๐ ๐ฌ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ฟ ๐ถ๐ป ๐๐ฎ๐ถ๐๐ต, ๐๐ฎ๐ ๐ณ๐ด: ๐ฃ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐ฒ๐ฝ๐ต๐ผ๐ป๐ฒ
Persephone is the Greek goddess of spring and queen of the Underworld, a personification of the changing seasons. Her name possibly means โgrain thresherโ.
๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐๐ต ๐ฆ๐ต๐ฎ๐ธ๐ฒ๐ฟโ๐ ๐๐ฎ๐๐ด๐ต๐๐ฒ๐ฟ
Persephone is traceable back to the pre-classical Mycenean period of Greek history (1600-1100 BCE). Itโs possible she may be even older, from the Minoan civilization, from which we have evidence of a harvest goddess who underwent a cycle of rebirth, though at this point the direct connection becomes tenuous. Persephone is not alone in Mycenae; Linear B (the writing system used before the Phoenician-born Greek alphabet still used today) inscriptions have been found bearing the names of most of the classical panhellenic gods, though with some notable discrepancies. Some 3-8 hundred years before Homer wrote the ๐๐ฅ๐บ๐ด๐ด๐ฆ๐บ, Zeus was not the chief of the gods. Instead that role was filled by Poseidon. Poseidon himself was also not the sea god, but an underworld deity who had the epithet โearth shakerโ. Hades, the classical god of the underworld, was absent. This is relevant to Persephone as she is related to all these gods in significant ways. In classical mythology Zeus is her father, and Hades is her husband. In Mycenae, both these roles seem to have been filled by Poseidon, with Persephone and her mother Demeter (also attestable at that time) filling the role of dual queens. How the change from Mycenae to Homer occurred is uncertain, the two civilizations are separated by a 3-400 year long dark age with sparse records. To speculate, its likely that as Poseidon and Zeus changed roles, the partners of Demeter and Persephone fluctuated to maintain thematic purity. Its important to the myth that Persephone be the daughter of the chief god (a royal divine lineage) and that she be wed to the underworld god (as a cycle of life and death). Transitions of this kind are common, and especially noticeable when myths pass between different cultures; the individuals of the myth may change greatly, but the themes maintain. An important thing to note her is that, in the religious practices of Persephone and Demeter, they are the main actors; not their interchangeable husband/s.
๐๐ฎ๐๐ด๐ต๐๐ฒ๐ฟ ๐ผ๐ณ ๐ ๐๐๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ถ๐ฒ๐
Persephone is most associated with the ancient Greek religious tradition known as the Eleusinian Mysteries. The mysteries were both an organization and a specific event of initiation rites (aka. โmysteriesโ) that took place in the sanctuary at Eleusis. The Eleusinian Mysteries were not the only mystery religion of ancient Greece, but they were the most famous, both then and now. Possibly as a result of its popular yet secretive nature the Mysteries had a remarkably stable and long life, stemming from pre-classical times (Mycenean or even Minoan) and persisting until the rise of Christianity and prosecution of Pagans in the Roman Empire. So stable was its doctrine, it even seems to have preserved aspects of the Mycenean arrangement of gods, with the underworld Poseidon. There may even have been a distinct identity given to the earlier and later versions of Persephone, evidenced by epithets: the elder daughter of Demeter and Poseidon, Despoina (โmistressโ), and the younger daughter of Demeter and Zeus, Kore (โgirlโ). At the center of these traditions was the abduction myth. The general story is as follows: Hades, lord of the underworld, falls in love with Persephone. He beseeches her father, Zeus, for permission to marry her. Zeus, aware that Demeter would not allow the union, advises Hades to abduct Persephone. Hades does so, taking Persephone into his domain beneath the earth. Demeter is distraught when she cannot find her daughter and causes the earth to become barren. Zeus commands Hades to return Persephone in order to end the disaster. Hades does so, but not before Persephone eats from a pomegranate. Having eaten the food of the underworld, she becomes bound to it. While she can return to Demeter and bring life back to the world, she must eventually return to the underworld and let the Earth go barren again. The core of the myth is tied to the changing of the seasons: vegetation seems to dies in the winter (in the Northern Hemisphere) and return to life in spring. To initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries, this cycle of death and rebirth also represented a form of immortality of the soul, though it is uncertain if this was further extrapolated to a doctrine of reincarnation or simply the perception of the continuity of oneโs family line as immortality.
๐๐ถ๐๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐ถ๐ป๐๐ผ ๐๐ฏ๐ฑ๐๐ฐ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป
At a glance, the abduction myth seems to portray Hades as a villain, stealing a young maiden for lascivious purposes and then trapping her with him. Most ancient records of the myth do generally depict a terrified Persephone during the act of the abduction itself and a duplicitous Hades feeding her the pomegranate. But there are reasons to assume the depiction was not so simplistic, not least of which being that the myth is part of the core doctrine of a religious tradition built upon secret initiations. For context, it should be noted that the underworld is not the Greek equivalent of the Christian underworld, or Hell, which is a nightmarish realm of torture. The Greek underworld is a realm of the dead, but of all dead, virtuous and wicked. Death is also only one of its functions; it is also the source of mineral wealth. Thus, Hades is not a Greek devil, but a kind of fertility god in his own right, the source of precious metals, gemstones, and other such things. The pairing of Persephone and Hades is not a union of opposites, but compliments. When looking at depictions of the underworld couple outside of this myth, they are often the very image of royal respectability, a great contrast to the antagonistic relationship of the actual chief couple Zeus and Hera. Persephone is invoked directly in the ๐๐ฅ๐บ๐ด๐ด๐ฆ๐บ when Odysseus descends to the underworld, and his sacrifice is made to her, not Hades. This does not necessarily imply that Hades act was not kidnapping; the characters are, after all, fictional, and the ancient Greeks did not generally feel pressed to explain incongruities in mythology: these were things of gods which humans cannot understand. There is a possibility that the entire affair is a metaphoric depiction of ancient Greek courting rituals in which Zeus or Demeter are at fault; Demeter for being overprotective of Persephone, Zeus for his dishonesty to Demeter. Many Renaissance depictions of the myth use the title โthe rape of Persephoneโ, though this use of โrapeโ stems from the Latin for โseizeโ and did not contain the explicit meaning of sexual violence it does now.
Image Credit: Proserpine, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1874
