Messianity and Eleusinian Mysteries

As was highlighted in the essay From Eleusis to Florence: the Transmission of Secret Knowledge[1], in the Eleusian Mystery Tradition humanity is considered the daughter of the ancient Titan Gods, defeated by the new Olympic Gods in an epic war, the Titanomachy, narrated to us by Hesiod in his Theogony, but whose memory and profound echo has always been present in all the traditions of ancient peoples, from the Mediterranean to the Near East, from Asia to the Americas.

In particular, Eleusian Tradition attributes the creation of this humanity to the four sons of the Titan God Hyaphethos (Iapetus, in Greek Ιαπετός): Atlas (in Greek Ἄτλας), Menoetius (in Greek Μενοίτιος or Μενοίτης), Prometheus (in Greek Προµηθεύς) and Epimetheus (in Greek Ἐπιµηθεύς), who created man and woman in their image and likeness.

This is what the Sacred Texts write about it: «Prometheus took a part of Night, a part of Water and a part of Earth, kneaded them and shaped a figure in the image and likeness of him and his brothers. Presola, her brother, Atlanthe, blew into her mouth, giving her sacred breath, while her brother, Menethios, surrounded her with nerves and muscles and, standing her up, called her a man. Similarly, Epimetheus created woman“[2].

The Texts continue: “…took the beasts that roamed the soil of Taea (on Earth, ed.), remodeled them in their imprint and likeness and, seeing them Lan and Thn (female and male, ed.), called them Taahiv and Skefsket (man and woman, ed.). Thus, they perpetuated themselves, thus the human progeny of the Blue West was born“[3].

Eleusinity teaches us that Atlas gave man Knowledge and Life, Menoetius both internal and external Strength, Prometheus the male seed and Epimetheus the female seed. The Titans then, jointly, gave humanity the “Night”, a term that expresses a concept superior to that of “soul” that we commonly understand, the very concept of the titanic divine essence, which, through and thanks to the work of these four Titans dwell in every man today.

Another significant passage, which refers to the Titan God Menoetius, reports the following:

“…who girded the mortal race of Hyaphethe with nerves and muscles, You were, after Phlemethe (Prometheus, n.d.a.) shaped it and Hathlanthe gave it breath, to raise it on its feet, and erect you placed it before You, and, seeing her defenseless, you placed your spear in her hand. Which God placed his weapon in the hands of his creature? You alone, oh most famous Tan, gave all your trust“[4].

Following the Titanomachy and the religious overthrow that followed with the victory of the new Olympic Gods and with the establishment, both on a religious and social level, of the patriarchal regime, the Ancient Titan Gods, although defeated and partly imprisoned in Tartarus, they never abandoned their human children. Mystery Tradition teaches us, in fact, that two attempts were led by the Titans to redeem humanity and save it from the darkness of the cult of the new Gods.

In this chapter we will address the messianic role played by deities such as Leto, Demeter and Kore-Persephone precisely in the context of these attempts at redemption, but to do so we must necessarily start from afar.

The first of these attempts was to envisage the birth of a Savior, a redeeming Divinity who would lead humanity to Salvation and a return to full self-consciousness. This redeeming Divinity should have been generated by the Goddess Leto (Λητώ), also known in classical times as Lada or Latona, the sweetest of the Titanic Divinities, the «Lady of the Night Darkness with the Brown Mantle»[5].

Leto, or Letho, whose name, according to Guido Maria Stelvio Mariani di Costa Sancti Severi[6], derives from Αανθαναω (Aanthànao, i.e. “hidden star”), is a stellar Goddess of Titanic lineage. The word “Titania” always appears in front of her name, which must be distinguished from the more generic word “Titana”. According to the Hyerogonia of the Eleusinian Mother, and also according to the archaic Aegean-Mediterranean tradition, Titania Leto was generated, together with her sister Asteria (Ἀστερία), by the Titan Keys (Κοῖος,  Ceòs,  Coiòs),  and  by  the  Titan  Phoebe  (Φοίϐη, Phoebe). This is confirmed in Hesiod’s Theogony in verses 404-410.

