The
following was the Main Rite I wrote for Ozark Mountain Grove's 2010 Fall
ritual. As I had been working with Demeter in meditation and developing
materials to create the Demeter and Eleusinian Order I wanted to create a
ritual that the Grove could use that would reflect the mythology surrounding
the Eleusinian Mysteries. I wanted the main offering to be the telling of the
story of Demeter's loss of her daughter Kore. In that telling I wanted to
reflect some of the actions that were taken during the Lesser Mysteries. To
that end, I included Grove actions and responses to the story telling. Also
since part of the story centers around the purification and attempt to
immortalize Demophon I felt that the enactment of this purification would be
appropriate. I had done a similar ritual a few years before. I created an
abstract baby form which was hollow. It was filled with season herbs that had
been harvested from one of the Grove members gardens. We also poured olive oil
and honey into the belly of the form to signify the ambrosia that Demeter fed
to Demophon before placing him into the fires for purification.
Kindred of the
Occasion Invocation:
Daughter to the Great Titans Kronos and Rhea,
Earth Goddess par excellence,
She who brings forth the fruits of the earth
And the life sustaining grains of the land,
We Pray!
[pour oil and honey around the Tree]
Goddess who forsake the throne and riches offered
to Her by Her might brother Zeus,
Father of all the Gods,
So that She could live among men upon the earth,
We Pray!
[pour oil and honey around the Tree]
She who taught man the arts of seed and plow
To end the nomadic lives they lead,
Who became the Goddess of planned society.
We Pray!
[pour oil and honey around the Tree]
Great Beloved Goddess Demeter, Mother of
Persephone,
We come to honor and praise you!
In Your sadness from the lose of you daughter,
The world suffered bitter winter and death,
finding no relief or joy,
Teaching men that all things end.
With the return of Your Daughter, Persephone,
You allowed life to return to the land sending
away the cold winter of death.
With this You taught man that life once gone
returns anew to the world,
That the eternal soul of all things flows with
the cycle of the land.
Demeter, Goddess of the Eleusinian Mysteries,
We come before You in honor of all Your teachings
to man,
We come before You to ask that You burn away our
impurities
As You once sought to do with Demophon.
Blessed Mysteries of life, death, and life again
are yours,
Great Beloved Demeter.
λαμπρή θεά, δέχεται την προσφορά μας!
(repeat 3 times)
(Lam-prai The-ah, de-ke-tigh
tain pros-por-ah mas!
All: Glorious Goddess, accept our offerings!
Praise Offerings (First round to
DoO, a
round for each Kindred Invoked, then open to all):
Main Offering
[Reading from Homeric Hymns]
I begin with
Demeter, the holy goddess with the beautiful hair.
And her
daughter [Persephone] too. The one with the delicate ankles, whom Hadês seized.
She was given away by Zeus, the loud-thunderer, the one who sees far and wide.
Demeter did
not take part in this, she of the golden double-axe, she who glories in the
harvest.
She
[Persephone] was having a good time, along with the daughters of Okeanos, who
wear their girdles slung low.
She was
picking flowers: roses, crocus, and beautiful violets. Up and down the
soft meadow. Iris blossoms too she picked, and hyacinth. And the narcissus,
which was grown as a lure for the flower-faced girl by Ge [Earth]. All
according to the plans of Zeus. She [Ge] was doing a favor for the one who
receives many guests [Hadês].
It [the
narcissus] was a wondrous thing in its splendor. To look at it gives a sense of
holy awe
to the
immortal gods as well as mortal humans. It has a hundred heads growing from the
root up.
Its sweet
fragrance spread over the wide skies up above. And the earth below smiled back
in all its radiance. So too the churning mass of the salty sea. She
[Persephone] was filled with a sense of wonder, and she reached out with both
hands to take hold of the pretty plaything. And the earth, full of
roads leading every which way, opened up under her. It happened on
the Plain of Nysa. There it was that the Lord who receives many guests made his
lunge.
[Grove members
scream out]
Thereafter, for
nine days did the Lady Demeter wander all over the earth, holding torches
ablaze in her hands.
Not once did she
take of ambrosia and nectar, sweet to drink, in her grief, nor did she
bathe her skin in water.
