Respect for nature, sharing resources, accepting one's own mortality, humility, community, equality, sublimation, civilization, peace. These words all describe key ideas Eleusis (modern Greek: Elefsina) could still teach us today.
Archaeologist George E. Mylonas, the ancient site’s excavator, describes how the truth was revealed by the Eleusinian Mysteries to the initiates through what we would call performance, poetry recitations, and exhibitions of objects! We can only speculate which sacred objects revealed the secret of immortality in the then-known world which, already in Antiquity, was maddened by crisis, conflict, war, inequality, injustice.
A Middle East inferno threatens to engulf us, and we will not prevent it as long as we opt for the road to destruction instead of the road to Eleusis.
We need to read more history more often; to double-check news sources, to debate but with respect for the other person's views. It is also time to discuss how we will stop extremists from spreading hate and ugliness even inside the artist community and academia.
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