Lecture Eight. The Eleusinian mysteries and the Afterlife

 

Demeter’s visit to Eleusis is a crucial narrative element in the Homeric Hymn; it also has important connections to ritual outside the storyline.

-          Eleusis is a town near Athens, where the great “Mysteries” in honor of Demeter and Persephone were celebrated for over 1000 and perhaps nearly 2000 years. They fell into disuse about 400 AD

-          “Mysteries” in this context means “secrets”; the ceremonies were open only to initiates.

-          The initiates were forbidden to tell non-initiates about the rites.

-          Initiation was available to men and women, to free people and to slaves, the only requirements were that one must not be a murderer and that one must speak Greek. One had to make the journey to Eleusis and make a sacrifice to be initiated.

-          The requirement of secrecy means that our knowledge of the Mysteries is both limited and quite possibly biased.

-          Although certainly some initiates must have told the secret, the surviving written references observe the prohibition. They allude to the Mysteries but do not describe them.

-          The only writers who do describe the Mysteries are early Christian authors. Because they wrote with the desire to prove the Mysteries false, their testimony may not be accurate.

-          The sources seem to agree that the high points of the Mysteries was showing or revealing of something to the initiates.

-          Some sources imply that whatever was revealed was obscene.

-          Other sources say that the revelation consisted of an ear of wheat being cut in silence.

-          Although the details of the Mysteries will probably remain unknown, we know enough to recognize many details in the Homeric hymn as etiologies for parts of the ritual of the Mysteries.

-          Demeter’s visit to Eleusis explains why the Mysteries are celebrated there.

-          On a conceptual level, the connection with death and the afterlife is aetiological, because initiation promised a happy afterlife.

-          If we had more information, we might recognize other details as aetiological.

The Eleusinian Mysteries apparently promised a happy afterlife. Elsewhere in surviving literature, we find less pleasant views of the afterlife.

-          The standard view seems to be that the Underworld is a place of dim, shadowy existence, much less desirable than life in this world.

-          The ghost is sometimes called an eidolon, or “image”; it is less real than the living person.

-          The word for soul, psyche, originally seem to have meant breath. That which visibly leaves the body at the time of death.

-          In the odyssey, the spirits in Tartaros are described as being witless, not even knowing themselves.

-          Some exceptionally noteworthy souls are picked out for reward or punishment, but overall there seems to be little sense that one’s state in the afterlife was determined by one’s actions in this life.

-          The conception of the Elysian Fields, reserved for a very few especially good souls, is alluded to in the odyssey and elsewhere.

-          The idea of punishment for the wicked is more clearly developed, but even it does not apply to the majority of humanity; punishment is restricted to a few famous wrongdoers, such as the cardinal sinners, tantalos, tityos, and Sisyphus.

We also have some evidence of a belief in reincarnation.

-          Pythagoras apparently taught a doctrine that included reincarnation.

-          Plato discusses reincarnation is so-called “Myth of Er”

-          One difficulty in using this as evidence for fourth-century belief is that Plato may have invented this myth for use in the republic.

-          Virgil, writing in the first century BC, combined the ideas of reward and punishment and the idea of reincarnation in Book 5 of the aeneid. Again as with Plato, it is difficult to determine to what extent Virgil used the idea of reincarnation purely as a literary device and to what extent it mirrors actual belief.   

One of the most important myths concerning the afterlife is the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus, a son of Apollo and one of the Muses, was the greatest poet who ever lived.

-          Orpheus, a human, supposedly had the power to charm animals and even stones and trees with his music.

-          When his wife, Eurydice, died, Orpheus made his way to the Underworld to plead for her release.

-          His music moved Hades and he agreed to release her if Orpheus not look back at her.

-          Orpheus did look back, and Eurydice returned to Tartaros.

-          This purely mythical Orpheus was associated with the body of writings and a set of religious beliefs called Orphism.

-          Orphism began to be taught in the sixth century BC

-          The orphic writings supposedly contain knowledge that Orpheus gained while in the underworld.

-          Reincarnation is central to the doctrine; only by following the teachings of Orpheus to lead an ascetic life can the soul eventually be freed from rebirth. As in Buddhism, incarnation is a bad thing from which one seeks release.

-          Some orphic writings contained precise instructions about what one should say and do in the Underworld to avoid reincarnation.