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History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 4

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History of non-Christian Religions — Topic 4

4.1 Greek Theogony

“First it was Chaos, and next broad-bosomed Earth, ever secure seat of all the immortals, who inhabit the peaks of snow-capped Olympus, and dark dim Tartaros in a recess of Earth having-broad-ways, 120 and Eros [Love], who is most beautiful among immortal gods, Eros that relaxes the limbs, and in the breasts of all gods and all men, subdues their reason and prudent counsel. But from Chaos were born Erebos and black Night; and from Night again sprang forth Aether and Day, 125 whom she bore after having conceived, by union with Erebos in love. And Earth bore first like to herself in size starry Sky, that he might shelter her around on all sides, that so she might be ever a secure seat for the blessed gods; and she brought forth vast mountains, lovely haunts of deities, 130 the Nymphs who dwell along the woodland hills. She too bore also the barren Sea, rushing with swollen stream, the Pontos, I mean, without delightsome love; but afterward, having bedded with Sky, she bore deep-eddying Okeanos, Koios and Kreios, Hyperion and Iapetos, 135 Thea and Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, and Phoebe with golden coronet, and lovely Tethys. And after these was born, youngest, wily Kronos, most savage of their children; and he hated his vigor-giving father. Then brought she forth next the Kyklopes [Cyclopes], having an over-bearing spirit: 140 Brontes, and Steropes, and stout-hearted Arges, who gave to Zeus his thunder, and forged his lightnings. Now these were in other respects, it is true, like to gods, but a single eye was fixed in their mid-foreheads. And Kyklopes was their appropriate name, because 145 in their foreheads one circular eye was fixed.7 Strength, biē, and contrivances were in their works. But again, from Earth and Sky sprung other three sons, great and mighty, scarce to be mentioned, Kottos and Briareus and Gyas, children exceeding proud. 150 From the shoulders of these moved actively a hundred hands, not brooking approach, and to each above sturdy limbs there grew fifty heads from their shoulders”.

(Hesiod, Theogony, 116–150)

In the Theogony, Hesiod recounts the entire history of the origin of the gods. He tells us that in the beginning there was chaos. In the Greek epic tradition — in Hesiod and Homer — the word “chaos” denoted the unformed matter that had always existed. The word derives from the root kha, meaning “to gape, yawn, gaping void, emptiness.” Plato adds that alongside Chaos there was also Eros — love. And when desire took hold of Chaos, he brought forth the earth, Gaia. Gaia in turn — driven by a similar desire — brought forth from herself Uranus, with whom she then entered into marriage.

In Greece, from the union of Heaven and Earth, of Uranus and Gaia, the second generation of gods is born. The first generation of gods, then, consists of Gaia and Uranus (Eros and Chaos are not counted, since these are the primordial substances). The second generation, born of Uranus and Gaia, are the Titans. The word “titan” is not of Greek origin. From this union there springs a whole series of wondrous beings, such as the Moirai and the Keres. The Moirai are the Fates; the Keres are spirits of violent death and retribution.

Uranus then refuses to allow Gaia to bear further children. He dislikes the noise and dislikes the unending succession of new offspring. To some extent this parallels the Babylonian conceptions of conflict between the generations of gods. Gaia suffers from being pregnant yet unable to give birth, and so she asks one of her children, Cronus, to set her free.

170 “Mother, this deed at any rate I will undertake and accomplish, since for our father, of-detested-name, I care not, for he was the first that devised acts of indignity.” Thus spoke he, and huge Earth rejoiced much at heart, and hid and planted him in ambush: in his hand she placed 175 a sickle with jagged teeth, and suggested to him all the stratagem. Then came vast Sky bringing Night with him, and, eager for love, brooded around Earth, and lay stretched on all sides: but his son from out his ambush grasped at him with his left hand, while in his right he took the huge sickle, long and jagged-toothed, and hastily 180 mowed off the genitals of his father, and threw them backwards to be carried away behind him. Not for no purpose did they slip from his hand; for as many gory drops as jetted forth from there, Earth received them all; and when the years rolled round, 185 she gave birth to stern Furies [Erinyes], and mighty Giants, gleaming in arms, with long spears in hand, and nymphs whom men call Ash-nymphs, [Meliai] over the boundless earth”.

(Hesiod, Theogony, 170–187)

The tradition tells of a brutal conflict, and how, on account of this conflict and the castration of Uranus — of Heaven — there are born the Erinyes, the avenging spirits who pursue transgressors of the laws. For Cronus too had broken the law by raising his hand against his father. At the same moment Aphrodite is born.