Keys is the Titan of albino (white, daylight) light and He, like His Kingdom, represents the Celestial Pole of our galaxy. That is, it is identified with the constellation Draco (Dragon), whose most famous star is Thuban Giogo del Cielo, or Alpha 11 Draconis, which was the ancient North Star. Phoebe is instead the Titan of the light of Darkness. Among her names there are those of “Silvery”, “Bright”, “Shining”, “Nocturnal” one.

Letho’s sister, the Titan Asteria (from Ασθρ = Asthr, Aster, i.e. “astro”, “star”), is the Goddess «of the Starry Night with the blue peplos»[7], also called “Honorata”, to whom the God Ennosigeo-Poseidon donated, according to Tradition, a small floating island on the sea, which he anchored to the seabed. This islet, one of the Cyclades, initially bore the same name as the Titan Goddess, namely Asteria, and later changed its name to Delos.

Paredra   of   Leto   was   the  Titan   God   Kreys   (Κριως,   Kriôs,   “ram”,   or Κρειος, Kreios, “master”, “lord”), also called Megamedes (“Great Lord”).

As Mariani di Costa Sancti Severi always underlines[8], we know well that in the classical Hellenic period and also in the Doric period (and perhaps even earlier in the Mycenaean period), there was insistence on attributing the paternity of Letho’s children to Zeus. But this was not the case in the archaic Aegean-Minoan, Pelasgian, Lelegico-Cycladic and Lelegico- Anatolian periods. The Hellenic authors carried out this distortion both for clear reasons of pride of lineage and with political-religious intentions, in a manner that was entirely functional to the political, military and cultural control that the new “Greek” culture, with its “Olympic” religiosity, exercised. on the indigenous Pelasgian and Lelegian populations of mainland Greece, the coasts of Anatolia and the Aegean islands. This operation of “syncretic” substitution was also facilitated by the fact that both Kreys and Zeus were represented, in the most archaic iconography, with the head of a ram on a human body.

In Egypt, Letho was known as the Goddess Uadjet (a name later Greekized into Uto, Utit or Buto), i.e. the Cobra Goddess, equivalent to the concept of “Darkness”, similar to the Uraeus worn on the crowns of the pharaohs. Erroneously considered originally as a local deity of the city of Per-Uadjet, built on the Nile delta, about twenty kilometers north of Sais (later called Βοῦτος in the Ptolemaic age, today’s Tell El Farain), it became, at moment of the unification of the predynastic kingdoms, the protective Goddess of the Pharaoh and the personification of Lower Egypt, as the Vulture Goddess Nekheb was of Upper Egypt.

The Mystery Tradition of the Eleusinian Mother teaches us that the Goddess, to fulfill her mission of redemption of humanity, descended from the Celestial Pole (the star Thuban), arriving at the North Pole of the Earth of the human perishable. There she assumed the external form of a snow- coated wolf and descended from the North, crossing vast Europe, until reaching the Mediterranean coasts, where she was supposed to give birth to the Redeemer, the powerful divine son conceived with the Titan Kreys.

Zeus and the Goddess Hera were warned by some of their messengers and, made aware of what was about to happen, they were frightened and terrified, like all the other Olympian Gods. They were in fact aware of the existence of an ancient prophecy, which read: “If Titania Letho generates a single child, the kingdom of Zeus will be overwhelmed, annihilated, and covered by the earth»[9].

So it was that Hera and Zeus, to avoid the feared return of the Titan Gods, prohibited anyone (Gods, Demigods and their mortal slaves) from giving asylum to the Goddess.

