DEMETER KÜLTÜ IŞIĞINDA ELEUSİS MİSTERLERİ

Abstract

The ground, known as the eternal power source of fertility, is the godmother and mother earth. As the Hellenic belief personified the gods, the ground allowed the emergence of Demeter. From the Olympus gods, the goddess Demeter is the mother earth, the goddess of the cultivated land and fertility, the great goddess bringing the seasons, nourishing the people, and sustaining life. She is a beautiful goddess with blond hair and hazel eyes in Homer’s epics, while, in Hesiod’s poems, she is Kronos and Rheia’s daughter and Zeus’s sister. She is mentioned with her daughter, and they are described as dual goddesses or goddesses. It is possible to encounter the Demeter cult in almost every region where grain farming is carried out in continental Greece. In this cult, the mythology of Persephone’s abduction by Hades forms the goddess’s worship basis. The Demeter mythology, Persephone and Hades represent the natural life cycle, the seasonal cycle and the death of the earth in winter and its rebirth in spring. The mythology of the goddesses, the Demeter cult source and the Eleusinian Mysteries, considered to have emerged from this mythology, was widely practised. The religious ceremonies performed during the formation of Eleusinian Mysteries were secret and completely interconnected. With these mysteries, people approached death and life with different perspectives. That is, it made possible for believers to have a more hopeful mood for the afterlife. This study aims to explain the mythology of Persephone’s abduction by Hades, thought to be the basis of the Demeter cult, the reasons for the creation of the Eleusinian Mysteries emerging from this mythology, the ceremonial content, Demeter and Persephone’s duties in these mysteries, and the reasons for Persephopne’s intermediary role between the earth and the underworld.