From the union of Heaven and Earth there are born hundred-handed giants and beautiful nymphs, who fill every region of the Earth and serve as the spiritual principles of the mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, seas, and bays — that is, every place has its own nymph.

“The image of the castration of the father is characteristic of the Hittites (Kumarbi) and of Canaan — of Ugaritic poetry and mythology. The cutter with which the giant Ullikummi was overthrown, when the Earth was separated from Heaven, recalls very strongly the sickle with which Cronus castrated his father; and the separation of Earth from Heaven is, in essence, the castration of Uranus. The meaning is that Heaven and Earth were once one, but this unified existence was at some point torn apart, severed. The most terrible form of this rupture is castration, when Earth ceased to bear for Heaven, when Earth ceased to conceive of Heaven, when the heavenly seed ceased to fall upon the Earth,” notes A.B. Zubov.

Uranus curses his son and declares that the same fate will befall him at the hands of his own son. The line of the curse continues. The crime perpetrated by Cronus and Gaia in collusion thus inaugurated the curse in the world of the gods.

Cronus takes his sister Rhea to wife. Rhea means “the Wide.” She bears him children, the third generation of gods. But he devours his children, so that none of them may do to him what he did to Uranus. Cronus condemns the children he has swallowed not, of course, to death — for gods cannot be put to death — but to eternal confinement within himself, to perpetual powerlessness. Rhea resorts to a stratagem: in place of her youngest son Zeus, she gives Cronus a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes. Cronus swallows the stone, while Zeus is taken to be raised on Crete, in the Idaean Cave. The Corybantes, benevolent spirits, drown out the cries of the infant Zeus by striking their spears or swords against bronze shields. The child is nourished on the milk of a goat and grows up, naturally, with the sole purpose of freeing his brothers and sisters whom Cronus had swallowed.

The battle of the gods and the Titans begins. Some of the Titans side with Zeus — among them the Titan Helios and Prometheus — while others — the hundred-handed giants and many other dreadful beings — side with Cronus. The battle of the gods and Titans is one of the favorite subjects of classical Greek art. In this long battle, which lasted, as Hesiod tells us, ten years, victory falls to Zeus. He forces Cronus to disgorge all his children — that is, Zeus’s brothers and sisters — and casts Cronus himself into Tartarus, a place as far below the kingdom of the dead as Heaven is high above the Earth.

Pindar recounts that Zeus later forgave Cronus, raised him up to the Islands of the Blessed, and made him sovereign of those Islands — a kind of paradise, a beautiful afterlife to which the worthiest of mortals, the heroes and kings, are taken after death. Cronus’s original fate, however, was a terrible one.

Cronus in turn curses Zeus, declaring that his son will treat him in the same way. This curse hangs over Zeus. By all appearances, in the first millennium BC the Greeks believed that the day would come when the son of Zeus would do overthrow him, and “they lived with the thought that their supreme god, whom they worshipped and revered, awaited retribution for the outrage, for the lawlessness which he had committed against his father. This, of course, leaves its mark upon religion,” says A.B. Zubov.

Such, in brief, is the theogony of the Olympian gods.

4.2 Greek Daimones.

In ancient Greek thought, the distinction between a spirit (daimon) and a god (theos) is often blurred. For Homer, the terms are frequently interchangeable, denoting divine power. Plutarch, in On Isis and Osiris, refers to many gods as “great daimones.” Nevertheless, Hesiod makes a specific distinction regarding the spirits of the dead. Of the first generation of human beings (the Golden Age), he writes:

”…After the earth had covered this generation (an interesting theme, to which we shall return later), they all became beneficent daimones upon the earth. By the will of great Zeus they guard mortals on the earth, keenly observing our righteous and unrighteous deeds. Clad in misty darkness, they go about the whole earth, bestowing riches upon men. Such is the royal honor that has fallen to them” [Hesiod, Works and Days, 122].

According to Hesiod, then, at least some of these spirits are the very ancestors of human beings. In contrast to our understanding of demons as negative beings, the Greeks generally spoke of daimones as positive and good beings. Menander wrote: “Daimones can do only good to those they possess.” And again: “Beside every human being at birth there stands a good daimon, who initiates him into the mysteries of life” [Menander, 550K]. Pindar says in the Fifth Pythian Ode: “The mighty spirit of Zeus is the helmsman beside the daimon of those who are dear to Him” [Pindar, Pythian 5.122]. That is, good daimones do not act on their own but are directed by Zeus, and the daimones of those dear to Zeus are guided by Zeus himself. A person guided by such a good spirit was called eudaimon (from which we get “eudaimonia,” meaning happiness or flourishing). Thales of Miletus famously asserted that “all things are full of gods,” referring primarily to these ubiquitous spiritual presences.

