Phthinoporine Isemeria

#The Festival at a Glance

#The Nature of the Festival

The Autumn Equinox is the mirror of the Spring Equinox. Day and night are again of equal length over the whole earth, the Sun again rises due east and sets due west, and the scales hang level; but this time the dark is gaining. From the 22nd of September the nights lengthen in the north, the light retreats, and the world descends into the inner half of the year.

The Sun enters Libra, the Scales, the only sign of the zodiac that is a thing and not a living creature, because the balance is the thing itself. The Temple keeps the festival on the 21st of September for the whole world, in both hemispheres, because the sign is universal.

It's the festival of Demeter and Persephone, the Two Goddesses, as the Greeks called them without needing to name them, and it's the season of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the most sacred initiatory rite of the ancient world, which were held at Eleusis in the month of Boedromion, from the 15th to the 23rd, for 2,000 years, until the Goths of Alaric burned the hall in 395.

The myth of the Two Goddesses is the myth of descent and return: the Maiden, picking flowers in the meadow, is taken down into the earth by the Lord of the Dead; the Mother searches for 9 days with torches and in her grief withholds the grain, and the race of men nearly perishes; Zeus relents; the Maiden comes up, but she has eaten the pomegranate seed and must return below for a third of every year.

The pattern reaches past agriculture into every spiritual transformation: the soul must descend into the dark, confront what lies hidden, and return changed. The Greater Mysteries enacted that pattern on the initiates themselves, in the hall at Eleusis, in 1 night, and those who came out had, as Isocrates says, sweeter hopes about the end of life and all eternity.

The spiritual value of the Autumn Equinox is initiation and inner descent. This is the time for turning inward: for self-examination, for confronting one's shadows, for beginning the deep work the dark half of the year asks for. The Spring Equinox favoured outward creation, the Magnum Opus begun at the hour of Zeus; the Autumn Equinox favours the inward work, meditation, study, the cultivation of inner power, and the reading, on the level day, of the paper that was written at the other equinox, to see how far the spring's work went.

The Scales are the judge's sign. What the spring began, the autumn judges.

The dark isn't the enemy of the light; it's the other pan. The Queen below is the Maiden above, and the scale is level because she's on both sides.

#The Goddesses of the Festival: Demeter and Persephone

Demeter, the Mother Who Searches

Demeter is the Giver of Grain and the Law-Bearer, whose festival of the first harvest the Temple keeps at Lammas; here she's the Mother who searches.

When the Maiden was taken, sharp grief seized her heart; she tore the veil on her hair, threw a dark cloak over her shoulders, and rushed like a bird over land and sea, and for 9 days wandered the earth with burning torches in her hands, tasting neither ambrosia nor nectar, not bathing, until on the 10th Hekate met her with a torch and the 2 went together to Helios, who sees all and told her the truth (Homeric Hymn 2.40 to 89).

Then she left the Gods and came among men in disguise, and sat by the Maiden Well at Eleusis in the shade of the olive like an old woman, and the daughters of King Keleos took her home. She wouldn't sit on the couch but on a low stool; she wouldn't eat or drink or laugh until Iambe's jokes made her smile; she refused the wine and asked for barley and water with pennyroyal, the kykeon, and drank it “for the sake of the rite” (2.98 to 211).

Then she commanded the temple at Eleusis and taught the rites to Keleos, Eumolpos, Triptolemos and Diokles: “holy rites that no one may transgress or learn of or utter, for great awe of the Gods restrains the voice” (2.473 to 479).

Persephone, the Maiden Who Goes Down

Persephone (Περσεφόνη) has 2 names, and the Greeks were careful with both. Above, in the meadow with her mother, she is Kore, the Maiden; below, on the throne beside her husband, she is Persephone, the Queen of the Dead, “dread Persephone” in Homer (Odyssey 10.491).

She was picking roses and crocus and violets and hyacinth and the narcissus, which Earth grew as a snare by the will of Zeus, and when she reached for it with both hands the earth gaped on the Nysian plain and the Lord, the Receiver of Many, sprang out with his immortal horses and carried her off weeping (Homeric Hymn 2.5 to 20). She ate the pomegranate seed below, and the seed bound her: a third of the year with her husband, 2 thirds with her mother (2.393 to 403).

