Night of Spectacles
“Well before Jesus walked the shores of Galilee, Eleusis was a beacon of hope in a nasty age of uncertainty, when the average life expectancy was much lower than today. Half the population might not reach the age of five. For those who survived a traumatic childhood and managed to avoid enslavement, natural disasters, food shortages, violence, social unrest, deadly plagues, and infectious disease made for a far nastier existence than our own, with as much as 60 percent of the Greco-Roman world succumbing to the bacteria and viruses we have now largely managed to control.
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“If COVID-19 offers any insight on the past, it’s the psychological and emotional toll of a pandemic, and the sense of helplessness that must have been excruciating for our ancestors. But as long as the Mysteries were celebrated once a year around the fall equinox, everything was in order.
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“Following their sip of an unusual elixir called the kukeon, and a night of spectacles in the temple, each pilgrim earned the honorary title epoptes, which means something like ‘the one who has seen it all.’ Beyond any doubt, they claimed, death was not the end of our human journey. We do, in fact, survive the physical body. And underneath this mortal clothing, we are all immortals in disguise—gods and goddesses destined to the stars for eternity.” — Brian C. Muraresku; The Immortality Key, p. 26-27
Eugenia Loli
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