DEATH BECOMES HER: Persephone as the Mother of Mortality
The typical view of Persephone is of a sweet young maiden bedecked in flowers, captured and ensnared in the gloomy Underworld against her will. However, upon a closer reading of the mythology surrounding Persephone more evidence can be found that she is a much older deity subsumed into the Greek pantheon. This interpretation views the best-known Persephone myth, told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, as an after-the-fact construction that does not denote the beginning of Persephone’s involvement in Greek mythology but rather reflects a perversion of older traditions in order to seamlessly incorporate the goddess into the Greek pantheon.
Let us begin by examining the most widely known myth concerning Persephone, that of her abduction into the Underworld. The story goes that Persephone was playing in the fields of Nysa, collecting flowers with her nymph friends, when Hades burst from the ground and snatched her. The earth closes behind them as Hades takes his bride to the Underworld. Demeter, distraught at the loss of her daughter, ceases to allow the crops to grow. At last Zeus, who surreptitiously gave his permission for the marriage, is forced to find a way to appease both Demeter and Hades; the solution reached is that Persephone will spend six months out of the year with her mother, and six with her husband, because she had eaten six pomegranate arils while in the Underworld. In this version of the story, Persephone has no agency and is treated more like an object than a goddess with power in her own right.
The popular abduction myth serves an aetiological purpose, explaining the turning of the seasons through Persephone’s travels between the celestial and chthonic worlds and the resulting grief of her mother. Indeed, in this myth it is Demeter who causes the crops to wither and Demeter who allows the crops to grow again. However, I posit that it makes more sense for Persephone to be the active agent here. It is her absence that causes the crops to die, and her presence that prompts their regeneration. Persephone is not simply the trigger for the seasonal cycle, she is the entire reason for it; she encompasses the full life/death cycle within herself, independently from both her husband and her mother.
When we drop the relational aspect of the myth and allow Persephone to stand on her own, she becomes not a pawn traded and bartered by the other gods but a figure of immense power. The way her story is traditionally told, Persephone is a figure of contradiction, tension arising between her status as a fertility deity and a ruler of the dead. This tension is easily resolved by thinking of Persephone as an independent deity whose powers are not a result of the abduction myth but were fully-formed before such a myth was created, before Demeter was her mother and Hades her husband. This Persephone takes Queen of the Underworld as her proper place. Rather than place life and death at odds with each other, this view of Persephone places them as part of a continual cycle of death and regeneration, with Persephone herself as the conduit through which they flow.
Here Persephone is not a goddess of life captured and forced by her husband to dwell among the dead, but the primary life/death deity. Support for this interpretation comes from an unlikely source: Hades himself. Hades is not inherently tied to the Underworld from the start of his attending mythos. Rather, he spends quite a bit of time in Kronos’ stomach before Zeus eventually rescues him and his siblings to fight in the war against the Titans, overthrowing Kronos and establishing Zeus as the leader of the universe. It is then that Zeus divides up the rest of the world between his two eldest brothers: Poseidon becomes lord of the Sea, Hades king of the Underworld. While Persephone, as a goddess concerned with vegetation and fertility, has intrinsic ties to the life/death cycle, Hades does not. Furthermore, Hades has no connection to the land of the living; he rarely leaves the Underworld and does not interact with living mortals. Persephone, however, moves between the world of the living and the dead, much like the shades over whom she rules, and can be seen to signify the connection between life and death. This is a vital connection, for a lord of the dead with no ability to impact the living does not have much power.
On the basis that Persephone is more inherently suited to her position as a death deity, in that she encompasses the full life/death cycle and represents both life- and death- forces, I posit that Persephone existed, in some form, long before Hades made her his wife. The marriage between Hades and Persephone is painted as a marriage between life and death; their union is the connection between the two. However, this justification for the marriage is simply surplus; Persephone herself is the bond between life and death, regardless of her husband. I think it not too far a jump to make to surmise that she, as an older death goddess, was already Queen of the Underworld, and that following the War of the Titans and Hades’ appointment as Lord of the Dead, the marriage was arranged so that she would share some of her power with him and thus uphold the new world order. The abduction myth then becomes a post-hoc explanation for the origins of Persephone as she is subsumed into larger Greek culture.
It is not unthinkable that a female death deity would have preceded Hades in both temporal creation and power. In Hesiod’s Theogony, “the divinity who first emerges from the primeval void is not an omnipotent male deity…but the goddess Earth…as the Greeks themselves understood the story, it seemed more natural to imagine a female conceiving and giving birth to something than a male” (Lefkowitz, 1). Certainly the earliest archetype of deity incubated in the human mind was a “creator deity,” and surely it is not far-fetched to suppose a tremendous overlap between such a deity and the “mother archetype.” I posit that Persephone, or more accurately the goddess(es) that became Persephone, arose from such a creator-mother tradition in which the goddess is a joint deity of life and death. It is, once again, a position that seems especially fitting for a female, as women, who conceive and carry new life within their own bodies, are inextricably tied to both. Every woman “gives birth astride a grave” (Beckett) as she brings forth new life but simultaneously, by nature of the necessity that all things born must die, creates a death.