After having arrived on the Aegean coasts in the shape of a she-wolf, Titania Letho assumed, upon completion of Her Mission, an external human form. But all the “doors” of the Mediterranean world closed in her face and everywhere she was rejected and chased away. She had no choice but to head to the Cyclades islands, but there she too encountered refusals, as each of the mortals feared the wrath and revenge of the Lord of Olympus. Only on the rock of Delos, in open defiance of Zeus and Hera, she was welcomed and protected by her sister Asteria.

Her ordeal lasted for nine nights (symbolically the number 9 represents a “small cycle”), lying on the green slopes of the small Mount Kynthos. In the meantime, the Olympic Gods worked with magic to break Letho’s generating force, and to divide it into two parts: in fact, if she were to generate more than one born, the prophecy would have been nullified. Only on the tenth night, Tradition always tells, did the Goddess manage to give birth with pain, grasping with her hands the tufts of grass on the slopes of Kynthos, where she was lying, while her eyes looked at the sky from which she was descent. But it was a twin birth: Zeus had partly won. Thus, it was that the Goddess generated two divine twins from the Titan Kreys,: Kynthia Artemi (Ἄρτεµις, Artemis) and Kynthios Phoebus (Φοίβος).

According to a different version, Kynthia Artemi would have been born a few hours before Kynthios Phoebus, not in Delos, but on a nearby island, at the time called Ortyx (this island was later called Rhenaia, while today it is known as Rhenia), and would have helped the Divine Mother to give birth to her brother.

However, all sources agree in reporting that, regardless of the order by Zeus  and  Hera,  the  Great  Midwife  Eileithyia  (Εἰλείθυια)  arrived  from  the Cretan city of Amnisos to the aid of Titania Letho, the Goddess of life. This very ancient tradition, of Cycladic and Aegean origin, was very widespread among both the Pelasgians and the Lelegians. The latter, whose totemic emblem was the wolf, venerated the Goddess Letho herself in her wolf aspect. And the divine twins born from Ella took on Aegean-Cycladic-lelegic names derived from the site that had given them birth, namely Delia and Delios (the Delic gemini) and Kynthia and Kynthios (from Mount Kynthòs).

The Homeric Hymn to Apollo[10] narrates the wanderings of the Goddess in this way:

The immense space was travelled by Leto
during the pains of childbirth; and she asked whether she wanted to offer
one of these lands of refuge to his son.
But they trembled fearfully and no one
dared, no matter how rich, to welcome Phoebus.
Finally, the august Leto arrived at Delos,
and she, while questioning, uttered winged words:
«Delos, would you perhaps like to be the home
of Phoebus Apollo my son
and build a shining temple for him in you? Of course, no one
will ever come to honor you. I don’t believe
you are rich in herds or flocks;
neither crops produce nor harvests nor many trees.
But if you hosted a temple of the darting Apollo,
all the mortals would come and offer you massacres
by gathering together; and always a fragrant smoke
of fat victims will arise from you, and you will be able to feed
your people at foreign hands,
so little fertile, so stingy is your soil.”
So she spoke; and happy was Delos, and replied:
“Leto, of Ceos mighty illustrious daughter;
I would be happy to host the birth
of the archer numen: in fact, my name is obscure,
almost unknown among men;
famous, honored instead that’s how I would become.”

As Guido Maria St. Mariani of Costa Sancti Severi highlights, “As soon as he was born, Kynthios already had with him the Great Silver Bow and the quiver full of darts, like subsidiary appendages of himself! Instantly he climbed at a quick pace to the summit of Kynthòs, in the middle of the night. The Great Arch shone, spreading a silvery glow all around, a cold light that illuminated the night. With this act Kynthòs automatically became Phoebus the Illuminator, the Great Archer, the Hekatebolos (“far-striking”), the Hekaergos (“far-striking”), the Argyrotoxos (“of the silver bow”), the Lycos (Wolf of the Lelegi), the Guanokaites “with cerulean hair” (this is how his hair is described, like the hair of the Pelasgian lineage)”[11].

