DARK MIST RISING: AVALON UNVEILED

  By Mary Harrsch - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96137324 To preface this short section on the cult centers of Demeter, here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:   Major cults to Demeter are known at Eleusis in Attica, Hermion (in Crete), Megara, Celeae, Lerna, Aegila, Munychia, Corinth, Delos, Priene, Akragas, Iasos, Pergamon, Seli nus, Tegea, Thoricus, Dion (in Macedonia), Lykosoura, Mesembria, Enna (Sicily) and Samothrace.   An ancient Amphictyony, probably the earliest centred on the cult of Demeter at Anthele (Ἀνθήλη), which lay on the coast of Malis south of Thessaly. This was the locality of Thermopylae.   OK, so, Anthele was the most ancient cult center devoted to Demeter. That’s great, of course; but I had no idea where Anthele was when I read this, and the quote gives no idea of how old the cult center there was except to say, “probably the earliest”, so I went to the source That source is none other than the “Fa...

  Demeter and Metanira. Detail of the belly of an Apulian red-figure hydra, ca. 340 BC. By Varrese Painter - User:Bibi Saint-Pol, own work, 2008, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3839471 In the interest of hopping a little more briskly along this rabbit hole, I have decided to use the simple quote from John Chadwick – a noted Aegean scholar – that I found in Wikipedia and move on. Here it is:   The earliest recorded worship of a deity possibly equivalent to Demeter is found in Linear B Mycenean Greek tablets of c. 1400-1200 BC found at Pylos. The tablets describe worship of the “two queens and the king”, which may be related to Demeter, Persephone and Poseidon.   Apparently, the indicator is the name  i-da-ma-te , or  Demeter . And there is the date: 1400-1200 BC. That’s early, people. Real early. It indicates that Demeter was an established deity by no later than the Mycenaean period…and possibly earlier. On even earlier Linear A t...