Persephone

A Quick Summary | From Kore to Queen | Divine Roles | More Myths | Read More

A Quick Summary -

Persephone is the daughter of Demeter, and starts of being the Maiden (Kore). When she is taken by Hades into the Underworld, she becomes his wife and Queen of the Dead. After a long search (where everything plantlike on Earth died), her mama finds her and brings her back into the world, which lived anew, and thus she is also the Goddess of Spring. This cycle is repeated yearly, and is the mythic center of the Eleusian Mysteries. She is a seriously chthonic deity.

From Kore to Queen
The story begins with beautiful Persephone picking flowers. We should actually call her Kore here, but, to keep from getting confusing, I don't think I will. Anyway, despite what appears to be in the Waldherr painting on the right, Persephone was not alone, she was surrounded by other maidens who were likewise picking flowers. The maidens were the Oceanids, and (according to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter) Athena and Artemis, too. But despite her beautiful and sweet and all those other saccharine-sounding companions, she managed to wander off away from them. I mean, after all, there's only so much time you can spend with a bunch of seriously sugar-y girls. So off she goes. It didn't SEEM like anything was wrong. The sun was shining bright and the flowers were blooming perfectly. But clearly we aren't looking in the right place for a portent. I'll clue you in: it was among the flowers. Yeah, there were violets and roses and crocuses and lots of other things that never actually bloom at the same time, but there were also narcissus. And as you may remember from other myths (or, more likely, you don't), the narcissus is not a happy flower. Nope nope nope. Just so's you know, some people say that the narcissus was the portent of deathly type stuff because of its narcotic capabilities - but there's other reasons, too.

So there she is, and as she leans over to pick the narcissus, the earth opens and Hades, the Lord of the Underworld jumps out. Okay. Let's take a moment out and understand WHY King Dead is coming up like so many daisies. See, it all started because Persephone was the daughter of Demeter and Zeus. Now, Persephone had loyalty to her mom, first and foremost, but Zeus wasn't exactly peachy about that whole deal, and without running it by either Persephone or Demeter, he decided to tell his brother (that's Hades, folks) that he could marry our dainty little heroine (oh don't worry, she's not ALWAYS dainty). Anyway. So there's Hades thinking, "Ah, yes, a lovely opportunity to take my wife to her new kingdom," and there's Persephone thinking, "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

So she gets taken down to the Underworld and Hades shows her the sights and stuff - but Persephone isn't too thrilled. Meanwhile, up above ground, Demeter is going nuts. There's a very cool story about it, but I refuse to write it three times, so until it gets to the Myth Pages, you'll have to check it out on Demeter's page. So back to the Underworld. It's really sucking to be her at this point, I mean, let's review who she is. She's called "Kore," and is, essentially the personification of girlhood ("kore" means "girl"). She's all happy and flower-y and she's the daughter of a freakin' NATURE FERTILITY Goddess! So how much of a suck would it be to win the position of Queen of the Dead - the total antithesis of everything she represented as a girl. No longer would she rejoice in flower chains (except for the ghostly gray asphodel that covers the meadows of the Underworld), nope, now she gets to wear metal on her head and sit in a shadow world (that is, without Sun) and her only sweet and beautiful companions are dead. Poor kid. Was it any surprise that she wasn't too keen on the idea at first?

All she wanted to do was go home. She moped around and didn't eat and didn't sleep and didn't do much of anything. Did I say didn't eat? Well . . . not much anyway. See, there was this one little foible: this annoying little punk named Ascalaphus (see, even his NAME is annoying) got her to eat a seed or three of a pomegranate (a fertility symbol from this story on). She wasn't thinking about it, just sort of stuck 'em in her mouth. But that was enough. Because when Demeter finally found her, Ascalaphus tattled about the food to Hades. Now, this may not seem like a big deal - but it had a meaning. It meant that she had to stay in the Underworld, because she tied herself to it by partaking of the food. Moral: don't take candy from strangers. Anyway, so even though her mom sorta rescued her, she still had to spend lots of time in the Underworld reigning as Queen (a third of the year, actually).

Divine Roles
Persephone is called Kore (KOH-ray) as a girl. In Greek "kore" is literally the word for "girl" so this is not shocking, but it is important. Persephone as Kore was a goddess that represented girlhood. When she was raped by Hades (or in Orphic myths, when she sleeps with Zeus in the form of a dragon), she left her maidenhood. Bonnie MacLachlan wrote a great essay about how in one particular cult, the myth of her marriage to Hades was far from non-consensual, and that she became a nymph, playfully accepting her dark marriage. But however you tell the story, dark is definitely what this goddess had in store for her. While her mother, Demeter, was focused on fertility, Persephone was profoundly chthonic (check out the blog post on Dark Earthy Death Goddesses and How To Pronounce "chthonic") and in fact was even called "Chthonia" sometimes. Like her husband, she had power over the dead, but unlike him, her power extended to the living in an ever-changing cycle. She and her mother together were the principal deities of the Eleusian Mysteries, a widespread religion we still know little about.

More Myths
Despite her unique status as Megala Thea (Great Goddess) in the Eleusian Mysteries, Persephone had plenty of regular old myths, too. One that Aphrodite is best known for is the myth of Adonis,. In that story a fairly equitable arrangement is reached between the two goddesses, but in others she is just as jealous as her cousins. For example, there is a story that Hades once cheated on her with an Underworld nymph named Minthe who had the arrogance to say that she was better than the Queen of the Dead, more beautiful, and that, in fact, Hades was going to make her Queen instead. Persephone couldn't have it, and either she or her mother trampled the girl and subsequently transformed her into the mint plant we know so well today. But she had pity in her, too, for it was she that released the dead Eurydice to her mourning husband Orpheus. She also released the perfect wife, Alcestis, back to the world of the living. Likewise she let Heracles borrow Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog of the Underworld, and even let him take his friend Theseus out of his punishment.