Only later, as the Eleusinian Pritan Mother always observes, did the Dorians-Greeks attribute blond hair to this God, in fact changing his symbolism into that of a solar Phoebus and erasing his stellar nature, given that “Stellar Deities” meant only one thing: Titans, a Greek word derived from the Lelegico-Cretan term Tan. However, they forgot to change the bow of this solar Phoebus with a gold one, which instead remained silver. Initially, Greek culture identified him with the sun’s rays, then later, avoiding the Titan God Helios, they identified Phoebus himself with the Sun. Obviously the subsequent Roman authors maintained this misleading interpretation in their works which drew heavily on Hellenic culture, despite it was clear that he was a nocturnal deity (Kynthios Phoebus was born on the tenth night of the Goddess’ labor).

Furthermore, the Greeks of Olympic culture and religion attempted, and fully succeeded, to assimilate the figure of Kynthios Phoebus to that of one of their Nordic divinities, a simple shepherd God and nothing more, Apollo (Ἀπόλλων), who certainly nothing could connect to the Sun, much less to Delos. From here it is clear that a good part of the interpretation that modern mythologists and religious historians have given us of the so-called “classical mythology” is fundamentally incorrect and needs to be rewritten.

So far, we have seen how the first attempt at the redemption of humanity by the Titan Gods was not successful due to the plots of the Olympic Gods, and how the Goddess Leto, instead of generating the God that everyone was waiting for, gave birth on the island of Delos two Divine Twins: Artemis and Phoebus. As important as these two Divinities proved to be for humanity, they were unable to fulfill the mission of recovery and redemption that would have fallen to the Divine Child. The strength and power that the latter should have had, in fact, turned out to be split into the two new Divinities and it was not possible to carry out the desired mission. The Olympic Gods had thwarted what they considered a terrible prophecy which, if it had come true, would have decreed the end of their dominion. But we will see how their temporary victory has generated a new prophecy, even more terrible than the first. But, before explaining what it is, let’s focus on the following passage, taken from Book VI of Ovid’s Metamorphoses:

And since then, everyone, men and women, fear the manifesting
of divine wrath and with greater zeal everyone pays honors
to the tremendous power of the Goddess mother of twins;
and as it happens, from the recent event they go back to the previous ones.
«Even in the lands of fertile Lycia», says one, «it happened
once upon a time that the peasants despised the Goddess at their own risk.
The matter is little known, truly so, due to the modesty of the characters,
yet surprising. With my own eyes I saw the swamp and the place
famous for the prodigy. My father, too old now
to face the journey, had ordered me to bring him
from Lycia some thoroughbred oxen and had given me as a guide
a man from that region. While I was scouring the pastures with him,
here an old altar caught my eye in the middle of a lake
blackened by the fire of rituals and surrounded by a fluttering of reeds.
My guide stopped, whispering fearfully:
«Protect me, please», and like him I too whispered «Protect me».
But then I asked him to whom the altar was consecrated, if to some Naiad,
to a Faun or a local Deity. He replied to me:
«It is not to a God of the mountains, my boy, that this altar is sacred:
the Goddess who was once banished from the world by the consort of Jupiter
considers it her own, the Goddess who was welcomed in her wanderings from Delos,
when like a floating island she lightly wandered.
There, leaning on a palm and the Pallas tree,
Latona gave birth to twins, despite her stepmother.
And it is said that from there, after giving birth, to escape Juno
she would flee carrying her children, those two divine beings, in her bosom.
Having reached the homeland of the Chimera, in the territory of Lycia,
under the fiery sun that burned the fields, exhausted from running,
due to the oppressive heat, she felt parched with thirst:
her hungry children had emptied her breasts of all her milk.
Luckily, she saw in the distance, at the bottom of a valley,
a small lake: some farmers were harvesting osier filled with buds, rushes and marsh algae.
Having approached, the Titan’s daughter bowed down,
bending one knee to the ground to draw water and drink.
But that mob forbade her, forcing her to reply:
«Why do you deny me water? Everyone has the right to it.
Nature has given to no one as property the sun and the air
or clear water: I have approached a common good
and despite this I beg you to give me a gift. I did not intend to wash
my tired body and limbs here,
but only to quench my thirst. I speak, yes, but my mouth is dry
and the throat is all a fire, so much so that the voice can barely pass through.
A sip of water will be nectar for me, and I will have to admit
of having regained my life: with the water you will give it to me.
And at least have mercy on these who tend from my breast
their little arms.” And at that moment the little ones held out to her.
Who wouldn’t be moved by the sweet words of the Goddess?
Those on the other hand, faced with prayers, persist in the prohibition
and they add threats if she would not leave, and insults her on top of that.
And as if that wasn’t enough with hands and feet
they muddy the lake and with malice from the bottom of its bed
they raise the mud by jumping here and there.
Anger makes Ceo’s daughter forget her thirst:
she no longer pleads with those unworthy people, she does not lower herself further
to speeches that humiliate a Goddess; she raises his palms to her stars and:
«May you live forever in this pond!» she shouts.
And the vow comes true: since then they have enjoyed being in the water,
sometimes to dive with the whole body to the bottom of the pond,
others stick their heads out or swim on the surface of the water,
often they stop on the shore, often to dive back
in the freezing lake. But they never stop exercising
their gossips in arguments and without any shame,
even being underwater, underwater they try to curse.
Their voice has become hoarse, their swollen cheeks swell
and the same insults dilate their enormous mouths even more.
The head is sunken into the shoulders, the neck seems to be missing;
the back is green and the belly, which is almost the entire body, is whitish:
having assumed the appearance of frogs, they wallow in the mud of the marsh.”[12]

