Whisperers

by J H Brennan

  The ruins of Eleusis, which was once the heart of a religion that held out the promise of direct spirit contact.

  Historically, the first location of the ritual Mysteries was the small Greek town of Eleusis, a coastal city on the Isthmus of Corinth, between Athens and Megara. Ceremonies were held there in honor of the goddess Demeter. Among them were local initiations of town burgesses, in rites that were more political than religious and strictly confined to Eleusinian townspeople. But the practice underwent a profound change when Eleusis was annexed by Athens around 600 BCE. This meant Athenians were now entitled to initiation and many of them claimed the right. Greeks from other areas soon began to follow suit.

  At about this time, there was a change in the nature of the rite as well, which moved in emphasis from political to mystical. Participation was no longer a matter of becoming a town burgess but of undergoing a literally life-changing experience. When the Ptolemaic (Greek) pharaohs became established in Egypt, their Alexandrian capital expanded to include a new suburb named for Eleusis, with its own cult of Demeter offering initiations patterned on the Greek originals. The influence of Eleusis spread to another popular cult, the ecstatic rites of Dionysus. As god of wine, Dionysus had long encouraged his followers to seek the transpersonal in group dancing, drinking, and sexual release. Now the emphasis slowly shifted toward individual salvation.

  The Mysteries, from whatever source offered, were open to everyone able to speak Greek, whether they be male or female, freeman or slave, but the initiate was bound by oath to hold the rites absolutely secret. While tens of thousands learned it, that secret was kept, a telling tribute to the power of the central experience. To this day, our knowledge of what really happened in the Mysteries is extremely fragmentary, but there are hints, clues, and small revelations from both archaeology and ancient documents that permit us to patch together a broad picture.

  Focus of the rites was the great telesterion (initiation hall) at Eleusis, on the site of which, archaeological digs have confirmed, were a series of buildings from prehistoric times onward. But before the rites could begin, the initiate had to be carefully prepared. A Homeric Hymn, one of thirty-three anonymous Greek texts celebrating individual gods, throws some light on the preliminary rituals. Initiation, it seems, began with a purification. This was carried out by a priest or priestess of the Mysteries while the candidate was seated on a stool, with his head veiled and one foot resting on a ram’s fleece. No record exists to describe the nature of the purification, but there are hints that it may have involved fire. Exactly how is open to speculation: simple censing seems the most likely approach, although more rigorous tests of faith like fire-walking cannot be completely ruled out.

  Purification was followed by a nine-day fast, during which the candidate was allowed neither food nor wine, although it is unclear whether other liquids were permitted. Given a maximum daily temperature of 26.7ºC (80.06°F),2 it is possible to survive for nine days without water, but only at the risk of near-terminal dehydration. Nonetheless, if the aim of a Mysteries initiation was to induce an altered state of consciousness, a risky ordeal of this sort may have been considered acceptable. During or immediately after the fast period, the initiate was obliged to take part in a vigorous all-night festival (pannychis), which involved torchlit dances around the well Callichoron, still visible at the entrance to the Eleusinian sanctuary to this day.3 Here too one can see the possibility of an altered state.

  The fast was broken with a special drink combining barley, water, and pennyroyal. Although pennyroyal oil is highly toxic, indeed lethal, in quite small doses the herb itself was used in a culinary capacity in ancient Greece and to flavor wine. Taken as an infusion, one of its medicinal properties is to promote sweating. Some authorities have speculated that the barley used in the preparation might have been (purposely) contaminated by ergot, a fungus known to induce hallucinations. Thus, if we take the preliminaries as a whole, their similarity to shamanic preparations involving exhausting ordeals and psychotropic plants becomes evident. What evidence we have clearly points to initiation as the induction of a mind-altering experience.

  When Athens took over the Eleusinian Mysteries, the preliminaries became more complex and a new structure was introduced formalizing what was known as initiation into the Lesser Mysteries. These rites took place in Athens, while the ultimate initiation of the Greater Mysteries remained centered on Eleusis. Purification was still an important preliminary and now included a sort of baptism in the River Ilissus. Here too there is a possibility that the aim was an altered consciousness. In a later era, the famous Qabalistic rabbi Isaac Luria developed a system of total immersion designed to trigger higher visionary states. Adepts in this system first entered a river, lake, or special ritual bath called a mikvah. Before immersing themselves completely, they were required to engage in a complex meditation on the term mikvah, then on the word nachal, a stream. When this was completed, they were instructed to immerse themselves fully in the water, then emerge with the words Im tashiv miShabbat raglecha, a quotation from the book of Isaiah that translates, “If you rest your foot for the Sabbath.” Although the meditative sequence, which involved the divine names of God, was an intellectual powerhouse, it seems from texts left by Luria’s pupils that the act of immersion was the main thing. Breath retention, which forms such an important part of Oriental yoga systems, combined with visualization and other forms of meditation is another tested route to mystical experience. One school of thought even holds that early Christian baptism was not the symbolic sprinkling used in churches today, nor even the (brief) total immersion of some fundamentalist denominations. Instead it is argued that the earliest Christians were held under water at the literal risk of their lives until oxygen starvation forced a change of consciousness with visionary experiences analogous to the life of a drowning man flashing before his eyes. But whatever might have been experienced, initiation into the Lesser Mysteries at Athens was seen as no more than a preparation for entering the Greater Mysteries later in the year. Consequently, the ceremonies had an instructive content, although scholars have yet to discover exactly what knowledge was imparted.