[Grove chants/cries
out: Iakch' o Iakche]
But when the tenth bright dawn came upon
her, Hekatê came to her, holding a light ablaze in her hands.
She came with
a message, and she spoke up, saying to her:
“Lady
Demeter, bringer of hôrai, giver of splendid gifts, which one of the
gods who dwell in the sky or which one of mortal humans seized Persephone and
brought grief to your philos thûmos? I heard the sounds, but I did not see
with my eyes who it was. So I quickly came to tell you everything, without
error.” So spoke Hekatê. But she was not answered by the daughter [Demeter] of
Rhea with the beautiful hair. Instead, she [Demeter] joined her [Hekatê] and
quickly set out with her, holding torches ablaze in her hands.
[Grove wonders
around the space holding torches as if searching]
They came to
Hêlios, the seeing-eye of gods and men. They stood in front of his
chariot-team, and the resplendent goddess asked this question:
“Helios! Show me respect [aidôs], god to goddess,
if ever I have pleased your heart and thûmos in word or deed. It
is about the girl born to me, a sweet young seedling, renowned for her beauty,
whose piercing cry I heard resounding through the boundless aether, as if
she were being forced, though I did not see it with my eyes. I turn to you as
one who ranges over all the earth and sea [pontos] as you look down from the
bright aether with your sunbeams: tell me without error whether you have by any
chance seen my philon child, and who has taken her away from me by
force, against her will, and then gone away? Tell me which one of the gods or
mortal humans did it.
So she spoke. And
the son of Hyperion answered her with these words:
“Daughter
of Rhea with the beautiful hair, Queen Demeter! You shall know the answer,
for I greatly respect you and feel sorry for you as you grieve over your child,
the one with the delicate ankles. No one else among all the immortals is
responsible [aitios] except the cloud-gatherer Zeus himself, who gave her to Hadês
as his beautiful wife. So he gave her to his own brother. And he [Hadês],
heading for the misty realms of darkness, seized her as he drove his
chariot and as she screamed out loud. But I urge you, goddess: stop your loud
cry of lamentation: you should not have an anger without bounds, all in vain.
It is not unseemly to have, of all the immortals, such a son-in-law as Hadês,
the one who makes many sêmata.
In her anger
at the one who is known for his dark clouds, the son of Kronos, she shunned the
company of gods
and lofty
Olympus. She went away, visiting the cities of
humans, with all their fertile landholdings, shading
over
her
appearance, for a long time. Until, one day, she came to the house of
bright-minded Keleos, who was at that
time ruler of
Eleusis, fragrant with incense.
She sat down
near the road, sad in her philon heart, at the well called
Parthenion [the Virgin’s Place], where the
people of the polis used to draw water. She sat in the
shade, under the thick growth of an olive tree, looking like
an old woman
who had lived through many years and who is deprived of giving childbirth and
of the gifts of
Aphrodite,
lover of garlands in the hair. She was like those nursemaids who belong to
kings, administrators
of themistes,
and who are guardians of children in echoing palaces. She was seen by the
daughters of Keleos, son
of Eleusinos,
who were coming to get water, easy to draw [from the well], in order to carry
it in bronze water-jars
to the phila home of their father. They [the
daughters] stood near her and spoke these winged words:
“Who are you, and where are you from,
old woman, old among old humans? Why has your path taken you
far away from
the polis? Why have you not drawn near to the palace? There,
throughout the shaded
chambers, are
women who are as old as you are,
and younger ones too, who would welcome you in word
and in deed.”
So she spoke. And the Lady Goddess spoke with the
following words:
“Phila children!
Whoever women you are among the female kind of humans, I wish you kharis [‘I wish you pleasure and happiness
from our relationship, starting now’]. I shall tell you. It is not unseemly,
since you ask, for me to tell you alêthea. Dôsô is my name. It was given to me by my
honored mother.
But that was then. I am from Crete,
having traveled over the wide stretches of sea against my will. Without
my consent, by biâ, by
duress, I was abducted by pirates. After a while, sailing with their swift
ship, they
landed at the
harbor of Thorikos. There the ship was boarded by women of the mainland, many
of them.
They [the
pirates] started preparing dinner next to the prow of the beached ship. But my thûmos did not
yearn for
food, that delight of the mind. I stole away and set out to travel over the
dark earth of the
mainland,
fleeing my arrogant captors. This way, I stopped them from drawing any benefit
from my worth
without having
paid the price.