Her descent is the gift. Without it there would be no Queen below, and without the Queen there's no one to receive the soul. The gold leaves buried with the Bacchic initiates in Italy and Crete name her as the one to whom the released soul reports: I come pure from the pure, Queen of those below, says the soul, and she answers, hail, hail, hail, go to the right, to the holy meadows (Thurii leaves, OF 488 to 490 Bernabé).

In Sumer she is Ereshkigal, Queen of the Great Place, before whom Inanna hung on the hook; in Rome Libera and Proserpina; in the North, Hel. The Temple's Ritual honours her under 3 names as the Queen of the Great Below, She Who Returns, Bringer of Spring, Mother of Zagreus.

The Two Goddesses are 1 Goddess at 2 points of the year: the one who searches and the one who is found, the one above and the one below. The Zevist is both, and the equinox is the day he knows it.

Without the descent there's no Queen, and without the Queen there's no return. The going down is the gift.

#History and the External Conduct of the Greater Mysteries

The Greater Mysteries are the best documented secret in antiquity. What happened inside the hall was never written; what happened outside it, on the road and in the city, was public, and the sources describe it day by day. The Temple sets out the external conduct here as completely as the evidence allows, because the restoration of the festival begins with the outer rite, as the ancients themselves began it.

The Days of Boedromion

The Officials

The Hierophant, “the one who shows the holy things,” came always from the family of the Eumolpidai, descendants of the Eumolpos who sang the first hymn; he held the office for life, lived in continence, and his personal name wasn't spoken while he held it (Lucian, Lexiphanes 10; Eunapius, Vitae sophistarum 7.3). The Daduch, the Torch-Bearer, second in rank, and the Hierokeryx, the Sacred Herald, who made the proclamation and called for silence, came from the family of the Kerykes.

There were also the priestess of Demeter, who lived in the sanctuary and dated the years; the Hierophantides, the 2 priestesses who assisted at the showing; the Iacchagogos who carried the image; the Hydranos who washed the candidates; and the pais aph' hestias, the child initiated “from the hearth,” a boy or girl of a noble family chosen by lot and initiated at public expense on behalf of the whole city (Clinton, The Sacred Officials of the Eleusinian Mysteries, 1974). The Temple's own offices of the night are modelled on these, as its earlier festival pages show.

The Hall

The Telesterion was unlike any other Greek temple: a square hall, enlarged by Pericles' architect Iktinos to hold 3,000, its roof carried on 42 columns in rows, with stepped seats cut into the rock on all 4 sides and an opening in the roof, the opaion, through which the smoke and the light of the great fire went up.

In its centre stood the Anaktoron, the small stone house of the Lord, into which only the Hierophant went, and from which he came out shining at the climax of the night (Plutarch, Pericles 13.7; Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries, 1961, 111 to 135). The floor is still there, and the steps.

Who Walked the Road

Everyone. The proclamation excluded only the murderer and the one who couldn't speak Greek; slaves were initiated, women, children, foreigners. Cicero was initiated, and wrote that of all the things Athens had given the world the Mysteries were the best, since from them “we have learned the beginnings of life and received the way not only to live with joy but to die with a better hope” (De legibus 2.36). Hadrian was initiated, and Marcus Aurelius, who went through all the grades (Historia Augusta, Hadrian 13.1, Marcus 27.1); Nero wasn't, because the herald's proclamation stopped him (Suetonius, Nero 34).

Those who told were punished: Aeschylus was tried for a line in a play and acquitted only because he could prove he hadn't been initiated and so couldn't have known (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1111a); Diagoras of Melos was outlawed with a price on his head; Alcibiades was condemned to death in his absence for parodying the rite at a dinner party (Thucydides 6.28, 6.61; Plutarch, Alcibiades 19 to 22). The silence wasn't a custom; it was the thing itself.

The Greater Mysteries are the best documented secret in antiquity: everything outside the hall was public, and nothing inside it was ever written.

#The Mystery of the Autumn Equinox

The outer festival is the descent of the Maiden. The inner festival is what was shown in the hall.

The ancients named 3 parts of what happened inside and named nothing else: things done, things said, things shown, the dromena, legomena and deiknymena. Plutarch, a priest of Apollo and an initiate, left the nearest thing to a description. The soul at the moment of death, he says, has the same experience as those who are initiated into the great Mysteries, and the Greek language says so, since teleutan, to die, and teleisthai, to be initiated, are the same word.