Besides good spirits there were also evil ones, kakodaimones. There was, for example, the alastor, a daimon that prompts evil thoughts. In Aeschylus’s tragedy The Persians, the messenger calls the slave Sicinnus an alastor before Xerxes’s wife Atossa: a pretended defector from the Greek side, Sicinnus deliberately led Xerxes into wrong military decisions, seeking to bring about his defeat and prompting him to a ruinous maneuver — the nighttime departure of the fleet to sea [Aeschylus, Persians, 357].

The hero of Sophocles’s drama Trachiniae, when his father proposes that he marry a woman to whom he is not attached, exclaims: “Has an alastor entered into me? Better for me, my father, to die than to bear the burden of life with a hated wife!” [Sophocles, Trachiniae, 1235].

Epilepsy was regarded as possession by a god — the entering of a god or spirit into a person. The Greek tragedians all draw upon this idea. Euripides, for example, does so in Hippolytus, where Phaedra’s illness, epilepsy, is caused by a spirit.

There are also altogether terrifying spirits — neither avenging spirits nor prompters of evil thoughts, but wholly dreadful beings. Eurynomos, for instance, devours the bodies of the dead. Empusa, with her donkey’s leg, sucks human blood. Gello abducts children. And our “bogey,” with which children are frightened, is Mormo among the Greeks. Mormo was a mormolykeia—a terrifying bogeywoman used to frighten children. Lamia was a Libyan queen whom Zeus loved; out of jealousy Hera killed all her children. Lamia in turn took her own life and became a demon who kills the children of others. She is mentioned in Aristophanes’s comedy Peace [Aristophanes, Peace, 758].

4.3 The Cult of Heroes.

The word hērōs, “hero,” derives from a word meaning “noble, strong, of distinguished birth.” The hero as a special kind of being is already known to Homer. In Book XII of the Iliad we read: “So many shields and shining helmets fell into the dust, and there lay demigods, mighty men” [Homer, Iliad, 12.23]. Demigods — these are heroes, that is, those in whom both divine and human blood flow. Hesiod too knows of heroes and discusses them in detail. For him they are the fourth generation, the generation of the Heroic Age. There were the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and then the Heroic Age.

“The fourth generation upon the bountiful earth was made by the Son of Cronus, more righteous than the previous ones and better — the divine race of glorious heroes. Men call them demigods: they dwelt upon the earth before us. Dreadful war and terrible battles destroyed them…”

There follows an enumeration of the battles — above all those beneath the walls of Troy, but also the campaign against Thebes and other battles of Mycenaean times: ”…Many in the bloody battles were covered by the fulfillment of death; the rest the Son of Cronus, the Thunderer, carried off to the boundaries of the earth, giving them sustenance and dwellings apart from mortals. Knowing in their hearts neither thoughts nor cares, they peacefully dwell on the Islands of the Blessed near the depths of the Ocean. Thrice a year the grain-bearing soil brings forth in abundance for the happy heroes fruits as sweet as honey” [Hesiod, Works and Days, 155–175].

Between the heroes and ordinary mortals, then, there is a difference of lot after the grave: a special posthumous existence awaits the heroes, though in other sources we meet heroes who, like ordinary mortals, end up in the kingdom of Hades.

In the Second Olympian Ode Pindar distinguishes three categories of beings — gods, men, and heroes. “What god, what hero, what man shall we extol?” he asks [1–8]. So there are three categories: gods, heroes, and human beings. Plato adds the category of daimones, making four in all. In the dialogue Cratylus (397d–e) he speaks of gods, daimones, heroes, and human beings.

In the Thirty-Second Homeric Hymn, “To Selene,” we read these lines:

“Beginning with thee, I shall sing

The demigods, the famous heroes,

Whose deeds the servants of the Muses, the Singers,

Praise with sweet lips” [18–20].

A hero is necessarily one who was once a living human being. He may have been born of the union of a mortal and a god, but he was himself a human being. In short, the hero is the one who, after death, is able to exercise his power (as a hērōs). The hero is the one who has something to give to the living from beyond the grave.

