The Maidens

by Alex Michaelides

loss had to be psychologically accepted and that person relinquished, or else you ran the risk of succumbing to pathological mourning, which he called melancholia—and we call depression.

We all secretly hope that tragedy will only ever happen to other people. But Mariana knew, sooner or later, it happens to you.

The temple was dedicated to Demeter, goddess of the harvest—goddess of life—and to her daughter, Persephone—goddess of death. The two goddesses were often worshipped together, two sides of the same coin—mother and daughter, life and death. In Greek, Persephone was known simply as Kore, meaning “maiden.

I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it when I sorrow most; ’Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all …

It was a marble relief of two women, standing on either side of a nude male youth, each with her right hand extended toward him.

“These two goddesses,” he said, “are about to initiate a young man into the secret cult of Eleusis. They are, of course, Demeter and her daughter, Persephone.”

“When she lost her daughter at Eleusis, Demeter plunged the world into wintry darkness, until Zeus was forced to intervene. He allowed Persephone to return from the dead, every year, for six months, which is our spring and summer. And then, for the six months she resides in the Underworld, we have fall and winter. Light and dark—life and death. This journey Persephone goes on—from life to death and back again—gave birth to the cult of Eleusis. And there, at Eleusis, at the entry point to the Underworld, you too could take part in this secret rite—that gives you the same experience as the goddess.”

“The exact nature of the rites at Eleusis have remained secret for thousands of years,” he said. “The rites, the mysteries, they were ‘unspeakable’—because they were an attempt to initiate us into something beyond words. People who experienced them were never the same again. There were stories of visions and ghostly visitations and journeys to the afterlife. As the rites were open to everyone—men, women, slaves, or children—you didn’t even have to be Greek. The only requirement was that you understood Greek, so you could understand what was being said to you. In preparation, you had a drink called kykeon—which was made of barley. And on this particular barley there was a black fungus called ergot, which had hallucinogenic properties; thousands of years later, LSD would be made from it. Whether the Greeks knew it or not, they were all tripping slightly. Which might account for some of the visions.”