Michelle Zerba (Louisiana State University)
The language of “mystery” that grew up around the Eleusinian cult was related to practices of initiation, one of which imposed a vow of silence upon those inducted. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter stipulates this vow (478-79; Richardson and Foley): the legomena, dromena, and deiknumena of the rites were not to be spoken (Burkert, Mylonas, Cosmopoulos). They were arrheta, “unable to be put in words,” and aporrheta, “forbidden to be put in words,” terms that point to both ineffability and prohibition. Yet why would the ineffable have to be prohibited if it escapes words?
This question leads to a topic that has received scant attention: the relationship between the sacred and the secret. It is in the passage from reverential silence to socially proscribed regulations of unspeakability that secrecy arises. The mysteria, whose nomenclature derived from the myo/myeo group, “to shut the mouth and eyes” or “to make someone shut the mouth and eyes” (Chantraine), should not be equated with secrecy tout court, as it often is. The term and what it governed entered the regime of secrecy only when they were taken up by agents engaged in self-differentiating identity formation. This was a process implicated in social awareness, self-monitoring before the law, and the highly intentional effort required for membership in an elective group. The Eleusinian cult presents us with early evidence of how relations of power and prestige developed around surveilled secrecy.
Drawing on research in sociology, anthropology, and cognitive theory (Simmel, Luhrmann, Herdt, Bellman, Larson), this paper revisits well-known episodes related to the Eleusinian mysteria in advancing new ways of approaching old problems. First, while secrecy begins in religious awe, it gathers meaning in a process of communication that elicits deference for the hidden content. The more energy invested in protecting it, the more a secret becomes an “adorning possession” (Simmel) that brings distinction to the initiated. The rise of Eleusis to Panhellenic prominence is evidence of this value (Clinton). Second, secrecy thrives not on the content of the information repressed (anything can be secret) but on the advertisement that a secret is being kept. The do-not-speak it prohibition must be reinforced through circulation (Bellman)—a point borne out by the criminal charges laid against Aeschylus (Arist., NE 1111a9), Diagoras of Melos (Athenag., Plea for Christians 4), and Alcibiades (Plut., Alcibiades 22) for divulging the mysteries. Secrecy is a performance paradoxically grounded in public acts of controlling the flow of information. Third, as a form of social capital, secrecy is self-perpetuating and uses obfuscation to extend wonder. The Eleusinian synthema is an example: “I fasted, I drank the kykeon, I took from the container, after working, I deposited into the basket and from the basket into the container” (Clem. of Alex., Protrepticus 2.21.2). This password performs unspeakability by refusing to name the sacred things that are the objects of the verbs.
My paper will assess how social practices of secrecy contributed to the psychic transformation for which the Eleusinian mysteria were famous.