The cult of the hero is celebrated only at his grave, where the hero was buried — in effect, upon his very bones. The cult of the hero is to a great extent bound up with the body. The altars of the Olympian gods were always built above ground, for they are heavenly gods; they consisted of stones set upon the earth. The altars of the heroes — the places where sacrifices were offered to them — were always below ground level. They were dug-out pits, or caves, from which a special channel or trough often led directly to the grave, so that the blood of the sacrificial animals would flow literally down upon the hero’s bones. Thus in Book XI of the Odyssey Odysseus sacrifices a ram so that the souls of the dead may speak. Over the eschara black bulls and rams were slaughtered, so that the deceased heroes might be sated with their blood. The heads of the sacrificial animals, with their throats cut, were pressed to the ground, so that their eyes might look into the earth. The body of the hero was thus the connecting link between the soul — which exists in Hades or on the Fields of the Blessed — and the earthly world. Through the body, communion with the deceased takes place. The distinctive emblems of the heroes were weapons of bronze, since they were inhabitants of the Bronze Age.

Flavius Philostratus the Elder wrote a special treatise On Heroes, in which it is stated which hero helps in which circumstances. Hippolytus and Protesilaus, for instance, help those in love [Flavius Philostratus the Elder, On Heroes, III.3, 14]. The children of Asclepius, Machaon and Podalirius, were heroes who granted health, or at least counsel on how to be cured. Sleeping in the temple of a hero on the skin of a sacrificial animal would either heal the sick person, or bring him a revelation in a dream about how to be cured. Pausanias, in his Description of Greece, writes: “In Hyettus there is a temple of Heracles. The sick can find healing here. His statue (idolon) is without any adornment, made according to the ancient custom — in the form of a rough stone” [Pausanias 9.24.3]. The famous Helen, cause of the Trojan War and wife of Menelaus, was venerated as a heroine who could make plain girls beautiful. Her grave was in Sparta, as Herodotus reports.

Throughout Hellas, predictions of the future were made at the graves of heroes. Particularly interesting is Pausanias’s account of the oracle of Trophonius at Lebadeia. Trophonius is the son of the Argonaut Erginus and the brother of Agamedes, with whom, according to tradition, he built the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Plutarch says that the secret mysteries at Lebadeia belong to the pre-Olympian age, the age of Cronus, and that this is a very ancient tradition [Plutarch, On the Face in the Disk of the Moon, 30].

The graves of heroes are often located within the temples of the Olympian gods: Saron in the temple of Artemis Saronia; Iphigenia in the temple of Artemis; Telemessios beneath the altar of the temple of Apollo at Telmessos; Cleobis and Aristogiton are buried in the temple of Hera at Argos. These last are the two youths who died immediately after their mother had asked Hera for the happiest fate for them [Pausanias 2.30.7]. The graves of heroes were often kept in private houses as well — graves of local heroes, of one’s own ancestors. In the Roman Questions Plutarch writes: “The Greeks at the new moon honor the gods, and on the next day pay their due to the heroes and daimones. So at the feast they make the second libation to the heroes and heroines” [Plutarch, Roman Questions, 25 — 270A]. “To them (the heroes) belongs all food that has fallen from the table,” writes Aristides [fr. 180 R].

4.4 The Five Ages.

The Greeks took little interest in the origin of man. Mircea Eliade writes on this point: “It may seem that anthropogony was of no special importance to the Greeks, in contrast to the question of the origin of peoples, cities, and dynasties. Many families traced their lineage back to heroes, who in turn arose from love affairs between gods and mortals. The Myrmidons, it was believed, came from ants; another tribe came from ash trees. After the flood, Deucalion created a new population from ‘the bones of his mother,’ that is, from stones. Finally, according to a later tradition (fourth century BC), Prometheus fashioned man from clay” [Eliade, M. A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 1. Chicago, 1978].

It is known that the first generation of human beings arose still under Cronus, in the “Golden Age,” and that it was perfect and exclusively male. They were all transformed into beneficent daimones:

“First of all the ever-living gods, dwellers of Olympian habitations, made a golden race of human beings.

Cronus the Lord at that time was still master of the heavens.

Those people lived like gods, with calm and clear soul,

Knowing no sorrow, knowing no toils. And sorrowful old age

Did not dare to approach them. Always equally strong

Were their hands and their feet. In feasting they passed their lives.

And they died as though embraced by sleep. Want

Was to them unknown in anything. A great and abundant harvest

The grain-bearing lands gave them of themselves” [Hesiod, Works and Days].

In Works and Days, Hesiod speaks in detail of the characteristics of the people of each age and of how the ages succeeded one another. The generation of the Golden Age perished together with the fall of Cronus and the coming to power of Zeus. Of the silver generation Hesiod says:

“Then another generation, much worse,

The great gods of Olympus made of silver.

