Music and Ritual in Primitive Eleusis
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Demeter and Dionysos: Connections in Literature, Cult and Iconography Kathryn Cook April 2011
Demeter and Dionysos: Connections in Literature, Cult and Iconography Kathryn Cook April 2011 Demeter and Dionysos are two gods among the Greek pantheon who are not often paired up by modern scholars; however, evidence from a number of sources alluding to myth, cult and iconography shows that there are similarities and connections observable from our present point of view, that were commented upon by contemporary authors. This paper attempts to examine the similarities and connections between Demeter and Dionysos up through the Classical period. These two deities were not always entwined in myth. Early evidence of gods in the Linear B tablets mention Dionysos as the name of a deity, but Demeter’s name does not appear in the records until later. Over the centuries (up to approximately the 6th century as mentioned in this paper), Demeter and Dionysos seem to have been depicted together in cult and in literature more and more often. In particular, the figure of Iacchos in the Eleusinian cult seems to form a bridging element between the two which grew from being a personification of the procession for Demeter, into being a Dionysos figure who participated in her cult. Literature: Demeter and Dionysos have some interesting parallels in literature. To begin with, they are both rarely mentioned in the Homeric poems, compared to other gods like Hera or Athena. In the Iliad, neither Demeter nor Dionysos plays a role as a main character. Instead they are mentioned in passing, as an example or as an element of an epic simile.1 These two divine figures are present even less often in the Odyssey, though this is perhaps a reflection of the fewer appearances of the gods overall, they are 1 Demeter: 2.696. -
Resounding Mysteries: Sound and Silence in the Eleusinian Soundscape
Body bar (print) issn 2057–5823 and bar (online) issn 2057–5831 Religion Article Resounding mysteries: sound and silence in the Eleusinian soundscape Georgia Petridou Abstract The term ‘soundscape’, as coined by the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer at the end of the 1960s, refers to the part of the acoustic environment that is per- ceivable by humans. This study attempts to reconstruct roughly the Eleusinian ‘soundscape’ (the words and the sounds made and heard, and those others who remained unheard) as participants in the Great Mysteries of the two Goddesses may have perceived it in the Classical and post-Classical periods. Unlike other mystery cults (e.g. the Cult of Cybele and Attis) whose soundscapes have been meticulously investigated, the soundscape of Eleusis has received relatively little attention, since the visual aspect of the Megala Mysteria of Demeter and Kore has for decades monopolised the scholarly attention. This study aims at putting things right on this front, and simultaneously look closely at the relational dynamic of the acoustic segment of Eleusis as it can be surmised from the work of well-known orators and philosophers of the first and second centuries ce. Keywords: Demeter; Eleusis; Kore; mysteries; silence; sound; soundscape Affiliation University of Liverpool, UK. email: [email protected] bar vol 2.1 2018 68–87 doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/bar.36485 ©2018, equinox publishing RESOUNDING MYSTERIES: SOUND AND SILENCE IN THE ELEUSINIAN SOUNDSCAPE 69 Sound, like breath, is experienced as a movement of coming and going, inspiration and expiration. If that is so, then we should say of the body, as it sings, hums, whistles or speaks, that it is ensounded. -
The Protrepticus of Clement of Alexandria: a Commentary
Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui THE PROTREPTICUS OF CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA: A COMMENTARY to; ga;r yeu'do" ouj yilh'/ th'/ paraqevsei tajlhqou'" diaskedavnnutai, th'/ de; crhvsei th'" ajlhqeiva" ejkbiazovmenon fugadeuvetai. La falsedad no se dispersa por la simple comparación con la verdad, sino que la práctica de la verdad la fuerza a huir. Protréptico 8.77.3 PREFACIO Una tesis doctoral debe tratar de contribuir al avance del conocimiento humano en su disciplina, y la pretensión de que este comentario al Protréptico tenga la máxima utilidad posible me obliga a escribirla en inglés porque es la única lengua que hoy casi todos los interesados pueden leer. Pero no deja de ser extraño que en la casa de Nebrija se deje de lado la lengua castellana. La deuda que contraigo ahora con el español sólo se paliará si en el futuro puedo, en compensación, “dar a los hombres de mi lengua obras en que mejor puedan emplear su ocio”. Empiezo ahora a saldarla, empleándola para estos agradecimientos, breves en extensión pero no en sinceridad. Mi gratitud va, en primer lugar, al Cardenal Don Gil Álvarez de Albornoz, fundador del Real Colegio de España, a cuya generosidad y previsión debo dos años provechosos y felices en Bolonia. Al Rector, José Guillermo García-Valdecasas, que administra la herencia de Albornoz con ejemplar dedicación, eficacia y amor a la casa. A todas las personas que trabajan en el Colegio y hacen que cumpla con creces los objetivos para los que se fundó. Y a mis compañeros bolonios durante estos dos años. Ha sido un honor muy grato disfrutar con todos ellos de la herencia albornociana. -
