Time: 7 pm EST
Admission: $8 - Tickets HERE
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Tonight, follow anatomical sculptor and lapsed Classicist Eleanor Crook down into the Underworld of Ancient Greece and Rome as she leads us on a subterranean journey to see what we can reconstruct of the most tightly kept secret of Greek religion, the Eleusinian Mysteries. So closely guarded and sacred that their priests and devotees never passed them on, the rituals and reenactments at the shrine of Eleusis outside Athens seem to have reproduced an experience of death and the afterlife for initiates, after which they never feared death again. The story of the abduction of Persephone from her mother the goddess Demeter, by Hades king of the underworld, has captured the imagination of artists and poets down the ages, tying into our most fundamental beliefs about the seasons, fertility, the cycles of nature and death itself.
You will meet fertility goddesses from all over the ancient Mediterranean, visions of Hades, the three-headed dog Cerberus, underground rivers and souls of the departed, examine the shreds of evidence of what went on at the shrine that the initiates found both terrifying and comforting, meet some of the oddest ancient statues Eleanor has yet encountered and learn how this death-positive cult spread round the Mediterranean, bringing enlightenment and possibly psychedelic drugs to initiates from several ancient lands. The Mysteries extended their influence beyond Antiquity into the esoteric studies of the Renaissance, later Occult practices, Jungian psychology and current neo-Pagan celebrations, very much alive and enthusiastically performed to this day. This highly illustrated lecture introduces a mystery, the facts and the fancies that have arisen from the secrecy and suggests how the symbolic ceremonies can enhance our understanding of death and nature.
Eleanor Crook is a sculptor in wax, bronze, and lifelike media who makes work about anatomy and mortality. She studied Classics and ancient art history which instilled a fascination for statues, effigies and mummies which she found was better explored by making them. Whilst studying sculpture at Central St Martins and the Royal Academy Schools she learned anatomy from medical museums and sculpting from Victorian textbooks, adopting neglected techniques. Later she trained as a medical sculptor alongside medical students at Guy’s Hospital. She is artist in residence at the Gordon Museum, teaches classes and workshops for Morbid Anatomy and Camberwell School of Art, and works internationally with medical museums such as the Science Museum London, Vrolik, Amsterdam, La Specola, Florence, GUM Ghent, Hunterian London, and various wax collections. She has a special interest in learning the expressive techniques of former times whilst employing contemporary to bring her creatures to a kind of life.
Image: Phryne at the Poseidonia in Eleusis by Henryk Siemiradzki, c. 1889