The daughters of Keleos spoke:
“The wives of all of these manage the palace. Of these
women, not a single one of them, when they first
look at you,
would deprive you of tîmê, the way you look, and turn you
away from the palace. Rather, they
will receive
you. For, right now, you look like the gods. If you wish, wait for us, while we
go to the palace
of our father
and tell our mother, Metaneira with the low-slung girdle, all these things from
beginning to
end, in the
hope that she will tell you to
come to our house and not to seek out the houses of others. She
has a
treasured son, growing up in the well-built palace. He was born late, after
many a prayer for the birth
of a son: a
great joy to his parents. If you nourish him to grow till he reaches the
crossing-point of life,
coming of age,
I can predict that you will be the envy of any woman who lays eyes on you. That
is how
much
compensation she [Metaneira] would give you in return for raising him.”
So they,
filling their splendid jars with water, carried it off, looking magnificent.
Swiftly they came to the great
palace of
their father, and quickly they told their mother what they saw and heard. And she told them quickly
to go and
invite her [Demeter] for whatever wages, no limits, and they, much as deer or
heifers in the hôrâ of
spring prance
along the meadow, satiating their dispositions as they graze on the grass, so
also they, hitching up
the folds of
their lovely dresses, dashed along the rutted roadway, their hair flowing over
their shoulders, looking
like crocus
blossoms. Metaneira was seized by a sense of aidôs, by a holy wonder, by a
blanching fear.
She
[Metaneira] yielded to her [Demeter] the chair on which she was sitting, and
she told her to sit down. But
Demeter, the
bringer of hôrai, the giver of splendid gifts,
refused to sit down on the splendid chair, but she stood
there silent,
with her beautiful eyes downcast, until Iambê, the one who knows what is worth
caring about
[kednon] and what is not, set down for
her a well-built stool, on top of which she threw a splendid fleece.
For a long
time she sat on the stool, without uttering a sound, in her sadness. And she
made no approach, either by
word or by
gesture, to anyone. Unsmiling, not partaking of food or drink, she sat there,
wasting away with
yearning for
her daughter with the low-slung girdle, until Iambê, the one who knows what is dear and
what is not,
started making
fun. Making many jokes, she turned the Holy Lady’s disposition in another
direction, making her
smile and
laugh and have a merry thûmos.
[Grove tells a few
off color jokes and rude gestures]
Then Metaneira
offered her [Demeter] a cup, having filled it with honey-sweet wine. But she refused, saying that
it was
divinely ordained that she not drink red wine. Then she [Demeter] ordered her
[Metaneira] to mix some
barley and
water with delicate pennyroyal,
and to give her [Demeter] that potion to drink.
[Grove passes the kykeon around to drink from as Demeter did]
The Lady known
far and wide as Dêô accepted it, for the sake of the hosia.
Then well-girded Metaneira
spoke up in
their midst:
“Woman, I wish
you kharis [‘I wish
you pleasure and happiness from our relationship, starting now’]. I
speak this way
because I think you are descended not from base parents but from noble ones.
You have the
look of aidôs in your eyes, and the look of kharis,
just as if you were descended from kings, who uphold
the themistes.
We humans endure the gifts the gods give us, even when we are grieving over
what has to be.
The yoke has
been placed on our neck. But now that you have come here, there will be as many
things that
they give to
you as they give to me. Take this little boy of mine and nourish him. He is late-born,
and it was
beyond my
expectations that the immortals could have given him to me. I prayed many times
to have him.
If you nourish
him to grow till he reaches the crossing-point of life, coming of age, I can
predict that you
will be the
envy of any woman who lays eyes on you. That
is how much compensation I [Metaneira] would
give you in
return for raising him.”
Then Demeter,
with the beautiful garlands in her hair, addressed her:
“Woman, I wish you kharis back, and then some. May the gods give
you good things. With positive
intentions, I
will take your little boy as you tell me to. I will nourish him, and I do not
expect that, through
the
inadvertence of her nursemaid, he
would perish from a pestilence or from the Undercutter. I know an
antidote that is far more powerful than the
Woodcutter; I know a genuine remedy for the painful
pestilence.”