  The Greater Mysteries were held in the month of Boedromion (September –October) from the fifteenth to the twenty-third day. Two grades of admission were on offer, with a full year between them and admission to the second grade dependent on initiation into the first. This final grade was known as the epopteia, perhaps tellingly, since the word translates as “vision.” The opening day of the ceremony began with a solemn gathering in Athens and the arrival of certain sacred objects, carried in special boxes, from Eleusis. A priest commenced proceedings with a proclamation naming the classes of people who were forbidden participation in the Mysteries—basically those who could not speak Greek and criminals. The following day there was a grand procession to the coast, with the candidate for initiation accompanied by a live pig, an animal sacred to Demeter.4 Both pig and candidate were required to take a ritual bath in the sea.

  Another procession took place on the nineteenth or twentieth of the month, this time a fourteen-mile journey to Eleusis itself. We know it was called the Iacchus Procession after Demeter’s son who personified the ritual cry of joy uttered during the march. On the way there was dancing, various ceremonies, the singing of hymns, and sacrifices. Curiously, it was also traditional for participants to lighten the more sober aspects of the celebration by telling obscene jokes about prominent citizens. The arrival at Eleusis was marked by further dancing before the candidate retired to rest in anticipation of his initiation the following day.

  What happened during an initiation is less certain than the foregoing descriptions of the preliminaries. Archaeological investigation shows that the ceremony took place in a huge square hall of fifty-one-meter sides with wide, stepped tiers of seats capable of accommodating an astonishing four thousand spectators. There is speculation that a small room once stood in the center of this vast space, functioning as a sanctuary for the hie
rophant who conducted the ceremony.5 Evidence of the ceremony itself is largely drawn from a Latin work of fiction, the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and the suspect writings of disapproving Christians. Nevertheless, there are just enough correspondences between the various accounts to allow us a reasonable degree of certainty about the broad outlines of what went on.

  The ritual was divided into three parts—legomena, or “things spoken,” dromena or “things performed,” and deiknymena or “things revealed.” The first of these was almost certainly brief. We have it on the authority of Aristotle that candidates for initiation did not go to learn but to be put in a particular frame of mind. The emphasis was always on emotion and experience, points reiterated by other writers in the ancient world.

  “Things performed” may have included the enactment of a sacred marriage between Hades and Persephone, or possibly Zeus and Demeter. Bishop Asterius of Amasea (ca. 350–410 CE) suggests this involved a sex act between the hierophant and a priestess, a possibility that may have been more spiritual than it must have appeared to the bishop. There is a technique of Oriental tantra in which a couple identify with a specific god and goddess during the sex act in order to communicate with the divinities and/or channel their energies. The tantric “magic” works by changing the consciousness of the participants in such a way that permits an experience of direct spirit communication. It is possible that some similar technique could have been developed within the Greek Mysteries.

  Another known aspect of “things performed” was a light show that accompanied the revelation of certain sacred objects to the candidate. An inscription at Eleusis tells of the hierophant “coming from the shrine and appearing in the luminous nights.” Another describes the scene as “clearer than the light of the sun.”6 The light show seems to have immediately preceded the final act of the Mystery—the revelation. Hippolytus of Rome, a third-century CE theologian, claimed this was nothing more than a single ear of corn, dramatically produced by the hierophant amid many fires. Although widely quoted and supported by academics to the present day, this seems unlikely. Initiates of the Greater Mysteries were described as joyous, having been granted a far more positive view of both life and death than was offered by orthodox Greek religion. In short, they underwent a profound and lasting change. This seems a tall order for a single ear of corn, even if the plant was closely associated with the goddess Demeter. If we consider the various elements that made up the Greek Mysteries—the fasting, the ordeals, the breath control, and the possibility of a mind-altering drink—the parallels with shamanic practice become obvious. In view of this, the likelihood is that the final initiatory experience, guided and to some extent controlled by the ceremonial, was a visionary meeting with the goddess herself—in other words, a spirit contact. If so, it would not be the only spirit contact to influence the culture of ancient Greece.