Three aspects are listed in the narrative: Mere, Pond and Swamp. They, according to the interpretation of Guido Maria Stelvio Mariani di Costa Sancti Severi, have a very specific esoteric and revelatory meaning.

The Pond represents the condition of the human community, and through this the single individuals, whose life is the daily repetition of a routine without any sense of goal. That is, it is the condition of the so-called common man, who leads his monotonous and repetitive life in work activities, without worrying about the great goals of the Universe, about the so-called “thoughts bigger than himself”. The pond is under the aegis of Zeus, it is his territory where mankind is compared to the repetitive way of life of frogs.

The Swamp is the condition of perdition, resulting from the pond, the lowest level to which humanity can descend, already set towards self-destruction by its own institutions; the lowest level of civil respect, of any value of honesty. The Swamp, from which it is no longer possible to ascend, is the territory of Hades.

The Mere represents the noblest concepts of our and your atavistic conscience and memory (remember the Lake of the Titan Mnemosyne, and her Source, in which souls can drink to quench their thirst and then access the Elysian Fields).

Ovid’s passage speaks of “Mere” and not of “Lake”, because in the material world it is a rare element, and reserved only for those few who have the desire to evolve above the mass insensitive to the great works of thought. In the midst of a human species that has become stupid and ignorant of great concepts, Titania Letho has created this “Pond” of Atavistic Consciousness for all those who want to access it. She created it in an enemy land under the yoke of Zeus, and she placed her Altar there in the open air, an Altar of comfort and hope. She created it not in a large and rich city, not surrounded by an imposing and rich temple, but in a very humble place, devoid of all pride and all wealth, reminding us that She humbled herself there, and that she was poor and deprived of everything, wandering and pursued. And that she had repressed her divine and stellar power to accept the humble human condition. And only afterwards, having lost all hope of saving that part of humanity that was deviant and adept of Zeus, she found herself forced to judge them for what they were.

According to the Pritan of the Hyerophants of the Mother Eleusinians, and as the ancient Mystagogues and Hyerophants already supported in the past, the “Pond of Frogs” also symbolizes a terrible prophecy regarding the inevitable collapse and end of the fifth human civilization (the current one). A prophecy that I am not allowed to report here, but which is nevertheless very similar to another prophecy made by the Goddess Kore-Phersephone to the Eleusinian Mother:

“Truly I tell you that a time will come when a new race will reign over the brown land with vast lands. At that time the lineage of man will be a vague and uncertain memory“[13].

