The ancient mysteries

The teaching

As the Homeric Hymn to Demeter with Apuleius and the temples of Mithras teaches it.

Demeter and the Maiden

The rites of Eleusis rest on the story the Hymn to Demeter tells. Persephone, the Maiden, is gathering flowers when the earth opens beneath a wonderful narcissus and Hades, lord of the dead, carries her off by the will of Zeus. Her mother Demeter searches nine days with torches in her hands, tasting neither nectar nor ambrosia, until the Sun, who sees everything, tells her what was done.

In grief and anger she leaves the gods and wanders as an old woman. At Eleusis the daughters of King Celeus find her by the Maiden Well and bring her home to nurse their baby brother. She sits silent until a servant, Iambe, makes her laugh with jests; she refuses wine and asks for barley and water mixed with pennyroyal, the kykeon. She lays the child in the fire by night to burn away his mortality, until his mother sees and cries out, and the goddess, revealed in her glory, commands a temple.

The return and the founding of the rites

From her temple she lets no seed grow, and the human race would have perished had Zeus not sent Hermes to bring the Maiden back. But Hades gives her a pomegranate seed to eat, and so she must spend a third of every year below. Then Demeter makes the fields bear again and shows her rites to the leaders of Eleusis: rites, the Hymn says, that may not be transgressed, pried into or spoken of, for awe of the gods checks the voice. Happy is the one who has seen them, the Hymn says; the one who has not shares no such lot in the darkness after death.

The Lesser and the Greater Mysteries

Initiation came in two steps: the Lesser Mysteries in spring at Agrai, outside Athens, as a purification, and the Greater in autumn, in the month Boedromion. They were open to anyone who spoke Greek and was clean of bloodshed, man or woman, free or slave, and each candidate came with a sponsor already initiated. After the Greater Mysteries one was a mystes, an initiate; a year or more later one might return as an epoptes, one who has seen. The rites were led by the hierophant, the one who shows the holy things, of the old family of the Eumolpidai, with a torchbearer and a herald of the Kerykes and the priestess of Demeter.

The days of the festival

The holy things were first brought from Eleusis to Athens in covered baskets. The initiates gathered and heard the proclamation barring anyone with blood on their hands or speech that could not be understood. Then came the cry To the sea, initiates, and each bathed in the sea with a young pig, which was then sacrificed. More sacrifices followed, and a day for the healer Asklepios.

Then the great procession: crowned with myrtle, the initiates walked the Sacred Way to Eleusis, some fourteen miles, behind the image of Iacchos, crying his name. At the bridge over the Kephisos people mocked them with jests, as Iambe had jested with the goddess, and they arrived by torchlight. They fasted as Demeter had fasted and broke the fast with the kykeon. Pennyroyal is poisonous in strong preparations, its oil above all, and dangerous in pregnancy, so this is a drink to know about and not to brew; and any fast of one's own is best kept short, and not kept at all when unwell or pregnant.

On the last day they poured offerings for the dead from two vessels, one to the east and one to the west, and, as the late writer Proclus reports, looked up to the sky and cried Rain, and down to the earth and cried Conceive.

The night in the hall

The initiates entered the Telesterion, a great hall for thousands with a small stone chamber, the Anaktoron, at its heart. Greek writers speak of things done, things said and things shown there, and kept their oath: no one who saw them wrote them down. Plutarch writes of a crowd jostling and shouting, then falling into awe and silence as the holy things were shown in a great light, and a passage kept under his name likens dying to initiation: wandering in darkness and terror, then a marvellous light, open meadows, voices and dances. Athens punished betrayal of the rite with death. A hostile Christian writer, Clement of Alexandria, gives a password he says initiates spoke, I fasted, I drank the kykeon, I took from the chest, I worked and put it in the basket, and from the basket into the chest; no initiate confirms it.

