Eleusis Redux

"The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which appears to date from about 600 B.C., has been thought to preserve in epic form much of the ritual of the Mysteries. It describes how Aidoneus, better known as Hades, the 'Unseen,' a euphemistic title of Death, could find no one willing to share his grisly kingdom. Spying Persephone, Demeter's daughter, gathering flowers in company with the Oceanids in the plain of Nysa, he ensnared her with a lovely bloom and bore her away beneath the earth. Demeter's grief was so inconsolable that the world grew barren and Zeus was moved to restore the girl to her mother. Aidoneus dare not refuse his great brother's request, but even Zeus was powerless in face of the law which laid down that return from the underworld was only possible for those who had eaten nothing there. Persephone unfortunately had eaten some pomegranate seeds, so a comprimise was agreed whereby she was permitted to return to earth for eight months only before rejoining her consort among the shades.

"Demeter meantime had wandered to Eleusis, and been kindly treated by king Celeus. In return, she attempted to render his infant son invulnerable by burning him in the fire, but was surprised by the child's mother, who spoiled her plan. Thereupon the angry goddess revealed herself in all her dread majesty and commanded the Eleusinians to raise a temple and altar in her honour by the spring of Kallichoron.

***

"The myth as recorded, and apparently also by the nebulous Pamphos, if Pausinas really used him to check his own account, is composed of three elements. One, and possibly the earliest, was concerned with the chthonian deity, connected with agriculture and fertility, variously known as Plutus or Pluto, whose name means 'Wealthy,' presumably in the specialized sense of riches in the earth. That he should have in course of time become identified with Hades, and his wife with Persephone, who were also associated with the depths below, is scarcely surprising, if such a fact was the true course of events.

"Why the equation should have been made at Eleusis we do not know, unless the Hymn was composed as a piece of propaganda either in the Eleusinian or Athenian cause. Eleusis at any rate possessed the Rharian plain, where the science of agriculture was supposed to have been first practiced, as well as a hero of the stature of Triptolmeus who was destined to attain wide fame.

"Superimposed upon or coeval with the legend of Plutus/Hades and Persephone was the worship of the corn-goddess Demeter and her daughter Kore -- the word means 'maiden' or 'daughter' -- who was apparently a personification of the seed-corn which, as Nilsson suggested, was kept in subterranean silos after the harvest until the period of the autumn sowing. This barren season was described in myth as the time of Kore's absence in the underworld. Finally the story of how the local Eleusinan king adopted the worship of Demeter may have an historical basis in Mycenaean times."

-- John Pollard,"The Eleusinian Mysteries," in Seers, Shrines and Sirens: The Greek Religious Revolution in the Sixth Century BC





THE MYSTERIES OF BLISS

Dec. 6

1.

In the raw particulars of my
drunkalogue, I always went out
to get lucky. On the high end
I dreamed of finding my long-lost,
ever--desired, forever-unrequited
Mrs. Right at last that night,
falling deeply into her starry
wild kiss, ending my whole
long bad history as a solitary
man. At the low end of the
hope -- the place where I
lived on night after night --
I knew that with enough
beer and whiskey in my
brain that I would be
able to see the nubilette
in the smoky murk,
my ever-shy hands becoming
tridents, hauling her off
at closing to enter the
profaner sanctions of Love,
deep in the dankest folds
of the verboten night.
The compulsion for going out
and finding her was so enmeshed
in my alcoholic gears that
booze and pussy
were one noctal thresh
whose soft suggestions sang
so deeply into my brain
that just couldn't say
no to the heading out
and repeated it endlessly,
four to seven nights a week,
my desire a turkey
vulture spiralling
on the downward
thermal of my years.
When all that ended
-- again -- I see what what
life I have been given
back as means to
right my ways,
to make amends for all
those late-night thefts
in Pluto's britches. How?
By trying to help others
out of the same bottle,
by trying to be a good
husband to my wife.
Here I matin back that
vespered booty on the pure
white sheets of this page.
I work the deep fields of
the Lord at 4:30 a.m.,
that former zombie zone
where I was either
nodding off with my nose
up in some girl's cooze
or driving blacklit highways
home, the man at the wheel
a hollow iron drone.
I know from hard experience
that it's perilous to romance
the booze, that I'm not good
at resisting temptation's
gold-rimmed shotglass
set there on bright neat space
front and center of my mind;
it's also infinitely dangerous to
make a myth out of those
dreadfully wrong nights,
for fear the siren song again
be heard, calling me out
to bars and babes in the
voice I can't refuse. So here
I write to amulet enough
that pair of dark divines
who still softly beg me
swill the depths of salt
desire, even though
I know they're shortcuts
to the storied God of Love,
routes which only
empty the world of
You, Beloved, God,
Umpteenth Thrall
to hymn a song. Wisdom
cautions me to write O so
carefully of the magic
which still hums below.


II.

Still -- (O Lord, limn these
words as I proceed, in faith
You speak most deeply here)
-- There was something ritual
to those pagan hours, a Mystery
rudely enacted in that gloom
that still haunts me here, arising
not from memory as from what
they distilled, an intuition of
a wilder story deep within,
thrown out as young men do
across the night in cocksman's
myth, the same way Greeks
psychologized the stars.
Why else are dreams
so porous, confused and starry,
harrowing back to long-lost days
(as when, last night, I tried to
find a coworker in a vast
corporate tumulus) only to
marrow what's ahead?
So travel with back with me
25 years in a tumble of white
sands down the upturned glass ...

There's the fool initiate practicing
his guitar, running through the
riffs of gut-strung ecstasy, his
hands like horses up and down
the fretboard, itself a shore
for big night music always
bluer and wilder and more
swollen than mortal hands
achieve ... Such minstrelsy
is not enough to rouse
real singing beasts, to invoke
the genie who envowels all
wishes: No Mephistopheles
ever came knocking
after those power chords,
his arm around some
poodle-skirted knockered
vixen offering her to
me for play: Rather, what
arose in my bottled-up
frustrations was just the
sort of spirit I jonesed
on worst, the one who
whispered More and More
and More, pointing out my
door into the unmargined
grand maternities of the
night. Yes, something of that
next order was required (that
spirit in my ear's bottle
whispered), leaping off a
bum guitar's airy back
onto a more fully-blooded filly,
seaweed mane be damned.
And so headed out into
a lush humid dark
still singed from early
evening storms,
where flashes of heat
lighting jiggered
high and spectral
across the heavens
from god to god to god.
I always walked out
as if through a grand
proscenium whose stone
arches were pocketed
with skulls and pottery
filled with burnt down
bits, garlanded with orange
tree boughs in high blossom,
exuding the kind of naked
sweet that turned my brain
to whiskey, as when
I'd cram into a woman's
cleavage for the first time
of a night. When I walked
out that door I was 14
and leaving my mother's
Christian house, heading
out to meet a naughty
girl & play beneath
the moon, I was 6
and playing Show Me
Yours in the woods of
first grade recess, I
was the four-year-old
holding Paula's hand
heading into the park
away from home
to look for worms: Always
desire lead me out
on the scent of something
new and wild in the
air, sweet with first
love's pealing bells
beyond the borders
of the known -- a place
I knew I must not go
and could not help
from going so.