The Eleusinian Mysteries

I, at Eleusis, saw the finest sight,
When early morning's banners were unfurled.
From high Olympus, gazing on the world,
The ancient gods once saw it with delight.
Sad Demeter had in a single night
Removed her sombre garments! and mine eyes
Beheld a 'broidered mantle in pale dyes
Thrown o'er her throbbing bosom. Sweet and clear
There fell the sound of music on mine ear.
And from the South came Hermes, he whose lyre
One time appeased the great Apollo's ire.
The rescued maid, Persephone, by the hand
He led to waiting Demeter, and cheer
And light and beauty once more blessed the land.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850 – 1919)

Day Before Yesterday, The Asormos.

Yesterday, the Holade Mystai, the Day of Purification. Ritual bathing to purify yourself for the ceremony to come. Day is dedicated to Demeter and Persephone, with, Stein says, "strong influence of Isis".

Today, the third day, offerings of barley and grain, "the life force".

Last year, I started reading about the Eleusinian Mysteries – which you may recall, got me started on waking dreams – which you may also recall, came to a screeching halt when I was prescribed medication to halt the leg cramps, and temporarily lost my ability to remember dreams, due to the drugged state the medication inflicted on me. I have hope that the ability will return. A year has passed, and I again picked up my reading on the Mysteries. The more I read about them, the more enthralling they become. I still want to go back in dream time into Greece for the Mysteries. I can almost taste the excitement the initiates must have felt.

Meanwhile, I found the mythology that may have eventually developed into the Greek and Egyptian Mysteries:

Telipinu was the Hittite god of farming. He was the son of the weather and fertility god according to their mythology.

In one story, he grew angry at the world and left his house, causing the crops to fail. Hannahannas, the mother goddess, sent a bee to find him; when the bee did, stinging Telipinu and smearing wax on him, the god grew angry and began to wreak destruction on the world. Finally, Kamrusepa, goddess of magic, calmed Telepinu by giving his anger to the Doorkeeper of the Underworld.

The Telepinu Myth is an ancient Hittite myth about Telepinu whose disappearances causes all fertility to fail, both plant and animal. This results in devastation and despair among gods and humans alike. In order to stop the havoc and devastation, the gods seek Telepinu but fail to find him. Only a bee sent by the goddess Hannahanna finds Telepinu, and stings him in order to wake him up. However this infuriates Telepinu further and he "diverts the flow of rivers and shatters the houses". In the end, the goddess Kamrusepa uses healing and magic to calm Telepinu after which he returns home and restores the vegetation and fertility. In other references it is a mortal priest who prays for all of Telepinu's anger to be sent to bronze containers in the underworld, of which nothing escapes.

But the Eleusinian Mysteries were much more extensive. Everything in the Greek world stopped for them. Initiates came from all over the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Ionian Seas, possibly further than that. Wars stopped. Travel to Greece that might have been banned at the time, was now allowed. The buzz in the air was audible, throughout the entire region. Preparations had been underway, and now there was no time left. The Mysteries had begun. THIS is the event I have always wanted to dream travel back to, and experience. Except for the medication screwing with my dream recall, I see no reason why I can’t do that. I just need to learn how.

I’m reminded of a past dream I had that was so immediate and so real I had trouble readjusting when I woke up.

I lived in Yonkers. Took a nap. Fell so deeply into this dream it became reality for me, for a time. This was the dream:

I was a boy of about 9 years old. There was a small group of us, sitting on the ground. A man of about 30-40 years was sitting on a rock. I knew the man’s name in that lifetime. I don’t want to say we were all wearing togas – more that we had cloth wrapped around ourselves by way of clothes.

The older man definitely had sandals of some sort on his feet; I’m pretty sure I was barefoot. He had salt and pepper hair and beard. He was instructing us in something, and I do remember him drawing the infinity symbol in the dirt with a stick.

I had just said something out loud, which was dry or sarcastic. I made the other boys laugh. The man looked at me, and as he reached out to cuff me on the side of the head for interrupting the lesson he was imparting to all of us, I distinctly heard him think (so in this dream, I could read minds as well!) that I reminded him of his younger self. But he cuffed me anyway, for being a smart-ass. As his hand impacted the side of my head, I gasped and said, "Wait! I know who you are! You’re ---", and I blurted out the name of someone I knew in my present life. He put his finger to his lips, and as he did so, I felt myself fall over sideways onto the ground, and side-slipped through time and woke up in Yonkers.

Two things: I did know who the older man was in this lifetime, and he actually confirmed it later on, without even being asked about it, by remarking that he was a man with the name I’d already been aware that he had, because of that dream. I remember every hair on my body standing up in shock when he said that.

The other thing: I was scared out of my wits to wake up and find myself a woman. I cannot describe the terror, because it’s one of those things I’ll bet not a lot of people experience. I’d identified so completely with the body and mind of a nine-year old boy that waking up as a woman was foreign and unfamiliar. I actually started crying out in horror and backing up toward the headboard of the bed in a panic to get away from myself, before I returned mentally and remembered I was a woman. Terrifying, let me tell you. And extremely odd.

I hadn’t thought of that dream in a long time, but a photo of Piero was posted. I looked at it, and suddenly said, "I KNOW him." Well, of course I knew it was a photo of Piero Barone, but it was the first time I’d felt a glimmer of "other recognition", for want of a better phrase ... and couldn’t figure out why. I’d just thought I loved his voice and hadn’t thought there may have been more to it than that. As though I’d known him from somewhere else. The reaction was nearly identical to the one I’d had in the Yonkers dream. Couldn’t place him anywhere else – I knew of only a few other lives I’d had: Venezia was one, and probably the one that left the greatest emotional impact on me. The boy of nine in a Grecian type settlement was another. There was a third one in Mesoamerica.

The Grecian one makes me think, "Might have been ..." where I may have encountered Piero, because I’d always thought that life took place in Greece or Magna Graecia, and Sicily has Grecian roots. No other reason for me to think that, though. I couldn’t remember why he seemed familiar to me outside of his role as "Piero Barone of Il Volo".

But because I’d said almost the same thing ("Wait! I know him!") – or close to it – when I saw that photo of Piero, I found myself wondering if he was a fellow student, or a brother or something in that life. Something about the way his body was shaped, or his collarbones looked, or the way his head was turned. I can’t find it again. I just know that at the time the sense of recognition happened, it sent a bolt of electricity through me, the ‘recognition’ was so startling. Would at least partially explain the period of obsession – with him I must have felt safe, even subliminally.

The point being: is it possible I might have been familiar with the Mysteries while they were actually taking place? After that "glimmer" happened, I was even more eager to see if I could dream-walk into the Mysteries.

"And thou shalt know the Source ethereal,
And all the starry signs along the sky,
and the resplendent works of that clear lamp
of glowing sun and whence they all arose.
Likewise of wandering works of round-eyed moon
Shalt thou yet learn and of her source; and then
Shalt thou know too the heavens that close us round –
Both whence they sprang and how Fate leading them
Bound fast to keep the limits of the stars ...
How earth and sun and moon and common sky,
The Milky Way, Olympus outermost,
And burning might of stars made haste to be."

Parmenides