Demeter instructed the Eleusinians to build a temple to her, which they did, and she established her mystery cult in the city. But Demeter took up her abode in her new temple, and she refused to return to Olympus. Still without her daughter, Demeter was so angry at Zeus that she stayed in her temple in Eleusis and would not join the other gods on Olympus.
Furthermore, she caused a drought on the earth which lasted for an entire year, and nearly killed all the mortals. Zeus realized that if all the mortals died there would be no one to sacrifice to the gods, so he sent Hermes to persuade Hades to let Persephone return to her mother. Hades agreed to allow Persephone to return, but before she left, he tricked her into eating a seed from a pomegranate. Demeter was ecstatic to reunite with her daughter, but her spirits fell when she learned that Persephone had eaten during her time in the Underworld.
There seems to have been a rule that if someone eats anything in Hades, even something as small as a pomegranate seed, they can never leave. A bargain was struck, however, between the god of the Underworld and the goddess of grain: for two thirds of the year spring, summer, and early fall , Persephone would live with her mother and the plants would grow, but for the remaining third late fall and winter , she would live with her husband below the earth and all the plants would die Homeric Hymn to Demeter.
This, of course, is the origin of the seasons a natural aitiological myth. She aided him when foreign kings did not take kindly to the gifts and she helped him gain the throne of Eleusis. In return he began the tradition of the festival to Demeter called the Thesmophoria. This was a festival celebrated by women all over Greece and was the second most prominent rite for Demeter, after the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Her mother hears her cry, and begins a search for her throughout the whole world. Whilst ever Persephone is missing Demeter creates a blight on the land in which nothing germinates and nothing grows.
It would deprive them of the honours that they receive from mortals. But Demeter will not let go of her fury at the loss of her daughter. Zeus is forced to relent and sends the messenger Hermes to the Underworld to get the girl back. But, just as she is going, Hades prevails on her to eat the seed of a pomegranate to prevent her from staying with her mother above the earth all her days.
Persephone is therefore forced to spend one-third of each year under the earth with Hades, and two-thirds with her mother and the community of gods on Mount Olympus. Whereas she might have expected an immortal existence with her mother on Olympus, Persephone becomes the central figure in a new cycle of life and death. She is both queen of the Underworld, as wife of Hades, and associated with the new life that rises with the spring. Death and life are no longer mutually exclusive, but co-exist in both the upper and lower worlds.
There is life in death, and death in life. The Demeter Hymn contains the foundation myth of the Eleusinian Mysteries - renowned religious rites which took place at Eleusis, near to Athens. Initiation into the Mysteries held out the prospect of making death less threatening. Read more on our privacy policy here.
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