What Were the Eleusinian Mysteries?
For nearly two thousand years, the Eleusinian Mysteries were the most prestigious initiatory rite of the Greek world. Held every September at the small town of Eleusis, a few miles west of Athens, the mysteries centered on the goddess Demeter and the story of her daughter Persephone, who was abducted by Hades, lord of the dead, and carried into the underworld. Initiates underwent a sequence of ritual acts culminating in a secret revelation that no ancient writer ever fully disclosed. The mysteries were so central to Greek religious life that Cicero, who was initiated as a young man, called them the most ancient and the most venerable of all Greek rites (De Legibus 2.36); so secret that no one ever betrayed the central revelation; and so important politically that participation in the mysteries was a marker of civil standing in Athens. The depth of their influence on later Western esotericism is debated, but the mysteries remain a touchstone of any account of ancient esoteric roots and of the history of the occult. The standard modern treatment is George Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (1961); the older Karl Kerényi, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (1960), is the most readable synthesis of the ritual symbolism.
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter
The central literary source is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (Hymn 2, composed c. seventh or sixth century BCE). It tells how Persephone, gathering flowers, was seized by Hades and carried into the underworld; how Demeter withheld the fruits of the ground in grief, demanding a temple at Eleusis; and how Zeus negotiated the compromise by which Persephone would spend part of the year above and part below. The hymn ends with the establishment of the mysteries at Eleusis, “dreadful, which no one may in any way transgress or reveal, for deep awe of the gods holds the speaker” (lines 473–476). The ritual passage at lines 273–292, in which the goddess instructs the princes in the performance of the rites, is the foundation text of the Eleusinian liturgy.
The Myth of Demeter and Persephone
The mythological foundation of the mysteries was the story of Persephone, also called Kore, the maiden daughter of Demeter, goddess of grain and fertility. As told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the story ends with Demeter establishing her rites at Eleusis as a gift to humanity, making the mysteries a reenactment of the goddess’s grief and the mother’s joy at her daughter’s return. The myth is the founding narrative of Greek agriculture, of the cycle of the seasons, and of the relationship between the visible world and the realm of the dead. The related but distinct Thesmophoria, celebrated by women in autumn, was a fertility ritual of agricultural thanksgiving; the Eleusinian mysteries built on its symbolism but developed their own mythic framework.
The Structure of the Initiation
The Greater Mysteries at Eleusis were held every September, the Lesser Mysteries at Agrae on the Ilissus river every February. The Greater Mysteries lasted about ten days. The sequence, as reconstructed by modern scholarship, included the official proclamation of the date; the ceremonial washing of the initiate in the sea; the carrying of the sacred objects from Eleusis to Athens in a procession of robed initiates; a period of fasting on the day of the fast, in which initiates broke the fast with a ritual drink of kykeon, a mixture of barley, water, and pennyroyal; the sacrifice of a piglet by each initiate; a day of instruction and recitation; the night of the epopteia, the climax; and a final celebration called the Plemochoai. The mysteries admitted both men and women, both free and slave-born. The Athenian administration supervised the festival through officials including the hierophant (the priest who showed the sacred things), the dadouchos (torch-bearer), and the priestess of Demeter. The hierophant was a hereditary office held in the Eumolpid and Keryx families. Kevin Clinton’s The Sacred Officials of the Eleusinian Mysteries (1974) is the standard treatment of the institutional structure.
What Was Revealed and Why the Secrecy Mattered
The central revelation of the mysteries, the arrheton or unspeakable, was never disclosed by any ancient writer. To break the secrecy oath was a serious offense: in 415 BCE, the Athenian general Alcibiades was prosecuted for profaning the mysteries (the so-called “Mysteries Scandal,” associated with the parallel mutilation of the Herms — the Hermocopidae — in the same year). The penalty for violating the oath was, in principle, death, and the few reported violations all came in moments of political crisis.
Modern scholars have reconstructed some plausible elements of the revelation. The initiate’s fasting, the drinking of the kykeon, the procession by torchlight, the descent into a dark chamber, and the climactic showing of light and sacred object together produced a profound personal encounter with the central myth. The epopteia is variously interpreted as the showing of a sacred object — perhaps a sheaf of grain or a sacred fire — or as a vision in which the initiate experienced the descent of Persephone and the reunion with her mother. The Christian writer Clement of Alexandria, in his Protrepticus (II.21.2), mocked the mysteries by describing the hierophant plucking an ear of grain in silence and presenting it as the great symbol. The early Christian theologian Hippolytus of Rome, in his Philosophumena (V.7–8), recorded formulas he claimed to have been told, though most scholars now treat his account as a fabrication. The most plausible reading treats the epopteia as a symbolic drama in which the initiate reenacted the death and rebirth of Persephone; Walter Burkert (Greek Religion, 1985) and Robert Parker (Polytheism and Society at Athens, 1996) have argued the case in detail. The absence of disclosure is itself a major fact about the rite, and an important constraint on what can be said about it.
The Greek cult in general did not impose a universal obligation of secrecy; the Eleusinian Mysteries were the exception. The most common explanation is that the secrecy was constitutive of the rite: the unspeakable was unspeakable because it was kept secret, and breaking the silence destroyed the power of the experience. To be an initiate was to share something with the hierophant, with the other initiates, and with the gods; the initiates, according to the Homeric Hymn, were promised a happier lot in the afterlife.
The Political and Religious Role
The Eleusinian Mysteries became a central institution of Athens. The festival was paid for by public funds, the officials of the mysteries were among the most respected in the city, and the eiresione (a ceremonial truce) suspended hostilities for the duration of the festival. The mysteries also played a role in foreign policy: Alexander the Great reportedly received initiation at Eleusis before his campaign against Persia; the Roman emperor Hadrian completed his initiation in 124 CE; Marcus Aurelius was initiated in 176 CE. The Roman general Sulla, returning from his campaign in Greece during the First Mithridatic War (88–85 BCE), brought the sacred objects of Eleusis to Rome for safekeeping, returning them after his victory. Plutarch’s Life of Alcibiades and the Lysias oration Andocides are the standard ancient sources on the political history.
Why the Rites Ended
The mysteries were celebrated every year from the seventh or sixth century BCE until the late fourth century CE. Theodosius I issued the Edict of Thessalonica (27 February 380) making Nicene Christianity the official religion of the Empire, and a series of edicts in 391 and 392 prohibited pagan sacrifice and closed temples. The temple of Demeter at Eleusis was destroyed by Alaric’s Visigoths in 395 or 396 CE, and the last securely attested celebration is generally placed in that year, though a final flickering of the cult may have persisted into the early fifth century. The site at Eleusis is now an archaeological park, the remains of the Telesterion, the great Hall of Initiation, still visible in the rock.