Now perhaps it is time to deal with Persephone’s status as a maiden, seemingly precluding her from being a mother. Indeed Persephone was widely referred to simply as Kore, maiden, but she is in fact no virginal goddess. Persephone counts three children as her own: Melinoe, Zagreus, and the Erinyes. The Erinyes, or Furies, are not always attributed as Persephone’s children, but this is simply a hazard of a mythos in which multiple variations are present and accepted and we shall not concern ourselves overmuch with it. I will discuss these children of Persephone only briefly, as I am concerned primarily with their importance rather than the details of their respective attending mythologies.
Zagreus, like his mother, is a symbol for rebirth. Conceived by Persephone and Zeus, in the shape of a serpent, Zagreus was Zeus’ first-born son and placed on the throne of Heaven by his father. He was torn to pieces by the jealous Titans, leaving only his heart intact. The heart was made by Zeus into an elixir, which Semele drank and from it became impregnated with the god Dionysus. The tie between the twice-born god and his original mother is preserved in Dionysus’ ties to the cultivation and life cycle of the grape vine. Furthermore, the usage of wine as an offering to the dead during funeral ceremonies in ancient Greece points once again to the lasting connection between Dionysus and Persephone. The placement of Dionysus in the Greek pantheon as a deity of great importance is at odds with the typical portrayal of Persephone as an auxiliary character of little import. We are reminded that despite the relatively few myths which bear her name, Persephone must have been a deity of great importance to the Greeks, as she holds considerable power over death, and her placement in the cosmological pantheon mirrors that of Hera herself.
Melinoe, “who from infernal Pluto’s sacred queen [Persephone], Mixt with Saturnian Jupiter [Kronion Zeus], arose” (Orphic Hymn LXX) is half-dark, half-light, physically showing her dual heavenly and chthonic nature. She is capable of driving mortals mad with nightmares, and presides over the conciliatory offerings made to the dead. Unlike the Erinyes, who were fathered by Hades and Persephone, Melinoe was fathered by Zeus “under Pluto’s semblance.” Following the logic that the powers of divine children are derived from their parents, Melinoe’s connection to death and the Underworld cannot come from Hades, but must issue from Persephone herself. Clearly, Persephone’s connection with the realm of death is not created through her marriage to Hades but an inborn part of herself.
Perhaps the most illuminating myth concerning Persephone and motherhood, however, is a far more obscure story in which Persephone is the creator of mankind. According to Pseudo-Hyginus Fabulae 22o, “When Cura [Persephone] was crossing a certain river, she saw some clayey mud. She took it up thoughtfully and began to fashion a man. While she was pondering on what she had done, Jove [Zeus] came up; Cura asked him to give the image life, and Jove readily grant[ed] this.” Following this, Persephone, Zeus, and Gaia argue about who should possess the newly-created mankind; in the end, Gaia possesses him while he lives, Zeus controls his fate, and Persephone possesses him in death. In this myth there is no mention of Hades at all; he is superfluous to the ownership of the dead by Persephone. Even Zeus’ role in the myth is secondary, and closely mirrors the biological structure of the bearing of offspring. Persephone creates and forms the man, but is unable to animate it on her own and must have the help of Zeus; in parallel, a woman may carry and birth a child on her own, but cannot conceive without the addition of male genetic material. This pairs nicely with the Greek view of parenthood, in which “there was a profound difference between mother and father, the former being biological parent only — she who gave birth — and the latter being social parent — he who gave and continues to give his children their place in the world” (Lincoln 4). It is important to note, however, that Zeus can lay only temporary claim to this “child,” with power over its fate while it lives, but must inevitably surrender it to death and to Persephone, who will keep it in her embrace for all eternity.