It was not like the golden, neither in appearance nor in mind.

[130] For a hundred years a man grew as a witless child,

At home near his good mother, amusing himself with childish games.

But at last, having matured and reached full maturity,

They lived but a short time, dooming themselves to misfortunes

By their own folly: for, in their wild pride, they could not

Restrain themselves, did not wish to serve the immortals,

Did not bring sacrifices on the holy altars of the Olympians,

As is the custom appointed for men. Zeus the Thunderer

Hid them beneath the earth, indignant that men

Did not render honor to the blessed gods who dwell on Olympus” [Hesiod, Works and Days].

This generation too became beneficent daimones, though subterranean ones; and yet they too are venerated by mortals. The third generation were great warriors, sheathed in bronze, as Hesiod says — terrible and strong — and yet they all perished in war.

“Yet another generation, the fourth, Cronion created

Upon the bountiful earth, more righteous than the previous ones and better —

The divine race of glorious heroes. Men call them

Demigods: they dwelt upon the earth before us.

A grim war and a dreadful battle destroyed them” [Hesiod, Works and Days].

The fourth generation are the heroes, also venerated by human beings but as demigods, possessed of particular gifts by virtue of their nature. They were taken to the Islands of the Blessed, ruled by Cronus. Finally, there is the present generation, to which Hesiod counts himself — the iron people, the most wretched of all. Hesiod writes:

“Would that I had not lived with the generation of the fifth age!

I would either have died earlier or been born later.

The earth is now inhabited by iron people” [Hesiod, Works and Days].

4.5 The Pessimism of the Ancient Poets

Hesiod sets the tone of the pessimism with which the Greeks regarded the lot of man and the prospects of human life:

“Zeus will destroy this generation of speaking people too

After they shall begin to be born already gray-haired.

Children with their fathers, fathers with their children, will not be able to agree.

Comrade will become a stranger to comrade, guest to host;

No longer will there be love among brothers, as once there was.

Soon old parents will cease altogether to be honored;

Impious children will revile them fiercely and angrily

With heavy abuse, knowing no retribution from the gods; no one will

Wish any longer to provide food for old parents.

The fist will replace right. Cities will be given over to plunder.

[190] And no one will be moved to respect by the keeper of oaths,

Nor by the righteous, nor by the good. Sooner will honor be paid

To the impudent man and the villain. Where there is force, there will be right.

Shame will perish. Bad people will harm the good

With false depositions, swearing falsely.

After every hapless mortal there will go relentlessly

Malicious-glad and evil-tongued envy, with a terrible face.

Then mournfully from the broad-pathed earth to many-headed Olympus,

Wrapping their beautiful bodies tightly in snow-white cloaks,

To the eternal gods will ascend, flying away from mortals,

[200] Conscience and Shame. Only the most cruel and heaviest woes

Will remain to people in life. There will be no deliverance from evil” [Hesiod, Works and Days].

Hesiod’s idea of the utter impenetrability of human fate was repeatedly endorsed by later poets, and anticipated by some. Let us cite a few examples:

“In my view senseless and pitiful are those

Who wish to prolong life beyond measure,

For a long life is only long sorrow,

Every day multiplies sufferings…

The highest gift is to be unborn;

But if thou hast seen the light of day —

Oh, by the backward path the sooner

Into the dear womb of non-being return!” [Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, 1211–1239].

“It would be best for thee, mortal, not to be born at all,

Not to see the rays of the brightly shining day at all;

But if thou wert born, then pass quickly through the gates of Hades

And lie buried deep beneath the earth” [Theognis, Elegies, 425].

“Strive not to become a Zeus;

The mortal must have mortal thoughts” [Pindar, fr. 157].

In Ionian poetry there often sounds the thought that man knows nothing of life and death, of fate and the gods, of their will, and indeed cannot know. Moreover, the distribution of good and evil, of woes and sufferings, in no way depends on a person’s own conduct:

“Short-lived as sheep, we pass our lives, not knowing

What end the god prepares for each of us.

In vain do we worry, and yet

We still console ourselves with hope. One in the nearest day

Awaits joy, another in the distant future.

But each waits — the desired time will come,

And he will receive much, much wealth and good.

But meanwhile, one is by mournful old age

Before his time struck down. Heavy illnesses

Are the lot of others. Some, struck down by Ares,

Are led down by Hades into the black earth.

Some at sea by a hurricane are overtaken

And in the furious depths of the purple waves

Find death, though they might have lived still.

