Download or read book The Road to Eleusis written by Robert Gordon Wasson and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P. This book was released on 1978 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Presented here is an astonishing solution to the Mysteries of Eleusis, the secret religious rites of ancient Greece that have remained a riddle for the Western World for close to 4,000 years. Acting on an insight into the true nature of the rites, R. Gordon Wasson sought the collaboration of Albert Hoffman, the renowned chemist who discovered LSD, and Carl A. P. Ruck, a classical scholar specializing in Greek ethnobotany. Wasson, the author of three books on the role of hallucinogenic mushrooms in human societies, has already uncovered the mushroom cult of Mesoamerica and identified the elusive "Soma" of the Vedic hymns. Closely coordinating their research, the three scholar-scientists first offered documentation on the religious rites at an International Conference on Hallucinogenic Mushrooms in late 1977. These sensational findings, given here in a much expanded version, leave little doubt that the ancient secret of Eleusis has at last been unveiled."--Pg. [4] of cover.

Download or read book Bronze Age Eleusis and the Origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries written by Michael B. Cosmopoulos and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than one thousand years, people from every corner of the Greco-Roman world sought the hope for a blessed afterlife through initiation into the Mysteries of Demeter and Kore at Eleusis. In antiquity itself and in our memory of antiquity, the Eleusinian Mysteries stand out as the oldest and most venerable mystery cult. Despite the tremendous popularity of the Eleusinian Mysteries, their origins are unknown. Because they are lost in an era without written records, they can only be reconstructed with the help of archaeology. This book provides a much-needed synthesis of the archaeology of Eleusis during the Bronze Age and reconstructs the formation and early development of the Eleusinian Mysteries. The discussion of the origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries is complemented with discussions of the theology of Demeter and an update on the state of research in the archaeology of Eleusis from the Bronze Age to the end of antiquity.

Download or read book The Eleusinian Mysteries and Rites written by Dudley Wright and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-05-28 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This brochure by Brother Wright, a Masonic scholar of Oxford, England, contains the ripest scholarship on Eleusis, its rites, symbols, and legends. This study of the Grecian mysteries shows the ties between the rituals celebrated in the 7th century BC and the 19th cent Freemasonry tradition. As the author noted, there is a striking resemblance in many points to the Operative and Speculative Freemasonry practices, which laid the basis of this work.

Download or read book A Companion to the Classical Greek World written by Konrad H. Kinzl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-01-11 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Companion provides scholarly yet accessible new interpretations of Greek history of the Classical period, from the aftermath of the Persian Wars in 478 B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. Topics covered range from the political and institutional structures of Greek society, to literature, art, economics, society, warfare, geography and the environment Discusses the problems of interpreting the various sources for the period Guides the reader towards a broadly-based understanding of the history of the Classical Age