A prophecy, this – let me say – is more relevant than ever, if we consider the disturbing events that the whole world has been experiencing since the autumn of 2019.

Leto, within living memory, was the first Deity to incarnate in the human form, with all the limitations that a fragile mortal body can entail. And in this body, She wandered through the lands of mortals, suffered hunger and thirst. She was hindered, offended and humiliated and finally managed to give birth to her children. She was followed, several centuries later, by the incarnation of Demeter and Kore-Persephone, in what is considered, in the Eleusinian context, as the second attempt at redemption of humanity by the Titan Gods.

The Mystery Tradition narrates, as we have seen, that in Hanebu (Crete), on a field plowed three times, the Goddess was united in a Hyeros-gamos (sacred marriage) with a chosen mortal, Iasion (Jason). From their union Plutos was generated, a mythical divine figure symbolizing wealth, not material, but internal and spiritual, the very Archetype of Knowledge. The great Greek historian Diodorus Siculus, particularly active in the Caesarian and Augustan ages, in the fifth book of his Historical Library, entitled On the Islands, focuses on the birth of this divine figure, which however has always been seen in the Eleusinian context as purely symbolic in such a way :

“They say that Pluto was born in Tripolos of Crete to Demeter and Jasion and his birth is told in two different ways. Some state that the land, sown by Jasion and receiving the appropriate care, produced such an abundance of fruit that those who saw it gave a special name to the large quantity of fruit that had been born and called it wealth (πλοῦτος in the Greek language, ed.): this is why it has been handed down to posterity that those who have procured more than necessary have wealth. Others, however, say that from Demeter and Jasion a child called Pluto was born, who was the first to teach them to take care of possessions, to accumulate and defend riches, while previously everyone had paid little attention to gathering riches in large quantities and guard them carefully“[14].

The intrinsic and esoteric content of these words will not escape the eyes of Initiates and the most attentive readers. Pluto represented in synthesis the intrinsic value of Knowledge and the richness of the spirit. It was thanks to the figure of this Divine Child that humanity began to cultivate its intellect and better understand the divine richness that is preserved within us all.

But Plutos won’t be the long-awaited new Redeemer either. Having learned of Hyeros-gamos and the birth of Plutos, Zeus did not delay, as we have seen previously, in striking by lightening Jason and persecuting the Goddess everywhere.

Demeter managed to escape to Sicily, in the mythical plain of Nysa (near Enna), where she generated – from Ennosigeo-Poseidon – Kore, the Maiden of Maidens, the Word, the Truth, the Purity.

Aware of the role that this Divine Maiden would have had, the Gods of Olympus, one day, while Kore was busy picking some daffodils in a meadow, ordered Hades and Hermes to kidnap her to remove her from the control of the Mother.

Demeter searched for her Daughter for nine days and nine nights, enduring the violence of the Olympic Gods who wanted to prevent her from becoming the “Seeker”. It was only the Goddess Hekhate who took pity on Her and advised Her to consult with the Titan Hyperion (later, in tradition, replaced with Helios), who said to the Goddess: “Among those who dare to call themselves Gods in our place, the culprit is only Zeus.”

Demeter then decided to incarnate in an old woman and, starting from Enna (which, esoterically, in the Eleusinian context means the Beginning, the Departure), she wandered through the cities of men, finally reaching Eleusis (the Arrival).

The theologians and Initiates of the Eleusinian Wisdom and Mystery Schools have always been aware of the fact that it was certainly not accidental on the part of the Goddess Demeter, the choice of Eleusis as the place of “arrival”, from which to start and transmit to humanity the message of the Sacred Mysteries. The small town of Eleusis, overlooking the Gulf of Salamis, in fact, in the 12th century BC, represented a sort of ethnic and religious “enclave”, being populated exclusively by inhabitants of Aegean-lelegical lineage faithful to the ancient Titanic religion of Cretan derivation. This while in many other places in Attica and throughout Greece the Mycenaean populations who progressively descended into Greece from the North and the Danube regions already predominated. These populations, which – as we have seen – were characterized by cults and clearly patriarchal social patterns, in open antithesis with the most ancient and authentic Aegean religion.

