The Eleusinian Mysteries

The sources for this blog are:
Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries by Mylonas
Classical Myth by Barry Powell

The Eleusinian Mysteries was a cult in ancient Greece, centered around the fertility goddess Demeter at the town of Eleusis. In mythology, only members of this cult could travel to the Underworld while still alive, and so every hero that did so (Herakles, Orpheus, Odysseus, etc.) was initiated into the Mysteries. Also, the only way to reach the Fields of Elysium (effectively the equivalent of our modern perception of Heaven) was to join the cult. In order to reach the fields, a shade (what was left over after a person died and travelled to Hades) had to say specific things to specific characters from mythology, the last of which was Achilles at ‘The Gray Oak Tree,’ after which the shade was allowed into Paradise. Almost everything that had to be said, and to whom, is known today, except for the last part. Scholars know that only once fully initiated was a person allowed to know the final secret. It was celebrated by a huge ceremony, that culminated in a High Priestess of Demeter opening a box that held the final secret. It has never been found what was in the box, if anything.

The strictest of secrecy was required of all initiates, and even the government of Athens made is a crime to let loose any of the secrets of the cult. In one instance, a member got drunk, and proceeded to act out certain parts of a secret ceremony. Because of this, he had all his property taken, and in another instance a person told all the secrets, to which the government ‘offered one talent for him dead, two to anyone who captured him alive.’

There were five stages or degrees of initiation. The first involved an initial purification, the second a mystic communion, third the initiate was granted the right to view holy object, fourth a crowning of garlands that proved full initiation into the cult, and finally a happiness resulting from a direct communion with the gods.