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After nine days of ritual, fasting, and initiations at Eleusis — a process so secret that revealing its contents was …

After nine days of ritual, fasting, and initiations at Eleusis — a process so secret that revealing its contents was punishable by death — the Pannychis began. An all-night feast with torches, dancing, and offerings near the Kallichoron well, where Demeter was said to have wept for Persephone. Initiates believed what they'd witnessed guaranteed them a better afterlife. We still don't know exactly what they saw inside the Telesterion. Two thousand years of initiations, and the secret held.