Please note October's discussion is a follow up to September's discussion.
Topics:
September 28th, 2025, Members only Online Discussion The Ritual Path of Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries
5.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.
October 26th, 2025, Members only Online Discussion Demeter and Persephone
5.30 p.m. to 6.30 p.m.
Source Material:
September's source material: Keller, E. (2021). The Eleusinian mysteries. Rosicrucian Digest, 99(1), 21–33. Ancient
Mysteries.
https://cac45ab95b3277b3fdfd-31778daf558bdd39a1732c0a6dfa8bd4.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/07_keller.pdf
October's source material: https://cac45ab95b3277b3fdfd-31778daf558bdd39a1732c0a6dfa8bd4.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/02_spretnak.pdf
Article Summary for September
The Greater Mysteries at Eleusis, the Eleusinian Mysteries called ta Mysteria, lasted almost two thousand years, from approximately 1450 BCE to 392 CE around the time of the Autumnal Equinox.
In these rites of initiation, initiates participated in a reenactment of the mythos or sacred story of Demeter and Persephone, their unwilling separation and joyful reunion.
Demeter’s rites enshrined the natural laws of the birth, growth, death, and regeneration of humans, the crops, and all nature, and were therefore considered essential to the survival of humanity.
In contrast to the cathartic experience of watching a tragic drama … an initiate of the Mysteries would undergo physical, emotional, and spiritual cleansing in preparation for the main part of the ritual – a spiritual identification with the Mother and Daughter in their separation and suffering and then joyful reunion, a transformation from death to rebirth.
In the middle of the month prior to the beginning of the Greater Mysteries (approximately mid-August), special messengers or heralds … were sent from Athens and Eleusis across Greece to invite Demeter’s worshippers to attend the festival of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The sequence of the ritual is important to the realization of its overall influence:
Day One: initiates … assembled with their teachers in the Athenian Agora or marketplace … together with thousands of celebrants who came from all around Greece, and beyond.
Day Two: initiates, with their teachers, families, and friends paraded the handful of miles to the seashore south of Athens, to the Bay of Phaleron.
Day Three: called Heireia Deuro! or “Bring Sacred Offerings!” The official state ceremonies in Athens, on the evening following the day at the sea, included the sacrifice of a suckling pig by each initiate.
Day Four: special blessings were invoked for doctors and healers, and perhaps healing practices were offered at Demeter’s Eleusinion temple in Athens to all who came for them.
Day Five: many thousands of exuberant celebrants joined the Pompe or Grand Procession from Athens to Eleusis, led by the priestesses of Demeter and Persephone
Day Six: began in the evening with a Nightlong Revelry, the Pannychis, with torchlit dancing by women around Kallichoron, the well “of beautiful dances” near Demeter’s temple at Eleusis.
Days Seven and Eight: were called Mysteriotides Nychtes, the Mystical Nights or Nights of the Mysteries. Little is known with certainty of what happened during these culminating nights.
Day Nine: called both Plemochoai, Pourings of Plenty, and Epistrophe, Return. This day was a time for offering libations (to the deities? to the ancestors?), and it began the transition back to one’s own home, family, community, and work—to the rest of one’s life, with a new way of seeing.
As the rites concluded, the initiates returned home with a new vision of life, blessed by the mysterious gifts of beauty and love.