Mysteries at Eleusis – Feminism and Religion

The Eleusinian Mysteries: Alchemical Grain, Part II by Sally Mansfield Abbott

Part 1 was posted yesterday. You can read it here.

The Eleusinian Mystery Rites derived from early planting and harvest festivals, agricultural rites from the late Neolithic. They celebrated the growth of the plant from a seed in the ground, but their purpose was also to convey a new way of seeing, an opening of the eyes, the Epotopia. The golden grain signified the alchemical gold of a new consciousness, the miracle of a plant turning to gold. Through fasting, initiates experienced a ritual identification with grief and loss, followed by a return of life and joy, a rebirth, Persephone’s triumphant return from Hades. Demeter was a giver of agricultural rites, but she laid down spiritual laws as well, hence her title of Thesmophoria, or Lawgiver.

Demeter offers a benediction to Metaneira who proffers wheat, a symbol of the Mysteries

The Eleusinian Mysteries: Alchemical Grain, Part I by Sally Mansfield Abbott

This post is dedicated to the memory of Mara Lynn Keller, who passed away on 12/23/23. Mara was an expert on the Eleusinian Mysteries, and much of this post is based on her scholarship. Mara was a life-long friend and ally of Carol Christ’s, going back to their days in the Ph.D. program at Yale. She co-founded the Women’s Spirituality program at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) with Eleanor Gadon (The Once and Future Goddess). Mara was an unusually warm, welcoming, and generous presence, and must have been a fabulous teacher.

The Eleusinian Mystery Rites were practiced in Athens and Eleusis from 1450 BCE to 329 CE, a period of almost 2,000 years, before they were expressly forbidden by the newly Christian Roman Empire, and years later the temple was destroyed. The Rites had originated on Crete, and continued to be practiced in Knossos and in the caves there for many centuries. It is likely no coincidence that the origin of the Mysteries in Eleusis in 1450 BCE is the same date as the fall of Knossos.

Meeting the Melissae: The Ancient Greek Bee Priestesses of Demeter by Elizabeth Ashley, Book Review by Carolyn Lee Boyd

The Mysteries at Eleusis, a nine-day festival in ancient Greece based on the myth of Demeter and Persephone, has fascinated and baffled us for millennia. Here thousands of people from all over Greece and beyond came to understand, in the words of Plutarch, “an undoubted truth our soul is incorruptible and immortal” (277). Producing this festival was the task of the Melissae, the bee priestesses of Demeter, powerful and honored women in a society in which women had few rights, famous in their own time but almost unknown in ours.

In Meeting the Melissae: The Ancient Greek Bee Priestesses of Demeter, Elizabeth Ashley offers us not only facts about the Melissae and other ancient Greek priestesses gleaned from archaeology, art and literature from the period, and modern academic research but her own glimmerings of their deepest spiritual life. She explores what is known about the priestesses and their everyday lives, the goddesses whose temples they presided over, and bees themselves. An aromatherapy researcher, she began her journey to discovering the secrets of the Melissae when she kept reading references to them in ancient botanicals about the herb lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) but nothing more. (The connection between lemon balm and bee priestesses? Pheromones. That’s all I’m going to say).