The Collaborative International Dictionary
Eleusinian \El`eu*sin"i*an\, a. [L. Eleusinius, Gr. ?.] Pertaining to Eleusis, in Greece, or to secret rites in honor of Ceres, there celebrated; as, Eleusinian mysteries or festivals.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1640s, "pertaining to Eleusis," town outside Athens, site of the mystery associated with the cult of Demeter, goddess of harvests, and her daughter.
Usage examples of "eleusinian".
It refers to initiation in the Eleusinian Mysteries, and means that the initiate understands the life which follows death.
The Eleusinian Mysteries, for instance, were not necessarily any thing intrinsically dark and hard to be comprehended, but things hidden from public gaze and only to be known by initiation into them.
Among the laws of Solon is a regulation decreeing that the Senate shall convene in the Eleusinian temple, the day after the festival, to inquire whether every thing had been done with reverence and propriety.
Thirdly, it is intrinsically absurd to suppose that an institution of gross immorality and cruelty could have flourished in the most polite and refined Greek nation, as the Eleusinian Mysteries did for over eighteen hundred years, ranking among its members a vast majority of both sexes, of all classes, of all ages, and constantly celebrating its rites before immense audiences of them all.
For the connection of the Eleusinian goddesses with agriculture, the seasons, the under world, death, resurrection, etc.
The New Woman of the future will be the woman with the petticoats, she who shall restore the ancient Eleusinian mysteries of the silk skirt and the tea-gown.
Often now I thought of that symbolical marriage which takes place on the night of the Eleusinian festivities between the high priestess and the hierophant, and which is not a union or even a contact, but is a rite, and is sacred as such.
Bithynian was receiving a kind of eternal right of citizenship from the Eleusinian goddesses.
Oxyrhynchus, in the same district, in successive publication since 1898, have afforded no new details about the architecture of the Hadrianic city or the cult of the favorite there, but they provide a very complete list of its religious and administrative divisions, which evidently come down from Hadrian himself and bear witness to the strong influence of Eleusinian ritual on his thought.
Julian, of course, could only observe these public celebrations of the Eleusinian mysteries from afar, as a bystander.
He secretly sought out the chief minister of the rite, the hierophant, convincing the old man of his sincerity in wishing to be introduced to the community of Eleusinian worshipers, and gaining permission to actually participate in several of the secret culminating rituals.
It is also asserted by some Masons of strong powers of imagination that they take their origin from the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Dionysus and that the Eleusinian, Orphic and other mysteries associated with Dionysus were all based on eating this early hallucinogen.
Thames, but even have made a figure in the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, during which the Athenian matrons rallied one another from different waggons, with that freedom of altercation so happily preserved in this our age and country.
Sir, the bottle, la Dive Bouteille, is a recondite oracle, which makes an Eleusinian temple of the circle in which it moves.