The Eleusinian Mysteries were annual rites carried out in Ancient Greece by devotees of the Goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone. They were held every year by women initiates who celebrated the Goddess of agriculture and fertility and her daughter’s journey into the Underworld. 

This myth personifies the hero’s journey with the cycle of descent, searching, and then ascent back into reunion with the Mother. For initiates, the death and rebirth of Persephone symbolized immortality and the eternity of the afterlife. 

The ceremonies are widely believed by Classicist scholars to have involved the ingestion of psychedelics, medicines which enable the dissolution of ego identity, aka “ego death”. The widely held belief was, “If you die before you die, you won’t die when you die.” In other words, but conjuring visions of an afterlife, the fear of death lessens its grip, allowing for a full spectrum of vitality that makes life worth living. 

Eleusia is the modern expression of this ancient rite of passage. It is a transcendence of the mind body dualism paradigm that has dominated medicine in the last century, reuniting science with the sacred with the reintroduction of psychedelic medicine ceremonies into mainstream society. It is a remembrance. It is our birthright.