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| THE
GREEK PANTHEON: DEMETER |
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MOTHER
AND DAUGHTER | | |
| Demeter
is the Indo-European "Mother Da(n);"
in typical Greek syncretism,
her daughter Persephone (or Kore, "girl") seems to have been a Pelasgian
goddess belonging to a general type of so-called "tree goddess." These
goddesses tend to be associated both with abduction and death (hanging). In one
old tradition Poseidon is Persephone's father, but in the major tradition, as
preserved in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, her father is Zeus. | |
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PERSEPHONE |
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| As
told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hades abducts Persephone, carrying
her to the underworld in his chariot. Demeter wanders the earth, mourning and
searching for her daughter. She hides herself, and the earth becomes barren. At
Eleusis, she learns of her daughter's fate. She asks Zeus to intervene and he
tells his brother that Persephone must be returned. Persephone has eaten Otherworld
food (a pomegranate) and so is not entirely free to leave. She spends two-thirds
of the year above ground and one-third with Hades. While she is gone her mother
mourns, and the earth is barren. |
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DIEING
AND REVIVING GOD | |
| This
version of the Dieing
and Reviving God is no doubt the best known one among Western audiences,
but it is atypical. In Near Eastern tradition the goddess involved is a generalized
fertility goddess. In Greek tradition, Aphrodite became a goddess of human passion,
and the powerful Earth Mother Da of Indo-European tradition was reduced to a grain
goddess -- and thus the logical choice for consort of the Dieing and Reviving
God. Also, Demeter probably had taken on the role before Aphrodite was introduced
into Greece. Aside from the Dieing and Reviving God tradition, there are traces
in Greek myth of an old tradition in which the Earth Mother becomes angry and
withdraws from the world until she is appeased by her supplicants. Again, the
Greek tradition is highly syncretistic. |
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THE ELEUSINIAN
MYSTERIES | |
| Eleusis
was a cult site in Pelasgian
times -- Neolithic
figurines have been found there -- and in Greek tradition became the place where
Demeter learned of her daughter's plight. It became the central location for a
mystery
religion: the Eleusinian
Mysteries. The temple complex was accessible only to initiates, and the
main temple is the only one in Greek tradition in which the celebrants entered
a fully enclosed, windowless room. This symbolic death and rebirth lay at the
center of the mysteries: humans are reincarnated; one's future hinges on moral
improvement. |
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