May 31 – June 5 , 2008
The Eleusinian Mysteries was the most important healing art ceremony of all times. Join Mary Rockwood Lane, Layne Redmond, and Michael Samuels in a ceremony that uses frame drumming, dance, music, guided imagery, theatre and ceremony to help us remember sacred mysteries within. Experience transformation through death and rebirth in this eternally sacred site.
"Beautiful indeed is the mystery given us by the blessed gods:
death is for mortals no longer an evil, but a blessing."
Inscription found at Eleusis
The Eleusinian Mysteries were the most sacred of all the ritual celebrations of ancient Greece. They were conducted in the Eleusis, fourteen miles west of Athens, for about two thousand years. The Mysteries were based on a legend about Demeter, the goddess of life, agriculture and fertility. Demeter's daughter Persephone was gathering flowers when she was kidnapped by Hades, the god of death and the underworld and taken to his underworld kingdom. Demeter searched for her daughter and goes to Eleusis.
Demeter causes a drought and Zeus asks Hades to release Persephone to bring back rain. But on the way up, she ate pomegranate seeds and had to remain in the underworld for three months of the year. The Eleusinian Mysteries were given to the people of Eleusis by Demeter to celebrate Persephone's return.
The celebration of the Mysteries at Eleusis took place over nine days in the month of September. For each day, there was a series of rituals that initiates followed. First there was the invitation, then the purification and sacrifice. Next the procession from Athens to Eleusis. Then, the initiates would rest, purify themselves, and fast. They would break their fast by drinking "kykeon," meal and water mixed with fresh pennyroyal mint leaves.
What next happened remains a secret. There may have been a ritual reenactment of the story of Demeter and Persephone, including the abduction by Hades; Demeter's grief; her search and the famine and death that followed.. There was finally, a sudden blaze of fire and light, the joyous moment of Persephone's rebirth as she came back from the underworld and returned to her mother. The intensity of this ceremony with drumming, music and chants was said to be awe-inspiring and life changing.
The Mysteries may have led the initiates through dark infernal regions with horrible images and frightening shapes to recreate a foreshadowing of what awaits the death for the uninitiated then, light represented a blissful afterlife in the company of the goddesses with a sense of great relief and spiritual rebirth
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Yet with all that has been written, the truth about what happened in the Mysteries remains secret of the oath of secrecy and the capital offense of telling anyone what occurred.
In our ceremony at Eleusis, we will drum and chant, and do ritual to enter the underworld and see in our mind’s eye what the Mysteries revealed about death and life. This life changing transformative experience was the most important piece of healing art in history and we will use this site and ceremonial form in the same way.
Layne Redmond has found that chanting, overtone singing and humming sacred sounds to the rhythms of the frame drum is an ancient technique for directly synchronizing the mind/body, creating conditions for psychological, physical, and spiritual healing. The ancient Bee Priestesses, called the Melissa in Greek led the ceremonies in Eleusis. This ascending buzzing energy illuminates the chakras which are interconnected with areas of the brain that are silent in the unawakened state. The brain explodes into awareness as these dormant areas are activated
The frame drum is an archetypal idea that people all over the world and at all times have been compelled to create and play to transform their consciousness into higher states of awareness. It is a time tested, powerful trance-inducing instrument that gives us a means of creating peace and wisdom within ourselves.
Here will we use frame drumming, music, dance, theatre, guided imagery, and ceremony to recreate the experience of the Eleusian Mysteries for personal transformation. We will lead the participants through a ceremony of death and rebirth, to see life in a new way.
Faculty: Mary Rockwood Lane (Co-director Art and Healing Program) www.maryrockwoodlane.com Layne Redmond, (World reknowned frame drummer) http://layneredmond.com/ and Michael Samuels (Co-director Art and Healing Program) www.michaelsamuels.com
Mary Rockwood Lane, PhD.
Mary Rockwood Lane was the co-founder and director emeritus of Shands Arts in Medicine program at University of Florida, Gainesville. She founded and created the first artist in residence program of this type in the country. She led and developed that program for over ten years. She is now an Associate Professor of Nursing at College of Nursing, University of Florida, where she teaches Creativity and Spirituality in Healthcare. She is core faculty with in the Center of Spirituality and Healthcare. She has written many articles on art and healing in peer reviewed journals and is a recognized leader in the field. She lectures and teaches workshops on art and healing and spirituality in healthcare. She has been very involved in setting up art and healing programs in Florida and around the country. Her research was a phenomenological hermeneutic study researching the lived experience of art and healing. She is currently developing an end of life program at University of Florida that integrates spirituality and creativity as well as the arts. She is co-author of Creative Healing, Spirit Body Healing, and The Path of the Feather, Shaman Wisdom- Shaman Healing, and Path to Peace. Shaman Wisdom- Shaman Healing was nominated as one of the finalists in the health/healing category in the prestigious Nautilus Awards. Currently, she is working on a book on Woman’s Heath and a film script on the divine feminine, .. She does divine feminine pilgrimages to Delphi, Delos and Tinos Greece each year and does workshops on the divine feminine in healthcare in her classes at University of Florida College of Nursing. Mary is excited about expanding her work in spirituality and healthcare to co-direct the art and healing series at Wisdom University.
Layne Redmond
The February 2000 issue of DRUM! Magazine listed Layne Redmond as one of the 53 Heavyweight Drummers Who Made A Difference in the '90s.
