The Festival of the Greater Elusinia
Greece, September 23-Oct 1

Typically, it was the Women who cared for the fields, plowed and scattered the seed and reaped the harvest. So it was natural they felt that a Woman divinity could best understand and help Women's work.  It was through Demeter that the fields of grain were hallowed.   Demeter's rule did not limit itself to just the fields, it was the threshing floor too that was under her protection as both are considered her temples; at any moment she might be present.

 So, it is by no accident then that her chief festival came at the harvest time.  In earlier days, this might have been a simple thanksgiving day.   In later years, the humble feast grew into a mysterious worship, about which we know very little.  The Greater Elusinia festival, in September, came only every five years, but it lasted for nine days. During this time the people marched through the streets, often barefoot, while wearing flowered garlands and the fruits and crops of the season were made into feast.  This public celebration is commonly known and has been related by many writers.  However, the ceremony that took place in the temple has never been described because those who participated were bound by a vow of silence that remains.

DEMETER-The Goddess-The Myth

She was sister to Zeus, and goddess of fertility. She had various lovers, including her brother Zeus. One of her children was Persephone (by Zeus), who was carried off by Hades (god of the underworld). Once the flowerlike Persephone, her lovely daughter, disappeared; Demeter, could find her nowhere. The weeping Demeter searched and searched through the fields, crying out for the daughter who she so loved. Demeter fretfully clutched her blue-green cloak, then thoughtlessly shredded it into tiny pieces, scattering them as cornflowers in the grasses. But flowers and grasses soon faded, for Demeter was the source of all growth; as she mourned, the goddess withdrew her energy from the plants, which began to wilt and shrivel. So the happy earth changed for the first time into the yellow-gold, autumnal aspect of Demeter. The goddess wandered through the dying earth until she came to a town near Athens. There she took a job as nursemaid to Metanira, queen of Eleusis, as caretaker for her son Triptolemos. Demeter developed a strong maternal love for the boy and decided to make him immortal, by smoking him like a log in the fireplace. The frantic queen discovered them, and the disguised goddess is revealed. She desists in her effort to make Triptolemos immortal but, in gratitude, teaches him the art of growing corn. Demeter stayed on in Eleusis, often sitting sadly by a well as she wept for the loss of her beloved daughter. One day the queen's daughter Baubo (Iambe) saw the sad goddess at the well and tried to comfort her. Demeter refused all her consoling words and so, to make the goddess smile, Baubo exposed her vulva salaciously. Surprised, Demeter chuckled, the first laughter the starving earth had heard from its goddess in many months. Shortly afterward, Persephone was restored to her mother for six months each year, and spring bloomed again on the earth after the long winter; the six months she has to spend with Hades in the underworld is winter and the six months with her mother is spring. In gratitude for the hospitality of the Eleusinians, Demeter taught the arts of agriculture to Prince Triptolemos and thereafter based her mysterious rites at that city.