And others end their luckless lives in a noose

And of their own will part with the sun.

20 None of the misfortunes passes by.

But thousands of sufferings, evils, and griefs

Everywhere lie in wait for mortals” [Semonides of Amorgos].

“In life nothing is shown to us exactly by the immortals,

And unknown to us is the way to please the deity” [Theognis, Elegies, 377].

The hopelessness of human existence is well expressed in the story of the Greek woman who entreated Apollo to reward her piety with the highest gift the god could bestow upon her children. Apollo heeded the mother’s prayer: the children died at once and without torment (Herodotus I, 31).

On the whole, the Greek view of man may be summarized thus: after death the human being, regardless of his conduct in life, comes to Hades, a joyless place in which the souls dwell as shades, having attained forgetfulness. This forgetfulness is granted by the river Lethe and is itself regarded as a good. We know of a few exceptional punishments inflicted by Zeus, such as that of Sisyphus, who eternally rolls his stone. The sufferings of Sisyphus are made all the more acute by his very awareness of them. Otherwise, however, there is no judgment beyond the grave, though Minoan-Mycenaean Greece probably did have conceptions of posthumous judgment, since the tradition of the existence of judges has been preserved — Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aeacus.

All Greek piety was grounded not in retribution beyond the grave but in the belief that the gods chastise children and the community for the sins committed. On the whole, man is weak, faint-hearted, ignorant, and unhappy. When Zeus came to power, he took from human beings the gift of foreseeing the future and replaced it with the gift of blind hope, which was perceived as a good.

“Dear Zeus! I marvel at thee; thou art lord of all,

All revere thee, thy strength is great,

Before thee are open both the souls and the thoughts of mortals,

Thou possessest the highest authority over all, O king!

How then, son of Cronus, doth thy soul allow that the impious

Should have one and the same lot with those who keep the truth,

That equal to thee should be one wise in soul and the haughty,

Who passes his life in unjust deeds?

In life nothing is shown to us exactly by the immortals,

And unknown to us is the way to please the deity” [Theognis, 373–382].

4.6 Demeter and Persephone.

The word “mystery,” which today is generally translated as “secret” or “sacrament,” probably goes back to the word myō — “to close” (the eyes or ears) — that is, to see something that compels one to shut one’s eyes. Samuel Brandon, in his book Man and His Destiny in the Great Religions, in the chapter devoted to Greek religion, writes: “Some testimony to this earlier optimistic faith may, perhaps, be discerned in the mystery rituals performed at Eleusis… These rituals are indisputably of pre-Hellenic origin, and they promised a blessed afterlife to those who were initiated into them” [S.G.F. Brandon, Man and His Destiny in the Great Religions, Manchester University Press, 1963, p. 160].

Of particular interest are the testimonies of the early Christians concerning these mysteries. Maximus the Confessor, in the thirteenth scholion to the first chapter of Dionysius the Areopagite’s On the Celestial Hierarchy, writes: “By initiation (telete) is named, among the Hellenic philosophers, the rite of transmitting the mysteries (mysterion), as it were accomplishing the participation in the mysteries of the one being initiated and conferring perfection upon those approaching these mysteries.”

Archpriest Georges Florovsky, analyzing Dionysius the Areopagite’s On the Celestial Hierarchy, notes in his article: “In Dionysius the Areopagite the terminology recalls the usage of the Greek mysteries. This language, however, was openly and consciously assimilated by the Church from the very beginning; in any case, it was already being spoken by the Alexandrians of the second century” [Archpriest Georges Florovsky, “Preface to On the Celestial Hierarchy by Dionysius the Areopagite,” St. Petersburg, 1997, p. xiv].

Evidence suggests that, in ancient Greece there existed no fewer than two dozen mysteries — at any rate this is what Pausanias reports in his Description of Greece — but the principal and most famous remained always the Eleusinian Mysteries, associated with the goddesses Demeter and Persephone.

In the surviving fragments, Pindar says the following of the Eleusinian Mysteries:

“Blessed is he who has gone beneath the earth, having seen what he has seen:

He knows the end of life, he knows the God-given beginning” [Pindar, fr. 137].

Let us note these words: “having seen what he has seen.” Throughout the discussions of the Eleusinian Mysteries it is said that the mystēs, the initiate, sees. He does not study, he does not listen to a story, he does not memorize a sacred text — he sees. This is repeatedly affirmed.

