Introduction:
"Mortal immortality" is the "core iron law" that runs through Homer's epic poems and even the entire Greek mythological system, and it is also the shackles of fate that all mortal heroes cannot break in their lifetimes.
As described in the Iliad:
"Like the withering of fallen leaves, so do the generations of mankind. The autumn wind blows the leaves to the ground, and when spring comes, the forest will sprout again, and new green leaves will grow, and human beings will also be born in one generation and wither away from one generation. ”
So, can mortals who are subject to fate really only have to embark on the road of "no return" in Hades?
In fact, it is not quite true, although ancient Greek mythology has drawn an insurmountable gap between humans and gods, but the very few outstanding among mortals still retain the possibility of not having to accept the judgment of the underworld and achieve "alternative immortality".
Homer's "The World After Death": Hades and Eleucion
In the ancient Greeks' worldview, death was not the end of life, because there was still a long, inactive, and lonely afterlife, the house of Hades, waiting for them.
According to Homer's Epic:
Deep underground, Hades is a place that is completely dark and inaccessible to sunlight.
After death, the soul will leave the body and float to Hades, and every soul in Hades is an immaterial being without thought, desire, or memory.
From the descriptions of the very few people who have been to Hades such as Orps and Odysseus, it is not difficult to find that the afterlife world ruled by Hades is a place where even heroes give birth to "pale fear"; And the most terrifying thing about Hades is that everyone cannot get rid of the fate of death, and all the horror, cruelty and helplessness here are part of the established destiny that people cannot escape.
It is worth mentioning that Homer's Hades is not an absolutely fair place that operates entirely according to order.
In fact, many "heroes" who bear the wrath of the gods in Hades will suffer after death because of their "blasphemous acts" before death; Just like Orion, the hunter who fell in love with the goddess of dawn, Sisyphus, who kidnapped the god of death, and so on.
The experiences of these people are all a warning to Odysseus that mortal life is limited, gods are immortal, and only by recognizing this essential difference between man and god and facing suffering can we understand the true meaning of destiny.
Of course, there is not only a landscape of suffering and punishment in Hades; The few mortal heroes who are favored by the gods also have the opportunity to enter an "eternal living place" full of elements of peace, happiness and joy - Eleucion.
There, their souls will not only not be brutally punished, but will live comfortably and happily.
Although mortal heroes who can enjoy this "special honor" are rare in ancient Greek mythology, it is undeniable that the existence of "eternal blessed land" still brings great spiritual inspiration to people.
Some scholars believe that Homer named this small "pure land" in the afterlife world Eleucion, perhaps because the name symbolizes "the place struck by lightning", that is, the land blessed by the god king Zeus.
From Menelaus, who was predicted by the "immortal Proteus" to eventually enter the fate of Eleusian, one can roughly guess that one of the prerequisites for entering this blessed land - to be related to the gods on Mount Olympus and to constantly strive to defend the authority of the gods in his limited life.
In other words, entering Homer's postmortem of Elysium has a very high "threshold" requirement, and mortal heroes such as Agamemnon are not eligible for eternal life; Because the privilege of eternal life after death is equivalent to half a foot stepping into the ranks of gods, and the "small" Olympian gods cannot generously accept those mortal heroes who have caused them a lot of trouble before their death.
As a paradise that is incompatible with the rules of Hades, Eleucion not only has frighteningly high entry standards, but also has an excellent geographical environment independent of the underworld.
From the Odyssey:
Eleucion in Homeric religion is likely to be in opposition to the underworld, like Hesiod's island of bliss, located "on the edge of the earth, on the shore of the ocean Okeanos."
Compared to the underworld, which never shines sunlight, Eleucion is more like a "paradise of the dead" modeled after the Olympian god realm—Homer says that it "does not blow strong winds, never rains, does not see any snowflakes, and stretches out in space, without any clouds, shrouded in bright white light." ”
It is a good shelter with good weather and sunshine, full of life and vitality.
Similar to the descriptions of the afterlife in the Christian and Buddhist teachings that prevailed in later generations, Homer's Eleucion covers almost all the beautiful imaginations of the living about the afterlife.
As an ideal "afterlife", although the absolute boundary between the human and divine realms is maintained here, there is also the beauty of immortality, in other words, in addition to not being able to return to the human world, Eleucion has been able to satisfy all people's fantasies about the afterlife.
In a way, the Eleucion depicted in Homer's epic poem and the underworld represent two diametrically opposed ideas of the afterlife, the former symbolizing good redemption and making people no longer afraid of death, and the latter emphasizing punishment and indoctrination, which makes people full of fear of the world of the dead.
With these two diametrically opposed circumstances, Homer implicitly conveys an important signal to the world, that in order to achieve the ultimate achievement of "mortal eternal life" and enter the "blessed land" after death, it is necessary to become a hero while fully worshiping the gods.
