How might marriage ritual then relate metaphorically to the salvation of the soul? How does pregnancy and birth relate to the ancient Greek’s view of the salvation of the soul, which comes from the nativity scene in the Mysteries? 

How might Demeter’s putting Demophoon in the fire to make him immortal relate to Dionysus’ “fire-birth?” 

How might the constant complaining of the people of Eleusis about the suffering given to mortals by the immortals (“the yoke about their necks”) relate to the suffering of Dionysus?

At the end of the hymn, does Persephone appear angry over being kidnapped and ravaged? 

Does the hymn relate to undercurrents in marriage and family relationships in the modern world?

The Meaning of the Demeter Myth 

Marriage to the ancient Greek also carried with it the connotation of death for the maiden. As Persephone descended into Hades’ realm to be married, so all maidens underwent a ritual of symbolic death before marriage. This is termed, “marriage to death,” and is a theme we’ll see many times in the tragedies we’ll be reading. Since Demeter and Persephone are one and the same goddess, part above, part below, so women also existed in this state. Women bring people into the world, just as seeds planted in Gaia spring forth new life, and women are also responsible for the dead, since the dead are reunited with mother earth. Women mourned and prepared the dead for burial. This was their god-given duty as manifestations of Gaia. But it went even beyond this. The Mysteries were the gateway to the afterlife, and this gateway was Demeter/Persephone. Women’s bodies constitute a living metaphor for the relationship between this world and the afterlife.

The Eleusinian Mysteries were based on the Hymn and constituted that part of the ancient Greek religion whereby they attained everlasting life. Those who were initiated into the Mysteries would, following death, join the gods in the Elysian Fields, the Isle of the Blessed. The Mysteries were the most important religious rites practiced in Greece during antiquity. The ancients believed the existence of Greece depended on them and that they held the entire human race together. The word “mystery” comes from the ancient Greek word musthrion, meaning a religious truth revealing a connection between the worlds of mortals and immortals known only by revelation and never fully understandable by mortals.

The Mysteries were a sixteen-day ceremony starting in Athens and involving many sacrifices. During the last two days the initiates formed a procession from Athens to Eleusis where they danced and attended a gigantic feast. The following evening the initiates, who sometimes numbered in the thousands, attended the initiation, which consisted of wandering in the dark blindfolded, drinking a sacred decoction of pennyroyal and barley and witnessing the epiphany. 

The intriguing debate continues among scholars as to what actually took place during the epiphany. It was kept secret under penalty of death, but many believe it concerned the birth of a divine child, a nativity scene with the presentation of a divine mother, Persephone, and her newborn son, Dionysus. We do know that the high priest, the Hierophant, sounded a gong to summon Persephone from the Underworld and that blinding flashes of light, visible for miles around, flooded the interior of the Telesterion, the sacred building used for the ceremony. Archeologists have found fire marks on the terrace dating back to Mycenaean times. Socrates, in Plato’s Phaedrus dialogue, describes the impact of the epiphany on the initiate:

… then were we all initiated into that mystery which is rightly accounted blessed beyond all others; whole and unblemished were we that did celebrate it, untouched by the evils that awaited us in days to come; whole and unblemished likewise, free from all alloy, steadfast and blissful were the spectacles on which we gazed in the moment of final revelation; pure was the light that shone around us, and pure were we, without taint of that prison house which now we are encompassed withal, and call a body, fast bound therein as an oyster in its shell. 

This then is the result, the impact on the individual of initiation into the Mysteries, and the description comes from one of the greatest philosophers of all time, Socrates through the writings of Plato. From Pindar the early 5^th century BC poet, we have the following:

Blessed is he who hath seen these things before he goeth beneath the hollow earth; for he understandeth the end of mortal life, and the beginning of a new life given of god. 

Further discussion of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter:

Note the lighthearted character of the narrative, the fact that the earth goddess herself, Gaia, caused the narcissus to grow and wide-pathed earth to yawn so Hades might kidnap Persephone. Then the whole earth laughed for joy. All this indicates complicity in a divine conspiracy to work in favor of the daughter so that she might become Mistress of the Underworld. The tone of the poem is one of bemusement, of tragic necessity. The conspiracy lacks sinister intent.  

But Demeter’s grief is more convincing. Though the rest of the world seems resigned to Persephone’s kidnap and ravishing, Demeter and Persephone are too close to the action to have perspective on it. What then is going on here?

The Greeks in their Homeric Hymns and tragedy pick up the non-literal part of our lives, the subterranean current of life we call the mythical element. An inscription was found on the island of Delos, which stated that Demeter and Persephone, the Kore, were one and the same goddess. Some scholars believe the epiphany of the Mysteries of Eleusis, upon which this hymn is based, was in part the revelation that Demeter and Persephone were one goddess. Persephone’s descent into the Underworld is a sort of death but points out that the goddess exist both on earth and within the earth, the Underworld. We also know that those who were initiated were destined, after death, to go to the Elysian Fields where they passed away eternity in the presence of the gods. This pathway to the afterlife was Demeter, one aspect of her in this world and the other aspect in the next.

This is reminiscent of the ritual all girls went through before they were married, a marriage to death. They participated in a ritual where they sacrificed a lamb that represented themselves as a maiden. The lamb’s death was symbolic of their death as a maiden, a kore, and the only life left to them was that of a young woman. All women were the physical manifestation, a metaphor, of the earth goddess.  

The point I would like to make is that, since Demeter and Persephone were one goddess, Demeter’s search for her daughter was in fact a search for herself. The “search for self” is central to another famous myth, that of Oedipus, and may indeed be central to all human existence. When we encounter this myth later on, we’ll have the opportunity to compare the two and see what myth tells us about the essential difference between men and women. Women’s search for self [as a part of her dual nature] is the quest for eternal life. Men’s search [as also a part of his dual nature] is for a murderer.