3. Connections between religious practices and the Hymn

Demeter, Statue, mid-4th century BCE - British Museum, London

The religious worship of Demeter and the Homeric Hymn 

The Homeric Hymn is immutably interconnected with the Eleusinian Mysteries as "the longest version of the story, narrated in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, straightforwardly asserts that Demeter's grief, anger, and eventual reunion with her daughter led to the institution of the Eleusinian Mysteries." (Johnston, 2013, p. 370). Without the Hymn, the Mysteries and the rituals that the initiates performed would not exist. 

Powell (2012, p. 252) tells us that "to divulge what happened within the temple was punishable by death and all modern commentators on the Eleusinian Mysteries must begin by confessing that we do not know what happened there". However, despite the secrecy surrounding the Eleusinian Mysteries, we do have a modest understanding of the religious practices performed inside the Telesterion based on the content found in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. What we do know indicates that initiates imitated what Demeter herself had done while looking for her daughter (Johnston, 2013, p. 379). After fasting for a day, just as Demeter had fasted while grieving for Persephone, the initiates then drank the kykeon. It was a barley drink mixed with pennyroyal, a type of mint, that Demeter had drunk at the end of her ten day fast in Eleusis. As previously stated we have little idea of what actually happened inside the Telesterion but a dramatic reenactment of the myth possibly took place, reinforcing the reunion between Demeter and Persephone and the joy they felt from being together again.