She's the only woman on this list which includes Tony Williams, Roy Haynes, Zakir Hussain, Elvin Jones and Micky Hart.
And she is one of the few drummers listed who has not been in a commercially successful pop, rock or jazz band. Instead Layne Redmond has followed an extremely unusual path specializing in the small hand-held frame drum played primarily by women in the ancient Mediterranean world. From 1981 through 1990 she performed and recorded the first contemporary frame drum compositions with percussionist, Glen Velez for European and American labels. During this period she intensively researched the playing styles and history of the frame drum in religious and cultural rituals culminating in her book, When The Drummers Were Women. This book details a lost history of a time when women were the primary percussionists in Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, Greece and Rome and also explains why they are not today. When The Drummers Were Women was released by Random House in June 1997 in the U.S., Canada, Australia and Europe.
Redmond is recognized as one of today's most exciting performers on the frame drum and has been featured in many music festivals including the Touch Festival in Berlin, Seattle Bumbershoot Festival, the Institute for Contemporary Art in London, Tambores do Mundo (drum festival in San Luis, Brazil) and as a soloist at the 1995 World Wide Percussion Festival in Brazil. On March 2, 2002 Redmond and Tommy Brunjes performed and gave clinics at the Vienna International Percussion Festival 2002.
Redmond is a master clinician and has taught and lectured numerous times at the Percussive Arts Society's International Convention, the National Association of Music Therapy and in 1998 she gave the keynote lecture and performance at the eighth annual Healing Sound Colloquium. Some of the venues she's taught or performed at are Penn State, Vassar College, William's College, Bucknell College, Hartford Seminary, Andover Newton Theological Institute, Sam Ash Music Institute, Berklee School of Music, Calif. Institute of the Arts, Roulette, The Knitting Factory, and Esalen Institute.
Her recordings include: Being in Rhythm, Since the Beginning, Chanting the Chakras: the Roots of Awakening and she has two instructional videos: Rhythmic Wisdom and A Sense of Time. Golden Seed Music released the new duo cd, Trance Union, by Redmond and Tommy Brunjes. She was the first woman to have a Signature Series of world percussion instruments with Remo, Inc., one of the world's largest manufacturers of percussion instruments and drum heads.
Michael Samuels, M.D.
Michael Samuels, M.D .is the founder and director of Art As a Healing Force, a project started in 1990 devoted to healing yourself, others, the community and the earth with creativity and making art and healing one. He teaches Art and Healing at San Francisco State University, Institute of holistic Studies. He is a bear dancer with the Chumash People three times a year, to heal people and the earth. He has used creativity, art, and guided imagery with patients with life threatening illness and life crises for over thirty years in private practice and in consultation. He lectures and does workshops nationwide for physicians, nurses, artists, and patients on how to use creativity and spirituality in healing. He has organized many nationwide conferences on creativity and healing and visited and participated in projects in hospitals where creativity, art and music are used with patients. He has networked people in the field together and is a recognized leader in art and healing. He is currently working on a book on Woman’ Health, and a film script on the divine feminine, .. He is a sculptor and marble carver. He is the author of twenty one books including the best selling Well Body Book, Well Baby Book, Well Pregnancy Book, and the guided imagery classic Seeing With the Mind’s Eye. He is co-author with Mary Rockwood Lane of Creative Healing, Spirit Body Healing, The Path of the Feather, Shaman Wisdom- Shaman Healing, and The Path to Peace. Michael is delighted to be co-directing the art and healing series at Wisdom University with Mary Rockwood Lane.
The mystery school initiation-Pilgrimage to Eleusis. Eleusis, 45 minutes from Athens, was the site of the ancient Greek mystery school for 2000 years. Now an archeological site, we will do ceremony to purify ourselves, enter the darkness, face death, and be reborn into the light. We will visit the fountain of Demeter, the cave of the underworld where Persephone was kidnapped by Hades, and the most sacred site of the ancient mystery school play of transformation and life change. Layne Redmond, a world renowned frame drummer will help produce trance in the way it was done thousands of years ago. Project- go into the darkness, face death, emerge into the light, in a play and dance.
Day 1- Sunday, May 31, 2008
9:00 Tinos Conference center, lecture: Layne’s teaching of drumming, humming, pranayama, energy and chanting practices of the Bee Priestesses and the Muses. We will also be relaxing, eating and swimming in Komi. .
Lecture about Eleusis and the Mysteries
Day 2, Monday, June 1, 2008
Travel to Athens by ferry, arrive in hotel. Orientation to Athens. Lecture about Eleusis.
Evening visit to Acropolis and temple of Athena
Day 3. 9: Tuesday, June 2, 2008
9:00 am Classroom lecture about the Eleusian Mystery ceremony
2;00 pm afternoon, visit National Museum of Archeology.
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Day 4 Wednesday, June 3, 2008
9:00 am To Eleusis, Ceremony all day
Day 5 , Thursday, June 4, 2008
Final Closing, and leave for home.
http://www.culture.gr/2/21/211/21103a/e211ca04.html
The Ecole Initiative: The Eleusinian Mysteries
THE MYSTERIES OF ELEUSIS: Contents and Introduction by Sanderson Beck
Eleusis - Pathways to Ancient Myth
Eleusinian Mysteries - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eleusis.htm