Chapter 3.2 - The Eleusinian Mysteries

The communicants started their descent into the depths of the earth, with nothing to light their way other than the high priestess’s torch.

The latter was tall, and her pallid members stood in stark contrast with her long hair, black as night, which flowed freely and draped around her shoulders like a mantle, and the black chiton, tied around her waist three times with a thin golden girdle.

She wore a tri-faced mask, which wrapped around her head, hiding her identity, and on her temples, the silver horns of the crescent moon: the symbol of Hecate.

As they continued their descent, the trail became narrower, sweeping between large boulders, overgrown with tree roots in places, its quietude disrupted by the sounds of an underground river flowing nearby.

The supplicants’ faces looked carved in stone, they all look the same, as if their spirits have left them. 

They seemed unaware of each other’s presence, their fixated stare darting into the darkness before them, as if something powerful inside it pulled them into its unknown depths, a ghostly army of the dead whose footsteps were muffled by the soft silt on the path.

All of them had partaken in the ceremonial drink, a hot wine mixed with herbs and spices which felt like liquid fire running through their blood, a paradoxically still fire, bringing peace beyond understanding. 

Their spirits turned inward, leaving their earthly shells vacant and making them look as if they were sleepwalking down the path.