Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

There were many ancient Greek festivals that were called Mysteria (in English, “mysteries”), but the oldest known festival of this type and the most famous was celebrated in Athens, the Mysteria of the Two Goddesses (Demeter and Kore). It was held in a sanctuary at Eleusis, about 14 miles west of the center of the city, by the shore opposite the island of Salamis. Today we refer to this festival as the Eleusinian Mysteries, to distinguish it from the other mystery festivals in the Greco-Roman world. One of its legacies, mediated through Plato and Platonism, is the mystery language of Christianity: terms like “mystical,” “mysticism,” “mystagogical,” etc. all go back ultimately to the Eleusinian and other ancient mystery cults.The Eleusinian Mysteria call to mind many things, but they were especially well known for their secrecy. The penalty for divulging these secrets was death. Indeed, these secrets are thought to rank among the best-kept secrets of the ancient world. George Mylonas, the distinguished Greek archaeologist who had been involved with the excavations at Eleusis since the 1930s, had this to say about the Mysteria in 1961:For years, since my early youth, I have tried to find out what the facts were. Hope against hope was spent against the lack of monumental evidence; the belief that inscriptions would be found on which the Hierophants had recorded their ritual and its ... log in or subscribe to read full text