Download or read book The holy rites of Eleusis were Archaic Wisdom Religion dressed in Greek garb written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Edward Pococke, Thomas Taylor, Alexander Wilder and published by Philaletheians UK. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Eleusinian Mysteries were viewed as the efflorescence of all the Greek religion, as the purest essence of all its conceptions. The offering of bread and wine to the candidate by the Hierophant symbolised the spirit that was about to quicken matter: i.e., the divine wisdom of the Higher Self was to take possession of the candidate’s inner Self or Soul through what was to be revealed to him. The transformation of Cybele to Ceres-Demeter was the basis for the sacredness of bread and wine in ritualism. Cybele is the Moon-Goddess of the Athenians, Pallas or Minerva, invoked in her festivals as Monogenes Theou, the One Mother of God, and Virgin Queen of Heaven. Esoterically, Cybele is Kabeiros, a representative of the Phoenician Kingly Race. The Hierophant was always an old unmarried man. This and so many other features of the great archaic system, known as the Sacred Wisdom Science, have been appropriated by the Romish Church. One of the greatest mysteries is how the ever immaculate and yet ever prolific Divine Virgin who, fecundated by the fructifying rays of the Sun, becomes the Mother of all that lives and breathes on her vast bosom. Her very “Breath” is Akasha-tattva or Universal Essence, i.e., Vital Electricity — Life itself. The Mysteries are fragments of a grand pre-historic Philosophy, as old as the world itself. They are not only the foundation-stone of modern Philosophy, they also gave birth to hieroglyphics, as permanent records were needed to preserve and commemorate their secrets. The fact that the Sanskrit and Greek words for Initiation to the Greater Mysteries, Avapta and Epopteia, imply revelation not by human agent but by receiving the Sacred Drink, points out to the pre-Vedic origin of the Eleusinia. A cup of Kykeon, quaffed by the Mystes at the Eleusinian Initiation, forcibly connects the inner, highest “spirit” of man, which spirit is an angel like the mystical Soma, with his “irrational soul” or astral body, and thus united by the power of the magic drink, they soar together above physical nature and participate during life on earth in the beatitude and ineffable glories of Heaven. One well versed in the esoteric mythologies of various nations can trace the Mysteries back to the ante-Vedic period in India. Only those of the strictest virtue and purity were admitted. Those who consciously engaged in Black Magic or were responsible for homicide, whether accidental or not, and other evil acts were excluded. Every approach to the Mysteries was guarded with the same jealous care everywhere, and the penalty of death was inflicted upon Initiates of any degree who divulged secrets entrusted to them. Why Truth keeps hiding like a tortoise within her shell? Because Truth is too dangerous even for the highest Lanoo. No one can be entrusted with full knowledge of the Secret Science before his time. In Egypt the Mysteries had been known since the days of Menes. The Greeks received them much later when Orpheus introduced them from India. Thus, even in the days of Aristotle, few were the true Adepts left in Europe and even in Egypt. While darkness fell upon the face of the profane world, there was still eternal light in the Adyta on the nights of Initiation. Athenians, the real barbarians of Hellas, charged Æschylus with sacrilege and condemned him to be stoned to death because, they claimed, having been uninitiated, he had profaned the Mysteries by exposing them in his trilogies on a public stage. But he would have incurred the same condemnation, had he been initiated. Every truth revealed by Jesus, and which the Jews and early Christians understood, was concealed by a Church that has always pretended serving Him. To deprive the Greeks of their Sacred Mysteries, which bind in one the whole of mankind, was to render their very lives worthless to them. Blessed is he who has seen these things before he goes beneath the hollow earth; for he understands the end of mortal life, and the beginning of a new life. The Lesser grades of Eleusinia symbolised the descend of Persephone, Ceres-Demeter’s daughter, to earth and were preparatory to Greater Mysteries, when the daughter returns to her divine abode and is finally reunited with her mother. Similarly, Northern Buddhism has its “Greater” and its “Lesser” vehicle, the Mahayana or Esoteric, and the Hinayana or Exoteric School. The object of the Lesser Mysteries was to instruct the candidate about the condition of the unpurified soul invested with an earthly body, and enveloped in a material and physical nature that, until and unless purified by high philosophy and ethics, is destined to suffer pain and death through its attachment to embodied life. Selfishness is the prisoner of the divine soul. Physical body is the prison. And real hell is life here, on earth. The Book of Job is a complete representation of ancient Initiation, and the trials which generally precede this grandest of all ceremonies. Still, the cunning translators of the Hebrew Bible imply that Job’s “Champion,” “Deliverer,” and “Vindicator,” was Messiah. