ABSTRACT
The attempted reconstruction of the basic lines of the Eleusinian Mysteries is especially vulnerable to the intrusion of culturally determined assumptions. To minimize this vulnerability we should not confront the data directly, or structure their reading through the filters of earlier discussions, which entails the deployment of modern assumptions. Instead, we should try to set in place some basic parameters for the reconstruction of the most elementary aspects of the nexus; that is, reconstruct some of the essential parameters that had shaped it and had also shaped the ways in which participants in the culture had made sense of its ritual elements. This can be done by artificially reconstructing a basic skeleton of “stable points” reflecting clearly established ancient realities. Then we should attempt to reconstruct the results of the interactions between those parameters, in a process very roughly comparable to that of pinpointing the location of a radio transmission through triangulation – though (because of the nature of our phenomena and our limitations of access) we are trying to recreate fluid contours, not locate accurately definite positions. For example, the setting in place of the parameters that Demeter and Kore were the central deities in the cult, and that the cult had an eschatological dimension, entails that it had also implicated the “Queen of the Underworld” persona of Kore. This judgement may be not unaffected by modern assumptions but it is not far off the ancient reality and is supported by other evidence. It may also appear obvious, but since we do not share the ancient religious and cultural assumptions we need strategies to minimize the effect of culturally determined judgements, and processes of this kind allow us to construct – more tentatively the further away we move from firmly established facts – a somewhat less culturally determined approximation of the most basic lines of the Mysteries, and to some extent the even more basic lines of the associated perceptions and beliefs.
