rituals, it was evidently a life-altering and life-affirming experience judging from the written record. Beyond the mother-daughter connection, the timeless theme of death and rebirth into a new life gave the pilgrims renewed hope, just as these themes do for us today. All civilizations have had, and still have, these resurrection themes; it’s not exclusive to the Christian world view. It’s astounding how similar these myths and mysteries are across time. And how much hope they bring to us. We can be reborn into a new self. The circle continues. The earth turns on her axis. The seasons spiral onward. Winter gives way to spring.