What Eleusis promised

The promise was a better lot, now and after death. Pindar called blessed the one who has seen these things before going under the earth, for he knows the end of life and its god-given beginning. Sophocles wrote that the initiated alone have true life among the dead. Cicero, himself initiated, wrote that the mysteries taught people to live with joy and to die with a better hope. They asked no creed and forbade no other worship.

Isis: the call of Lucius

The rites of Isis are known best from Apuleius, whose novel ends with an initiation told by its hero. Lucius, turned into an ass by a magic gone wrong, wakes on the shore at Cenchreae under a full moon rising from the sea, bathes, dipping his head seven times, and prays to the queen of heaven. Isis rises from the sea in his vision, crowned with a disc like the moon, in a black mantle strewn with stars, holding a sistrum and a golden lamp shaped like a boat.

She is nature, she tells him, mother of all things, mistress of the elements, the one goddess the world worships under many names, Minerva at Athens, Venus in Cyprus, Diana in Crete, Proserpina in Sicily, Ceres at Eleusis, while the Egyptians call her by her true name, Queen Isis. At her festival next day, when her ship is launched for the sailing season, her priest will carry roses; he is to eat them, and his life thereafter is hers. He eats them, the beast's shape falls away, and the priest tells him he has passed from a blind Fortune into the care of one who sees.

Isis: the initiation

He waits for the goddess's call, for no one may hasten the day. When it comes, the priest reads to him from books in unknown signs, bathes him, asks the gods' pardon for him and sprinkles him with pure water. For ten days he eats no meat and drinks no wine, and then, dressed in new linen, he is led into the innermost sanctuary.

What happened there he tells only as a riddle. He came to the boundary of death and trod the threshold of Proserpina; he was carried through all the elements and returned; at midnight he saw the sun shining brightly; he came face to face with the gods below and above and worshipped them close at hand. In the morning he is clothed in twelve robes, given a torch, crowned with palm leaves standing out like rays, and shown to the people like the sun. Later, in Rome, he is initiated into the night rites of Osiris and serves the goddess for life.

Mithras: the cave and the bull

The mysteries of Mithras left no book and are read from their temples. A mithraeum is a cave, or a long vaulted room made to look like one, with benches down both sides where the members reclined for the sacred meal. Porphyry explains that the first cave was dedicated to Mithras as an image of the world he made.

At its end stood the image of the bull-slaying. Mithras, in a Persian cap, kneels on the bull and drives a dagger into its neck, often turning his face back towards the Sun. A dog and a snake reach for the blood, a scorpion clutches the bull's genitals, a raven looks on, and ears of wheat spring from its tail. The torchbearers stand on either side, Cautes with his torch raised and Cautopates with his lowered, with the Sun and Moon above. Other scenes show Mithras born from a rock with a knife and a torch, striking water from a rock with an arrow, and clasping hands and feasting with the Sun on the bull's hide; the members' meal was the image of that feast.

The grades of Mithras: Raven to Lion

The members climbed seven grades, which Jerome lists and a mosaic floor at Ostia sets each under a planet. The first was the Raven, under Mercury, whose emblems are a cup and the herald's staff; ravens served at the sacred meal.

The second was the Nymphus, the bridegroom, under Venus, whose emblem is a lamp.

The third was the Soldier, under Mars, with helmet, lance and pack. Tertullian says that at his initiation the Soldier was offered a crown on a sword's point, pushed it away, and declared that Mithras alone was his crown.

The fourth was the Lion, under Jupiter, with fire shovel and thunderbolt, for the lion's element is fire; Porphyry says the Lions' hands were washed not with water, fire's enemy, but with honey.

The grades of Mithras: Persian to Father

The fifth was the Persian, under the Moon, with a curved Persian sword and the crescent moon and star, and to him too honey was offered, as the keeper of fruits.

The sixth was the Heliodromus, the Sun-runner, under the Sun, with torch, whip and crown of rays, who took the Sun's part beside Mithras at the meal.

The seventh and highest was the Father, under Saturn, with the Persian cap, a staff, a sickle and a libation bowl, who led the community; the painted walls of a temple in Rome greet each grade in turn under the protection of its planet.