Eleusis

Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter

Carl Kerényi, Ralph Manheim

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691213859
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Folklore et mythologie

The Sanctuary of Eleusis, near Athens, was the center of a religious cult that endured for nearly two thousand years and whose initiates came from all parts of the civilized world. Looking at the tendency to "see visions, " C. Kerenyi examines the Mysteries of Eleusis from the standpoint not only of Greek myth but also of human nature. Kerenyi holds that the yearly autumnal "mysteries" were based on the ancient myth of Demeter's search for her ravished daughter Persephone--a search that he equates not only with woman's quest for completion but also with every person's pursuit of identity. As he explores what the content of the mysteries may have been for those who experienced them, he draws on the study of archaeology, objects of art, and religious history, and suggests rich parallels from other mythologies.

Part One Reconstruction

1. Excavation and industry in present-day Eleusis

2. The excavated area near the Great Propylaia. At the far right, a bust of the Emperor Antoninus Pius

I.THE GEOGRAPHICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL SETTING

The Sacred Road

MODERN DEVELOPMENTS have dealt kindly with the natural settings of nearly all the most celebrated holy places of the ancient Greek religion. Cleared many years ago from the last vestiges of the medieval and Turkish periods, the Akropolis at Athens stands there as though it had sprung from the rocky soil and from the marble mountains of Attica. A whole village and its predecessor, a Byzantine city, have been removed from the ruins of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, and once more the high mountains hold uncontested sway over the sacred precinct. The resinous scent of Aleppo firs envelops the grove of Zeus at Olympia and the sanctuary of Asklepios at Epidauros in an atmosphere of natural enchantment. Delos and Samothrace give the impression of remote islands of the gods, cut off from the world. Only poor Eleusis, so easily reached from Athens, lies disenchanted beneath the yellow-gray film of dust and smoke that seldom departs from it. Cement factories are gradually eating away its crenelated romantic backdrop [1].

In the late twenties buses were already running on the former Sacred Road, the route of the processions between Athens and the site of the Mysteries [2]. At that time, one would sometimes meet, as early as April, the season of the first harvest, a throng of reapers on the highway. A meaningful encounter on that road, for it suggested the fertility of the Rharian Plain, the farmland between Thria and Eleusis, where in ancient days grain was sown according to the instructions of Demeter. It was here, the Eleusinians believed, that the goddess bestowed grain on their hero Triptolemos and through him on all mankind. In the late twenties one could still discern some of the river beds and watercourses crossed by Theseus, founder of the Athenian state, as he came from Eleusis and also by the annual procession from Athens to Eleusis. It was here that the procession of the mystai passed each year on its way to undergo the highest degree of initiation.

Not only has this road lost all air of sanctity today; it has almost ceased to be a country highway. The city is spreading up the mountain slope over the stony soil whose hardness for the pedestrian of ancient times is still remembered. Already urban enterprise has reached the lofty cypresses and the sparse woods near the cloister church of Daphni, erected on the site of a temple of Apollo. New houses have been built overlooking the Bay of Eleusis. The path leading through the pass between Mount Aigaleos and Mount Poikilon has been widened into an asphalt highway, and the plain that lies before us is no longer as it was. It was formerly one of those where two harvests were gathered each year. If the inroads of industry continue, there will soon be no harvest at all.¹

In the distance we can see the cloud of dust and smoke that lies over Eleusis, while in the foreground we behold, its contours quite unchanged, the scene of a glorious episode in the history of the world, the battle of Salamis. The Greeks made this battle into an incomparable performance, not only with the movements of their ships but also with their songs, the early morning hymns to the gods and heroes of the country.² To be sure, it was not the Greeks who looked upon the battle as a spectacle for the benefit of an audience but Xerxes, king of the Persians. Across from the island of Salamis, on the southern slope of the Aigaleos, Xerxes had a throne of rock erected, in order that he might look on, missing no detail, at the victory of his fleet, which he expected to be an easy matter: as we look down on the scene from a still higher vantage point, we are led to reflect not only on the past and now dwindling fertility of the plain of Thria which we can already glimpse, or on the bravery of the Greek warriors shut up in the bay, but also on the Mysteries of Eleusis which on this occasion—according to the story handed down to us by Herodotos—revealed their extraordinary importance in so striking a way.

