From the Stone Age to the Eleusinian Mysteries by Mircea Eliade

Author:Mircea Eliade [Eliade, Mircea]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: French Literature, Religion, Philosophy, Nonfiction, History
ISBN: 9780226204017
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1981-04-14T22:00:00+00:00

12 The Eleusinian Mysteries

96.The myth: Persephone in Hades

“Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries!” exclaims the author of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. “But he who is uninitiate and who has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom” (lines 480–82; trans. H. G. Evelyn-White, Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936]).

The Hymn to Demeter relates both the central myth of the two goddesses and the founding of the Eleusinian Mysteries. While she was gathering flowers on the plain of Nysa, Kore (Persephone), Demeter’s daughter, was carried off by Pluto (Hades), god of the underworld. Nine days Demeter searched for her, and during all that time she did not touch ambrosia. Finally, Helios told her the truth: it was Zeus who had decided to marry Kore to his brother Pluto. Overcome with grief, and infuriated with the king of the gods, Demeter did not go back to Olympus. In the guise of an old woman she traveled to Eleusis and sat down by the Well of the Maidens. Questioned by the king’s daughters, she said that her name was Doso and that she had just escaped from pirates, who had carried her off from Crete by force. She accepted their invitation to bring up the infant son of the queen, Metaneira, and demanded kykeōn, a mixture made from meal, water, and pennyroyal.

Demeter did not nurse Demophoön but rubbed him with ambrosia and at night hid him “like a brand” in the fire. The child became more and more like a god, for in fact Demeter wanted to make him immortal and eternally young. But one night Metaneira found her son in the fire and began to lament. “Witless are you mortals, and dull to foresee your lot, whether of good or of evil!” Demeter exclaims (line 256). Henceforth, Demophoön can no longer escape death. Then the goddess reveals herself in all her splendor, a brilliant light shining from her body. She demands that “a great temple and an altar below it” be built for her, where she will teach her rites to human beings (304 ff.). Then she leaves the palace.

As soon as the sanctuary was built, Demeter retired inside it, wasting away with yearning for her daughter. It was then that she brought on a terrible drought, which ravaged the earth (304 ff.). Zeus vainly sent messengers begging her to return among the gods. Demeter answered that she would not set foot on Olympus, and would not let vegetation grow, until she had seen her daughter again. Zeus had to ask Pluto to bring Persephone back, and the lord of Hades submitted. However, he succeeded in putting a pomegranate seed into her mouth and making her swallow it: this ensured Persephone’s annual return to her husband for four months.1 After recovering her daughter, Demeter consented to rejoin the gods, and the earth was miraculously covered with verdure.

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