Having so
spoken, she took the child to her fragrant bosom, in her immortal hands. And the mother
[Metaneira]
rejoiced in
her mind.
[Priest is handed Baby form is accepted and cradled in arms]
And thus it
came to pass that the splendid son of bright-minded Keleos, Dêmophôn, who was
born to well-girded
Metaneira, was
nourished in the palace, and he grew up like a daimôn,
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. At nights she would
conceal him within
the menos of fire, as if he were a smoldering
log, and his philoi parents were kept unaware.
[Place Baby
form into the Fire]
But they marveled at how full in bloom he came
to be, and to look at him was like looking at the gods. Now Demeter
would have
made him ageless and immortal if
it had not been for the heedlessness of well-girded Metaneira, who went
spying one
night, leaving her own fragrant bedchamber, and caught sight of it [what
Demeter was doing]. She let out a
shriek and
struck her two thighs, afraid for her child. She had made a big mistake in her thûmos.
[Grove shrieks
in terror]
Weeping, she
spoke these winged words:
“My child! Demophon! The stranger, this woman, is making
you disappear in a mass of flames!
This is making
me weep in lamentation [goos].
This is giving me baneful anguish!”
Demeter, she
of the beautiful garlands in the hair, became angry at her [Metaneira]. She [Demeter] took her
[Metaneira’s] philos little boy, who had been born
to her mother in the palace, beyond her expectations,
—she took him in her immortal hands
and put him down on the floor, away from her.
“Ignorant
humans! Heedless, unable to recognize in advance the difference between future
good fortune
[aisa] and future bad. In your
heedlessness, you have made a big mistake, a mistake without remedy. I
swear by the
Styx, the witness of oaths that
gods make, as I say this: immortal and ageless for all
days would I have made your philos little boy, and I would have
given him tîmê that
is unwilting [a-phthi-
tos]. But now there is no way for him to avoid death and
doom. Still, he will have a tîmê that is unwilting
[a-phthi-tos], for all time, because
he had once sat on my knees and slept in my arms. At the right hôrâ,
every year,
the sons of the Eleusinians will have a war, a terrible battle among each
other. They will do so
for all days
to come. I am Demeter, the holder of tîmai. I
am the greatest boon and joy for immortals and
mortals alike.
But come! Let a great temple, with a great altar at its base, be built by the
entire dêmos. Make
it at the foot
of the acropolis and its steep walls. Make it loom over the well of Kallikhoron,
on a prominent
hill. And I
will myself instruct you in the sacred rites so that, in the future, you may
perform the rituals in
the proper way
and thus be pleasing to my noos.”
So saying, the
goddess changed her size and appearance, shedding
her old age, and she was totally enveloped
in beauty. And
a lovely fragrance wafted from her perfumed robes. The radiance of her immortal
complexion
shone forth
from the goddess.
And thus the Eleusinian Mysteries were
born!
Prayer of Sacrifice-Communion:
(Hold Plate of meat, fat and bones towards the fire)
We
come before you Golden Wheat Goddess, as
in days of old,
We
offer unto the Gods which is the right and portion of the Gods,
In
doing so we share this meal with you becoming closer,
Becoming
One!
(Place
Fat and Bones into the Fire- Then circle through those attending so they make
take their portion of the Sacred Meal)
Prayer of Sacrifice
Libation Hymn: (Pour each out as it is said)
Shining
Gods and Goddesses,
We
come to you as in times of old, bringing libations, gifts to honour and soothe:
To
you all that have come, to all that heard our call we give you these gifts;
White
milk, sweet to drink from the animal sacred Hermes, the cow;
(Pour
Milk)
Golden
honey, the distillation of the bees that work on sweet Persephone’s blossoms;
(Pour
Honey)
Holy
water brought from the source a pure spring domain of the Nymphs;
(Pour Water)
This
refreshing, unmixed drink from the ancient vine, its mother Demeter the Goddess
of all growing things, the gift to human kind from Beloved Dionysus;
(Pour
Wine)
And
the fragrant fruit of the pale green olive that lives its abundant life among
the leaves and light of Helios, the gift of Athena to her people;
(Pour
Olive Oil)
These
gifts we give to you in love and in respect, in friendship and kinship.
Might
Ones accept our offerings!
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