Because this is not a world where good and evil are always rewarded, for most people, only the present world is the most worthy of their attention.
The Secret of Eleucus: Another Form of "Resurrection from the Dead"
In ancient Greek mythology, although even the powerful gods and mortal heroic emperors could not change the fate of death and achieve the true meaning of "resurrection from the dead", the ancient Greeks at that time never gave up their pursuit of "resurrection" culture.
For example, on the island of Crete, there is a legend that Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos, combined with Dionysus to become a plant goddess who rose from the dead.
These "resurrection" legends often appear along with a series of ancient and mysterious Greek secrets.
According to Parindel, a professor at Oxford University, these occult activities are "remnants of pre-Greek Mother Earth worship" because the vegetation crops that have replaced the land have achieved "immortality" in another way.
Speaking of the most influential secret rituals in ancient Greece, we have to mention the secret ritual of Aeleus.
In Cicero's words, it is a secret ritual that "teaches us not only how to live happily, but also how to deal with death with unfulfilled hope", and it shows in a mystical way the ancient Greeks' quest for a happy afterlife.
As a secret ritual that revolves around the two themes of agricultural production and resurrection from the dead, the secret ritual of Eleucus is dedicated to Demeter and Persephone, two goddesses closely related to land and agricultural production.
According to the Hymn of Demeter:
Soon after Persephone was plundered into the underworld by Hades and forcibly married, her mother Demeter fell into grief and left the earth in desolation; In order not to starve mortals to death, the god king Zeus finally ordered Hades to release Persephone back to earth. But because the woman ate an apple from Hades before returning to the sun, Persephone still stays in the underworld for a third of the year, which is why the earth has a long period of desolation every year.
The Secret Rite of Eleucus was a sacrament and mystical ritual that Demeter showed to King Eleus, on his way down the journey in search of his daughter.
Grateful to the king who had hospitalized him, Demeter not only taught the son of Kerus to farm, but also blessed all who had seen the secret ritual.
It is not difficult to see from the description in the Genealogy that "mortals who can see these things are blessed, and those who fail to participate in this ritual while alive will not be happy after death", it is not difficult to see that the ancient Greeks at that time had closely linked happiness after death with the growth of crops; For them, to attain peace after death, they must devote themselves to the love of the land.
In the more well-known Dionysian sacrifice, the ancient Greeks' love for the land and crops was further demonstrated. Dionysus was revered in large part because he satisfied the demand for abundant yields and gave the ancient Greeks the wine they lived on, consistent with the reason for the worship of Demeter's mother and daughter.
During the annual Eleucus ritual, the ancient Greeks would show their love for the gods and the land in a "mimic-communicating" way; On the first day of the ceremony, the youth of Athens traveled along the holy path to Aleus, from where they retrieved the mysterious "holy relics" that symbolized life or fertility; Later, after bathing and fasting and offering sacrifices, people will perform stories related to the goddess, recreating the whole process of Demeter's search for his daughter, and realizing the harvest and the power of life from the performance.
It is worth mentioning that the Eleucus Ritual is a mystical ritual that is closed to the public and strictly forbidden to outsiders. Unlike the Dionysian sacrifices that indulged in the square, the center of the Eleucus Ritual was a hall that could accommodate thousands of people; And everyone who comes here for the first time to participate in the ceremony needs to be led by an introducer to enter.
Since most of the worshippers and participants of the Eleucus ritual were women, the whole ritual is also considered to be a manifestation of the idea of female worship; In that era of dependent food and limited population, it is not difficult to understand the great concern of the ancient Greeks about fertility and fertility, because Persephone's "resurrection from the dead (that is, from the underworld to the sun)" heralded the replacement of vegetation, and Demeter longed for the return of his daughter, just as mortals longed for the spring return to the earth and began a new round of sowing and cultivation.
From the perspective of the ritual process and meaning, the secret of Eleucus actually tells an alternative "resurrection from the dead" story.
In this story, life and land are organically combined, and the land that gave birth to life gave the ancient Greeks the opportunity to survive, and the ancient Greeks also experienced the meaning of life in the process of participating in the secret ritual.
The "mortal eternal life" of ancient Greek mythology: the desire and of realists alone
To some extent, all the mystical rituals that were popular in the city-state era have more or less something to do with the afterlife; Because the mysterious phenomena contained in them that only devout believers can see contain the code of fate, it is a euphemistic hint given by the gods to believers.
As we all know, the gods of ancient Greek mythology cannot give mortals the privilege of eternal life, even those who are of noble birth, and the sons of gods cannot escape the fate of the judgment of the underworld.
Therefore, in order to achieve eternal life and come to a position one step closer to the gods, the only way to enter the "blessed land" after death is to enter the "blessed land"; Because only in this way can we break the boundary between man and God a little, and exchange the reverence for God before death for a peaceful and happy life after death.