At first come wanderings and wearisome runnings about and journeys through the dark full of fear and without end; then, before the end, every terror, shuddering and trembling and sweat and amazement; and then a wonderful light meets the wanderer, and pure places and meadows receive him, with voices and dances and the solemnities of holy sounds and holy visions, and he walks free, crowned, among the pure, and looks down on the uninitiated crowd below (fr. 178 Sandbach, in Stobaeus 4.52.49).

Aristotle said it in 1 sentence: the initiate is “not to learn something but to suffer something, and to be put into a certain state” (fr. 15 Rose).

The hostile witnesses preserved 2 more things. Hippolytus, a Christian bishop writing to expose the rite, says that the Hierophant, in the great fire, cried out: the Lady has borne a holy child, Brimo has borne Brimos; and that “the great and wonderful and most perfect epoptic mystery” was an ear of grain, reaped and shown in silence (Refutatio 5.8.39 to 40). He wrote it down to shame it, and it's the holiest sentence he ever wrote.

The same source and Proclus record the 2 words the initiates cried looking up to the sky and down to the earth: hye, kye, rain, conceive (Refutatio 5.7.34; Proclus, In Timaeum 293c). The Father and the Mother in 2 syllables each. Clement preserved the password, the synthema: I fasted; I drank the kykeon; I took from the chest; having worked, I put back into the basket, and from the basket into the chest (Protrepticus 2.21.2). What was in the chest no one wrote.

The password is public and the thing it opens isn't, and that is the shape of every Mystery.

The Zevist reads it inward. The ear of grain is the Maiden who went down and came up, the daughter in the seed, the whole year held in the hand in silence; the one who sees it sees, as Pindar said, “the end of life and its God-given beginning” (fr. 137). The wanderings in the dark are the descent of the soul into its own hidden places, which the dark half of the year asks for; the light that meets the wanderer is the light the equinox promises on the other side of the winter.

The Temple's year is built so that the Lesser Mystery of Imbolc, the purification, leads to the Greater of September, the showing; the one who kept the Feast of Fire rightly is ready for this night.

#The Names of the Goddesses Across the Nations

The names in this table are the same essence under the tongues of different peoples. A Zevist of any nation may address the Two Goddesses under the name that the ancestors of that nation used, provided the essence of the God is understood as one. The Temple sets the Greek name first because the Greek sources preserve the fullest theology; it doesn't set it as the only name.

The ancients themselves did the same: Herodotus wrote Greek names for Egyptian Gods without hesitation, and the Romans wrote Jupiter over every altar of Zeus they found (Herodotus 2.42 to 2.50; Caesar, Gallic War 6.17; Tacitus, Germania 9, 43).

#The Rite of the Autumn Equinox

The Rite stands on the frame of the Standard Ritual and the Advanced Zevist Ritual of the Temple. Whoever knows those knows the skeleton: the bell, the Four Powers, the Invocation to Zeus, the prayer, the burning, the meditation, the closing. The festival adds its own flesh to that skeleton at fixed points. The order below gives every step, so that a Zevist alone and an assembly of 300 perform the same Rite on the same night.

The Rite of the Autumn Equinox has 2 forms. The Night form is kept at home or by a small gathering on the night of 20 to 21 September, and holds the whole festival in 1 night, as the Spring Equinox does. The 9-Day form is kept by the Temple's gatherings from the 15th to the 23rd of September, following the days of Boedromion as the table above gives them, with the Night form on the 20th at its centre.

Both are given here. The Ritual of the Goddess is the Ereshkigal, Persephone, Libera Power Ritual; the Rite of Demeter is the one composed for Thalysia · Consualia · Lammas · Lughnasadh, performed here in its Eleusinian aspect.

Timing of the Night Form

The fast is kept from dawn on the 20th of September: water only, as the Goddess fasted. At dusk the fast is broken with the kykeon, and the Rite begins. Its height is the Psalm's fifth movement, at or near midnight, kept in the dark. At dawn on the 21st the Sun is greeted as it rises due east, and the Plemochoai are poured. The day of the 21st is quiet, inward, a day of study and of the first long meditation of the dark half of the year.

