...roughly the distance between the Diplon gate in the Kerameikos and the entrance to Eleusis. I wish my feet could vouch that number, but I'll try to actually walk the Way again sometime next Fall. )
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Thursday, October 29, 2015
This visit to the center of the known universe called
Eleusis has been
so long in coming. I was scheduled to visit in 1982, then got deferred to 1994, then again to 2007. I finally made it to Greece last year, but alas! not to the Sacred Way.
So when I arrived to Athens earlier this week, I could barely settle down enough to actually envision
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| Diplon Gate - where the Way begins. |
the trip. Each day seemed to be consumed by one nervous fidgeting or another, gathering gifts, scrying maps, am I awake enough? relaxed enough? alert enough? Oh, and now it is 1 or 4 or not-oclock, too late to make a journey that seemed too close too far too much too bright too easy too strange to actually accomplish. Today.
Eleusis. Right there. Right,
right there. A mere 20 kilometers; a whole 12 miles... but I'll lay some part of my hesitation on Google's cock-eyed sense of space. Hey Google: the american mile ≠ 1.6 kilometers in primate cities. Something about the sheer foldedness of Euro or Eurodoppel urbanity boggles your cartographic crow. You need to learn to measure
this space in circles. Or something.
In the end I had to resort to self-trickery, mumbling that I was just going out - to Syntagma Square or Kerameikos (the beginning of the Sacred Way) and see what happens. I did 'accidentally' buy the offering, and remember that I am carrying a split of wine and corkscrew. Oh, and ghast-but-not-least, pack the children's ashes. Sitting in the biggest Starbucks on the planet, lo! it turns out I am perhaps 10 blocks from what may be a foolproof bus straight to modern-day Elefsina, the little industrial town which envelopes the sacred site.
The walk: 10 blocks between Starbucks and the bus stop is low-rent merchantile - a million trinkets, bags, scarves, aluminum pots, buckets of nails, motor oil; then several long streets of open-bag spice houses - 30 gallon sacks of oregon, turmeric, vanilla bean, annatto churning from doorless storefronts. I realize I am looking at African spices when the handwoven headscarves block my view and people with skin like burnt gold rumble along beside me.
This is the Omonia district. I am told it is a 'rough' neighborhood. I find it alive and noble. The Way is starting to quietly slip under my tread; somehow my shadow gets thinner and the street signs are easier to read.
Thea Zoe, 'She Lives.' I hear this resounding first in the back of my attention, then slowly elbowing up to my voice.
"Zöés Thea," I say to the Orthodox priest haggling over a new suitcase. He looks up, a little annoyed until he sees that I am standing fully in the sound of it. His eyebrows go up. Then to the imam who has buttonholed a couple of young, anxious-looking men. The shaikh won't divert his gaze, but one of his audience turns and attends - then laughs gently. I touch his sleeve and keep walking.
The third time it falls from my lips, there is the bus: A-16 to Elefsina. I follow it around the park, only to find that I have to buy a ticket from a kiosk that is actually closed. The driver just shrugs, waves me in.
About halfway there, tears begin to flow. Just as on Tuesday - quiet tears, some expression of reverence; not at all the violent weeping I have endured since Quentin's death. I weep as if I am unforgetting something essential, washing something away that has obscured my heart. Then, it just stops. It stops without ever truly revealing why it started.
Hopping off of the bus, I wonder how the
Eiros Odos got to be 3 city blocks from the entrance to Eleusis as I turn left and head toward the bay. Once at the iron gate,
oh noes! the site has been closed for an hour. So like any resourceful
mystes, I stalk the perimeter till I find a low spot in the fence. . .
Once over, of course I have the place to myself. Most of my discoveries from that point will have to stay behind the pennyroyal veil, but the place was utterly familiar - each part known before I had arrived. The entrance to Plouton's realm, for example, was clear to me from the first photo -- one that came without a caption. And which, upon my arrival, was confirmed by this sign . . .
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| Netherstep |
One of the features of that shadowy escarpment was a deep piercing into the ground, just east of the cavern. I've never seen it photographed or mentioned in any description. It isn't the kallichoron, the public well of the Dancers found on the far Southern (most public) side of the site; just a hole about 3 feet in diameter - dark, simple, rimless and very,
very deep. I got the same onyx thrill from seeing it that I experienced the first time I approached the fountaine d'Vauclaus, which is a hell-gate of no small puissance. With the same warning:
approach me not. I didn't even make offering to this one, just acknowledged its power and kept moving.
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| The Mirthless Rock |
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Impossible garden
|
I came into Eleusis from an odd, northwestern angle, one covered by woods and grasses. The Eastern opening -- where initiates and supplicants entered for the Greater and Lesser Mysteries -- was the standard path, but since I was there after-hours I stepped in where the Dadouchos stood and witnessed anyone who spoke Greek (slave or free woman, citizen or citiless) come for instruction and rites.
Approaching the Way, I took a photo of myself in a shrinehouse, seated on a marble pedestal where the statue of the Mother would have been. On the South side of the road I found a small footprint for another shrine, where I surmised the Daughter would have been shown. Saw with my eye's mind the
Dadouchos raising and lowering torches in front of the Icons, just long enough to impress the imagination.
When I went to the Oracle near Macedonia last year it was very clear that I could not tread the precinct in shoes; I took them off in a slow drizzle and a big white dog named Hector laid down on them, keeping them warm and dry for 3 hours. Though I have no clear idea if that Oracle and Eleusis fell under the same orders, in
no wise could I set foot on the Way wearing shoes. I removed and placed them to the left of the little bridge shown (going over the trench which was the last known track of the Eridanos); then carefully, so carefully placed my feet on the luminous blue marble of the Way.
The most astonishing thing was its texture - a surface both tough and pliant, like blue beeswax that had somehow been annealed, hardened by the thousands, possibly millions of people who had trod the Way.
To the right the hill curved up to a spot overlooking the Sea, to the left a complex of baths and sheltered spaces for meditating and offering and celebrating. Never have I been in a 'religious' space that seemed so joyful. Demeter had found Kore; she found her and defied Death himself for the recovery of her daughter. Of course there was joy.
I recognized this intellectually, but my own experience is still so
otherwise that I could only 'acknowledge' (not quite feel) it.
The public side of Eleusis was calling me, so I wandered south of the Way, sitting for what I thought would be only a moment under a solitary tree. At this writing the species is still unclear, but it was unlike any I have ever touched. It had a canopy that reached all the way to the ground, and its greendark was punctuated by maybe a thousand bees, all humming, seeking, spinning in the viridian gloom. The bark, almost like skin, was twinkling, glittering in the westering light. I thought it was sap, but was not in the least bit sticky. But the most remarkable feature was the scent - savory like the inside of a man's thigh, sweet like the back of a woman's neck - in the same breath.
It may be a type of myrtle; I have found reference to myrtle being sacred to both Aphrodite and Demeter. Anyway, this tree is where I finally paid my respects, pouring the wine and ashes into the dripline; sitting quietly, feeling the interface between Dion to the North and Demeter here in Attica. It is a dialogue long unbeheard, but one that may be finding new strength.
Zöes Thea.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(As I was doing some research for this post, I came across a blog by one 'Sheila Rose Bright' who happened to have
also made her trek to Eleusis on October 29 -- though it seems to have been in 2002.
Her entry is worth a look.)
One of them just popped up, but it is the protocol I know nothing about - so we'll see if it makes a difference. The other one is still stuck in Athens, in Customs. I have no idea what it will take to loosen up that clinch. But returning to Athens is not in the budget. 