(Title of the Thesis)*
Dionysian Semiotics: Myco-Dendrolatry and Other Shamanic Motifs in the Myths and Rituals of the Phrygian Mother by Daniel Attrell A thesis presented to the University of Waterloo in fulfillment of the thesis requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2013 © Daniel Attrell 2013 Author’s Declaration I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners. I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public. ii Abstract The administration of initiation rites by an ecstatic specialist, now known to western scholarship by the general designation of ‗shaman‘, has proven to be one of humanity‘s oldest, most widespread, and continuous magico-religious traditions. At the heart of their initiatory rituals lay an ordeal – a metaphysical journey - almost ubiquitously brought on by the effects of a life-changing hallucinogenic drug experience. To guide their initiates, these shaman worked with a repertoire of locally acquired instruments, costumes, dances, and ecstasy-inducing substances. Among past Mediterranean cultures, Semitic and Indo-European, these sorts of initiation rites were vital to society‘s spiritual well-being. It was, however, the mystery schools of antiquity – organizations founded upon conserving the secrets of plant-lore, astrology, theurgy and mystical philosophy – which satisfied the role of the shaman in Greco-Roman society. The rites they delivered to the common individual were a form of ritualized ecstasy and they provided an orderly context for religiously-oriented intoxication. -
The Common Wine Cult of Christ and the Orphic Dionysos: the Wine and Vegetation Saviour Deity Dionysos As Model for the Dying and Rising Christ
REL 4990, MA thesis. Culture and Ideas, History of Religion. Autumn 2010. Maritha E. Gebhardt. Page: 1 The common wine cult of Christ and the Orphic Dionysos: the wine and vegetation saviour deity Dionysos as model for the dying and rising Christ. MA Thesis, Master's Programme in Culture and Ideas, History of Religion, Department of Culture and Oriental Languages, Autumn 2010, by Maritha Elin Gebhardt. Synopsis: In 2005 the Hebrew University Excavation Project unearthed a small incense burner from the fourth century C.E. in the Jewish capital of the Galilee, Sepphoris, depicting a crucified figure, Bacchic satyrs and maenads, and the Christian representation of the sacrifice of Isaac in symbolic form as a ram caught in the thicket of a bush. Five years later the book Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity, by Herrero de Jáuregui, refers to two large funerary cloths, one depicts a Dionysiac scene similar to the murals from the Villa dei Misteri and the other one show scenes from the life of Jesus and Mary, both found in the same tomb in Egypt. Both of these depictions testify to the continued syncretism of the Orphic and the Christian symbols and that people in the Hellenistic era found the figure of Christ similar to the Bacchic Orpheus. In my thesis I claim that the dying and rising saviour deity of Dionysos is the forerunner to the dying and rising saviour deity of Christ. I claim that I will prove this by showing that the cult of Christ is a wine cult. The epiphany of Jesus was as a human guest at a party, turning water into wine at the wedding-feast at Cana in John 2:1-11, likewise the epiphany of the wine-god Dionysos is in a similar scene as the Cana-miracle, where he turns water into wine (Achilleus Tatius' De Leucippes et Clitophontis amoribus 2.2:1-2.3:1). -
Isis Unveiled, Volume 1 — H
ISIS UNVEILED: A MASTER-KEY TO THE MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT AND MODERN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY H. P. BLAVATSKY CORRESPONDING SECRETARY OF THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY "Cecy est un livre de bonne Foy." — MONTAIGNE. VOL. I. — SCIENCE. Blavatsky's first major work on theosophy, examining religion and science in the light of Western and Oriental ancient wisdom and occult and spiritualistic phenomena. Theosophical University Press Online Edition. Electronic version ISBN 1-55700-135-9. This edition may be downloaded for off-line viewing without charge. For ease of searching, no diacritical marks appear in the electronic version of the text. CONTENTS PREFACE (pages v - viii) BEFORE THE VEIL (pages ix - xlv) Dogmatic assumptions of modern science and theology / The Platonic philosophy affords the only middle ground / Review of the ancient philosophical systems / A Syriac manuscript on Simon Magus / Glossary of terms used in this book ———————— Volume First: THE "INFALLIBILITY" OF MODERN SCIENCE. CHAPTER 1: OLD THINGS WITH NEW NAMES (pages 1 - 38) The Oriental Kabala / Ancient traditions supported by modern research / The progress of mankind marked by cycles / Ancient cryptic science / Priceless value of the Vedas / Mutilations of the Jewish sacred books in translation / Magic always regarded as a divine science / Achievements of its adepts and hypotheses of their modern detractors / Man's yearning for immortality CHAPTER 2: PHENOMENA AND FORCES (pages 39 - 73) The servility of society / Prejudice and bigotry of men of science / They are chased by psychical -
