Demeter and Persephone Quintessential Mother and Daughter DemeterPersephone Takes care of grain // takes care of childKore: the “Girl” (the earth’s fertility // women’s fertility, daughter and bride Cf. Thesmophoria)queen of the underworld (symbolically “dead” to her mother)

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

The Rape of Persephone Vergina, Tomb, ca 350 BC (Marriage as a form of abduction/rape)

Hades and Persephone Bernini (1621)

The Rape of Persephone Bryson Burroughs

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

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

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.

What does Demeter finally agree to eat in her grief over her daughter’s 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.

Demeter and Persephone’s 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

Triptolemos is Demeter’s first initiate: She teaches him both agriculture and the “secret rites” that lead to Immortality.

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