Healing and Transformation

The Secret of The Mysteries

The secret of the Eleusinian Mysteries lies in connection between ritual itself and the dim historical record of the shift from hunting cultures of the Late Glacial Period (8,000B.C.) to the beginning of the agricultural societies of the Near East (approx. 6,000 B.C.) - although there is evidence that uncultivated grain gathering took place as early as 15,000 B.C. and probably earlier. The shift to agriculture was marked by the gathering of cereal grains (mostly barley) and the slow development of cultivation of these grains by conscious seasonal sowing of seeds and harvesting. With this gathering came settlement and thus "civilization" as we have come to use the term. The profound change in society which resulted marks a critical point in religious history as well.

The settling process broke a pattern of intimate communion with divine presence and shifted the relationship with that presence to one of sacrificial appeasement and distance. The historical patterns (after 6,000 B.C.) of ritual all reflect a longing to be reunited with lost gods, with apprehension that such loss was caused by the very process of human settlement. When human beings ceased to wander, they ceased to trust in the magical powers of the earth and sky to meet their needs. Settlement brought trust in human skills instead. Civilization meant that existence itself was now in the hands of human power. Offended, the gods withdrew, only to be invoked to come to the aid of men by sacrifice, first human, and then animal.

In the myths of the Greek peoples, Demeter (as Mother Earth) gave the secret of agriculture to mankind. This myth established the gift of divine aid and suggested tangible presence. It is through this myth that a connection to divinity is maintained, and the hope remains that man may yet become reunited with all of his gods. There is in the myth reference to barren conditions that wiped out the natural fruits of the earth upon which life depended. Certainly the last glacial period and numerous droughts remained in human memory to fuel such myths.

The Demeter myth describes these events quite accurately. After Demeter successfully wins the return of her daughter from Hades and settles for keeping her for eight months out of twelve as a lawful expression of Nature, mankind is able to see the connection between the natural law and the divine presence for which it longs. Therefore, the Eleusinian Mysteries were established to provide a ritual through which men could reenact the shift from nomadic to agricultural life, to include the real loss of their gods in a period of glacial darkness, and to be reunited (or forgiven) once again. This ritual pattern is the source of all initiation mysteries.

The secret of the Mysteries is the moment of the reunion, the appearance of Persephone as she emerges from the underworld. At this moment the initiate feels the emotional release from the dark night of the soul and is reborn to the light. The journey of the maiden is the human journey from it's grain-gathering nomadic ways to the paralyzing darkness and cold of the underworld only to return again to the light and fecundity of his earthly paradise, a garden of Eden still occupied by God. Man needs to know that he has not sacrificed union with the gods for the seeming comforts of civilization. Demeter is the forgiving mother, nurturing her children and providing for the them the means to return to her bosom after life is over.

These facts help explain why, in A.D. 364, when the Roman Emperor Valentinian ordered the Mysteries stopped, he was persuaded to allow them to continue on the grounds that life would cease for the Greeks without them. To fail to reenact the ritual would be to bring darkness back to the earth once more. The guilt for having created civilization (a state of being known only to the gods before Prometheus stole fire for men) could be assuaged by this ritual. To offend Athena might result in the destruction of Athens, but to offend Demeter would destroy life itself...forever.

The Nature of the Secret. In the ninth discourse of the Bhagavad-Gita, it is said that the Great Secret of the universe, of life itself, had several characteristics, which marked it as a true secret. First, the secret had to be intuitional, that is, capable of being known by anyone wishing to know it and not dependent upon outside teaching or being revealed by an adept. Second, it had to be righteous, that is, lawful, within the bounds of the cosmos, according to universal principles. And third, it had to be pleasant beyond measure, that is, the secret had to be life-enhancing and exceed the pleasures of earthly existence.

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