TFBT: Demeter and Easter

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?
 

TFBT: The God Demophon

(Dēmophōn) was nourished in the palace, and he shot up equal to a superhuman force, not eating grain, not sucking from the breast. But Demeter used to anoint him with ambrosia, as if he had been born of the goddess, and she would breathe down her sweet breath on him as she held him to her bosom. Homeric Hymn to Demeter 235-238

When I read “and he shot up equal to a daemon”, I recalled (Iliad 18) where Thetis says, “I gave birth to a son who was without fault and powerful conspicuous among heroes; and he shot up like a young tree.”  Thetis lovingly brought “forth a son, of strength mightier than his father, whose hand should launch a shaft more powerful than the bolt of thunder or the fearsome trident” (Pindar, Isthmian Ode 8)

Demeter was not in a loving mood. “ But grief yet more terrible and savage came into the heart of Demeter, and thereafter she was so angered with the dark-clouded Son of Cronus that she avoided the gathering of the gods” (HHD 90)  When Hera was once angry with Zeus, she too went apart from the gods and giving notice to the powers below prayed; “ Harken you now to me, one and all, and grant that I may bear a child apart from Zeus, no wit lesser than him in strength--nay, let him be as much stronger than Zeus as all-seeing Zeus than Cronus.’(Homeric Hymn 3 to Pythian)  The product of Hera’s terrible, savage anger with Zeus was the giant monstrous Typhon; conqueror of Olympus

Although Demeter appeared to be doing something good in the way she brought up Demophon, not all the gods’ gifts are freely given.  The Titan Prometheus was one of the sons of Iapetus.  These brothers led the second generation Titans in the war against the Olympians called the Titanomachy.  He ended up switching side, becoming the benefactor of mankind and the cause of Thetis’ marriage to Peleus.   In “Hesiod's Cosmos”  Jenny Strauss-Clay suggests that Prometheus gifts to us of fire and the best cuts of the sacrifice were not altruistic, but rather "presupposes a reciprocal counter-gift on the part of men, presumably their support of Prometheus in the contest between the Titan and Zeus" (p107)

The poets give no ulterior motive into Demophon’s baptism into ambrosia and fire.  But, what future did this terrible goddess, savagely starving mankind to death, angry with Zeus, standing apart from the gods intend when her foster son, the god Demophon, reached maturity?