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    The Salmon Mysteries: A Guidebook to a Reimagining of the Eleusinian Mysteries
    The Salmon Mysteries: A Guidebook to a Reimagining of the Eleusinian Mysteries
    The Salmon Mysteries: A Guidebook to a Reimagining of the Eleusinian Mysteries
    Ebook99 pages1 hour

    The Salmon Mysteries: A Guidebook to a Reimagining of the Eleusinian Mysteries

    By Kim Antieau

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    About this ebook

    Demeter’s search for Persephone, her daughter lost in the underworld, inspired the Eleusinian Mysteries, a 9 day celebration so powerful much of it remains a secret to this day. Now, in a radical reimagining of this potent & ancient story, Antieau updates the tale for modern sensibilities. The Salmon Mysteries is mystical inspiration and a practical tool for transforming your life and community.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreen Snake Publishing
    Release dateDec 30, 2010
    ISBN9781458076533
    The Salmon Mysteries: A Guidebook to a Reimagining of the Eleusinian Mysteries
    Author

    Kim Antieau

    Kim Antieau is the author of Mercy, Unbound. She lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest.

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      Book preview

      The Salmon Mysteries - Kim Antieau

      The Salmon Mysteries:

      A Guidebook to a Reimagining

      of the Eleusinian Mysteries

      2nd edition

      Kim Antieau

      Published by Green Snake Publishing

      Copyright © 2010 by Kim Antieau

      All rights reserved. Used by permission.

      Discover other titles by this author on Smashwords.com.

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      The Salmon Mysteries:

      A Guidebook to a Reimagining

      of the Eleusinian Mysteries

      2nd edition

      Kim Antieau

      For Marija Gimbutas:

      We will not forget.

      With love and gratitude to

      Vicki Noble, Demetra George, and Patricia Monaghan:

      Amazons all, you are my heras.

      Special thanks to Ruth Ford Biersdorf for her incredible attention to detail and her kindness and generosity.

      Designed by Mario Milosevic.

      Cover image by Joanna Powell Colbert.

      Special thanks to Lucia Ploskey.

      With hope for Peace,

      I send The Salmon Mysteries out into the world.

      May the Nch’I-Wana soon run red with wild salmon again.

      Contents

      Preface to The Salmon Mysteries

      A Word About Words and Other Things

      Introduction to The Mystai Guidebook

      The Salmon Mysteries: A Reimagining of the Demeter and Persephone Myth

      A Little Herstory, or How to Become Mythwise

      What Happened in Eleusis?

      How Should You Prepare?

      Day One: Day of Commitment

      Day Two: Day of Gathering

      Day Three: Day of Purification

      Day Four: Day of Coyote

      Day Five: Day of Snake

      Day Six: Procession Day

      Day Seven: Day of the Bear

      Day Eight: Mysteriotides Nychtes, Night of the Mysteries

      Day of Mystery

      Day Nine: Day of the Salmon

      Song of the Salmon

      Notes

      Bibliography

      Preface to The Salmon Mysteries

      She is the mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all.

      —Hildegard of Bingen, translated by Gabriele Uhlein

      The body cannot he whole alone. Persons cannot he whole alone.... To try and heal the body alone is to collaborate in the destruction of the body. Healing is impossible in loneliness.

      —Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America

      Welcome to the Mysteries! The Eleusinian Mysteries have fascinated me for years. After all, what happened on the last two nights of this nine-day celebration and worship of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone had been kept secret for over 3,000 years despite the participation of thousands of people. The more I studied the Mysteries, however, the less I was interested in solving a mystery. Instead I wondered what it would have been like to worship a goddess all of my life: to think of the Divine as female. To see representations of Her everywhere, artwork where someone with a body like mine was Goddess. It gave me chills.

      I believe we may be hardwired for cyclical activity—for routine, ceremonies, celebrations. My fondest memories of childhood are of Halloween, Christmas, and Easter. Most of the actual celebrations blur into one mysterious Halloween, one mystical Christmas, and one colorful Easter; each year is not distinguishable from the other, but the act of celebrating in a similar manner on each holiday became touchstones of stability in the ever-changing life of a child.

      I was raised Catholic but left that religion long ago because its rituals and doctrines were meaningless to me. The lack of respect for and exclusion of women in every organized religion I studied kept me far from any thought of the Divine until I rediscovered what I had known as a child and forgotten as an adult: the Divine is in Nature. Nature is always present, always producing air for me to breathe, water I can drink, and food I can eat. She is the ultimate Mother. When I learned that our ancestors had most likely worshipped the Earth as Goddess and lived in relative peace and harmony with Her and one another, my entire worldview changed.

      I realized we didn’t have to be killers. Those who said humans were biologically predetermined to kill each other and destroy the environment didn’t know the truth; life did not have to be about death, dying, and killing. Death was only part of a lifelong cycle. Men killing people for eternity (and it was usually men doing the killing) was not the only reality or the only story.

      We needed a new story.

      We needed a new way of seeing the world, of being in the world.

      We needed a new cycle—one that was not permeated with violence.

      At the core of the Demeter and Persephone myth, underneath the parts added by patriarchal storytellers that I stripped away like layers of ugly old paint, is a story of love, cyclical change, and rebirth: a story for our times.

      Although I set The Salmon Mysteries here in the Pacific Northwest and it deals with the wild salmon and their slide toward extinction, The Salmon Mysteries could take place anywhere. Just as The Eleusinian Mysteries were most likely adapted from Cretan ceremonies to fit into Greek society, so The Salmon Mysteries can be adapted to wherever you make your home. You may not live alongside a Big River, but a river (or another body of water) figures into your ecological life, whether you are aware of it or not.

      Waterways all over our country—and the world—are in great peril. The sacred salmon is extinct in many places already. But the salmon could just as well be the sacred owl, redwood, jaguar, bear, ladyslipper, or hummingbird; they are by their very Nature sacred, holy. The word holy comes from kailo which means ‘whole, hale, uninjured, health.’ The existence (or extinction) of the salmon, owl, jaguar and other species indicates whether our environment is whole, healthy, hale.

      I see The Salmon Mysteries as a way of life and an annual celebration, something which will bring positive change in the world and become a touchstone of joy and stability in our lives. Adapt it to your own community and to whatever time of year seems appropriate. Make it meaningful to you, and let me know how it goes.

      A Word about Words and Other Things

      The fields belong to woman...The mystery astounds her. And she is the mystery, the fields belong to woman.

      —Betty De Shong Meador

      A mystes was an initiate into the Mysteries. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, the mystai began their preparation six months earlier

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