as conventional representations of a universal religious phe-
nomenon.
SEE ALSO Animals; Shape Shifting.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Therianthropism is discussed by Joseph Campbell, who takes a
diffusionist approach to the topic, in The Way of the Animal
Powers (New York, 1983).
STANLEY WALENS (1987)
THESMOPHORIA. The Thesmophoria was an annu-
al women’s festival widely celebrated in ancient Greece. In
most areas it took place in autumn, at the season of plowing
and sowing, and it was held in honor of the grain goddess
Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Fertility of crops and
of women was evidently the essential theme.
The Athenian form of the ritual is the best known. Here
the festival occupied three days. On the first day the women
went up to the sacred grove of Demeter Thesmophoros, set
up an encampment there, out of sight of all males, and made
some preliminary sacrifices. On the second day they fasted,
sitting humbly on the ground, as Demeter was said to have
fasted in grief over the abduction of her daughter. This absti-
nence was probably understood as a kind of purification in
preparation for the main ceremonies. The third day featured
pomegranates to eat, obscene jesting, and perhaps flagella-
tion—all things associated with fertility. Piglets were slaugh-
tered, and parts of them, it seems, were cooked and eaten;
substantial portions, however, were thrown into megara,
deep holes in the earth, together with wheat cakes shaped like
snakes or like male genitals, and an otherwise unknown god-
dess, Kalligeneia, whose name means “fair birth,” was in-
voked. At some stage—perhaps the night before—certain
women who had for three days observed purity restrictions
climbed down into the hole, and while others clapped,
brought out the decayed remains of the previous year’s offer-
ings. These were ceremoniously carried out of the camp and
set forth on altars. (The Thesmophoria itself took its name
from this “bringing of the deposits.”) If a farmer took a little
portion of the remains and mixed it in with his seed corn,
he was supposed to get a good crop. This element of primi-
tive agrarian magic suggests that the Thesmophoria’s origins
lay in a remote past.
SEE ALSO Demeter and Persephone.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
A full and judicious discussion can be found in Martin P. Nils-
son’s Griechische Feste von religiöser Bedeutung (Leipzig,
1906), pp. 313–325. Walter Burkert’s Griechische Religion
der archaischen und klassischen Epoche (Stuttgart, 1977),
translated as Greek Religion (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), con-
centrates on the main features and their interpretation. Lud-
wig Deubner’s Attische Feste (Berlin, 1932), pp. 40–60, re-
mains the most detailed study of the Athenian
Thesmophoria, but one of its main conclusions (that the pigs
were deposited at a different festival in the summer) is
strongly disputed. H. W. Parke’s Festivals of the Athenians
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1977) follows Deubner on this point. For
primitive customs of fertilizing fields with the remains of sac-
rificial victims, see chapter 7 of James G. Frazer’s Spirits of
the Corn and Wild, 2 vols., part 5 of The Golden Bough, 3d
ed., rev. & enl. (London, 1912).
New Sources
Brumfield, Allaire Ch. The Attic Festivals of Demeter and Their Re-
lation to the Agricoltural Year. New York, 1981.
Clinton, Kevin. “The ‘Thesmophorion’ in Central Athens and the
Celebration of the ‘Thesmophoria’ in Attica.” In The Role of
Religion in the Early Greek Polis: Proceedings of the Third In-
ternational Seminar on Ancient Greek Cult, Organized by the
Swedish Institute at Athens, 16–18 October 1992, edited by
Robin Hägg, pp. 111–125. Stockholm, 1996.
Nixon, L. “The Cults of Demeter and Kore.” In Women in Antiq-
uity: New Assessments, edited by Richard Hawley and Barbara
Mary Levick, pp. 75–96. London, 1995.
Prytz, Johansen J. “The Thesmophoria as a Women’s Festival.”
Temenos 11 (1975): 78–87.
Sfameni Gasparro, Giulia. Misteri e culti mistici di Demetra.
Rome, 1986. See especially pages 223–284.
Versnel, Hendrik S. “The Roman Festival for Bona Dea and the
Greek Thesmophoria.” In Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman
Religion. 2. Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual,
pp. 235–260. Leiden, 1993.
M. L. WEST (1987)
Revised BibliographyTHEURGY (from the Greek theourgia) means literally
something like “actuating the divine” and refers to actions
that induce or bring about the presence of a divine or super-
natural being, whether in an artifact or a person. It was a
practice closely related to magic—not least in its ritual use
of material things, sacrifices, and verbal formulas to effect the
believer’s fellowship with the god, demon, or departed spirit.
It is distinguished from ordinary magical practice less by its
techniques than by its aim, which was religious (union with
the divine) rather than secular. Use of the term theourgia—as
well as of the related theourgos, referring to a practitioner of
the art—arose in the second century CE in Hellenistic circles
closely associated with the birth of Neoplatonism. The prac-
tice was commended and followed, in the third and later cen-
turies, by certain Neoplatonist philosophers and their
disciples.
The origins of this movement can be traced, in all prob-
ability, to a work called the Chaldean Oracles, plausibly attri-
buted to the reign of Marcus Aurelius (161–180). A collec-
tion of obscure and pretentious oracular utterances written
in Homeric hexameters, this work, now known only in frag-
ments, was apparently assembled (if not composed) by one
Julian the Chaldean or (perhaps more likely) by his son Ju-9156 THESMOPHORIA