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the Hindus, the real Champion and Deliverer it Atman; with the Neo-Platonists, Nous Augoeides; with the Buddhists, Agra; with the Persians, Ferouer. The true Champion is the immortal spirit in every man. It alone can redeem our soul and save us from ourselves, if we follow its behests instead of squandering our divine inheritance by pandering to our lower nature. There were two classes of participants, the Neophytes and the Perfect. And two castes of Magi, the initiated and those who were allowed to officiate in the popular rites only. Neophytes first taught in upper temples were initiated in crypts. Oral instructions were given at low breath, in solemn silence and secrecy. Jesus and Paul classified their doctrines as esoteric and exoteric: The Mysteries of the Kingdom of God for the Apostles, the parables for the multitude. Aristides calls Mysteries the common temple of the earth. Epictetus says that all that is ordained therein was established by the Masters of Wisdom for the instruction of mortals and the correction of their customs. Plato asserts that the object of the Mysteries was to re-establish the soul in that state of perfection from which it had fallen. Baptism was one of the earliest Chaldeo-Akkadian rites of inner purification. Candidates were immersed thrice into water by Hydranos, the Baptist. At the Mysteries of the Anthesteria at limnai, i.e., the Feast of Flowers at the temple lakes, after the usual baptism by purification of water, the Mystai were made to pass through to the gate of Dionysus, that of the purified. After their Second Birth was accomplished, and the Mystai had returned from their baptism in the sea, the Tau or Egyptian cross was laid upon the breast. The Mysteries of the Jews were identical with those of Pagan Greeks, who took them from the Egyptians, who borrowed them from the Chaldaeans, who got them from the Aryans, who inherited them from the Atlanteans, and so on. But what Gods and Angels had revealed, exoteric religions, beginning with that of Moses, reviled, reveiled, and hid for ages from the sight of the world. The lure of lucre was the final nail in the coffin of the Eleusinia. An Athenian demagogue and sycophant, whose eloquence was described as of a coarse and vehement character, degraded the Sacred Mysteries by persuading the State to levy a charge for those seeking admission to higher life. Thus initiation had become a commodity — and as necessary as baptism has since become with the Christians. The first hour for the demise of the Mysteries struck on the clock of the Races with the Macedonian conqueror. The first strokes of its last hour sounded 47 BCE in the Thebes of the Celts. But the Mysteries of Eleusis could not be so easily disposed of. They were indeed the religion of mankind, and shone in all their ancient splendour if not in their primitive purity. It took several centuries to abolish them, and they could not be entirely suppressed before the year 396 of our era. The Eleusinian Mysteries were archaic Wisdom-Religion dressed in Greek garb. Prehistoric Greece was colonised by two great Indian races, the Solar and the Lunar dynasties. Springing up from the kingdoms of Cashmir and Tibet, the prehistoric colonists of Greece consisted of the two great primitive and radical races of Aryavarta, the Solar or ancient Budhistic dynasty (Surya Vansa), and the Lunar dynasty (Chandra Vansa). The former were the earliest settlers in Greece and their religious exponents appear to have been the Dodan, or Brahmanical priests of the great tribe, Doda. As history progressed, the original Lamaic system of religion has been so much modified and so far compromised, as to be compelled to seek refuge in the asyla of the Grecian Mysteries, instead of the state-position it once occupied. Inside Greece, Bacchus was a prosonym of Zagreus, the successor of the Lamaic sovereignty in whose service was Orpheus, the founder of the Mysteries. Outside Greece, Bacchus was the Tartarian Jupiter Hammon whose Lamaic worship accompanied the emigrants of Tartary to Egypt. In Budhistic belief, the young Lama is born again from the consort of the Jaina Pontiff, Semele or Su-Lamee, the Great Lama Queen. The Eleuth-Chiefs, who spread the Lamaic doctrines in the Attic territory, became Eleusine. Their forms of worship and Tartar ceremonials composed the staple of the celebrated Eleusinian Mysteries. The high-born Brahmans or Culini lived on the Peloponnesian Mount Cyllene. The Mysteries were communicated to Culyus-Celeus, ruler of the land of the Rarhya, by Demeter herself. Yet the Greeks besmirched their noble ancestry by belittling their Hierophants as troglodytes. Three Hierarchs represented Budhistical and Brahmanical power. Two orders of priests officiated over the initiations. The descendants of the High Budha Priest or Eumolpidai, and the Budhist Keerukos or Keryx, the sacred herald of the Greeks, the latter aided by the daughters of the late Eleusinian high-caste king Culyus or Celeus. Modern Greek authors who treat Eleusinian worship as mysteries, rather than the old national form of worship, name those admitted to the Lesser Mysteries as Mokshtai or Mystai, from the Budhist word Moksha. After taking an oath of secrecy to preserve the old religion of the country against the more attractive heresy of Homer and his popular gods, those admitted to the Greater Mysteries were styled avapta or epoptai. Iacchos (Bacchos), properly Yogin, who appeared on the sixth day of the Mysteries, is none other than Dio Nausho or Dionysos, son of the Jaina Pontiff (Jeyus), and the Great Lama Queen, Soo Lamee or Semele. Couros, a prosonym of Iacchos, is Gooros or Guru, a spiritual teacher. Hence, Demeter is styled by the Greeks Couro-trophos or Guru-nurse. Erectheus-Poseidon was worshipped jointly with Athene and is identified with Poseidon or Po-Sidhan, Prince of all Saints, Chief of Saidan, and Prince of Sidon. Saidan, Eracland, and Phœnicia, are in close proximity to Afghanistan; Sidan is repeated in the Phœnicia of Palestine. Poseidon was worshipped jointly with Adheene, the Virgin Queen of Heaven, modified by the Greeks as Athene. She is the Egyptian Neeti, corruptly written Neith. The mysterious name of Onge-Athene was also derived from AUM, the Triple Fire representing the highest Tetraktys.

