“[The Eleusinian Procession] served to unite all participants together, to dismantle the hard-bound rules about gender and societal interaction that governed normal life in Athens. The initiands’ shared experience must inevitably have drawn them together, no matter their age, status or gender.”
Athina Mitropoulos, “Retracing The Steps Of The Eleusinian Procession: A Mortal Experience.”
Eleusis was so widely-known and regarded and because the actual ritual was kept so secret, initiates were able to create a sense of community within themselves. In Mitropoulos’ article, she states that because the Eleusinian procession acted as a way to unite the individual participants together and to “dismantle the hard-bound rules about gender and societal interaction that governed normal life in Athens”, the shared experience between the initiates “must inevitably have drawn them together, no matter their age, status or gender” (Mitropoulos). The community and sense of togetherness that is born from these rituals are not unlike how Benedict Anderson describes his “imagined communities”. In Anderson’s words, “It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them. yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion… Communities are meant to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined” (49). Because the Mysteries were so exclusive and secretive, one can only assume that they believed themselves to be a part of some kind of ‘imagined community”. The only time initiates were aware of and acknowledged each other was during the procession from Athens to Eleusis as it was taboo to speak of the proceedings outside of the ritual and because of this, it is inevitable that they become their own imagined community.