Many fragmentary reports of the course of the Eleusinian Mysteries have come down to us, though the principal and most sacred part has remained unilluminated. The mystai swore oaths not to disclose the mystery. The chief source preserving the founding myth of the Eleusinian Mysteries is the Fifth Homeric Hymn. According to it, Demeter’s daughter Persephone was abducted by Hades into the underworld. The inconsolable Demeter, after a long search, learned of her daughter’s fate, left Olympus, and travelled in the guise of an old woman to a small town near Athens — Eleusis — where she became the nurse of the prince Demophon. Eliade retells the myth thus: “Demeter did not suckle Demophon at the breast but anointed him with ambrosia and at night hid him, ‘like a brand,’ in the fire. The child increasingly came to resemble a god: Demeter indeed wished to make him immortal and forever young. But one night Metaneira saw her son in the fire and was horrified. ‘Too foolish are you, mortals, and dull; you know neither your fortune nor your misfortune!’ exclaims Demeter (line 256). From this moment on, Demophon was no longer to be immortal. Then the goddess revealed herself in all her glory; a flashing light proceeded from her body. She commanded that a ‘great temple with an altar’ be built for her, in which she would teach her rites to humankind (278 ff.). Then she left the palace. As soon as the sanctuary had been built, Demeter withdrew into it, grieving for her daughter, while upon the earth there came a dreadful drought” [Eliade, M. A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 1. Chicago, 1978].

In the end, Zeus was obliged to ask Hades to release Persephone, and Hades consented. But before letting her go he gave her a pomegranate seed, which she ate. Having thus bound herself to the kingdom of the dead, she could never leave it for good and was compelled to return to it for four months every year.

“‘To thy black-robed mother go at once, Persephone.

Preserve a gentle power and a kindly spirit in thy breast.

And do not grieve excessively: thy lot is no worse than that of others.

Truly, I shall not be among the gods an unworthy spouse for thee,

The own brother of thy father Zeus. Abiding with me,

Thou shalt be mistress over all that lives and that moves,

Thou shalt have the greatest honors among the immortals.

Eternal punishment will overtake him among impious men

Who shall not come to thee with a fitting gift and shall not

Gladden thy power, bringing, as is proper, sacrifices.’

So he spake. Wise Persephone leapt up, embraced with joy, from the couch.

Then the lord of the dead

Gave her a pomegranate seed to swallow, sweeter than honey,

With a secret design, that for ever as his consort she might not remain

There above with the glorious black-robed Demeter” [“To Demeter,” 360–374].

“It was no longer enough for man to have the eternal life realized in the succession of generations. He desired personal immortality. In a happy life in the subterranean kingdom, the Eleusinian Mysteries promised him even this. And if a person of that age underwent initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries, he did so because he hoped for a happier life in the world to come and considered participation in the mysteries to be important for himself,” writes Martin Nilsson [M. Nilsson. Greek Folk Religion. New York, 1940].

4.7 The Eleusinian Mysteries.

The Eleusinian Mysteries themselves were conducted as follows. They were divided into the Lesser Mysteries and the Greater Mysteries. The Lesser Mysteries were preparatory; everyone could take part in them, and they were not a secret. They were called myēsis and took place in February on the river Ilissos.

Dionysus and Pluto (Hades) are probably one and the same person. Hades is identical with the Dionysus by whom the possessed maenads rage and surrender themselves to bacchic frenzy, as Plutarch tells us. In Isis and Osiris, Plutarch refers to the fifteenth fragment of Heraclitus, who says the very same. Dionysus and Pluto are one person in two manifestations, and the marriage of Dionysus and Persephone is, in essence, the marriage of Hades and Persephone. But Dionysus appears here not in the role of lord of the underworld but, on the contrary, in the role of the bestower of every blessing [Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 362a].

For the Lesser Mysteries, for the symbolic representation of the marriage of Dionysus and Persephone, a special temple was built on the river Ilissos. It was still standing at the end of the eighteenth century. It has now, unfortunately, been destroyed. The English artists Stuart and Revett left drawings of it from around 1760.

The Lesser Mysteries were devoted to the abduction of Persephone and her marriage to Hades — that is, to the tragedy. The Greater Mysteries were devoted to the victory. Naturally, in order to take part in the Greater Mysteries one first had to have passed through the Lesser. The Greater Mysteries were performed in the middle of the month of Boedromion — at the very end of September and the beginning of October. Boedromion, the third month of the Attic calendar, falls in the second half of September and the first half of October.