Preparation

• The sea: on the 16th, or on the morning of the 20th, go down to the sea where there's sea, or to a river or lake, and wash in it; failing all of these, a basin of salt water is set on the altar for the washing of the hands and face at the Opening. This is the Halade mystai, and nothing replaces it.
• The fast, from dawn on the 20th.
• The kykeon: barley meal, water, and a sprig of pennyroyal or mint, stirred together in a plain cup, to break the fast at dusk.
• Incense: myrrh, storax, cypress; poppy seeds on the coals.
• Candles: 2 torches or 2 tall candles for the Mother's search; a black or dark violet candle for the Queen below; a white candle for the light at the end of the wanderings, unlit until its moment.
• A pomegranate, cut open on the altar; an ear of grain, or the sheaf kept from Lammas; a myrtle crown for the head, or a sprig of myrtle; a chest or box, closed, on the altar, with nothing in it that the page names.
• 2 vessels for the Plemochoai, small bowls or cups, and water or wine to fill them.
• The paper of the Spring Equinox, from the Black Book, to be read on the level day.
• Flowers of the autumn: crocus, cyclamen, narcissus if any, the last roses.
• The Sigil of Persephone / Ereshkigal from the Temple as the point of focus; the ear of grain beside it.
• Clean clothing. Dark colours for the descent, with the myrtle crown; white kept for the dawn.

The Order of the Night Form

1. The Washing. Before the Opening the hands and face are washed in the salt water, or the sea is remembered aloud if it was visited, with the Halade Formula below.
2. The Breaking of the Fast. At dusk the kykeon is drunk, standing, with the Kykeon Formula below, before any other food. In a gathering the cup passes.
3. The Opening. The bell. The 2 torches of the Mother are lit; the other candles stay dark.
4. The Invocation of the Four Powers, as in the Standard Ritual, below.
5. The Invocation to Zeus. ΕΝ ΟΝΟΜΑΤΙ ΤΟΥ ΖΕΒ ΥΨΙΣΤΟΥ, as below. Drink from the cup.
6. The Proclamation. The words of the prorrhesis, below, spoken aloud by the celebrant alone or by the Herald for the gathering: whoever isn't clean of hands and intelligible of speech, keep away. The celebrant answers for himself that he's clean.
7. The Festival Invocation, below, with the torches raised.
8. The Rite of Demeter, as given on the Lammas page, the Second Affirmation (of Eleusis) spoken twice.
9. The Psalm, Movements I to III. The Search, the Coming to Eleusis, the Procession. At Movement III the celebrant walks, torch in hand, around the room or the garden or the hall, the Sacred Way in little, and cries Iacchos, O Iacchos 3 times.
10. The Lighting of the Candle of the Queen. The dark candle is lit from the Mother's torch: The Mother gives the torch to the Daughter. The torches are then put out. Only the dark candle burns.
11. The Ritual of Persephone. The Ereshkigal, Persephone, Libera Power Ritual in full, or halved, from the Spring Return to the Queen of Two Worlds, performed by the light of the single dark candle.
12. The Psalm, Movement IV. The Maiden.
13. The Descent. The dark candle is put out. In full darkness, seated, the celebrant eats 3 seeds of the pomegranate, and keeps silence for the space of 72 slow breaths, counted. This is the wandering. Nothing is said.
14. The Psalm, Movement V. The Night of the Rite, spoken in the dark from memory or by the smallest light, in a low voice.
15. The Light. The white candle is lit, with no words. The ear of grain is lifted and held in silence for the space of 12 breaths, and set down. The celebrant looks up and says Hye, and down and says Kye.
16. The Psalm, Movement VI. The Sweeter Hope.
17. The Reading of the Spring Paper. The paper of the Spring Equinox is opened and read on the level day, and the celebrant judges plainly how far the spring's work went; it's burned in the white candle, and the inward work of the dark half of the year is resolved in its place and written, to be read at the Winter Solstice.
18. The Prayer, in one's own words, to the Two Goddesses and to Zeus, for the sweeter hope.
19. The Meditation. On the ear of grain; on the descent and the light; on the Scales.
20. The Closing, below, and the bell.
21. The Dawn and the Plemochoai. At sunrise, in white, facing due east, the 2 vessels are filled, raised, and tipped out, 1 to the east and 1 to the west, with the Plemochoai Formula below. The dead of the family are named. The festival is closed.

