Demeter and Persephone Quintessential Mother and Daughter

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Demeter and PersephoneQuintessential Mother and
Daughter

• Demeter Persephone
• Takes care of grain // takes care of child Kore
  the Girl
• (the earths fertility // womens fertility,
  daughter and bride
• Cf. Thesmophoria) queen of the underworld
• (symbolically dead to her
• mother)

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• Demeter, Triptolemus, and Persephone
• Bas-relief (Eleusis 5th c. BCE)

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The Rape of PersephoneVergina, Tomb, ca 350
BC(Marriage as a form of abduction/rape)
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• Hades and Persephone
• Bernini (1621)

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The Rape of PersephoneBryson Burroughs
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The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is connected to The
Eleusinian Mysteries (located in Eleusis, near
Athens)
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The Eleusinian Mysteries

• Initiation into the Mysteries (at least by the
  classical period 480-332 BCE) was open to all,
  including women, slaves and non-Greeks

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Persephone/Proserpina eats pomegranate seeds (a
food not normally eaten by the gods) in the
underworld and gets a taste of mortality.
Eating the food of the underworld (a
symbolization of her consummated marriage) binds
her to her new condition as wife. Both the
pomegranate and the wife bleed.
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What does Demeter finally agree to eat in her
grief over her daughters loss?

• KYKEON a drink made of barley meal (i.e.,
  cultivated grain), water, and herbs.
• In other words, Demeter agrees to eat human food,
  because in the depth of her grief she comes to
  experience a part of their mortal condition pain
  and loss. She too, like her daughter, literally
  gets a taste of mortality.

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Demeter and Persephones Gift of Immortality
Offering a bridge between the 3 (normally
separate) realms

• Demeter - on Mount Olympos
• Rites of Eleusinian Mysteries - on Earth
• Persephone - in the Underworld

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• Triptolemos is Demeters first initiate
• She teaches him both agriculture
• and the secret rites that lead to
• Immortality.

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Persephone and Triptolemos (riding a divine
chariot to spread knowledge of agriculture
throughout the earth)