"Let me preserve a discreet silence, too, concerning that rite of Demeter which the Greeks call Thesmophoria, except as much of it as I am not forbidden to mention. The daughters of Danaus were those who brought this rite out of Egypt and taught it to the Pelasgian women; afterwards, when the people of the Peloponnese were driven out by the Dorians, it was lost, except in so far as it was preserved by the Arcadians, the Peloponnesian people which was not driven out but left in its home."

- HERODOTOS, THE HISTORIES  2.171

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Mysterious and misunderstood, the Thesmophoria festivals of Demeter and Kore (Persephone) prohibited the presence of men and featured distinctively perplexing elements: piglets in pits, ritual swearing, pomegranate seeds and contraceptive plants, frenzied dancing.

What happened during the Thesmophoria has been historically dismissed as "mere" fertility ritual or even a tool of control, reinforcing a woman's role as wife and mother for the patriarchy. Yet the very name Thesmophoria seems to hint at a mystery beyond agricultural concerns or societal expectations -- meaning literally,
The Carrying of the Holy Law / Divine Order.
And then there is the seemingly-unrelated name of the priestesses who performed these mysteries: Μέλισσαι, Melissai -- Bees (Apollodorus, FGrH 244 F89). 

These enigmatic rites of Demeter and Kore were supported financially by husbands and faithfully performed year after year by wives in at least 30 cities across Greece, Southern Italy, and Anatolia. The Ancient Greeks themselves believed the rites to be very ancient, perhaps more ancient than the Eleusinian Mysteries. Their wide diffusion points to an existence at least as early as the late Bronze Age, hundreds of years before the advent of the polis and its great marble and limestone temples.

What happened in the Thesmophoria was not merely symbolic reenactment. It was a carefully-preserved tradition of ritual magic from holy women of prehistoric times. It was a magic which infused the soil with steady sustenance and called down the rain nymphs to weep upon Gaia, an elemental magic which could only be wielded by devotees sitting side by side in seclusion. It was a magic of sexual power, of political power, of economic power. It was understood as the tending of a neglected cosmic hive then -- thousands of years later, it is needed more than ever.

This summer coinciding with Metageitnion, Boedromion, and Pyanopsion, sacred mystery months of Demeter and Kore in Attika, we will step inside the mystery as new Thesmophoric Melissai -- Bees who Carry the Holy Law of the Mother and Daughter, Bringers of the Divine Order.