Motherhood, and the strength of the mother-child bond, is an important theme throughout Persephone’s mythology. The central abduction myth focuses heavily on maternal love and duty, as Demeter first grieves and then “saves” her daughter. Demeter’s intervention in the matter serves a dual purpose: it first establishes the importance and strength of the maternal bond, and second provides a logical reason that Persephone cannot stay in the Underworld year-round. In a bigger-picture view of the myth, this allows for the aetiology of the seasons, but it also reinforces Persephone’s status as a deity that connects the three realms of being — the divine, the living, and the dead. I posit that Persephone existed independently of Demeter as a goddess able to travel between the realms of the living and the dead, and when she was incorporated into the Greek pantheon, Demeter’s role in the story emerged to explain this ability. If Persephone cannot stay in the Underworld with her husband year-round (ie, she cannot be solely a death-force), there must be some special cause for it; placing Demeter as Persephone’s distraught mother provides the special circumstance that necessitates the goddess’ return to the living world and the retention of her powers as a life-force. In the same vein, the pomegranate seeds Persephone eats in the land of the dead provide a physical reason that she must also return to Hades’ side. These events are typically seen as the raison d^etre why Persephone must divide her time as she does and why the seasons follow her circuitous journey; however, it is possible that the journey was part of Persephone’s mythology before the abduction myth became the accepted version of events, and these incidents were devised to explain the already-existing structure.
This interpretation of the myth is borne up by older Greek versions of the abduction myth. In these older variants, Hades does not appear at all, but Persephone, “hearing the despairing cries of the dead” chooses willingly to enter the Underworld to comfort them. This version may be a relic from older traditions replaced by the now-accepted abduction myth; perhaps this shift in the narrative is due to a shift in society to a more patriarchal structure, or perhaps it is done to allow for the aetiology of the seasons provided by Zeus’ ruling in the quarrel between Demeter and Hades.
Both versions of the Greek Persephone myth incorporate parallels to earlier mythologies which contain a Persephone-like figure. Inanna (Ishtar) was a Sumerian goddess of fertility who, like Persephone, travelled between the worlds of the living and the dead. In some versions of the myth, Inanna’s grief over her husband, who must spend half the year in the Underworld, is given as the aetiology of the seasons. Interestingly, these older myths conflate the functions of Persephone and Demeter in the Greek myth as both the one lost to the Underworld and the one left grieving the loss. To follow this vein, returning to the notion that the abduction myth was fabricated so as to import an already-existing goddess into the Greek tradition, creates a dynamic in which it is possible to surmise that Demeter is not simply Persephone’s mother but an aspect of the goddess herself re-personified into a maternal figure for the sake of the story. Bearing in mind Demeter’s role in the abduction myth as Persephone’s tie to the living world, Demeter then symbolizes the life-force aspect of the fertility goddess.
Though I cannot say with any certainty that Demeter and Persephone derived in Greek times from a single fertility/death goddess divided into distinct identities, the interpretation of the goddesses as aspects of each other is valuable to understanding them. In modern paganism, Persephone, Demeter, and Hekate are often referred to as corresponding, respectively, to the Maiden, Mother, and Crone aspects of the Great Goddess. They are all three both distinct entities and part of the larger entity of the Great Goddess. In this framework, the three goddesses represent progression through the stages of (female) life via archetypes common to all women. Demeter, as the Mother, represents the ability to give life, while Hekate, as the Crone, represents the end of life. Persephone, the Maiden, represents rebirth, or the reality that life begets death begets life. This principle is mirrored in the genealogy of the three goddesses: Demeter is Persephone’s mother; Melinoe is believed to be an Orphic title for Hekate, making her Persephone’s daughter. Thus the tripartite Great Goddess is also tri-generational, a goddess giving birth to aspects of herself.
It’s not just modern pagans who place Persephone at the center of their relationship with life and death. The ancient mystery cult surrounding the Eleusinian Mysteries attests to the sway the goddess was seen to hold over life and death. The cult was open to all, and “featured a series of celebrations consisting of Lesser Mysteries and Greater Mysteries, with the Greater celebrated every five years or so” (Veronese). Initiates believed they would receive favor and better fate in the Underworld, and viewed death as a new beginning. Occurring at the time of the autumn sowing in Eleusis, the Mysteries were heavily tied to the idea of regeneration and mirrored the ascent of Persephone from the underworld. Persephone’s annual rebirth “symbolized the eternity of life which flows from generation to generation” (Tripolitis). The Thesmophoria, a wide-spread Greek festival dedicated to Persephone and Demeter, was likewise steeped in the symbolism of death, decay, and rebirth. The festival involved making sacrifices of pigs and burying them in pits, and retrieving the composted remains of the pigs sacrificed the previous year to mix with seeds and then plant. The Thesmophoria, like the Eleusinian Mysteries, enforces the idea that the ancient Greek understanding of death was built primarily upon the natural life cycle of plants following the seasons, and that Persephone was at the epicenter.
Bedecked in flowers though she may be, Persephone is no sweet maid turned into a death goddess against her will. She is death; she is life. Born out of the natural understanding of death through plants, especially those grown as crops, Persephone predates the myth of her abduction and was already a powerful life/death goddess in her own right. Her name may not have been Persephone, but when the Greeks gave her that name, closely related to the Greek word for “destroy,” it was not the spring goddess they were thinking of but the perpetual cyclic balance between life and entropy.
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