The Mysteries at the Time of Xerxes (480 B.C.) and of Valentinian (A.D. 364)

ON THE 27th or 28th of September of the year 480 B.C., another event in addition to the battle of Salamis is said to have taken place in the geographical and historical setting I have described—some twelve miles west of ancient Athens. And this other event is fully as illuminating as the victory of the blockaded Greeks. Regardless of whether it was a later invention or a vision actually beheld and believed at the time, it is of the utmost importance for our knowledge of historical Greek existence. This, to be sure, was no empirical happening but an “act of the human spirit,” as were, in the words of Bachofen, the legends that made a place for themselves in the historical tradition, the narratives of events which never took place or which at least cannot be verified but which can, if clarified and faithfully interpreted, throw light on the historical reality.³

There were two Greek renegades in the retinue of the Persian king. One was the Athenian Dikaios, son of Theokydes, who having been banished from Athens had won the esteem of the Persians. It was he who gave an eyewitness report of the event, which is recorded by Herodotos. The other renegade was Demaratos, banished king of the Spartans. Before the battle of Salamis the two of them, probably with a part of the Persian army, were on the plain of Thria, through which ran the Sacred Road. The whole countryside around Athens had been laid waste. The Athenians had all taken to the ships or else withdrawn with their women and children to the mountains of the mainland. The day of the Mysteries came. Ordinarily the initiates left Athens on the 19th of the month of Boëdromion—according to our time reckoning, the 27th or 28th of September—for Eleusis, there to celebrate the mysterious holy night. On this day of the year 480, Dikaios and Demaratos, standing on the plain of Thria, witnessed the following scene. I take the story almost literally from Herodotos (VIII 65).

A great cloud of dust rose from Eleusis, as though stirred up by a crowd of some thirty thousand men. The two onlookers were amazed and wondered what men could raise such dust. Immediately afterward they heard voices that seemed to be crying, “Iakchos! Iakchos !” as at the Feast of the Mysteries. Demaratos was unfamiliar with the ceremonies performed at Eleusis and asked what the cries were. Dikaios, who later told the story, replied: “Demaratos, it can only be that the king’s army will suffer a great defeat. For this is clear: since all Attica has been abandoned by its inhabitants, those sounds must be a divine host that has come from Eleusis to help the Athenians and their allies. If it makes for the Peloponnese, it will endanger the king and his army on the mainland; if it turns toward the fleet at Salamis, the king is in danger of losing his fleet. For this is the feast that the Athenians celebrate each year in honor of the Mother and the Daughter. At this festival all the Athenians, as well as those other Greeks who so desire, are initiated. The voices you hear are the cries of ‘Iakchos!’ that resound at the feast.” Whereupon Demaratos said: “Be silent and mention this to no one else. If your words came to the king’s ears, you would lose your head. Neither I nor anyone else could save you. Just keep your peace. The gods will decide the fate of the host.” This was Demaratos’ warning. From the dust and voices a cloud arose and drifted toward Salamis, where the Greeks were encamped. Seeing this, the two men knew that Xerxes’ fleet was doomed.

This is the story as recorded in Herodotos. In it the cloud of dust and smoke that is always over Eleusis appears in a strangely transfigured light. In any case, one element of the miraculous tale is the nature of the soil at the site of the Mysteries. Another is the knowledge that at the time of the Persian Wars roughly thirty thousand initiates took part in the Mysteries when not prevented from so doing: a round number which Herodotos elsewhere cites for the whole population of Athens (V 97). On this occasion the festive throng was replaced by something divine. In a chorus of his tragedy Ion (1079-86),⁴ Euripides makes the sea and the sky reply to the dance of the throng arriving at Eleusis along the Sacred Road for the Mystery Night. Then: “the starry ether of Zeus takes up the dance, the moon goddess dances, and with her the fifty daughters of Nereus dance in the sea and in the eddies of the ever flowing streams, so honoring the Daughter with the golden crown and the holy Mother. . . .” The leader of the dance on earth was held to be the youthful torch-bearing god whose statue the procession bore from Athens and to whom it cried “Iakchos! Iakchos!” In The Frogs (316) of Aristophanes, the cry resounds in the underworld, in the abode of the blessed who in their lifetime had been initiated at Eleusis and now continue to dance in the Elysian Fields. Thus heaven, earth, and underworld are drawn into the dance.

Here we touch upon a third and perhaps the most important element of the story, which, if we suppose that the renegades each in fact experienced a hallucination, may well have been its source. This element is the general conviction that the Mysteries with all their rites, including the torchlight procession and dance, had to be celebrated when the time came. They were more than a common festival, they encompassed the world. A later version of the miraculous tale, recorded in Plutarch’s life of Themistokles (15), adds the characteristic sign of the secret rite, lest anyone suppose that the essential part of the Mysteries was not observed on this occasion. At the very moment when the cries were heard, a light flashed across the bay from ...