5.4.5: Demeter

More so than her Olympic sisters and their daughters, Demeter [de-MEE-ter] represents the motherly aspects of the Great Goddess, exemplified by her love for her daughter, Kore, “maiden,” whose name later becomes Persephone [per-SEF-oh-nee] after her descent, and her stewardship over the harvest, the extension of the Goddess’s nurturing of humanity.

In most versions of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Zeus is attributed as the father of Kore and her son Iacchus, but there are a few references to Kore being a virgin daughter from a virgin mother. In that tradition, Demeter, rather than Artemis, is the closest parallel to the Great Goddess for no other goddess in the pantheon embodies perfect parthenogenesis. Other stories of the goddess link her to the Titan Iasion (Iasius) with whom she bore another son Plutus. Despite these liaisons, the goddess never partners nor marries, which offers her a sense of independence and freedom from male control. But the dominant versions of her story separate her autonomy and enlist Zeus as the ultimate arbitrator over their child’s destiny, further separating the powers of the Goddess from the females in the pantheon and reminding readers that Greek gods father children, but they do not parent (Harris and Platzner).

Persephone’s dramatic abduction by her uncle, Hades, and Demeter’s painful separation from her daughter serve as the dramatic arc of the myth, a story which clearly serves as an etiological explanation for seasonal changes, and the effect such changes have upon the psyche of humans. The story also recapitulates the generational trauma of mothers separated from their children, such as Gaea’s children being forced back into her womb (the Underworld) by Ouranos, or Rhea’s children being consumed by Kronos. Like her predecessors, Persephone is swallowed into the Underworld of Hades where she is forced into a dreaded marriage to a relative a generation older than her, who also represents the antithesis of her mother. Her mother ensures life and renewal, while Hades houses death.

Unable to stop or reverse the theft of her child, Demeter’s only option is to abandon her duties to the harvest and honor her obligation as mother. Her quest captures elements of the heroic cycle, but the emphasis is consistently on her loss, which she attempts to soothe by nurturing a human child. The child, Dêmophôn, thrives under her godly care and the nightly ritual she performs to grant him immortality; however, when the child’s mother spies on the mysteries of the goddess, she breaks the spell and offends the goddess. Enraged at the separation from yet another child and the violation of her sacred rites, she orders the Elusians to build her a temple where she can properly instruct them in her rituals. The temple becomes her retreat where she refuses to tend the corn harvest for a year, forcing humans into a painful famine that brings them to the edge of catastrophe. When the humans pray to Zeus for relief, he finally intercedes with a compromise that reinforces the patriarchal forced bondage of marriage, an institution that Demeter had avoided for herself, but one from which she cannot save her daughter.