  Today, Epidaurus in southern Greece is a vast, multilevel archaeological site surrounded by rocky heights thinly covered in Mediterranean shrub. In classical times, it was a small but thriving city and contained arguably the most popular tourist attraction of the known world. The great Doric temple of Asclepios measured eighty meters in length and, according to an inscription discovered at the site, took almost five years to complete. But it was not its architectural splendor that attracted visitors, nor even the exquisite gold and ivory statue of the god. The thousands who flocked there, not merely from Greece but from surrounding countries and beyond, came mainly in the hope of a cure for their ills. For the Asclepion was a place of healing, with a reputation for producing miracles.

  But while there was a hall where patients might sleep—the Abaton—any further resemblance to a modern hospital was almost entirely coincidental. The shrines of Asclepios—at Epidaurus, Cos, Pergamum, and many other sites throughout Greece—were impressive examples of architecture and landscaping. Cypress groves enclosed springs, baths, long colonnades, and peristyles, as well as huge open-air altars and soaring temples to a variety of gods. Epidaurus had its own tiered ampitheater, Pergamum a library. A visitor to the shrine typically passed through an imposing entrance along a well-trodden path past a small temple of Artemis to the altar of Asclepios himself. There he might make sacrifice—an ox if he was rich, a cockrel sacred to the god, or a body part in precious metal signifying the area of illness. From there he might proceed to the Tholos, or purifying bath of waters drawn from a sacred spring. Depending on his condition, medical priests could insist on several days of a cleansing diet before the real healing began.

  Once cleansed, he was permitted to enter the Abaton. This was essentially a dormitory administered by white-robed priests. It was also the home of a great many nonvenomous snakes, creatures sacred to Asclepios. Within this extraordinary environment, the patient was put to bed and encouraged to sleep. In his dreams, the god would come and either effect a cure directly so that he awoke restored, or prescribe a course of treatment for him to follow. When morning came, the priests of the temple would help him remember his dream and interpret its meaning in those cases where it was not already clear. Sometimes the god might not enter the dream in person but send one of his totem animals—a dog, rooster or snake—in his place.

  Although dream incubation of this type is today open to a purely psychological explanation—the patient’s expectations are aroused by the temple visit so that his unconscious ensures he dreams of the god—to the ancients themselves it was, without question, an example of spirit communication. Whether psychological or paranormal, it worked. Six marble tablets, all that remained of a great many more, were discovered along the inner wall of the northern colonnade that bordered the sacred enclosure. They contained a remarkable record of iamata or cures, some bordering on the miraculous, carried out in the sanctuary.

  Although Strabo records that the earliest temple of Asclepios was at Trikka, the birthplace of the god, the healing temple at Epidaurus claimed primacy and its methods proved so effective that similar Asclepions were established at Cos, Pergamum, and eventually throughout the whole of the country, usually in settings of awe-inspiring natural grandeur. Soon they too were recording their own iamata. In the Lebena Asclepion on Crete, archives describe how the god performed a surgical operation on Demandros of Gortyn while he was asleep. Even more oddly, a sleeping woman was cured of her infertility through the use of a cupping instrument known as a sikya.7 She became pregnant soon after leaving the sanctuary. The exact nature of these two Cretan cures is not entirely clear from surviving descriptions. It is possible that the surgical operation literally took place and involved some form of anesthesia, which may have involved the administration of an herbal drug or the use of hypnosis—priests at the temple were known to be able to induce “sleep” in certain patients, an indication that an early form of hypnotism formed part of the treatment regime. The fact that the surgery was attributed to the god could easily be a religious convention, with the actual operation carried out on his behalf by a priest. The case of the infertile woman is also suggestive of actual physical treatment. Cupping, now mainly used by acupuncturists, involves placing a small quantity of flammable material on a (protected) area of the body, setting it alight, then immediately covering it with a cup or similar vessel. As the fire consumes the oxygen inside the cup, a partial vacuum is created that sucks on the area underneath the cup to therapeutic effect. A sikya, in Ancient Greece, was a vessel used for this type of treatment.

  But despite these indications of physical intervention, the iamata leave no doubt at all that the main healing technique in the various Asclepions was the incubation of dreams for spirit contact. Some of these produced bizarre results if the records are to be believed. Pandarus of Thessaly, for example, suffered from an embarrassing mark on his forehead. After he entered the Abaton at Epidaurus, Asclepios appeared to him in a dream and placed a bandage around his head, warning him not to remove it until the god had gone. Pandarus did as instructed and later took off the bandage, to find the mark had been transferred from his forehead to t
he cloth. When he awoke, the physical mark had disappeared as well.8 As an act of gratitude, Pandarus sent his friend Echedorus—who had a similar mark on his forehead—to Epidaurus with a gift of money to pay for the erection of a statue of Athene in the shrine. But Echedorus was untrustworthy and kept the cash for himself. When he went to sleep, however, Asclepios appeared to him in a dream and asked about the money. Echedorus flatly denied having received it but promised to paint a picture and dedicate it in place of the proposed statue. The god was not satisfied with the offer and wrapped the bandage used by Pandarus around the head of Echedorus. When Echedorus awoke, the forehead marks of Pandarus had been added to his own.