The 9-Day Form for the Gathering

The Invocation of the Four Powers

Face each direction in turn, beginning in the East and turning counterclockwise. At each turn a stream of electric blue light enters and fills the whole being; with each invocation the light grows stronger.

Then affirm: Eternal Gods, You who have gone by many names in the cultures of humanity, I invoke You within myself. May all Your Names be blessed. May Your Names bestow me with power.

The Invocation to Zeus

The Words Proper to the Night

The Halade Formula (at the sea, or over the salt water at the Opening)

The Kykeon Formula (at dusk, standing, before the cup is drunk)

The Proclamation (the prorrhesis, and the answer)

The Festival Invocation (after the Invocation to Zeus, with the 2 torches raised)

The Plemochoai Formula (at dawn, the 2 vessels tipped out east and west)

The Closing

Praised be Zeus, the God of Gods, the Unconquered and Greatest, Father of Gods and Men, King of the Immortals! Ring the bell, turning clockwise. The Rite is concluded.

Halade mystai: the cry is 2,500 years old, and the sea is still there.

#Celebrating Alone

The Autumn Equinox alone is the most inward of the 8 festivals, and the one in which the Zevist alone has the least to envy the gathering, because the hall at Eleusis held 3,000 and each of them was alone in the dark. Keep the sea first. On the 16th, or on the morning of the 20th, go to the sea, the river or the lake, and wash in it, whatever the weather; the mystai did it in September in the Saronic gulf with a pig under the arm, and the cold is part of the washing.

Where no water can be reached, the salt basin on the altar is the lawful substitute, and it's used without apology.

Fast from dawn on the 20th, water only. The fast is the day's work; it empties the body for the night. Make the kykeon at dusk: a spoon of barley meal stirred into a cup of water with a sprig of mint, drunk standing with the words.

Then the Rite, in the order above, which fills the night: the Rite of Demeter and the Persephone Ritual together take about an hour; the Psalm about 40 minutes; the Descent, 72 breaths in full darkness with 3 pomegranate seeds on the tongue, about 10 minutes that feel longer, and are meant to; the Light; the reading of the spring paper; the meditation. The Descent is the centre. Put the dark candle out, sit, eat the seeds, count the breaths, and say nothing.

What comes in the dark comes; the Temple doesn't describe it, and the Zevist doesn't describe it afterwards.

The white candle is lit with no words, and the ear of grain is lifted and held. The one who has read this page knows what the gesture is and doesn't need to be told what it means; the one who hasn't will find out by doing it. At dawn, in white, facing due east, the 2 vessels are poured, and the dead of the family are named, and the festival is over.

The 21st is kept quietly: study, a long meditation, a walk, no company that isn't wanted. From this day the Zevist turns inward, and the work of the dark half of the year begins.

#Celebrating as a Gathering

The gathering for the Autumn Equinox follows Eleusis as closely as the place allows, in the 9-Day form or in the Night form, and keeps the ancient division: the outer rite for the whole assembly, candidates, members, guests and children, and the inner rite for the ranks apart. The Herald's proclamation at the threshold is the same proclamation, and it's meant seriously: the one who comes with hostile intent or who can't understand what is said doesn't come in.

The Offices of the Night

The Order of the Gathering in the Night Form

1. The Washing, at the water on the morning of the 20th, or at the salt basin at the Opening, led by the Hydranos, the Herald crying Halade mystai.
2. The Fast, kept by all from dawn.
3. The Kykeon, at dusk, the Priestess of Demeter giving the cup around the circle with the words.
4. The Proclamation, by the Herald at the threshold, the Mystagogoi answering for their candidates, each member answering for himself.
5. The Rite, in the order above, the Hierophant presiding, the Chorus carrying the Psalm.
6. The Procession, at Movement III: the whole gathering, myrtle on the head, torch or candle in hand, walks behind the Iacchagogos around the place of the Rite, outdoors where possible, crying Iacchos; at a doorway or a bridge, 2 or 3 appointed jesters shout jokes at the great ones of the gathering as they pass, and the great ones laugh.
7. The Descent, in full darkness, the Herald counting 72 breaths, the child from the hearth eating the first seed, then all.
8. The Light, the Daduch lighting the white candle, the Hierophant lifting the ear of grain in silence between the Hierophantides, the whole hall looking up and saying Hye, and down and saying Kye.
9. The Closing, and the bell.
10. The Vigil, in quiet, until dawn; those who sleep, sleep in the hall.
11. The Dawn and the Plemochoai, outdoors, facing east, the Hierophant pouring the 2 vessels, the assembly naming its dead.
12. The Breakfast. Bread of the Lammas grain, honey, pomegranates, figs, the first wine of the vintage. The silence as to the hall is kept from here on; the speech as to everything else is free.

