INITIATION III// KALLICHORON

Celebrating the victory of civilization over the hybris of inflated egos

For two thousand years Eleusina, a farmers' community close to Athens, was the spiritual capital of the Greek-Roman world. The cult of Demeter and Persephone - Mother and Daughter – celebrated the establishment of human settlements and agriculture, the cycle of nature and life, the preparation and sharing of food, and gave a metaphysical explanation for the soul's destiny after death.
Many elements of the Eleusinian cult - its sacred architecture, objects, rituals, teachings – were taken over by Christianity after the decline of the ancient faith, thus becoming a vital part of Europe's spiritual heritage and cultural language.

"Kallichoron" = The Well of Fair Dances - still to be seen at the very entrance of the sacred site of Eleusina, alludes to the ecstatic dances the initiates performed around it to honor Demeter, Mother Earth. Kallichoron was the boundary between life and death, conscious and unconscious, upper world and Hades, the initiates had to cross to reach eternal truth.

For two thousand years, initiates joined hands, danced together and drank the kykeon behind the walls of the protective Sanctuary, celebrating the victory of civilization over the hybris of inflated egos.
In our days, Eleusina stands for the urgent need to reconsider dead-end patterns for growth, adopt sustainable development strategies and abolish acute inequality and misery which breeds ignorance, hate ideologies and war.

The work of Daniel von Weinberger, our show's Honored Guest, is a bitter reminder of the end of civilization Europe already witnessed between 1933-45. It can recur under a different ideological disguise, if we do not remain vigilant.

At the show opening, jewellery artists present performances they developed during an Artist Residency in Athens.
Loukia Richards & Christoph Ziegler

Initiation is a participatory procedure on discovering the secret of creativity.

Eight jewellery artists and designers visited Athens between June - September 2017 for an unusual Artist Residency: to discover whether the Greek tradition of jewellery and ornament - its motifs, designs and concepts - would still make sense to a contemporary jewellery maker striving for perfection in the highly competitive international market.

Greek jewellery speaks of life and death, of magic symbols to protect against evil or to achieve good luck and fortune, of a society combining pure reason with piety, of a faith viewing the seen and the unseen world as one united cosmos.

During the months of the residency, we visited the most important sites where Greek democracy and spirituality developed hand in hand. The title of the show refers to the initiation of mystics in a fearless attitude towards life and death. The secret to bliss was revealed during the holiest ceremony of the ancient world which took place once a year in Eleusina near Athens.
Today Eleusina is an industrial town with high unemployment and heavy pollution; few things remind visitors of its glorious past - at first sight. However, for the ones seeing beyond the obvious, Eleusina can be the challenge to dive inside one's own unconscious, the source of all secrets and creativity!

Like the ancient initiates had to search for the message of truth in the performance and spells of the hierophant, the eight participants of Initiation 2017 Sieraad dug through their thirst for knowledge and found inside themselves the passage leading to art excellence.

Enjoy the jewellery of this discovery!
Loukia Richards & Christoph Ziegler