The Thesmophoria – Ancient Greek Thanksgiving – Harvest Festival

 

 

The Thesmophoria was a festival held in honour of Demeter, goddess of the harvest and agriculture and her daughter Persephone, goddess of the Underworld.

The festival was celebrated in the month of Maimakterion, the fifth month of the Attic calendar which corresponds to late October and early November in the modern Gregorian calendar.

The Thesmophoria was not limited to Athens; on the contrary it was one of the most widely-celebrated festivals in the Greek world.

 The festival was famously parodied in Aristophanes‘s comedy “Thesmophoriazusae.”

 

The Attic Calendar

 

 

The Attic or Athenian calendar, exclusive to the goings on of the Athenians, was only one of the many ancient Greek calendars.

 It was a festival calendar consisting of twelve months, most of them named after a festival or a god and was created solely to remind the Athenians of the more than eighty yearly celebrations, plus the more than sixty God’s Birthdays, which were celebrated monthly rather than yearly.

Now you know how the saying “Party like a Greek” came about!

 

The Thesmophoria Festival

 

 

The Thesmophoria was a sort of modern day thanksgiving or harvest festival, a strictly women only three day event, dedicated to Demeter, goddess of agriculture and Persephone, her daughter, who was kidnapped by Hades, the god of the underworld.

Persephone’s adventure reflects the cycle of life, death and resurrection.

Symbolically Persephone represents the seed, which in ancient Greece was buried in bins in the ground and then opened during the sowing season for planting.

The festival, one of the most widely celebrated in the Greek world, commemorated the end of the harvesting season.

It was also a time to give thanks for abundant crops and for Persephone’s return from the Underworld when, in gratitude for the return of her daughter, Demeter gave the gift of agriculture to mankind.

 

The Abduction of Persephone

 

 

Persephone had been assigned the task of painting all the flowers of the earth but before she could complete her task, she was whisked away by Hades, god of the underworld, who had fallen in love with her at first sight and carried her off to his kingdom, the Underworld.

Demeter, mad with sorrow, hunted everywhere for Persephone, going as far as to disguise herself as an old lady with a lighted torch in her hands and roamed the Earth for ninety days.

Finally, the sun god Helios took pity on Demeter and told her that Hades had carried Persephone off to his underworld.

 

 

A Bargain is Agreed Upon

 

Demeter found Hades and they struck a bargain.

Persephone would live four months on Earth, with the living and eight months in the underworld. (The number of months spent in each place differs, depending on which story is read).

Before being set free from the underworld, Persephone was persuaded to eat six pomegranate seeds, to make sure she returned to the underworld when her time on Earth was up.

 (In ancient mythology, to eat the fruit of one’s captor meant that one would have to return to that captor)

 

 

In retaliation for the abduction of her daughter, Demeter caused a terrible drought in which the people suffered and starved, depriving the gods of sacrifice and worship.

During the months Persephone spent above ground with her mother, the world was fruitful however, when Persephone was in the underworld, the plants withered and died (This explains the seasons).

Persephone’s rebirth is symbolic of the revival of all plant life and a symbol of eternal life flowing from one generation to another.

The myth addresses the theory of transformation and the cycle of life; existence does not end with death; there is no death, only change from one state of being to another.

This concept is more or less the foundation of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

 

Demeter – Persephone

 And

 The Eleusinian Mysteries

 

 

This myth of Persephone, one of disappearing and reappearing, or birth and re-birth, was the origin of many festivals in ancient Greece, including  the Eleusinian Mysteries.whose secrets were so closely guarded little is known about them.

The Mysteries were intended to take man to another level; a divine place where he became a god and consequently immortal.

The main goal was sanctification of the soul, a physical, emotional and spiritual cleansing.

The rituals revolved around the connection between life and death and the myth of Demeter, goddess of life and agriculture and her daughter Persephone, goddess of death and Queen of the Underworld (Hades).

In the same way that Persephone, against her wishes, visited the land of the dead and returned to that of the living each year, so would every human die only to live again on another level of existence or in another body.

It’s worth mentioning here that the myth of Demeter and Persephone is just that, a myth, however the mysteries themselves actually happened, they were a reality, not a myth.

 

The Three Days of the Thesmophoria

 

The Thesmophoria is spread out over three days; day one was named Anodos, day two Nesteia and the third and last day, Kalligeneia.

The festival was a strictly women only affair, a sort of ‘women only symposium’, men were not even allowed to learn about the rites and rituals that went down there.

 Funnily enough though, the men had a legal and moral duty to finance their wives’ expenses for these jollies!

For the duration of the festival women were not even allowed to sleep with their husbands and before the start of the celebrations, were required to go through purification rituals performed at the temples.

 

Anodos

The Ascent

 

 

On the first day of the Thesmophoria, known as Anodos, “the ascent”, most likely owing to the fact that the women formed a torch-lit procession and “ascended” to the shrine called the Thesmophorion on this first day, where the first fruits of the harvest were offered to Demeter.

Another take on this is that it could refer to the ascent of Persephone from the underworld, which was also celebrated at the festival.

Then again it could be that the “ascent” had a double meaning; the women climbing the hill to the temple, were echoing Persephone’s climb from the underworld back to Earth.

Preparations for the festival were made, such as setting up the tents which would be home to the women for the next three days

In Athens the site of the Thesmophorium is thought to have been near the Pnyx hill.

 

 

Nesteia

A Day of Fasting

 

The second day, the nesteia, was a day of fasting and intense mourning, copying Demeter’s mourning for the loss of her daughter.

 The women would walk in procession, around the fields carrying torches representing the power of Demeter.

At sunset on the second day, the women broke their fast with an alcoholic barley drink called kykeon, again, in keeping with the myth of how Demeter broke her fast.

Kykeon was an Ancient Greek drink, there are various recipes, some were made with wine and grated cheese but it was usually made from water, barley and the naturally occurring substance, ergot; fungi that grows on rye and other grasses such as wheat and contains LSD-like psychedelic alkaloids.

The alcoholic beverage coupled with an already fasting state could impact the caused the women to lose all inhibitions resulting in “freedom of speech”, or shall we say, dirty jokes and insinuative conversations and wine by the urn!

Actually, it’s a known fact that profanity was celebrated in the Thesmophoria and at other festivals connected with Demeter and the powers of reproduction

 

Kalligeneia

The Beautiful Birth

 

The third day of the Thesmophoria was kalligeneia, meaning “beautiful birth”, was dedicated to the fertility of women.

On this, the final day of festivities, the women prayed to the Eleusinian nursemaid of Demeter, known as Kalligeneia, asking for divine protection over their own fertility.

This kalligeneia or “beautiful birth” depicted the resurrection or rebirth of Persephone’s resurrection or rebirth.

 

The Sacrificial Pig

 

 

A characteristic ritual of the Thesmophoria was the sacrifice of a pig and their remains being put into pits called megara.

Sometime later, the remains were retrieved from the pits and were then placed on altars as offerings to Persephone and Demeter, along with cakes baked in the shape of snakes and phalluses.

This sacrificial pig ritual can be explained by referring back to the myth of Persephone.

If you remember, at the time when she was abducted by Hades, she was gathering flowers in a field.

There happened to be a swineherd, a man named Eubulis, there in the field at the same time as Persephone, he and his pigs also vanished into the Underworld along with her.

 

 

Excavations around the areas where the Thesmophoria took place, have revealed offerings in the shape of a pig and clay models showing either a female worshiper, or even Demeter herself, carrying a pig.

 

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