The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Eliade, Mircea S 133

all night in the hall. Toward the end of the night they received some sort of revelation. Taking part in the mysteries was supposed to give people a better afterlife. The mysteries of Eleusis had some connec tion to the story of Demeter and her daughter Kore or Persephone. When the god of the underworld, Hades, abducted Persephone, her mother Demeter, the goddess of crops, went into mourning, and the plants on earth died. Eventually Demeter found her daughter in the underworld and negotiated her release. But because Persephone had eaten some seeds of a pomegranate, she could only spend six months of the year on the earth, when plant life flourished; during the other six months, when Kore was in the underworld, plants died. As a result, most scholars connect Kore with the sea sonal growth of vegetation. In fact, ancient rumors suggest that the revelation in Eleusis had some thing to do with an ear of grain. In any case, in the early 390s C . E . the Roman Emperor Theodosius, a Christian, outlawed the mysteries. In 395 invaders sacked Eleusis. The mysteries disappeared forever. Eliade, Mircea (1907–1986) in the second half of the 20th century, one of the most influential scholars of religion and myth Eliade, born in Rumania, was interested as a child in biology. His most creative contributions to the study of religion resemble an area in biology known as “morphology,” the study of underlying forms and patterns. It has also been important in the study of language. Eliade’s work explored the “morphology” of “hierophany.” The idea is not as complicated as the words. Eliade believed that one aspect made all reli gions special: In religion, the Sacred revealed itself. He believed further that the Sacred revealed itself in certain forms or patterns that different religions shared. He called these patterns “ ARCHETYPES .” According to Eliade, any aspect of the world could be and has been a means for revealing the Sacred. But some have been more prominent than others. These include natural phenomena like the

SIGNIFICANCE Although Jews, Christians, and Muslims may be reluctant to trace their beliefs and practices back to ancient Egyptian religion, some similarities are certainly suggestive. The name M OSES is Egyptian. Although Jewish MONOTHEISM almost certainly does not derive from the religion of A KHENATON , as some have suggested, J UDAISM probably preserves gen eral cultural elements that spread from Egypt to ancient Phoenicia, Israel, and Judah. The influen tial Neo-Platonic philosopher Plotinus thought of the universe as emanating from a single principle. Triads of Egyptian gods may have influenced the Christian notion of the TRINITY . At Luxor near The bes, Muslims hold processions of boats at the feast of the SAINT Abul Hagag. They look much like pro cessions at ancient Egyptian festivals. Further reading: Adolf Erman, A Handbook of Egyptian Religion (Boston: Longwood, 1977); Donald B. Redford, ed., The Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); John H. Taylor, Death and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); Claude Traunecker, The Gods of Egypt (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2001). Eleusis A town in ancient Greece near Athens that hosted the most famous mysteries in the ancient world ( see MYSTERY RELIGIONS ). The Eleusin ian mysteries were celebrated in the fall during our months of September and October. Originally only Athenians could participate. Later, all Greeks were admitted to the mysteries, and later still people throughout the Roman empire. At the beginning of the mysteries, participants gathered at Athens for an assembly. Then they bathed in the ocean and fasted for three days. After this they marched in a procession from Athens to Eleusis. At the front of the procession was an image of the god Iacchos. No one knows precisely what happened when the participants reached Eleusis, but participants had to give a password to enter the hall of the mysteries, and they spent