A major Olympian goddess (sister and mate to Zeus, mother of Persephone)

Attributes: stalks of grain, torch (firebrand); crown, sceptre

Demeter (left) and Persephone (right)

Other images of Demeter (from the Univ. of Victoria)

Other images of Persephone (from the Univ. of Victoria)

Demeter and the Near East

"Meter" = mother (cf. maternity); basic assoc. with grain and crops

Near East "Earth Mother"-- the "Great Goddess", a general goddess, perhaps, of fertility

• human sexuality: Aphrodite
• marriage & family: Hera
• animal fertility: Artemis
• crops: Demeter

Importation of Cybele: stories of Cybele: son-of-rock=Agdestis, Dionysus, Nana, pomegranate tree; Attis; pine tree & violets, hair grows, pinkie wiggles (cult of the Galli)

Compare the Homeric Hymn to Demeter! (death, rebirth, pomegranate; but otherwise?) - "Homeric Hymn" (but NOT written by Homer; nonetheless very old) 7th c. - almost our sole source of mythological information on Demeter (hardly mentioned in Homer, Hesiod, or the tragedians!)

Demeter and Eleusis

2 months truce, for travel to the celebration

"initiates" into the "mysteries" of Eleusis

nowhere a better example of the distance between MYTH and CULT

Hymn to Demeter: an etiological (aitiological) story

(Rape of Persephone by Hades, Withdrawal of Demeter to Eleusis, Cessation of crops, Persephone & the pomegranate seed)

• rotation of seasons: but problems (this is not the way crops rotated in Greece) - flowers, symbolism of renewal & rebirth
• why the great cult center for Demeter is the small village of Eleusis (14 miles west of Athens)
• Celeus - Metaneira - Demophon & fire

But what is the relationship between this tale of Demophon and the goddess of grain?!?

Central concern for the divine power associated with Demeter = issue of mortality and immortality

The Eleusinian Mysteries: the rites associated with the cult of Demeter

• thousands (!): all initiates welcome (initiation, not purity of heart!): myo ==> mystery
• initiation individual choice, included women, slaves
• procession
• piglet (bath in sea, sacrifice)
• fast
• drink of barley & pennyroyal (kykeon)
• basket: sexual things, mortar & pestle
• reenactments?
• climax: display of a cut ear of grain

What was the Mystery done, said, and shown at Eleusis?

• a ritual that takes terror from death, & (it seems) guarantees that the underworld has a better fate; immortality is NOT implied
• what is offered is different from the hope for eternity through fame among those in the upper world (the best fate in the view of Homer & most other poets)
• Persephone as queen of the underworld seems to lead to some fundamental insight into the nature of existence in the underworld, and the vision is something that comforts
• Demophon: the story seems to be saying: no, no that is not the way for mortals to gain "immortality" though it is that to which we aspire; Demeter has something to do with a different KIND of "immortality"
• Demeter = rebirth: "immortality" not from the absence of death, but by the ability to generate life from death (quote, importance of rebirth in symbolism of Christianity)
• Concentration in the hymn itself on lovely images, and at the end a sense of reconciliation, of all right in the world, of grief consoled: a sense of quiet joy in nature's ability to refresh and renew