Demeter at Eleusis

Everyone has heard the story of Persephone; how She was taken to the underworld and how Her mother, Demeter, scoured the earth looking for Her. We all know what happened with the pomegranate seeds and how the year got split up into seasons. It’s a powerful mythic narrative, and that’s a good reason for it to be well known and have such an enduring presence in the collective subconscious.

But there’s another branch of that story that I think deserves to be explored. We all know what was going on with Persephone, but what about Demeter? What can we learn if we follow Her in Her wanderings?

One of the first things we can learn is that Demeter appears in different aspects. There’s Demeter Lousia, also called “Green Demeter”, who’s happy and kind and tender. And then there’s Demeter Erinys (sometimes called “Black Demeter”) who is… well, let’s just say NOT happy and kind and tender. Just guess which aspect Demeter is in while she’s searching frantically for Her lost child. No wonder Zeus was worried, right?

So Demeter is touring the world, looking for Persephone (or Kore, as She was still known then), and it’s pretty obvious She isn’t happy. No one can tell Her where Her daughter went, and no one can cheer Her up in the slightest. Eventually, She ends up sitting on a rock in Eleusis, which is a little backwoods section of Attica. The rock She sits on (in case you were still wondering what mood She was in) is named Agelastos Petra. That translates to “rock of no laughter.”

While She’s sitting there, grim and angry, the daughters of the local king (or a local shepherd, kings and shepherds are often interchangeable in myth) come across Her on their way to a nearby well. Grieving, Demeter has chosen to veil Her Divinity, so they don’t recognize Her as a Goddess, but they do take some interest in Her. They know that their mother needs a nurse to help take care of their new baby brother, and they’d like to come home with one. Demeter isn’t exactly in Mary Poppins mode, and grumps make notoriously bad nurses, so before they can recruit Her, something has to be done about Her attitude.

This is where the serving maid (wife in the shepherd version) comes in. Her name is Baubo and she’s the Lisa Lampanelli of pre-classical Greece. She plies Demeter with jests and japes, but Demeter doesn’t even crack a smile. Baubo isn’t daunted however, and since she’s not afraid to work blue, she pulls out all the stops. She performs a series of gestures so categorically obscene that Homer can’t even bring himself to describe them. Other sources aren’t much more forthcoming, though we do learn that a portion of her dance involved flipping onto her back and exposing her genitalia. Seriously, we’re talking about a vagina exposing back flip. You can look it up. Go ahead; just remember to turn on Google Image’s “safe search” feature first (especially if you’re at work.)

Now, this is too much for Demeter. Rock or no rock, She bursts out laughing. She can’t hold it in. She laughs so much that Her whole demeanor is softened. Ernys gives way to Lousia. She agrees to act as nurse for the son of the king/shepherd. Demeter takes a shine to the tyke, and that leads to some further complications, which I’d like to go into in next week’s post.

But from the story so far we can already see some interesting symbols and patterns.

The Agelastos Petra resonates with me, particularly. With it, Demeter’s grief is presented as a thing of physical substance. Some sadness has that kind of density; solid and heavy as a rock. That’s the hard, cold place we find ourselves in when hope is lost. “Black Demeter” is called that because She is depicted in all black clothing. She is in the costume and the setting of deep mourning, and anyone who has been to a funeral for a child can build a powerful image around that. Imagine the mother, dressed in muted black and sitting alone on a hard bench, hiding her tears behind a veil of anger and isolation. That’s Demeter Erinys.

Demeter’s aspect is finally softened by laughter. This is a good lesson for when we find ourselves in positions of loss, as Demeter was. Laughter is uplifting and even though it doesn’t erase the causes of grief, it can help ease the symptoms of it. “Green Demeter” is the counterpoint of the mother lost in mourning. Hers is the tenderness of managed grief. She hasn’t forgotten Her loss, but She has refused to give in to it. Demeter Lousia is the mother of hope.

Laughter is also a good way to raise energy for magickal work. A little comedy in ritual can help tap into some underutilized power. If you feel odd laughing in circle, try to remember that in The Charge of the Goddess we are told to let our hearts be filled with both mirth and reverence.

Anyway, next week: Misadventures in Baby Sitting, Eleusis edition.

Most of the information about Demeter's Myth in this week's post comes from Karl Kerenyi's book: Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter