Sir James Frazer  - The Golden Bough

The youthful Persephone, so runs the tale, was gathering roses and lilies, crocuses and violets, hyacinths and narcissuses in a lush meadow, when the earth gaped and Pluto, lord of the Dead, issuing from the abyss carried her off on his golden car to be his bride and queen in the gloomy subterranean world.

Her sorrowing mother Demeter, with her yellow tresses veiled in a dark mourning mantle, sought her over land and sea, and learning from the Sun her daughter's fate she withdrew in high dudgeon from the gods and took up her abode at Eleusis, where she presented herself to the king's daughters in the guise of an old woman, sitting sadly under the shadow of an olive tree beside the Maiden's Well, to which the damsels had come to draw water in bronze pitchers for their father's house.

In her wrath at her bereavement the goddess suffered not the seed to grow in the earth but kept it hidden under ground, and she vowed that never would she set foot on Olympus and never would she let the corn sprout till her lost daughter should be restored to her.

Vainly the oxen dragged the ploughs to and fro in the fields; vainly the sower dropped the barley seed in the brown furrows; nothing came up from the parched and crumbling soil. Even the Rarian plain near Eleusis, which was wont to wave with yellow harvests, lay bare and fallow.

Mankind would have perished of hunger and the gods would have been robbed of their due, if Zeus in alarm had not commanded Pluto to disgorge his prey, to restore his bride Persephone to her mother Demeter. The grim lord of the Dead smiled and obeyed, but before he sent back his queen to the upper air on a golden car, he gave her the seed of a pomegranate to eat, which ensured that she would return to him.

But Zeus stipulated that henceforth Persephone should spend two-thirds of every year with her mother and the gods in the upper world and one-third of the year with her husband in the nether world, from which she was to return year by year when the earth was gay with spring flowers.

Terracotta group of two seated women, perhaps Demeter and

Persephone.  Myrina c. 100 BC. British Museum, London.

Gladly the daughter then returned to the sunshine, gladly her mother received her and fell upon her neck; and in her joy at recovering the lost one Demeter made the corn to sprout from the clods of the ploughed fields and all the broad earth to be heavy with leaves and blossoms. And straightway she went and showed this happy sight to the princes of Eleusis, to  Triptolemus, Eumolpus, Diocles, and to the king Celeus himself, and moreover she revealed to them her sacred rites and mysteries.

Blessed, says the poet, is the mortal man who has seen these things, but he who has had no share of them in life will never be happy in death when he has descended into the darkness of the grave.

So the two goddesses departed to dwell in bliss with the gods on Olympus; and the bard ends the hymn with a pious prayer to Demeter and Persephone that they would be pleased to grant him a livelihood in return for his song.

Solving the Eleusinian Mystery – Carl Ruck

 

The pilgrims called upon Iakchos as they walked. It was he who was thought to lead them on their way: through him, they would summon back the queen Persephone into the realm of the living.

When at last they arrived at Eleusis, they danced far into the night beside the well where originally the mother had mourned for her lost Persephone. As they danced in honor of those sacred two goddesses and of their mysterious consort Dionysus, the god of inebriants, the stars and the moon and the daughters of Ocean would seem to join in their exultation.

Then they passed through the gates of the fortress walls, beyond which, shielded from profane view, was enacted the great Mystery of Eleusis………

Ancient writers unanimously indicate that something was seen in the great telesterion or initiation hall within the sanctuary. To say so much was not prohibited. The experience was a vision whereby the pilgrim became someone who saw, an epoptes. The hall, however, as can now be reconstructed from archaeological remains, was totally unsuited for theatrical performances; nor do the epigraphically extant account books for the sanctuary record any expenditures for actors or stage apparatus……

The Greeks were sophisticated about drama and it is highly unlikely that they could have been duped by some kind of theatrical trick, especially since it is people as intelligent as the poet Pindar and the tragedian Sophocles who have testified to the overwhelming value of what was seen at Eleusis.

Aristides the Rhetor, 2nd century A.D

what the initiate experiences is new, astonishing, and inaccessible to rational cognition……… Eleusis is a shrine common to the whole earth, and of all the divine things that exist among men, it is both the most awesome and the most luminous.

At what place in the world have more miraculous tidings been sung, and where have the dromena called forth greater emotion, where has there been greater rivalry between seeing and hearing?

Sophocles:

Thrice happy are those of mortals, who having seen those rites depart for Hades; for to them alone is granted to have a true life there. For the rest, all there is evil. 

Plutarch of Chaeronea – Progress in Virtue [de profectu in virtute]

Just as persons who are being initiated into the mysteries throng together at the outset amid tumult and shouting, and jostle against one another, but when the holy rites are being performed and disclosed the people are immediately attentive in awe and silence, so too at the beginning of philosophy: about its portals also you will see great tumult and talking; and boldness, as some boorishly and violently try to jostle their way towards the repute it bestows; but he who has succeeded in getting inside, and has seen a great light, as though a shrine were opened, adopts another bearing of silence and amazement, and "humble and orderly attends upon" reason as upon a god.

Diodorus Siculus – Library of History Book 5, 49-1

 

Now the details of the initiatory rite are guarded among the matters not to be divulged and are communicated to the initiates alone; but the fame has traveled wide of how these gods appear to mankind and bring unexpected aid to those initiates of theirs who call upon them in the midst of perils.

The claim is also made that men who have taken part in the mysteries become more pious and more just and better in every respect than they were before.  And this is the reason, we are told, why the most famous both of the ancient heroes and of the demi-gods were eagerly desirous of taking part in the initiatory rite; and in fact Jason and the Dioskoroi, and Heracles and Orpheus as well, after their initiation attained success in all the campaigns they undertook, because these gods appeared to them.

Luke
 And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.
³⁷ But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit.
³⁸ And he said unto them, Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts?
³⁹ Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.......
⁴⁵ Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures,
⁴⁶ and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:

Lawrence Alma Tadema

 

 

Clement of Alexandria – Exhortation to the Greeks, 2.11-24; 12.118-20

And the formula of the Eleusinian mysteries is as follows:
I fasted; I drank the draught; I took from the chest;  having done my task,  I placed in the basket,  and from the basket into the chest.

Beautiful sights indeed, and fit for a goddess! Yes, such rites are meet for the night and torch fires, and for the "great-hearted"-I should rather say empty-headed people of the Erechtheidai, with the rest of the Greeks as well, "whom after death there await such things as they little expect." ……………

The mysteries, then, are mere custom and vain opinion, and it is a deceit of the serpent that men worship when, with spurious piety, they turn towards these sacred initiations that are really profanities, and solemn rites that are without sanctity. Consider, too, the contents of the mystic chests; for I must strip bare their holy things and utter the unspeakable. Are they not

• sesame cakes [seed grain],
• pyramid and spherical cakes [eggs],
• cakes with many navels [centre of egg ],
• also balls of salt and a serpent, the mystic sign of Dionysos Bassareus

Are they not also

• Pomegranates,
• fig branches,
• fennel stalks,
• ivy leaves,
• round cakes,
• and poppies?

These are their holy things! In addition, there are the unutterable symbols of Ge Themis,

• marjoram,
• a lamp [lantern],
• a sword,
• and a woman's comb, which is a euphemistic expression used in the mysteries for a woman's secret parts

What manifest shamelessness! Formerly night, which drew a veil over the pleasures of temperate men, was a time for silence. But now, when night is for those who are being initiated a temptation to licentiousness, talk abounds, and the torch-fires convict unbridled passions.