The fall and spring equinoxes mark a time of balance, when day and night are of equal length. To my mind, this September balancing act of dark and light isn't merely a happy time of harvest. It also warns of our hemisphere's imminent slide towards winter and death. Hurry up and enjoy the fruits of your labor, for tomorrow you may die.
The Greeks had a name for the first month of fall. They called it Boedromion, and the Greater Mysteries of Eleusis were celebrated at this time. (The Lesser Mysteries, with Persephone as the focus, were celebrated in the spring.) Demeter, the mother of Kore/Persephone, was the goddess of Eleusis, and to some, the rites of fall reenact her rage and sorrow over the loss of her daughter to the underworld, as well as her admonishment that nothing would grow until her daughter's return. On both physical and psychic levels, perhaps this story prepares earth-dwellers for the yearly loss of sun and warmth, equivalent to the relinquishment of youth to adulthood, of life to death, with the inevitable rebirth of spring.
The road to Eleusis was traveled at summer's end by those who sought initiation into the mysteries of Demeter, for Eleusis is where the goddesses briefly reunite after Kore's abduction to the underworld. There are many interpretations of what the story of Demeter and Persephone really means, and what initiates learned at Eleusis. Was Kore really taken against her will and raped, or did she sacrifice her life among the living in order to become as powerful as her mother? Either way, Kore transforms, becoming Persephone, queen of the underworld. Her mother's actions illustrate how we must sometimes relinquish something precious to achieve wisdom and reveal our higher selves.
The mysteries were steeped in all things fertile. One scholar tells of calling upon the sky to rain so that the earth might conceive, leading Christian commentators to assume that the infernal rites of procreation were the focus of the fest. No doubt they were, since any exploration of death and rebirth invariably leads us to our own desires to merge with one another and die, only to come back again.
The initiates, or mystai, prepared to meet the goddess through fasting and would literally be reborn in a new set of clothes. Imbibing hallucinogens probably assisted the process of rebirth.
To meet the goddess, one must be cleansed. On the second day of the festival, mystai bathed in the sea, to expunge evil. Then they spilled the blood of pigs, renowned for its power to rid human hosts of unclean spirits. In the days to come, the mystai would fast as Demeter had fasted, to feel the emptiness the goddess felt as she angrily mourned for her missing child.
Like the Celts, the Greeks neither welcomed nor feared death. To the Greeks, death was a shadow world. Worse than death, which was unavoidable, were ghosts of the unquiet dead. An improper burial, or worse yet, no burial at all, guaranteed that ghosts would haunt the living. An integral part of the Greater Mysteries were the patria, or rites of the ancestors. Thus, on the third day of Boedromion, special sacrifices were made to women and children, as a remembrance of those who gave their lives and the new life to come.
The fifth and final day was lit by the triumphant torches of Iacchos, announcing Persephone's return from the dead. The question remains, however: What mystery was revealed on the fourth day?
As at many other Greek festivals, sacrifices were required at Eleusis. To bring forth the grain of life, a maiden must be offered. In the early days of the festival, a real maiden probably was offered. In later years, this sacrifice was transferred into a symbolic one, with only vegetable and animal offerings required.
In the 2000 years the mysteries were celebrated, we can safely assume that it was more than an agricultural festival involving a carline wife (a corn dolly, used to insure the harvest was done promptly) nagging the farmer to bring in the crop. Cleansing, transformation and an appreciation of fertility were certainly the keys to this near-requirement for Athenian citizenship. The menstrual blood of the priestesses of Eleusis was considered so sacred that seeds were wrapped in this blood before being sown. The sacrifice of fasting included a list of forbidden foods that were sacred to the goddess: pomegranates, certain types of fish and beans. Because beans were reputed to sprout new life, it was considered cannibalism to partake of them. Every initiate also offered the goddess a small pig.
Whether intended for purification or good eating, it's interesting to note that the Greek word for pig, khoiros, was also Greek slang for the female genitalia. To reveal the goings-on at Eleusis tempted a death-sentence from Athens, but this did not stop Greek writers from occasionally mocking the rites, as one playwright did when he paraphrased the pig-sacrifice by calling a father's sacrifice of his maiden daughters "a sackful of piggy-wiggies." On this, our local commentator Dan Savage seems to agree, having once compared the vagina to a canned ham tossed from a tall building.
Classical art and commentary imply that wheat was worshipped as the "the great and marvelous mystery of perfect revelation." It was the perfect symbol of the infinite cycle of birth and death. The wheat must die, bringing life to those who reap it. (Harvesting, after all, is an act of destruction.) And what was the secret of Eleusis? That in itself still remains a mystery, but baskets containing everything from barley cakes to serpents are part of the much-rumored punchline to the age-old question "What does it all mean?"
Greek was the language of the rites, and only those who spoke it could witness the mysteries. Wizards and soldiers who had committed atrocities were among those who were not admitted to the temple. All initiates were accompanied by sponsors who insured their proper behavior at all times during the festival.
The secrecy that surrounded the rites helped to insure their longevity. Greek scholar Walter Burkert believes that as their importance waned, secrecy was stressed in order to preserve their unifying power among the Athenians: "Secret and initiation are features of one of the most successful structural forms in the human community. The celebration still marked transition into the adult world."
Athenians punished those who revealed the mysteries, so few documents from the Greeks exist. What we know, or think we know, is culled from the iconography of temple ruins and works such as the Homeric hymn to Demeter, which promises us that "happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries."
Most Greek commentators were careful to reveal little of the rites to the uninitiated, speaking riddles instead of fact. Aristotle said that initiates would suffer but learn little. Themistios implies that initiation into the Greater Mysteries was achieved through the reenactment of death and rebirth. In his essay "On the Soul," he tells of overcoming the terrors of death and ignorance to achieve true enlightenment and the company of holy men, "beholding those who live uninitiated, an uncleansed horde, huddled together in mud and fog."
In a world where death and secrets were the glue that held society together, the underworld was not a place of damnation or punishment. The teachings of the goddess promised a peaceful transition to the dark home of the ancestors. Like a plant that drops its seed before dying, perhaps the great mystery revealed was the paradox that before we can live, our old self must die. Those who avoided the teachings of the goddess were doomed only to live in ignorance, the darkest place of all. Eleusis was destroyed by the Goths in the fourth century, but the transformation it offered has never completely left us.
The festivities of Labor Day are bittersweet. Sixteen-hour days now hang like a thread. Sunsets become more foreboding, threatening to consume the days ahead. Walks on the beach will grow colder. White shoes are verboten until the return of spring. Finally, there is no stronger death knell than the annual broadcast of a sleep-deprived Jerry Lewis, admonishing us to "Give until it hurts, and then give a little bit more." As the leaves begin to turn and we once more begin the downward slide, it is time to say good-bye to the sun and its children, and bid welcome to those things that dwell in darkness.
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