By Winifred Milius Lubell, Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, Tennessee, 37235, 1994
BOOK REVIEWS The Metamorphosis of Baubo ■ '' Alehwjorphusisof \ Myths of Woman's Sexual Energy by Winifred Milius Lubell, Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, Tennessee, 37235, 1994. I X ■ ■ ' Reviewed By Luz Martinez ; ^ ■ oon Blood She bled and would not die and Ml. Olympus, and sets out to Ritual' a if she Slopped bleeding for 10 search for her, She lives among 'Miceremony consecutive lunar months, a humans hoping to leant L U BEL'' of women squatting new life sprang forth from the something of her daughter's over land allowing magical vulva. Palaeolithic man whereabouts. Disguised as an their menstrual was in awe of her powers. old poor woman, she is hired blood to flow in Women were so closely linked by a wealthy family to take order to bring life to to the almighty heavens, the care of their infant son. A the harvest, is one heavens which could bring rain, servant girl known as lambc is of the book's 74 black and ice, sunlight, thunder and part of this household and takes white drawings. Several are lightning were aligned with it upon herself to cheer up this original pieces by the author woman! No wonder early man and others are her drawings of old woman. She eventually realized that the female was accomplishes this by lifting her ancient art depicting the magic sacred. skirts and dancing for the of the vulva. goddess. The goddess is so Baubo has been called many The Meeamornhnt^.; pf charmed by her that even after things and has been associated she finds her daughter and l^tiubo is a complex historical with good, evil, mythical and journey through time when returns to Ml Olympus, she comical aspects of woman but women's sexuality was takes lambc with her and lambe she is always powerful. -
Unveiling Baubo: the Making of an Ancient Myth for the Degree Field Of
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY Unveiling Baubo: The Making of an Ancient Myth A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Field of Comparative Literary Studies By Frederika Tevebring EVANSTON, ILLINOIS December 2017 2 © Copyright by Frederika Tevebring 2017 All Rights Reserved 3 Abstract “Unveiling Baubo” describes how the mythical figure Baubo was constructed in nineteenth-century German. Associated with the act of exposing herself to the goddess Demeter, Baubo came to epitomize questions about concealment and unveiling in the budding fields of archaeology, philology, psychoanalysis and literary theory. As I show in my dissertation, Baubo did not exist as a coherent mythical figure in antiquity. Rather, the nineteenth-century notion of Baubo was mediated through a disparate array of ancient and contemporary sources centered on the notion of sexual vulgarity. Baubo emerged as a modern amalgam of ancient parts, a myth of a myth invested with the question of what modernity can and should know about ancient Greece. The dissertation centers on the 1989 excavation of the so-called Baubo statuettes, a group of Hellenistic votive figurines discovered at Priene, in modern-day Turkey. The group adheres to a consistent and unique iconography: the face of the female figures is placed directly onto their torso, giving the impression that the vulva and chin merge. Based on the statuettes’ “grotesque- obscene” appearance, archaeologist concluded that they depicted Baubo, the woman who greeted Demeter at Eleusis when the goddess was searching for her abducted daughter Persephone. According to late antique Church Fathers, Demeter refused the locals’ offerings of food and drink until Baubo cheered her up by lifting her skirt, exposing herself to the goddess. -
Demeter, Baubo, Iacchus, and a Redactor
DEMETER, BAUBO, IACCHUS, AND A REDACTOR BY M. MARCOVICH The mourning Demeter at Eleusis is persuaded to laugh, break her fast, and drink the cyceon either by the ritual jesting and jeering (aia- XPOÀO¡LOt, on the part of lambe, or by the equally ritual indecent exposure &vaJvpy6q) on the part of Baubo. The I main source for the former is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter 202-204,' and for the latter-Orphic Fr. 52 Kern. Baubo's anasyrma is preserved in two main sources: Clement, Protr. 20.1-21.1, and Arnobius, Adv. nat. 5.25-26. Now, in support of his words that Baubo avaa?El?E?a? -co ai8o?a xai &1tOOelXVúel Clement quotes an Orphic hymn consisting of five hexameters. Its text, in Stahlin's edition, reads as follows (Kern follows Stahlin's text): 1 &vecr6pecoP1M: &Vecr6pa.70P3Euseb. (Praep. ev. 2.3.34) / 8e7t?eEus. : 6CL?,xtP // 2 P ante corr. (ut vid.): P post corr. : flevM Eus. // 4 ?tei6rlaF-M Eus. : fJ.?tOr¡tcr?P ante corr. (ut vid.) : P post corr. Some one hundred years later (ca. A.D. 300), Arnobius translated Clement's text into Latin with some rhetorical embellishments of his own africitas.1 His text of the Orphic hymn, however, differs substan- tially from Clement's version, reading as follows :3 Sic effata simul vestem contraxit ab imo obiecitque oculis formatas inguinibus res: quas cava succutiens Baubo manu (nam puerilis ollis vultus erat) plaudit, contrectat amice. 295 5 Turn dea defigens augusti luminis orbes tristitias animi paulum mollita reponit: inde manu poclum sumit risuque sequenti perducit totum cyceonis laeta liquorem. -
