Page 14 - GALIET THESMOPHORIAS AND EUPHORIAS: Of Eyes and Funnels, Of Tracks and Traces IV

Galiet & Galiet
menstruating taboos and, hence, it may celebrate the peculiar nature of womanhood. Burkert also suggests pudenta worship since some iconic representations have been found. Perhaps Kalligeneia incorporated pudenta worship and castration worship. The fact that votive phalluses have been found seems to suggest the possibility of castration worship in anger for Zeus’ support of Hades’ abducting Persephone. This perhaps helps explain the purity and sexual abstinence of the Nesteia. It is important to note, as contrast, that Inca fertility icons, more often than not, show couples actually copulating.
Another Thesmophoria ritual is the aischrologia where foul jesting and jeering takes place.15 Though it is uncertain where the aischrologia belongs, both Dillon and Burkert logically ascribe it to the third day.16 According to Apollodoros,17 women uttered obscenities to each other in order to parallel Demeter’s condition: just as Demeter18 was cheered by Iambe’s19 lewd jokes when Kore went missing, the women at the Kalligeneia also jested and jeered. Dillon believes that these lewd jokes “promoted and presumably celebrated and encouraged women’s sexual desires and hence fertility” (p.113) while Burkert suggests that these verbal obscenities are due to “the irritated state of fasting” (p.244). These suggestions, though interesting, are fallacious. In times of excruciating loss and devastation, fertility is not the Kodak moment as reflected by Demeter’s behaviour. Similarly, Demeter is not irritated because she is
15 In Dillon’s work, evidence of this is given by Diodoros when he saw women at the Thesmophoria in Syracuse abusing each other verbally. Dillon, M. “Women-only Festivals,” Ch.4 in Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion, London 2002: 109-25 plus notes. 113.
16 In Dillon’s view, it is unlikely that jesting would occur on the Anodos, the procession towards the Pnyx or acropolis or the Nesteia, the day of grief. Dillon, M. “Women-only Festivals,” Ch.4 in Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion, London 2002: 109-25 plus notes.
17 In Dillon’s essay. Dillon, M. “Women-only Festivals,” Ch.4 in Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion, London 2002: 109-25 plus notes. 113.
18 West, Martin. Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Hymn to Demeter. Lives of Homer. London: Harvard University Press, 2003.
19 Burkert, by contrast, reminds us that the Iambos, a mocking poem, originates with the myth: Iambe consoles
the goddess by making her laugh. Burkert, W. “Thesmophoria”, Ch. V sec. 2.5 in Greek Religion, Cambridge (USA) 1985: 242-6.
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