Download or read book Bronze Age Eleusis and the Origins of the Eleusinian Mysteries written by Michael B. Cosmopoulos and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-30 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a synthesis of the archaeology of Eleusis during the Bronze Age, reconstructing the origins and early development of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Download or read book Eleusis written by Kōnstantinos Kourouniōtēs and published by . This book was released on 1936 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Immortality Key written by Brian C. Muraresku and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2020-09-29 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER As seen on The Joe Rogan Experience! A groundbreaking dive into the role psychedelics have played in the origins of Western civilization, and the real-life quest for the Holy Grail that could shake the Church to its foundations. The most influential religious historian of the 20th century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the "best-kept secret" in history. Did the Ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same, secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age? There is zero archaeological evidence for the original Eucharist – the sacred wine said to guarantee life after death for those who drink the blood of Jesus. The Holy Grail and its miraculous contents have never been found. In the absence of any hard data, whatever happened at the Last Supper remains an article of faith for today’s 2.5 billion Christians. In an unprecedented search for answers, The Immortality Key examines the archaic roots of the ritual that is performed every Sunday for nearly one third of the planet. Religion and science converge to paint a radical picture of Christianity’s founding event. And after centuries of debate, to solve history’s greatest puzzle. Before the birth of Jesus, the Ancient Greeks found salvation in their own sacraments. Sacred beverages were routinely consumed as part of the so-called Ancient Mysteries – elaborate rites that led initiates to the brink of death. The best and brightest from Athens and Rome flocked to the spiritual capital of Eleusis, where a holy beer unleashed heavenly visions for two thousand years. Others drank the holy wine of Dionysus to become one with the god. In the 1970s, renegade scholars claimed this beer and wine – the original sacraments of Western civilization – were spiked with mind-altering drugs. In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been quietly mounting in the laboratory. The constantly advancing fields of archaeobotany and archaeochemistry have hinted at the enduring use of hallucinogenic drinks in antiquity. And with a single dose of psilocybin, the psychopharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are now turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers. But the smoking gun remains elusive. If these sacraments survived for thousands of years in our remote prehistory, from the Stone Age to the Ancient Greeks, did they also survive into the age of Jesus? Was the Eucharist of the earliest Christians, in fact, a psychedelic Eucharist? With an unquenchable thirst for evidence, Muraresku takes the reader on his twelve-year global hunt for proof. He tours the ruins of Greece with its government archaeologists. He gains access to the hidden collections of the Louvre to show the continuity from pagan to Christian wine. He unravels the Ancient Greek of the New Testament with the world’s most controversial priest. He spelunks into the catacombs under the streets of Rome to decipher the lost symbols of Christianity’s oldest monuments. He breaches the secret archives of the Vatican to unearth manuscripts never before translated into English. And with leads from the archaeological chemists at UPenn and MIT, he unveils the first scientific data for the ritual use of psychedelic drugs in classical antiquity. The Immortality Key reconstructs the suppressed history of women consecrating a forbidden, drugged Eucharist that was later banned by the Church Fathers. Women who were then targeted as witches during the Inquisition, when Europe’s sacred pharmacology largely disappeared. If the scientists of today have resurrected this technology, then Christianity is in crisis. Unless it returns to its roots. Featuring a Foreword by Graham Hancock, the NYT bestselling author of America Before.

