Observations placeholder
Eleusinian Mysteries - Thesmophoria - 02
Identifier
016281
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
The story
The same extract below is repeated in another observation, but in order to keep the explanation of the Mysteries in context it has to be repeated.
The Eleusinian Mysteries were based on forms of spiritual experience based on sex. In reading the following one now has to take the alternative sexual symbolism into account and not the more generic symbolism.
The narcissus is in this context the penis. The bloom like girl is thus tempted by the penis - a lovely toy!
So the start of the process is to use the sexual energy of a man to trigger the process. This sends you figuratively speaking into the third world of sexual desires; you go to the underworld – the land of the subconscious.
In the story, Persephone is the conscious self and Demeter represents her higher spirit, who on losing her to the subconscious grieves bitterly as Persephone moves away from her Higher spirit and closer to the word of the subconscious. Persephone is ‘doing the dive’. But she is doing the dive in order to be united with her mother.
Step One – Coitus without fertilisation or orgasm
False pregnancies occur when there is continual infertile coitus.
There thus has to be a period of sexual stimulation without any sperm being produced or received. In animals false pregnancies are produced when a female is bred by an infertile male. So we have to mimic this situation.
A description of the experience
Homeric Hymn to Demeter
Apart from Demeter, lady of the golden sword and glorious fruits, she was playing with the deep bosomed daughters of Oceanus and gathering flowers over a soft meadow, roses and crocuses and beautiful violets, irises also and hyacinths and the narcissus, which Earth made to grow at the will of Zeus and to please the Host of Many, to be a snare for the bloom-like girl—a marvellous, radiant flower. It was a thing of awe whether for deathless gods or mortal men to see: from its root grew a hundred blooms and it smelled most sweetly, so that all wide heaven above and the whole earth and the sea’s salt swell laughed for joy.
And the girl was amazed and reached out with both hands to take the lovely toy; but the wide-pathed earth yawned there in the plain of Nysa, and the lord, Host of Many, with his immortal horses sprang out upon her—the Son of Cronos, He who has many names. He caught her up reluctant on his golden car and bare her away lamenting.
..........................................
Hades, her father’s brother, to be called his buxom wife. And Hades seized her and took her loudly crying in his chariot down to his realm of mist and gloom. Yet, goddess, cease your loud lament and keep not vain anger unrelentingly: Aidoneus, the Ruler of Many, is no unfitting husband among the deathless gods for your child, being your own brother and born of the same stock: also, for honour, he has that third share which he received when division was made at the first, and is appointed lord of those among whom he dwells.
The source of the experience
Eleusinian MysteriesConcepts, symbols and science items
Concepts
Symbols
The Three WorldsScience Items
False pregnancyActivities and commonsteps
Commonsteps
References