The inner rite of the hall, the epopteia of the ranks, is held apart, at its own hour on the 20th or the 21st, and the gathering isn't told its hour.

The hall held 3,000, and each of them was alone in the dark. The gathering keeps the outer rite together and the inner rite apart, as Eleusis did.

#The Psalm of the Autumn Equinox

The Psalm is sung in 2 halves and 1 dark passage: Movements I to III to Demeter after her Rite, with the procession at Movement III; Movement IV to Persephone after her Ritual; Movement V in the dark after the Descent; Movement VI after the Light. Each passage stands in 3 columns, Ancient Greek, transliteration and English. 72 passages: 36 to the torch, 36 to the throne.

The full Psalm stands on its own page: Psalm VII: The Psalm of Phthinoporine Isemeria · Sacra Cereris · Autumn Equinox. The first 24 of its 72 passages are shown here; the drawdown below unfolds the remaining 48.

#Correspondences of the Festival

#Sources

1. Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter (ed. N. J. Richardson, 1974), the whole, and in particular 1 to 89, 90 to 211, 231 to 304, 334 to 403, 470 to 495; Orphic Hymns 1, 29, 40, 41; Homer, Odyssey 10.491, 11.47.
2. Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 2.12 to 2.22; Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium 5.7.34, 5.8.39 to 40; Plutarch fr. 178 Sandbach (Stobaeus 4.52.49), De profectibus in virtute 81d to e, Pericles 13.7, Phocion 28, Alcibiades 19 to 22, 34; Aristotle fr. 15 Rose (Synesius, Dio 10), Nicomachean Ethics 1111a; Proclus, In Timaeum 293c.
3. Pindar fr. 137 Snell-Maehler; Sophocles fr. 837 Radt; Isocrates, Panegyricus 28, 157; Cicero, De legibus 2.36; Aristophanes, Frogs 316 to 459 and scholia, Acharnians 747, Peace 374 to 375; Origen, Contra Celsum 3.59; Suetonius, Nero 34; Thucydides 6.28, 6.53, 6.61; Andocides, On the Mysteries; Diodorus 13.6.
4. Pausanias 1.14.1 to 3, 1.38.1 to 7, 2.26.8, 8.37; Strabo 9.1.24; Athenaeus 11.496a; Hesychius s.vv. ἀγυρμός, ἅλαδε μύσται, γεφυρισταί, ὑδρανός; Polyaenus 3.11.2; Philostratus, Vita Apollonii 4.18; Lucian, Lexiphanes 10; Eunapius, Vitae sophistarum 7.3; the Historia Augusta, Hadrian 13.1, Marcus 27.1; Herodotus 2.171.
5. IG II² 1078 (the ephebes and the hiera); IG I³ 78 (the First Fruits); the Bacchic gold leaves of Petelia and Thurii (OF 476, 488 to 490 Bernabé; Graf and Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife, 2nd ed., 2013); Euripides, Helen 1301 to 1368.
6. G. E. Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (1961); K. Kerényi, Eleusis: Archetypal Image of Mother and Daughter (1967); K. Clinton, The Sacred Officials of the Eleusinian Mysteries (1974) and Myth and Cult: The Iconography of the Eleusinian Mysteries (1992); W. Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults (1987) and Homo Necans (1983) 248 to 297; J. N. Bremmer, Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (2014) 1 to 20; H. W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (1977) 55 to 72; F. Noack, Eleusis (1927).
7. The Temple's own pages on Imbolc (the Lesser Mystery), Lammas (the Rite of Demeter), the Spring Equinox (the paper of the work) and the Necromantic Rites, and the Ereshkigal / Persephone / Libera Power Ritual on the ritual site of the Temple.