Download or read book Tragedy the Greeks and Us written by Simon Critchley and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the moderator of The New York Times philosophy blog "The Stone," a book that argues that if we want to understand ourselves we have to go back to theater, to the stage of our lives Tragedy presents a world of conflict and troubling emotion, a world where private and public lives collide and collapse. A world where morality is ambiguous and the powerful humiliate and destroy the powerless. A world where justice always seems to be on both sides of a conflict and sugarcoated words serve as cover for clandestine operations of violence. A world rather like our own. The ancient Greeks hold a mirror up to us, in which we see all the desolation and delusion of our lives but also the terrifying beauty and intensity of existence. This is not a time for consolation prizes and the fatuous banalities of the self-help industry and pop philosophy. Tragedy allows us to glimpse, in its harsh and unforgiving glare, the burning core of our aliveness. If we give ourselves the chance to look at tragedy, we might see further and more clearly.

Download or read book Greek Mysteries written by Michael B. Cosmopoulos and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-08-18 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by an international team of acknowledged experts, this excellent book studies a wide range of contributions and showcases new research on the archaeology, ritual and history of Greek mystery cults. With a lack of written evidence that exists for the mysteries, archaeology has proved central to explaining their significance and this volume is key to understanding a phenomenon central to Greek religion and society.

Download or read book Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World written by Jan N. Bremmer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-07-28 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient Mysteries have long attracted the interest of scholars, an interest that goes back at least to the time of the Reformation. After a period of interest around the turn of the twentieth century, recent decades have seen an important study of Walter Burkert (1987). Yet his thematic approach makes it hard to see how the actual initiation into the Mysteries took place. To do precisely that is the aim of this book. It gives a ‘thick description’ of the major Mysteries, not only of the famous Eleusinian Mysteries, but also those located at the interface of Greece and Anatolia: the Mysteries of Samothrace, Imbros and Lemnos as well as those of the Corybants. It then proceeds to look at the Orphic-Bacchic Mysteries, which have become increasingly better understood due to the many discoveries of new texts in the recent times. Having looked at classical Greece we move on to the Roman Empire, where we study not only the lesser Mysteries, which we know especially from Pausanias, but also the new ones of Isis and Mithras. We conclude our book with a discussion of the possible influence of the Mysteries on emerging Christianity. Its detailed references and up-to-date bibliography will make this book indispensable for any scholar interested in the Mysteries and ancient religion, but also for those scholars who work on initiation or esoteric rituals, which were often inspired by the ancient Mysteries.

Download or read book Eleusis written by Carl Kerényi and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-16 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sanctuary of Eleusis, near Athens, was the center of a religious cult that endured for nearly two thousand years and whose initiates came from all parts of the civilized world. Looking at the tendency to "see visions," C. Kerenyi examines the Mysteries of Eleusis from the standpoint not only of Greek myth but also of human nature. Kerenyi holds that the yearly autumnal "mysteries" were based on the ancient myth of Demeter's search for her ravished daughter Persephone--a search that he equates not only with woman's quest for completion but also with every person's pursuit of identity. As he explores what the content of the mysteries may have been for those who experienced them, he draws on the study of archaeology, objects of art, and religious history, and suggests rich parallels from other mythologies.

Download or read book Eleusis written by Bruce Rimell and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2015-03-04 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A visionary and artistic exploration through the greatest of the Mystery traditions of Antiquity, 'Eleusis' follows the winding path that leads from the kidnap of Persephone and Demeter's grief at her loss to the transformation of mankind through the Epiphany of an Ineffable Female Godhead. Drawing from several years of mythological, experiential and visionary research, and delightfully enfolded with 25 colour and monochrome art images, Bruce attempts to move beyond the Eleusinian veil of secrecy to enter into the very Heart of the Mystery. A final illustrated essay also explores the meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries for the modern day.

Download or read book The Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries written by Thomas Taylor and published by Health Research Books. This book was released on 1996-09 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1875 These observances once represented the spiritual life of Greece, and were considered for two thousand years and more the appointed means for regeneration through an interior union with the Divine Essence. We can learn a valuable lesson in this rega.

