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Where I Got the Crazy Idea for The Salmon Mysteries and Other Tidbits
I initially wrote a slightly different version of this in 2001. I had been fascinated with the Eleusinian Mysteries for years. I wanted to delve into them more deeply and research what had actually happened during the mysteries. I'm also interested in ceremony and ritual. How do we create relevant ceremony for our communities here and now?
Years earlier, I had had several dreams about salmon. In one, the Columbia River ran red with salmon again. In another, I was a salmon trying to get home. I believe Salmon are the soul of the place where I live, and I've long wanted to find a way to honor them.
One year I visited the Goddess Temple in the desert about an hour from Las Vegas. I sat on the floor of the Temple and went on a "journey" and asked what I could do to help heal myself. What I heard was that I needed to study and write about Demeter and her travails. I returned home and did intensive research on Demeter and the Eleusinian Mysteries, and then I sat down and wrote The Salmon Mysteries.
I photocopied it and bound it to use for my own Salmon Mysteries ceremonies. I also sent copies to a few people, and others bought them from me. I never sent the manuscript out to any publishers. Last year I decided I wanted Ruby Rose's Fairy Tale Emporium (our press) to publish The Salmon Mysteries. I didn't change much except for the ceremony I suggest for The Day of Mystery. Over the years, I realized my original ceremony was too complicated. I've simplified it.
Wholly Inadequate Descriptions of This Book
The One Sentence Pitch
The Salmon Mysteries reimagines the mystical and profound Eleusinian Mysteries and adapts those ceremonies for use today as a way of life and an annual celebration.
Cover Blurb
Demeter's search for Persephone, her daughter lost in the underworld, inspired the Eleusinian Mysteries, a nine day celebration so powerful and awe-inspiring much of it remains a secret to this day. Now, in a radical reimagining of this potent and ancient story, renowned novelist and mythologist Kim Antieau updates the tale for modern sensibilities through the life cycle of a most remarkable creature: the salmon. Salmon live in two worlds: salt water and fresh water. They are shapeshifters, transformers, and finally, pilgrims searching for home. Relying on ancient sources and modern speculation, Antieau writes about what happened during the nine day celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries and offers a template for creating your own mysteries to celebrate and honor the cycles of Nature, your community, and your life. The Salmon Mysteries is mystical inspiration and a practical tool for transforming your life and your community.
Excerpt
Preface to The Salmon Mysteries
She is the mother of all, for contained in her are the seeds of all. —Hildegard of Bingen, translated by Gabriele Uhlein
The body cannot be whole alone. Persons cannot be whole alone....To try and heal the body alone is to collaborate in the destruction of the body. Healing is impossible in loneliness. —Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America
Welcome to the Mysteries! The Eleusinian Mysteries have fascinated me for years. After all, what happened on the last two nights of this nine-day celebration and worship of the goddesses Demeter and Persephone had been kept secret for over 3,000 years despite the participation of thousands of people. The more I studied the Mysteries, however, the less I was interested in solving a mystery. Instead I wondered what it would have been like to worship a goddess all of my life: to think of the Divine as female. To see representations of Her everywhere, artwork where someone with a body like mine was Goddess. It gave me chills.
I believe we may be hardwired for cyclical activity—for routine, ceremonies, celebrations. My fondest memories of childhood are of Halloween, Christmas, and Easter. Most of the actual celebrations blur into one mysterious Halloween, one mystical Christmas, and one colorful Easter; each year is not distinguishable from the other, but the act of celebrating in a similar manner on each holiday became touchstones of stability in the ever-changing life of a child.
I was raised Catholic but left that religion long ago because its rituals and doctrines were meaningless to me. The lack of respect for and exclusion of women in every organized religion I studied kept me far from any thought of the Divine until I rediscovered what I had known as a child and forgotten as an adult: the Divine is in Nature. Nature is always present, always producing air for me to breathe, water I can drink, and food I can eat. She is the ultimate Mother. When I learned that our ancestors had most likely worshipped the Earth as Goddess and lived in relative peace and harmony with Her and one another, my entire worldview changed.
I realized we didn’t have to be killers. Those who said humans were biologically predetermined to kill each other and destroy the environment didn’t know the truth; life did not have to be about death, dying, and killing. Death was only part of a lifelong cycle. Men killing people for eternity (and it was usually men doing the killing) was not the only reality or the only story.
We needed a new story.
We needed a new way of seeing the world, of being in the world.
We needed a new cycle—one that was not permeated with violence.
At the core of the Demeter and Persephone myth, underneath the parts added by patriarchal storytellers that I stripped away like layers of ugly old paint, is a story of love, cyclical change, and rebirth: a story for our times.
Although I set The Salmon Mysteries here in the Pacific Northwest and it deals with the wild salmon and their slide toward extinction, The Salmon Mysteries could take place anywhere. Just as The Eleusinian Mysteries were most likely adapted from Cretan ceremonies to fit into Greek society, so The Salmon Mysteries can be adapted to wherever you make your home. You may not live alongside a Big River, but a river (or another body of water) figures into your ecological life, whether you are aware of it or not.
Waterways all over our country—and the world—are in great peril. The sacred salmon is extinct in many places already. But the salmon could just as well be the sacred owl, redwood, jaguar, bear, ladyslipper, or hummingbird; they are by their very Nature sacred, holy. The word holy comes from kailo which means ‘whole, hale, uninjured, health.’ The existence (or extinction) of the salmon, owl, jaguar and other species indicates whether our environment is whole, healthy, hale.
I see The Salmon Mysteries as a way of life and an annual celebration, something which will bring positive change in the world and become a touchstone of joy and stability in our lives. Adapt it to your own community and to whatever time of year seems appropriate. Make it meaningful to you, and let me know how it goes.
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