Female Mystery Religion in the Womb of Sicily

Rigoglioso, Marguerite. Female Mystery Religion in the Womb of Sicily, Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion; Atlanta Vol. 21, Iss. 2,  (Fall 2005): 5-29,161

A feminist methodology.

Rigoglioso explores the mythology surrounding Lake Pergusa as well as archeology confirming that religion centered on Demeter on Persephone and their indigenous precursors was located there possibly as far back as the Paleolithic period. Her construction of the menstruating, initiation, healing, and funerary rituals shows how closely women connected their bodies and life passages with the natural environment surrounding the lake.

There is a lake, of waters clear and deep,

Not far from the walls of Enna, called Fergus.

Even Cayster never heard

Such singing of swans, so many have nested here;

With dark branches, a wood gives shade,

Encircling the lake as though to defend it;

Here flowers always bloom, winter never falls,

Here eternal spring smiles.

-Ovid, Metamorphoses

The author goes on to say 

Most of this scholarship discusses these divinities and their rites-principally the Thesmophoria and the Greater and Lesser Mysteries-as part of a religion that was primarily a Greek phenomenon whose main center was at Eleusis, just outside Athens. The majority of such scholarship is explicitly or implicitly androcentric, as it is based on written records dating to times when patriarchy was clearly established in Greece and the rites at Eleusis were subject to the control of the Athenian state.

and the paper examines what looks like the origin of the religion using a feminist approach, equating the lake with the symbol of the female body both divine and human, women's rites of passage and what was essentially a female centred religion.
The lake turns red with certain algae once a year, equated with blood perhaps.

The twentieth-century discovery of the archaeological site known as Cozzo Matrice, a plateau situated less than a quarter mile from the lake, whose name means "hill of the Mother," has provided abundant evidence that Lake Pergusa was once the location of an important religious center dedicated to female deities. Ceramic material found there dates to as early as 4000 BCE, and remains of circular and elliptical huts overlooking the lake date to 2500 BCE.5 The presence of circular enclosures, which in Paleolithic and Neolithic Europe symbolized the "womb" of the female divinity,6 suggests that this site was probably sacred to a goddess or goddesses from very early times.

The paper discussed the symbolism of the birds, as per Ovid and the pomegranate. I find the pomegranate interesting as it is the symbol of many religions, including the Jewish mystery religion of Kabbalah. Her the pomegranate symbolises the 316 mitzvas ( good deeds) of the covenant with God. The author says the pomegranate was used as an ancient form of birth control and menstruation. The symbol of the young woman prior to bearing child and the mother are reflected in the relationship between Persephone and Demeter. Hades is important here as the thief who took Persephone, the male, the underworld. I think here of the chthonic religions of women, private religions. 

Her abduction is initiated by picking the narcissus, left for her by Hades  to entice her into the ravine and into the underworld. I think here of self love, the story of the male narcissus and his rejection of the magical faery. The author notes that the root is related to narcotics, death and numbness.

Cicero intimates that "mysterious rites" were conducted in connection with Demeter and Persephone at Enna,60 suggesting that in later GrecoRoman times, formal mystery rites akin to the nine-day Greater Mysteries of Eleusis may have been held there (and, again, by extension, at Lake Pergusa). Given the level of intensity of the initiatory experience at Eleusis, I agree with scholars who contend that the Greek mysteries most likely involved the use of entheogens;61 and, if the Sicilian mystery rites were indeed similar to their Greek counterparts, they thus involved the use of such sacred medicines as well. I therefore suggest that such mystery rites-both at Enna-Pergusa and in Greece-may have originated in more remote times in the kinds of female initiatory rituals I am describing here, in which women may have used the sacred medicines they discovered and developed through their intimate work with plants.62

I am building here on Lincoln's argument that the Eleusinian Mysteries emerged out of female puberty rites whose origins predated the arrival of the Indo-Europeans in the Greek regions (ca. 1800 BCE?). Lincoln posits that the advent of the Indo-Europeans, whose religious system emphasized male deities, ideologies, and rituals, in contrast to the earlier matrifocal religion of the indigenous European peoples, spelled the decline of the importance of rituals that addressed the concerns of women. As Greece transformed from a predominantly tribal society into an urban one, as population increased, and as social roles became more differentiated, mandatory initiatory rituals became impractical. Tribal initiations became voluntary cults, and the puberty ritual related to Demeter and Persephone or their precursors was thereby transformed into the Eleusinian Mysteries celebration.

The author makes a link with Egyptian female religion

In a related argument, Jane Harrison contends that the Eleusinian Mysteries emerged out of the women-only ritual of the Thesmophoria,64 a rite that was also, as mentioned, conducted at Lake Pergusa. This festival was a ritual of great antiquity, having been brought to Greece by women from Egypt, according to Herodotus.

Funerary Rituals

Given that Lake Pergusa, like Lake Avemus, was considered to be a portal to the underworld, it is reasonable to suppose that rituals at the Sicilian lake may also have included death rites. Once more following on Grahn, death rites in Sicily, like all rituals, would have originally emerged out of the "menstrual mind." Death is connected with menstruation by virtue of the fact that the moon, with which women's cycles are synchronized under natural conditions, goes dark for three days. It is during this "death" phase of the moon that women who live in the absence of electric lights will menstruate. Furthermore, notes Noble, internally women "die" every month at the time of their menstrual period. They may not consciously relate to their menstruation as a shamanic death and rebirth each month, she observes, but their bodies know it as such.91

Thus, women are rendered natural "priestesses" of death. Correspondingly, funerary rites of indigenous peoples are sometimes accompanied by a show of blood, typically induced by the ritual cutting of the face and body, particularly by women.92 The connection between menstruation and death explains why, in the later Greek period at Lake Fergusa, death was the province of Persephone as queen of the underworld, who was also so intimately connected with the female blood mysteries.

Except for Mithraism, are the ancient mystery religions external to the State because they celebrate the older matriarchal society, the power of women? It is hard to imagine given that the State gods were equally male and female. Is the religion a link to the land as symbol of god? Does water mean cleanliness, like the mikvah or baptism in water?