Download or read book Sacred Mushrooms written by Carl A. P. Ruck and published by Ronin Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-18 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the ancient world, men and women joined cults known as Mysteries to unite with the deities of the otherworld and achieve eternal life. The most important of the Mysteries existed for two millennia at the village of Eleusis. Its deities were Demeter and Persephone, interchangeable in their roles as mother and daughter. The initiations and other rituals of this goddess-based cult were a profound secret: divulging information was punishable by death. For centuries, scholars have probed the secrets of the Eleusinian Mysteries and kykeon, its sacramental Eucharist — a sacred drink containing psychoactive chemicals similar to those in LSD. Their discoveries have been buried in the arcane language of alchemy, the occult sciences, and secret societies. Here, in prose accessible to all readers, Carl Ruck unravels the Mysteries, revealing the awesome powers of the goddesses, as well as the pagan underpinnings of Western culture.

Download or read book Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries written by George Emmanuel Mylonas and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most famous conspiracy of silence in the history of antiquity is examined here by one of the three archaeologists entrusted by the Archaeological Society of Athens with the final excavations of the Sanctuary. He traces the history of the cult in the archaeological remains, from the first traces of habitation at the site in the Middle Bronze Age (around 1900 B.C.) to its final grandeur and decay in Imperial Roman times. A guided tour of the Museum at Eleusis, illustrated with photographs of objects in the Museum, as well as air views, plans, and detailed photographs of the ruins closely correlated with the text, takes into account the needs of the visitor at the site as well as the reader at home. Originally published in 1961. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Download or read book The Eleusinian Mysteries written by Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-01-15 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes ancient accounts describing the Mysteries *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Ancient Greece and its mythology has fascinated people for thousands of years, and few elements have intrigued people quite like the Eleusinian Mysteries, which the Greeks believed transformed the initiates and gave them knowledge that eased both the living of life on earth and allayed fears of death, allowing an acceptance of their ultimate fate. The influence of the Eleusinian Mysteries was also far reaching; for example, the Telesterion is reminiscent of the labyrinthine, symbolic structures that can be found all over pre-historic Europe, ranging from those in Ireland to Malta and Crete to the Shetlands. The larger precinct of Eleusis, combining as it did caves, terraces and buildings carved into the rock again, all echo that ancient past. The external journey of the initiate is mirrored in his internal journey, and what can be seen is that the spiritual torch of classical Greece, as exemplified in these rites, hides the much older worship of deities. It was the spirit of those older gods and goddesses that ultimately pervaded Eleusis. However, it would be unwise to see the Eleusinian Mysteries as something separate from the other aspects of the Greek belief system, or even worse, seeing them as somehow more spiritual than the others. The fact that a considerable element of the Eleusinian Mysteries suggests a tendency towards spiritual monotheism has led to many false conclusions about their nature. They were not a unique phenomenon in Greek religious tradition, and the concepts of secrecy and revelation of mysteries only to initiates had parallels in the cults of Dionysius and Cybele. Similarly, the mystical dimensions of the rites, with their emphasis on a personal encounter with the deity, can be found in other cultic activities. Nonetheless, for the ancient Greeks the vital issue was that only through the Mysteries could they escape the miserable eternal fate ascribed for them if they were not initiated. Sophocles summed it up neatly, declaring, "Oh thrice blessed the mortals who having completed the Mysteries have descended to the underworld for those only will there be a future life of happiness, for the others there will find nothing but suffering." The rites comprising the Eleusinian Mysteries formed a Panhellenic event that attracted visitors from all over the Greek world, including Sicily and Cyrene. Ultimately, anyone who spoke Greek, male, female, free or slave, could present themselves as a candidate for initiation, provided that they were free of any sacrilege or untainted by a heinous crime such as murder. The Mysteries became the most sacred of the mystical celebrations that took place in Greece, and today the rites and rituals that made up what was a huge event are still the subject of academic controversy and religious debate. What makes the Eleusinian Mysteries so important for people studying ancient Greece is that they survived for hundreds of years, well into the Christian era. They celebrated Demeter, a hugely important figure in Greece (particularly in both Athenian and Roman worship), and the whole Festival was celebrated by the state with pomp. Most of all, however, the aura of mystery that has surrounded the famous rites, and the lack of absolutely incontrovertible information about what exactly went on in some of the most secret parts of the rites, has ensured that they have remained enigmatic and have thus continued to be intriguing throughout history. The Eleusinian Mysteries: The History of Ancient Greece's Most Famous Religious Rites looks at some of the ancient Greeks' most important religious practices. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Eleusinian Mysteries like never before.