However, Odysseus has already used the experience of a trip to Hades to show that the "achievement" of achieving eternal life after death is not so simple; Because Homeric religion does not pay attention to the practice of happiness after death in the present world, and most of the ancient Greeks are realists who focus on the present, so if you want to "cultivate" a good afterlife or posthumous life, you must first find a spiritual belief for yourself and obtain a shortcut to the "blessed land" with the help of the power of the gods.
Undoubtedly, the so-called "shortcuts" refer to some secrets about the resurrection of the dead that the gods convey to the faithful during rituals or occult ceremonies. In fact, if we see a series of mystical rituals, including the Eliucus Ritual, as an effort by the ancient Greeks to achieve "mortal immortality," then what these rituals have in common is probably the necessary step to achieve immortality after death.
The first common denominator is absolute loyalty to the object of sacrifice.
In contrast to public sacrifices, which are open to everyone and have almost no thresholds, occult ceremonies are only open to a small number of absolutely loyal believers and do not accept any exceptions. In other words, if it is impossible to confirm whether the faith is pure or not, then the host of the secret ritual would rather kill outsiders on the spot than allow the secret to be leaked.
To ensure absolute privacy in the ritual process, the officiator often presents only a small portion of the "miracles" to those who are new to the occult ceremony, rather than allowing them to see the full picture of the miracles that only "senior believers" are qualified to see.
This "differential treatment" raised the threshold of eternal life a little, and also raised the worship of the gods to a higher level, so that the ancient Greeks began to think about how to achieve "eternal life" in the afterlife under the guidance of religion.
The second common denominator is that almost all occult rituals are preceded by sin-cleansing rituals, which places higher and higher demands on the spiritual qualities of believers.
Although there is no description of the good going to heaven and the evil going to hell in ancient Greek religion, it is not difficult to see from the cleansing link in the occult ritual that the gods do not accept sacrifices for the evil. Only believers who are clear in body and mind can hope to receive the love of the gods and achieve happiness in the afterlife.
To some extent, there are many similarities between the ritual cleansing of sins and the idea of confession and atonement in later Christian cultures.
Because the essence of the cleansing link is purification, it is to implant in people's hearts a hint that only noble conduct and spiritual purity can obtain happiness after death, and this hint will subtly change the words and deeds of believers, let people develop in the direction of doing good, and then play a role in purifying the social atmosphere and stabilizing the order of the city-state.
The third common denominator is that the presiding officer of the occult ceremony was not a city-state official, but a hereditary aristocratic family.
The role of aristocratic families in the ceremonial ritual rituals was often closer to that of bishops and high priests in the church than those of city-state officials in charge of military and political power—they were not the holders of secular power, but enjoyed the "privilege" of direct communication and dialogue with the gods.
It was this privilege that placed them partly above the city-state officials and as objects of spiritual worship for the ancient Greeks, and this group of people who dominated the secret ritual and preached the idea of "mortal eternal life" to the general public were the group of people who led the ancient Greeks to pay attention to the afterlife.
To borrow Vernan's words, "The occult establishes a religion of individual salvation, the purpose of which is to transform the individual without relying on social order, to give him a new life, to break away from his status as an ordinary person and to enter another level of life." ”
In other words, the nobles who dominated the occult rituals reinforced the religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks, allowing them to temporarily escape the restrictions of secular laws and briefly devote themselves to the reverence of the gods.
The fourth common denominator is that the final part of the ritual is usually a story of God's suffering, death, and resurrection.
In an age when religious mythology led all Greeks forward, imagine what could be more instructive than experiencing God's experience in person. The final resurrection of the secret ritual reveals the essence of life and the mystery of death to believers, and gives people a glimpse of the mysterious and sacred afterlife.
Although the world of the dead has nothing to do with the daily life of the Greeks, it cannot be directly entered by any means, and ordinary people cannot achieve "resurrection from the dead", but the efforts of the dead can still win a chance for the Greeks to enter the "blessed land" after death and obtain a new life.
The "resurrection story" at the end of the secret ritual also tells people that mortals "live forever" rather than physically, and through the integration between humans and gods, even ordinary people can obtain eternal life in the way of "immortality of the soul".
Brief summary:
From the posthumous Pure Land of Elucion to the secret ritual of Eleuss, the ancient Greeks' pursuit of "mortal non-stop" has never changed.
After taking inspiration from the gods, people who originally focused only on real life began to extend their gaze to the unknown world after death; Eventually, they found a way to achieve mortal eternal life—that is, purification of the body and mind, faith in gods, and the exchange of this earthly effort for happiness after death, which became the object of subsequent religions.
Bibliography:
"Exhortation to the Greeks"
"Republic of Ideals"
Homer's Epic
History of Religious Thought