The Return of Persephone by Frederic Leighton

PERSEPHONE is the Queen of the Underworld, who became wife of the god Hades when the Dorics brought their Sky Gods to Hellas and he assumed the role of ruler of the land of the dead. She is also the Goddess of Spring, who was worshipped alongside her mother Demeter in the Eleusinian Mysteries. Plato calls her Pherepapha in his Cratylus, "because she is wise and touches that which is in motion." The Romans first heard of Her through the Aeolian Greeks who called Her Proserpine, thus the Roman name for Her became Proserpina. At Her holy site of Locri in southern Italy, She was revered as protectress of marriage. She was rarely called by name due to taboos in Greek culture, so She was usually referred to by epithets that described Her nature. Among these are:

Kore, Maiden
Nestis, Watery or Moistening with Tears
Kthonia, of the Earth
Karpophoros, Bringer of Fruit
Soteira, Saviour
Megala Thea, Great Goddess
Hagne, Holy One
Daeira, Knowing One
Praxidikê, Exacter of Justice

The first festivals celebrating the sorrows and later joys of Demeter and Persephone were exclusively for women held in pre-Hellenic Greece; that is in the Pelasgian period, when the civilizations of Crete and Troy were at their zenith before the time of the warrior-gods Zeus and Apollo who reduced the power of the Great Goddess. The women fasted for nine days in memory of the nine days of sorrow that Demeter roamed the earth holding a staff-like torch in search of Persephone. She meets Hekate, and together they go to Phoebus, the sun god, who had seen the young Goddess abducted and told them where She was. Afterwards Demeter, filled with wrath and grief, left the world of the gods, and sat as an old woman, heavily veiled, for days at the Well of the Virgin. Next She became a servant in a kingly household in Eleusis, the city that became Her largest sanctuary in Greece. She then cursed all the Earth so it bore no fruit for man or the gods for a whole year. Then the gods of Olympus, including Zeus, each pleaded with Her in vain, but She would not relent. Zeus finally succeeded in gaining Persephone's release; but while in the underworld She had eaten a seed of a pomegranate and as a consequence would have to spend one third of the year with Hades. She was embraced by both her mother and Hekate and returned to Olympus glorious, and, as if by magic, the Earth bloomed again with flowers and vegetation.

The seed-time festival of Thesmophoria lasted three days, the first day being named Kathodos (downgoing) and Anodos (upcoming), the second Nestia (fasting), and the last Kalligeneia (fair-born or fair-birth); and it was during the first that the suckling pigs were thrown into an underground chamber called a megara, and left there to rot for a year, the bones from the year before being carried up to the Earth again and placed upon an altar. Figures of serpents and human beings made of flour and wheat were also thrown into the chasm, or "chamber," at this time.

These rites were secret, thus little is known of them. However, in the widely celebrated and extremely influencial mysteries of Eleusis, where the Kathodos-and-Anodos of the maiden Persephone was again the central theme, pigs again were important offerings. And, a new motif appeared; for the culminating episode of the holy pageant performed in the "Hall of the Mystics" at Eleusis, representing the sorrows of Demeter and the ultimate Anodos or return of the maiden, was the showing of an ear of grain.

Another was the Anthesphoria, a springtime festival celebrated in Peloponessian Greece and Sicily, where Her abduction was mourned and flowers were strewn about in remembrance.

In Her rites at Locri, children were dedicated to Proserpina, and maidens about to be wed brought her their peplos to be blessed

The mysteries of these rites are the evolving of life, death, and rebirth. The pig was the sacrificial beast, representing death and rebirth. Thus the Goddesses Demeter and Persephone are symbolic of death and rebirth. During the period of the loss of her daughter Demeter had no desire for life, the Earth stopped functioning and the Earth was barren. Her desire for living was gone, taken away when Her daughter Persephone was abducted into the world of the dead. Persephone's role as Queen of the Underworld is as equally important too because she became the dead element of Demeter when She was taken, or severed, from Her mother. During the separation from Her daughter, Demeter did not and would not be Mother-Goddess Earth. But the moment Her daughter was reunited with Her, Demeter magnificently functioned again and the Earth blossomed. Thus this is the symbol of the ear of grain, the seed with the embodiment of life that lies as if dead until time to live again. Again, Persephone, being a Goddess, is divine, so when She entered the world of the dead, that divine part of Her entered too; and when She returned to the living, the divine returned too as it believed to do in each individual.

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