Defining Orphism: the Beliefs, the Teletae and the Writings
Defining Orphism: the Beliefs, the teletae and the Writings Anthi Chrysanthou Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Languages, Cultures and Societies Department of Classics May 2017 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his/her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. I This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2017 The University of Leeds and Anthi Chrysanthou. The right of Anthi Chrysanthou to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. II Acknowledgements This research would not have been possible without the help and support of my supervisors, family and friends. Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisors Prof. Malcolm Heath and Dr. Emma Stafford for their constant support during my research, for motivating me and for their patience in reading my drafts numerous times. It is due to their insightful comments and constructive feedback that I have managed to evolve as a researcher and a person. Our meetings were always delightful and thought provoking. I could not have imagined having better mentors for my Ph.D studies. Special thanks goes to Prof. Malcolm Heath for his help and advice on the reconstruction of the Orphic Rhapsodies. I would also like to thank the University of Leeds for giving me the opportunity to undertake this research and all the departmental and library staff for their support and guidance. -
The Local Divisions of Attica
f\1e.7)u-tl ~-tS )~ ,\A l'i~~ The Local DiYieions of Attiea Before the t~e of Solon, Attica was organized by trittyes and phratries. The phratries were groups of famil ies related by blood, ·e.nd were divided, in turn, into ~~v,., , smaller associations united in loyalty to a mythical ancestor. Although from the inscriptions~ioh record the decrees of various Y I. vn , we knOlJ that by the time of Cleisthenes their me.mbers were scattered over various dames, it is probable that in the earlier period the y c v~ were connected with a defi.nite locality.1 The trittyes may have been divisi.ons of the Athenian people on the basis of locality but the evidence does not . 2 make this clear. The Eupatridae, who were pro_bably, as WS.de-Gery suggested, the descendants of these men who. formed the first c ouncil. of the Athenian state at the time of the synoecism of the twelve Attic towns, controlled the government in the pre-Solonean period.3 - 4 They .elected the flvA o a.~- e-. ;~. s from their own number, and chose the 5 nine archons. We can see, therefore, that political power in the pre-Solonean period Tms in the hands of groups of families in specific districts. The evidence that we have on the Attic y~v~ who looked after the cults on the acropolis and at Eleusi.s throws some light on the important place that the y l v~ had in Attic religion at this time. The Eteobou tadae, for instance, cared for the cult of Poseidon Erechtheus on the acropolis. -
The Festival Proerosia Robertson, Noel Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Winter 1996; 37, 4; Proquest Pg
New Light on Demeter's Mysteries: The Festival Proerosia Robertson, Noel Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Winter 1996; 37, 4; ProQuest pg. 319 New Light on Demeter's Mysteries: The Festival Proerosia Noel Robertson EMETER'S "MYSTERIES: festivals conducted mainly by women and in sanctuaries that were suitably withdrawn, D were almost universal in Greek cities, like the cereal agri culture they were intended to promote. They were integral to Greek society and are now widely and profitably studied as a social phenomenon. If the general custom is important, so are the many ritual actions that constitute a given festival, through which (according to one's point of view) the women either worship the goddess Demeter, or work directly on the earth, or affirm their sense of the fitness of things. Animal sacrifice plays a large part, as usual, the pig species being favored by De meter, and there is a peculiar practice of throwing piglets into a pit, which is then closed. It is a disadvantage that reconstructions of ritual must be sought in older handbooks and special studies. The basic work on Greek festivals was done long ago, and new evidence, though not wholly neglected, has not led to any sustained effort of revision. The festival Proerosia, "Before-ploughing (rites)," is such a case. The Athenian, or Eleusinian, version of this festival once seemed to stand alone, as if it were something secondary and contrived, without much bearing on the larger pattern of Demeter's worship. We can now see that the Proerosia was widespread. It may have been as common as the greatest of Demeter's festivals, the Thesmophoria: it was a sequel to it, coming later in the autumn season.