Moreover, the choice of Sicily as the place of Kore’s birth was not even accidental, and therefore symbolically as the place of the beginning, of the departure, of the genesis of that already written and immutable path that would lead to the arrival and revelation of the divine message.

Sicily (and especially Enna) and Eleusis are esoterically and inextricably linked by a single thread. It is always Diodorus Siculus who, in his Book V, can help us understand how ancient and strong this bond was:

“The clearest evidence of the fact that Kore’s abduction took place in Sicily would be the following: the Goddesses stayed on this island because they extraordinarily loved it. According to the myth, Kore’s abduction took place in the meadows near Enna. This place is near the city, superior to the others in the beauty of violets and all kinds of flowers, worthy of the Goddess. It is said that, due to the scent of the flowers that bloom there, the dogs, used to hunting, are unable to follow the trail because they are prevented from physically perceiving the scent. The meadow we are talking about is flat in the center and very rich in water; while elevated at the edges, it falls sheer with cliffs on all sides. It seems to lie in the center of the entire island, so some call it the navel of Sicily. In its vicinity there are sacred groves surrounded by swamps and a large cave in which there is a chasm that leads underground in a northerly direction: according to the myth Pluto left here with his chariot when he kidnapped Kore. (…) Pluto, having committed the abduction, transported Kore on his chariot near Syracuse: he tore the earth, quickly sank into Hades and caused a spring called Cyane to flow, near which the Syracusans celebrate a famous festival every year (…) . After the abduction of Kore, Demeter, since she could not find her Daughter, lit torches from the craters of Etna, went to many places on earth and benefited the men who offered her the best hospitality (…)”.

Diodorus Siculus (Book V) also quotes the verses of the tragic poet Carcinus, who had stayed several times in Syracuse and had been able to see with his own eyes the zeal and devotion of the Syracusans in celebrating sacrifices and festivals in honor of the Two Goddesses, the Mother and Daughter:

“They say that once Demeter the mysterious maiden / Pluto kidnapped with hidden counsel, / sank into the recesses of the black earth; / for the desire of the missing girl, her Mother, / searched for her throughout the whole earth; / Sicily on the Etnean mountains / full of fire with arduous currents / all cried; sorrowful for the girl, / deprived of grain, she consumed the lineage dear to the Gods. / Where the Goddesses are still honored today.”

The sacred story of the rape of Kore, of the viaticum of sorrow of the Mother and of the arrival of the Goddess in Eleusis is – on a profane level – narrated in an exemplary manner by the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, a text by an unknown author whose writing dates back according to the historians to the 7th century BC, but which certainly derives from a long and previous oral tradition which only in that era was codified in the “Homeric” Greek language. It is part of a larger collection of thirty-three ancient Greek hymns called “Homeric” due to the linguistic style that they share with the works attributed to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey, with which they also share the poetic meter used, the dactylic hexameter. But it is necessary to keep in mind, as Filippo Cassola[15] underlines, that the text of the Homeric poems is preserved in numerous codes, or groups of codes, to a large extent independent, through which we can reconstruct the Alexandrian editions (and, according to some, also the Athenian edition), and from even more numerous papyri, while the manuscripts of the Homeric Hymns date back to a particular archetype of the 9th century and, in the specific case of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, we only have a manuscript from the 15th century.

Tradition tells that Demeter, still in the guise of an old woman, was welcomed into the court of Celeus, the King of Eleusis, and that she was entrusted with the task of raising little Demophoon, the last born of the royal family. The Goddess did not raise him with milk, but with sacred breathing and immersing him in a sacred blue and glacial fire.

