Amongst the rites as to which the poet thus drops
significant hints are the preliminary fast of the candidates for
initiation, the torchlight procession, the all-night vigil, the
sitting of the candidates, veiled and in silence, on stools covered
with sheepskins, the use of scurrilous language, the breaking of
ribald jests, and the solemn communion with the divinity by
participation in a draught of barley-water from a holy chalice.
But there is yet another and a deeper secret of the mysteries which
the author of the poem appears to have divulged under cover of his
narrative. He tells us how, as soon as she had transformed the
barren brown expanse of the Eleusinian plain into a field of golden
grain, she gladdened the eyes of Triptolemus and the other
Eleusinian princes by showing them the growing or standing corn.
When we compare this part of the story with the statement of a
Christian writer of the second century, Hippolytus, that the very
heart of the mysteries consisted in showing to the initiated a
reaped ear of corn, we can hardly doubt that the poet of the hymn
was well acquainted with this solemn rite, and that he deliberately
intended to explain its origin in precisely the same way as he
explained other rites of the mysteries, namely by representing
Demeter as having set the example of performing the ceremony in her
own person.
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