The Thesmophorias: Greece’s Women-only Religious Festival
It is curious to think that, in a society as misogynistic as Ancient Greece (where women could barely leave the gynoecium, their reserved place in the home) there was a religious festival exclusively reserved for them. And it is that, During the three days that the celebration of the Thesmophorias lasted, men could not access any of their rites, which, by the way, caused rumors of drunkenness and lust to spread among the participating women that were not true at all. In today’s article we delve into the Thesmophoria festival, the cult dedicated to Demeter and her daughter Persephone who exalted the fertility of nature.
The Thesmophorias: in honor of Demeter “she who carries the laws”
That is the etymological meaning of the name of the festival. It comes from one of the epithets associated with the goddess Demeter, Demeter Thesmophoria or, in other words, “Demeter the one who carries the laws.” And the goddess Demeter (which the Romans later identified with her goddess Ceres) was a very ancient divinity who had her roots in the most archaic Greece. She was the representation of the earth, but, unlike Gaea, who personified it as a habitable space, Demeter was the fertile earth, which received the seed to later bear fruit and provide food. For this reason, the goddess was also identified with the female womb, and, precisely for this reason, her festival was something restricted exclusively to the female sex.
We must read the epithet “she who carries the laws” from the perspective of natural laws: the very force of nature, which drives every living being to reproduce. Due to his agrarian nature, Demeter, along with her daughter Persephone, are the oldest goddesses in the Greek pantheon, and were always worshiped at the same time.
What do we know about Thesmophorias?
In reality, and due to their mysterious nature, we know quite little. The men of the community made an effort to know what their women did during the days that the celebration lasted, but their explanations are confusing and, at times, paradoxical. Aristophanes, the famous Greek playwright, said that the Thesmophorias lasted five days; others pointed to four. The reality was that the central axis of the ceremony did not exceed three days, during which Greek women lived in community, away from their husbands and fathers and, therefore, enjoyed a freedom that they did not have the rest of the year.
For a society as misogynistic as the Greek one, it was inconceivable that its women would leave home for a few days and that, to make matters worse, the men would not know what they were doing in their rituals. During their absence, it was their companions who had to take care of the house, the slaves and the children, and that was quite inconceivable for a man from Ancient Greece.
For all this, rumors soon began to spread about the exact nature of the rituals that were performed in the Thesmophorias. Some men claimed that their wives were driven into an almost violent frenzy, during which they drank until they were dead and during which they also had lustful sex with each other. For many, what should be a religious festival was, in reality, an excuse to give free rein to female “sinfulness.”
In fact, there is a Greek play by Aristophanes entitled The Thesmophorias, in which the playwright openly mocks the festival and ironically about the activities that women carried out there. In the text, a comedy, the author describes how the Greek women meet to vilify Euripides (their rival), and how the Thesmophorias are just an excuse to meet and develop a plan of revenge.
Fasting and chastity in honor of Demeter
Nothing could be further from the truth. All these hoaxes were the result of the concern of the male sector, which did not conceive of this type of “freedom” for the opposite sex. Their women, far from what they had come to think, did not indulge in any sexual or alcoholic frenzy, but rather the opposite.
The Thesmophorias were actually characterized by fasting and chastity. The meaning of it was to commemorate the ancient myth that told of the abduction of Persephone, the daughter of Demeter, by Hades, the gloomy god of the underworld who had fallen in love with her. The myth tells in detail the immense pain that the mother goddess suffered in the absence of her daughter, pain that manifested itself on earth with frosts, droughts and hurricane winds that prevented harvests and the normal passage of life.
For this reason, during the Thesmophorias women prepared for mourning. They had to prepare body and soul to be worthy of celebrating the goddess and, to do so, they did not hesitate to abstain from food and sex during the days that the festival lasted. Below, we detail how the celebration was carried out according to the information we have.
The Thesmophorias, day by day
The festival began a few days before the appointed date, since the women had to prepare to honor the goddess. To do this, a few days (of indeterminate duration) preceded the festival itself, during which a serious purification was carried out, based on absolute sexual abstinence and spiritual preparation to receive the goddess.
First day: the Anodes or the climb
The first day of the Thesmophorias was called Anodos, “climb”, since the women of the city left in procession to the mountain dedicated to Demeter, where they would spend the remaining two days. In the temple dedicated to the goddess, they mixed with the offerings previously deposited (already rotten or completely consumed) the cereal seeds they had brought, a clear symbol of the desire for fertility for the land, the animals and themselves.
It is still curious how preparing for a festival in which the goddesses of fertility were honored involved sexual abstention. In reality, it was, as we have already said, a sign of mourning and respect for the pain that the goddess experienced at the loss of her daughter, who, by the way, at the time of being kidnapped by Hades was a Koré, a virgin maiden.
Second day: the Nestéia
The second day of the Thesmophorias was the day of mourning itself. Persephone has already been kidnapped and Demeter mourns her disappearance, so the earth is dead and bears no fruit. To join the despair of the goddess, the women, already in her sanctuary, practice fasting and sleep on beds of anaphrodisiac herbs, that is, plants that were known to extinguish the libido. In this way, the attendees ritually return to being parthenoi, “virgins.”
Despite the ascetic conditions, that day was highly anticipated by the female community, since it was the only opportunity they had all year to sleep away from home in the company of their friends and relatives, which meant a moment of authentic freedom. .
Just in the transition of the second day and the third, when the night gives way to dawn, the women began a curious ritual known as the Aischrologia and which consisted of uttering obscene comments among themselves. The base, again the myth. It was said that Demeter was very sad about the loss of Persephone, and that, to cheer her up, the old woman Iambe told her dirty jokes and obscene stories. The result was that the goddess smiled (what was known as “Demeter’s laugh”), which was precisely what was intended during the Aischrologia ritual. The objective was for divinity to smile again and, in this way, life to return to earth.
Third day: the Kalligeneia
Finally, the third day was a day of rejoicing. Demeter had finally smiled and reached an agreement with Hades, whereby his daughter would return to the land of the living six months of the year (a beautiful way of explaining the passing of the seasons). Thus, the women of the community celebrated this rebirth (not in vain, Kalligeneia means “beautiful birth”).
Of course, the fast ended during this third day. Lambs and piglets were sacrificed and the women joined in a feast in honor of the goddesses, after which they returned home to return to their secluded lives. Without a doubt, during the rest of the year they remembered with a mixture of joy and melancholy those three days in which they had freed themselves from the male yoke and had enjoyed relative freedom.
