Demeter and Demophon

Wow, that was a pretty long week. I think I got lost in a month of Sundays.

But I’m back now and I’m intent on holding up my end of a bet. Vine & Ivy has entered a no-holds-barred, last typist standing, two people enter and one person leaves, guts of steel, Iron Blog Challenge! It works like this: If I don’t make at least one blog entry a month, I owe the lovely and talented Despoena a nice dinner. Likewise, should she miss a monthly entry on RenegadeTarot, I will be feasting upon a home-cooked meal of her own creation. The stakes are set, the game is afoot; may the best blogger win! (well, I’d actually prefer that I win, but if it has to go to the best blogger, I guess can live with that) .

And now without further delay, we join Demeter back at Eleusis where our next episode has already started…

Having been lifted from Her black mood, Demeter is once again following Her maternal instincts. She is acting as the nurse for Demophon, the youngest child of the King of Eleusis (or of the shepard who has made his home in that primitive region). She is very grateful to the family for rekindling her heart, and She decides that She’d like to give them something.

Demeter’s gift is no small thing. Though her Divinity is still masked from the humans around Her, She retains both the power and knowledge of a Goddess. She knows many secrets that humanity has never learned. She knows Mysteries beyond the ability of humans to even comprehend. She even knows a process that can make men into Gods. What She chooses to give Her hosts’ young son is nothing short of immortality itself.

Demeter has determined to make Demophon immortal, but She isn’t planning on teaching the actual secret of immortality to anyone. So She conducts the process in secret. Night after night, when the family has gone to sleep, Demeter takes the baby to the hearth and places him in the fire. With each night, more and more of Demophon’s mortality is burned away. He becomes less human, and more God.

Before the process is complete, however, there’s a snag. Demophon’s mother wakes and wanders up to the hearth one night, just as Demeter is placing the child in the fire. The mother is highly upset by the scene she has stumbled upon and she rushes to grab her child away from his nurse. Demeter is startled by the interruption and the process is spoiled. In some accounts, She drops the child into the fire without the correct preparation and he is burned to ashes. In others the consequences are less dire, resulting in the boy remaining mortal but otherwise unharmed.

By either account Demeter unmasks Her Divinity at this point and, thus revealed, admonishes Demophon’s mother (and humanity in general), saying “Unknowing are ye mortals and thoughtless; ye know not whether good or evil approaches!”

Demeter’s story continues, of course, even if Demophon’s does not. She goes on to eventually leverage Her dominion over the earth’s fertility to gain the seasonal return of Her daughter from the underworld. She gives the family (and humanity) another gift to replace the one Demophon’s mother spoiled. Her second gift really turned out to be more useful than just one more immortal thrown into the pantheon. She taught another of the King’s (or shepard’s) sons the knowledge of agriculture and also initiated him into the mystery tradition that was practiced at Eleusis for over 1500 years.

But what does Demophon’s story mean to us? What’s there that can be meaningful in our lives? None of us are likely to get our mortality burned away in the family hearth, regardless of what reaction our mothers might have. I think the moral of the story lies in the words of Demeter Herself.

We mortals ARE unknowing and thoughtless. We really DON’T know whether good or evil approaches. Divinity is at work all around us, in every natural process. But we don’t trust It. We seem to be irresistibly driven to interference. We cry out and grab control away from Mother Nature. Time and time again we act before we understand the consequences of our action. We’ve turned so many chances at immortality into sudden death and dry ash.

In chapter 29 of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu says this:
“Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.

The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it”

If we can ever learn to trust Divinity and let Nature find its own way, maybe we can eventually trust ourselves to find our own way too.

See you next month, when we’ll talk about wine and certain Divine personages closely associated with it.