The Lesser Mysteries began on the thirteenth of Boedromion. The Athenian youths, the ephebes, set out in procession to Eleusis in order to bring back from there the so-called ta hiera — the sacred objects required for the sacred procession from Athens to Eleusis that was to take place several days later. This journey was not secret; everyone saw it. But the sacred objects were nevertheless covered; they were handed to the youths in such a way that the youths themselves did not know exactly what they were carrying — they knew only that these were holy things. They bore them to Athens, to the Acropolis. On the fifteenth of Boedromion, two days later, those wishing to receive initiation gathered to be guided by the mystagogues and to receive counsel during the festival. The mystagogues are “those who lead into the mystery.”

Only those who had not been stained by crime or disgrace, who preserved purity of mind and heart, were admitted to the Greater Mysteries. Those who had once sinned but had truly repented were also admitted — they had performed, as the Greek phrase has it, metanoia, “a change of mind” — and as a token of repentance they offered a ram in sacrifice, sat upon its skin, and their sins were forgiven them.

At dawn on the nineteenth of Boedromion, after the rite of purification had been performed, all set out from Athens to Eleusis, carrying the sacred statue of Iacchus. Iacchus and Bacchus are, of course, one and the same. According to tradition, this name was at the same time the principal cry of the Eleusinian Mysteries — it was cried out during the procession. Frequent halts were made, during which sacred dances were performed. As the procession moved on, the mystai sang hymns. At sunset they reached the sacred precinct of Eleusis, sought lodging for the night, and prepared themselves for the mysteries. The procession itself was seen by all, but once they entered the sacred precinct, the gates were shut, and of what took place within we know very little. We know only that the mystai fasted during the day, and that in the evening, in complete darkness — there was no moon at this time — they entered the hall. This hall is called the Telesterion. The last Telesterion, built after the Persian invasion and destruction, has been excavated by archaeologists. It is a square hall of fifty-one by fifty-one meters, with steps and seats. In one part of the Telesterion stands the so-called Anaktoron, a small inner shrine.

The mystai entered the Telesterion, but to the Anaktoron one could only approach: there, beside the entrance to the Anaktoron, the Hierophant was seated. And he revealed something. We know that there was also the so-called entrance to the cave of Hades. There was in fact no cave there, but only a white semicircular stone that represented the Navel of the Earth. At night, above the roof of the Anaktoron a flame would rise — smoke and fire — but nothing was consumed. The radiance of the fire was visible from outside. Plutarch says: “He who succeeds in penetrating within (the sanctuary) and seeing the bright light issuing from the sacred place (the Anaktoron) falls silent in amazement. Attentively and humbly he listens… to God” [Plutarch, De profectu in virtute, 81d–e]. This fire was probably the image of the fire of Demeter into which she had placed Demophon.

At a certain moment, while displaying something — perhaps an infant, or a boy, the child of the hearth — the Hierophant proclaimed the sacred formula: “Brimo has borne Brimos,” that is, “the Queen has borne the King.” In reality no one knows exactly what was shown. There are various opinions, but it appears that a newborn child was shown. The sight of him granted the mystai immortality, a lot beyond the grave different from that of Hades. In the fourth century BC Isocrates said: “In Athens Demeter gave her greatest gifts (and the fourth century is a rather skeptical age) — agriculture, which raised people above the animals, and initiation, which gave hope concerning the end of life and eternity” [Isocrates, Panegyricus, 28].

On one of the tombstones of a Hierophant of Eleusis it was written: “For nine years I taught people the bright mysteries of Demeter, and in the tenth I departed to the abode of the gods. Marvelous is this mystery, granted to mortals by the gods. For us death is not only not an evil — death becomes a blessing” [Arseniev, “Pessimism and Mysticism in Ancient Greece,” Put’, no. 4, 1926, p. 456].

Bibliography:

Eliade, M. A History of Religious Ideas. Vol. 1. Chicago, 1978

Kerényi K. Eleusis; archetypal image of mother and daughter. New York 1967

Nilsson M. Greek Folk Religion. New York, 1940

Nilsson M.P. A History of Greek Religion, 1949

Rohde E. Psyche: The Cult of souls and Beliefs in Immortality among the Greeks, N.Y. 1925

Burkert W. Ancient Mystery Cults. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Cosmopoulos M. Bronze Age Eleusis and the Origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Cambridge University Press, 2015

Mylonas G. Eleusis and Eleusinian Mysteries. Princeton, 1961.

Zuntz G. Persephone: Three Essays on Religion and Thought in Magna Graecia. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971.

  • 4.1-4.2
  • 4.3-4.4
  • 4.5-4.7

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