One night, the mother, driven by curiosity, was induced by her human nature to spy on the Goddess’ actions. She saw this sacred blue fire and, not understanding what was happening to her, fearing for the life of the child, she let out a cry of terror. The Goddess, indignant, then placed the child on the ground and revealed herself to those present in her true essence and in her authentic appearance. Shocked and terrified, those present tried throughout the night to appease the wrath of the Goddess, until the moment in which, having taken the child back into her arms, Demeter pronounced what has gone down in history as the Speech of Revelation, handed down by the Eleusinians via mysterious ways.

The behavior of Metanira who, driven by concern and curiosity, had determined the interruption of the miraculous rearing of the child, who the Goddess would have transformed into an equal making him immortal. As Enzo Lippolis[16] observes, this hides a precise initiatory metaphor and introduces the theme of death and detachment, of the interruption of a process of growth and knowledge which is and must continue to be secret due to the uncertainty and ignorance of human nature. The consequence of this interruption is represented by the wrath of the Goddess and the apparently unfinished nature of her mission as divine nurse, which requires the establishment of a suitable ritual process to keep it propitious. Demeter herself therefore reveals forms and contents of cult and ritual, also showing men hidden truths that can only be known and understood through an adequate initiatory path, that of the Mysteries. The Goddess, in fact, after having manifested herself to the Eleusinians in her true nature, arranged for a Temple to be built for her near the Kallikhoron source – where she had met, upon her arrival in the city in the guise of an old woman, the daughters of the King of Eleusis Celeus who had led her to the palace – and established the Sacred Mysteries, giving life to the most long-lived and venerable mystery and initiatory tradition that history remembers.

At Eleusis Demeter obtained the restitution of her Daughter, but only for eight months out of her twelve, having tasted, during her stay in Hades, the seeds of a forbidden pomegranate offered to her by Hades. The Maiden’s Redemption role had thus been compromised, but not entirely.

After the offense of the kidnapping and the tasting of the forbidden fruit, Kore, the Word, the essence of Truth and Purity, was transformed into Persephone or, in an archaic form, Phersefhassa (“Ruin”, “Slaughter”, “Revenge”). From that day, she would remain Kore for the Eleusinians, but she would forever be Persephone for the false Gods and all their followers.

Thus goes a passage from a mystery text: “Word of the Daughter: Oh, Eleusis listen! This is the voice of the Daughter. Listen then, Oh Eleusis! For the people of the children of the Titans, We are Kore, the Maiden of Maidens. For the false Gods and for the peoples of the earth who have enslaved themselves to them by worshiping them, We are Phersefhassa“[17].

 

[1] Nicola Bizzi: From Eleusis to Florence: the Transmission of Secret Knowledge. Vol. I°. Ed. Aurora Boreale, Florence 1917.

[2] From a secret Eelusinian Mother papyrus.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] From a secret Eleusinian Mother papyrus.

[6] Guido Maria Stelvio Mariani di Costa Sancti Severi: Titania Letho, Eleusian Mother Goddess. In Aesyr n. 3 (September-October 2012).

[7] From a secret Eleusinian Mother papyrus.

[8] Guido Maria Stelvio Mariani of Costa Sancti Severi: cited article.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Homeric Hymn to Apollo, 45-65.

[11] Guido Maria Stelvio Mariani of Costa Sancti Severi: cited article.

[12] Publius Ovid Naso: Metamorphoses, Book VI

[13] From a secret Eleusinian Mother papyrus.

[14] Diodorus Siculus: Bibliotheca Historica, Book V.

[15] Filippo Cassola (ed.), Homeric Hymns. Ed. Mondadori, Milan 1997

[16] Enzo Lippolis: Mysteria: Archeology and Cult of the Sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis. Ed. Bruno Mondadori, Milan 2006.

[17] From a mystery papyrus preserved by the Mystery Schools of the Eleusinian Mothers.