In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, there exists an episode that scholars have not really seemed to understand. Demeter, in her grief, sits beside a well and is discovered by four beautiful maidens as they come to get water. Demeter, under veils, disguises herself as an old woman and asks the girls if they know where she can get work as a housekeeper or nurse. The girls run and tell their mother, Queen Metaneira, and she sends them back to hire her immediately for her “cherished” only son “at any price,” sight unseen.
The urgency here implies that Metaneira guessed that the stranger was likely a god unless there was such a shortage of nurses in the kingdom that even a Queen was excited to find one. That would also mean that because the gods are not benign, she would feel the need to keep an eye on her. So, when Demeter feeds the boy ambrosia (the food of the gods), and at night she “hides him in a fire” which does not burn him, Metaneria was watching. Who can trust a god? When she sees her son in the flames, she cries out, disrupting the process. Maybe she loved him as he was, and didn’t want to lose his humanity. Then Demeter reveals herself as the god Metaneira knew her to be. She lays down the law about what will happen in Eleusis going forward, and gives a great gift to human kind.
Scholars have long been baffled by this part of the story. They have proposed literary purposes for the scene (it’s there to express certain values of divinity and mortality; to develop Demeter’s character, etc.), but not mythological ones. That always seemed weak to me. This is the myth establishing the Cult of Eleusis. When the initiates marched the fourteen miles from Athens to Eleusis, there was an actor playing the role of Demophon. It was quite an honor to have your son selected for this purpose. If it wasn’t that important why would they have done that? I think Demeter puts Demophon into a pre-Christian version of “the fire that consumes but does not destroy.” The church father Origen of Alexandria in 348 CE, argued that this kind of spiritual fire “refines the soul but the soul survives the fire.” But clearly, Christians did not invent the concept – or the practice, because it predates them.
This metaphor perfectly describes the experience I have of psychedelics. When I consumed the food of the gods, I had the strong sense that an overriding divine intelligence knew exactly what it was doing with me, but it was intensely uncomfortable, partly because I hate being out of control. At times, I was terrified that I was dying, and in other moments I was overwhelmed with the wish to die and simply be done with it. Then, I saw it: this is my own personal distance dance with death – terror and longing. This huge Gordian knot of energy was running under the surface controlling everything. What had been white noise in my psyche became quite loud – and distinct. I understood how much energy it took for me to stay on top of that – in order to ignore it and carry on. Living without it felt like I had taken off one hundred pounds of wet fur coat and now I could dance.
The “fire that burns but does not destroy,” removes psychological dross like that. With or without drugs, it is profoundly uncomfortable. Some scholars believe that the rites must have included a psychoactive drug, so I began to wonder if this episode in the story isn’t there to demonstrate the process of what actually transpired in Demeter’s rites. They would undergo this ultimate purification - the means by which she intended to ensure that the initiates would not only enjoy a successful entrance into a happy afterlife, but have a better, happier and more productive life on earth.