Even after his death Aeacus is honored in the abode of Pluto, and keeps the keys of Hades. So Aeacus did offer prayers, and Greece was delivered from the death. Therefore, when Greece suffered from infertility on account of Pelops, because in a war with Stymphalus, king of the Arcadians, being unable to conquer Arcadia, he slew the king under a pretense of friendship, and scattered his mangled limbs, oracles of the gods declared that Greece would be rid of its present calamities if Aeacus would offer prayers on its behalf. Behold, I have told my experience, and yet what you hear can mean nothing to you." So, come join this journey into the past, into the heart of human experience.Īeacus Now Aeacus was the most pious of men. I approached the gods below and the gods above, and I stood beside them, and I worshipped them. At midnight I saw the sun shining in all his glory. I trod the threshold of Proserpine (Persephone" and born through the elements, I returned. Apuleius in his comedic work The Golden Ass relates the dream of the story's hero as follows: "Perhaps, curious reader, you are keen to know what was said and done.I approached the confines of death. Clement of Alexandra - an arch rival of the Mysteries - described the happenings within the Telesterion as a mystic drama: "The temple shook terrifying visions and fearful specters depicted the horrors of Hades." The greater part of the secret may have been not the knowledge gained, but the emotional experience, a sudden understanding effected by the transmission of the ineffable in an entirely new context. Themistios compares the mysteries to the point of death: "at first one wanders and wearily hurries to and from, and journeys with suspicion through the the dark as one uninitiated: then come all the terrors before the final initiation, shuddering, trembling, sweating, amazement: then one is struck with a marvelous light, one is received in pure regions and meadows, with voices and dances and the majesty of holy sounds and shapes." Aristotle stated that the initiates were not going to learn anything new, but they were to suffer, to feel, to experience certain impressions and psychic moods." To this day, the secret remains hidden, a shimmering mirage, a wisp of scent, a lightening flash of illumination.then silence. Within the awe, tantalizing clues rise from the past. "A great awe of the gods holds back the voice" the Homeric Hymn to Demeter explains. The rituals and experiences have remained shrouded in mystery for nearly three millenia. Approximately 1350 BCE, the Eleusinian Mysteries were first celebrated in Greece. Knowledge expands exponentially, and the internet is a phenomenal resource that destroys the boundaries of space and time, and allows communication that only decades ago was unimaginable. This is a challenge to explore and explain the Mysteries of Eleusis for the modern age.