The Eleusinian Mysteries

The founding myth in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter

The charter myth of the Mysteries is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, probably composed in the 7th or 6th century BC. Much of the ritual can be traced in its details.

After Hades carries off Persephone, Demeter wanders for nine days holding torches, refusing ambrosia and nectar and never bathing. On the tenth day Hecate and Helios tell her who took her daughter. Disguised as an old woman who calls herself Doso, she sits grieving by the Maiden's Well at Eleusis. There the daughters of King Celeus find her and bring her home to nurse their baby brother Demophon. She sits silent on a stool covered with a fleece until a servant, Iambe, makes her laugh with crude jokes. She refuses red wine and asks instead for a drink of barley, water and pennyroyal. This is the kykeon that initiates later drank.

At night Demeter anoints Demophon with ambrosia and holds him in the fire to burn away his mortality. His mother Metaneira sees this and screams, and the goddess, furious, drops the child and reveals herself in full radiance. She orders a temple built at Eleusis and starves the earth until Zeus sends Hermes to bring Persephone back. Because Persephone has eaten a pomegranate seed, she must spend part of every year below. Before leaving, Demeter teaches her rites to the leading men of Eleusis: Triptolemus, Diocles, Eumolpus and Celeus. The hymn ends with the promise behind the Mysteries: blessed is the mortal who has seen these rites, while the uninitiated will not have a like share once dead, down in the gloom. See Persephone and the seasons.

How the festival actually ran

There were two stages. The Lesser Mysteries were held at Agrai on the Ilissos river outside Athens in early spring, as a preliminary purification. The Greater Mysteries took place in the month of Boedromion (September–October) and lasted roughly nine days. During that time a sacred truce protected travellers from across the Greek world. The surviving evidence suggests this sequence:

1. The gathering and proclamation. Initiates assembled in Athens, and anyone with blood on their hands, or who could not understand Greek, was excluded. Women and slaves could be initiated, which was unusual for Greek religion.
2. "To the sea, initiates!" Each candidate bathed in the sea at Phaleron along with a piglet, which was then sacrificed.
3. The Epidauria. A day honouring Asclepius, who according to tradition arrived too late for the regular rites and was given his own.
4. The procession. A huge crowd walked about 20 kilometres along the Sacred Way to Eleusis, escorting the image of Iacchus, a torch-bearing god often identified with Dionysus. At a bridge on the way, masked figures shouted insults at prominent people, echoing Iambe's jokes.
5. The night in the Telesterion. The rites themselves took place there and were secret.

The rites were run by two old Eleusinian families. The hierophant ("revealer of sacred things"), who showed the sacred objects, came from the Eumolpidae. The daduchos (torchbearer) came from the Kerykes. There were also two grades: first-time mystai and, from at least a year later, epoptai, "those who have seen". The hymn's nine days of fasting are often quoted as a nine-day fast for initiates. The evidence actually points to fasting during part of the festival, broken by drinking the kykeon.

Glimpses of the secret, and those accused of betraying it

Christian writers hostile to the cult preserved two fragments. Clement of Alexandria quotes the initiates' password: "I fasted, I drank the kykeon, I took from the chest; having done my work, I put it in the basket, and from the basket into the chest." Hippolytus claims that at the climax the hierophant cried out in the firelight "Holy Brimo has borne a holy child, Brimos", and showed the epoptai an ear of grain reaped in silence. Both writers lived centuries after the rites began and wrote to discredit them, so their accounts are used cautiously.

The secret was not kept perfectly. Aristotle mentions that Aeschylus was accused of revealing something from the Mysteries on stage and defended himself by saying he had not known it was secret. In 415 BC Alcibiades was charged with mocking the Mysteries in a private house. The scandal helped drive him from Athens. Eight years later, after his return, he made a point of leading the procession to Eleusis overland under armed guard, despite a Spartan garrison nearby. Diagoras of Melos, nicknamed "the Atheist", was outlawed for ridiculing the rites. Even Pausanias, centuries later, wrote that a dream forbade him to describe anything inside the sanctuary wall.

The theory that the kykeon contained ergot comes mainly from The Road to Eleusis (1978), by R. Gordon Wasson, Albert Hofmann (the chemist who first synthesised LSD) and Carl Ruck. It remains debated. The sanctuary was badly damaged in the decades around 400 AD. Theodosius' laws against pagan cult and the Gothic invasion under Alaric are usually cited as the final blows.

Ancient sources

• Homeric Hymn to Demeter: the abduction of Persephone, Demeter at Eleusis, Iambe and the kykeon, the nursing of Demophon, and the founding of the rites.
• Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks, chapter 2: quotes the initiates' password and attacks the myths behind the cult.
• Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, book 5: the claim about the cry of "Brimo" and the ear of grain shown in silence.
• Cicero, On the Laws 2.36: praises the Mysteries for teaching people to live with joy and die with better hope.
• Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.38: the Sacred Way and Eleusis, and his refusal, after a dream, to describe the inner sanctuary.
• Plutarch, Life of Alcibiades: the profanation charges of 415 BC and Alcibiades' later armed escort of the procession.

Frequently asked questions

What happened at the Eleusinian Mysteries?

The public parts are well known: purification in the sea, a procession from Athens to Eleusis, fasting and the kykeon drink. The climax in the Telesterion involved something "done, said and shown" by the hierophant, probably sacred objects revealed in brilliant torchlight. What exactly it was remains unknown.

Who could be initiated?

Almost anyone who spoke Greek and was free of blood-guilt, including women, foreigners and slaves. Roman emperors such as Augustus, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius were initiated too.

What was kykeon made of?

According to the Homeric Hymn, barley meal mixed with water and pennyroyal. Whether it contained anything psychoactive is still debated.

Where was Eleusis?

About 20 km northwest of Athens, on the Bay of Eleusis. It is the modern town of Elefsina, where the remains of the Telesterion and the sanctuary can still be visited.