During Lent we hear much about “salvation”. I got to Petersburg Lutheran Church early this morning. I sat in the pew awaiting the great announcement that "The Lord is Risen. Surrounding me were decorations and flowers with the sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows. I wondered about the salvation of the ancients. All of us know of mortals who thank to their blood-lines, beautiful, divine patroness or heroic deeds attained Olympus. Pausanias tells us that;
"Men of the mythical age of heroes, because of their righteousness and piety, were guests of the gods, eating at the same board; the good were openly honored by the gods, and sinners were openly visited with their wrath. Nay, in those days men were changed to gods, who down to the present day have honors paid to them--Aristaeus, Britomartis of Crete, Heracles the son of Alcmena, Amphiaraus the son of Oicles, and besides these Polydeuces and Castor." Pausanias, Description of Greece 8. 2. 3 (trans. Jones)But, what of us lesser souls, what hope had we of a happy afterlife. One thought is the Eleusian Mysteries founded by Demeter were meant; "to elevate man above the human sphere into the divine and to assure his redemption by making him a god and so conferring immortality upon him." (Nilsson, Martin P. Greek Popular Religion pages 44) Of course Pausanias (1.38.7) can say nothing on this sacred subject. “My dream forbade the description of the things within the wall of the sanctuary, and the uninitiated are of course not permitted to learn that which they are prevented from seeing.” According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess found the Eleusian Mysteries while grieving for her lost daughter.
“she showed the conduct of her rites and taught them all her mysteries, to Triptolemus and Polyxeinus and Diocles also, -- awful mysteries which no one may in any way transgress or pry into or utter, for deep awe of the gods checks the voice. Happy is he among men upon earth who has seen these mysteries; but he who is uninitiated and who has no part in them, never has lot of like good things once he is dead, down in the darkness and gloom.”The hint here is that via the Mysteries normal people can become residences of the Island of the Blest upon their departure from this world. My question is why did Demeter found the Mysteries?
Personally, I cannot find in the Hymn to Demeter any evidence that the initiated will be sent to the Islands of the Blessed or otherwise will enjoy a very happy afterlife. As far as I see, there is just a promise by Hades, later certified by Demeter, that those who fail to honor Persephone properly (presumably those uninitiated in the Mysteries) will be punished forever. As if mortals are guilty for the way immortals manage their affairs. So the Mysteries were a hurdle, a condition introduced for mortals to obtain what they used to obtain by default, the gloomy oblivion of the Asphodel Meadows.
ReplyDeleteDemeter, as goddess of agriculture, is expected to teach humans how to grow crops - a culture goddess. She does this, in the myth of Triptolemus. However, there is no hint of this in the Hymn. Here, Demeter is a pure destroyer. Humans already have agriculture (we do not know how), all she does is to stop seeds from growing and bring famine, like Ino.
ReplyDeleteI checked the connection Demeter - Persephone. Homer mentions once in the Odyssey that Persephone is Zeus' daughter, but never mentions that she is Demeter's daughter. The Hymn to Demeter follows the Hesiodic genealogy and, like the Theogony, gives much importance to Hecate. I would suspect common authorship if Hesiod's vicious misogyny had not been replaced in the Hymn with perverted, radical, almost modern feminism.
Quotes that seem to relevant, from A. Bernstein's "Formation of Hell":
ReplyDelete"Homer and Hesiod give actual punishment only to a few special persons. Whatever evil brought Tityos or Prometheus to their fates, neither Homer nor Hesiod could conceive of a human deserving anything similar. Although there is no suggestion that the human shades in the house of Hades will ever cease to exist, neither are they punished. The distinction between Tartarus, prison of superhuman miscreants, and Hades, land of all the human dead of whatever character, is a crucial aspect of the cultural environment from which the concept of hell emerged. Later, it would be possible to imagine unending punishments for humans, too...
For seed, the underworld is a temporary place of rest. For souls, it is a permanent container... Knowledge of how this fertile cycle came to be is at the core of the mysteries Demeter established at Eleusis. This second myth suggests Hades the person as a source of evil, the underground as a negative force... which can be cajoled or appeased only through performance of certain rites, i.e. the Eleusinian Mysteries... Crucial to the foundation myth of those rites is Hades' promise to Persephone: she will rule alongside him, and those who refuse to honor her will know suffering every day forever (367-69). This is eternal punishment..."
Maya,
ReplyDeleteAll you say above is true. There is no promise in myth about a happier afterlife for those that attended the mysteries. But how could there be any literary evidence?
Any poet who attempted to write about it was stoned to death. If Aeschylus' hadn't been a war hero would have worn Hector's proverbial coat of stones. And we can't even tell what it was that he said that got the 20,000 furious faces up out of their seats and chasing him down the streets.
It a Mystery. I like a little mystery in my life.
Bill
How do you think, did the Greeks try to reconcile the version of Zeus' sons deciding the fate of every mortal soul in the underworld with the version of this fate determined by the soul's prior initiation into the Mysteries, or lack thereof?
ReplyDeleteMaya,
DeleteI assume the Mysteries offered purification for past sins and a promise of a good future. Everyone else had to chance it with Zeus' sons.
Nill
Observing Christianity and Islam, both in ancient times and now, I conclude that the deity who rules over the netherworld will rule over the earth as well. So I find it interesting that Demeter and Persephone didn't gain much more in cult. Maybe advanced societies are unwilling to submit to female deities. (Athena, who enjoyed more honors, was not truly female and did not try to empower women.)
ReplyDeleteMaya,
ReplyDeleteI am not sure that I agree with the above. They say that the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. Christianity has tried to supress Maryology since the days of the Lords ministry. Our Lady of Guadaloupe is the patron saint of much of the new world. Even the Muslims honor her as a saint.
Bill
I disagree with the proverb.
ReplyDeleteThere is indeed much veneration to Mother Mary in Orthodox and Catholic Christianity. I actually have in my room an icon of her with baby Jesus, copy of a centuries-old original.
However, Mother Mary is honored, venerated, even worshiped in the traditional female role - of mother giving life and care to children while they are young, and eventually mourning a fallen son. Orthodox Christians pray to her to entreat for them (like the Thebans to Aethra, and various Hades visitors to Persephone - we discussed this before), but Jesus and His Father will say the final word.
If you force a female character to intrude into traditional male domains, you must be careful not to end up with something like the Da Vinci Code :-).
Maya,
DeleteGreat point, Mother Mary does very much fit the role.
Bill