 Demeter
(Ceres) Goddess of the Harvest
With the advent of Ceres becoming
a planet it's valuable to look at her myth. We often
read of her daughter Persephone, let's now look at
the mother.
Once the flower like Persephone,
the lovely daughter of earth, disappeared, her mother
Demeter could find her nowhere. The weeping Demeter
searched and searched through the fields, crying
out for the daughter who was so close as to seem
her very self, her childhood, her gentle youth.
Demeter fretfully clutched her blue
green cloak, then thoughtlessly shredded it into
tiny pieces, scattering them as cornflowers in the
grasses. But flowers and grasses soon faded, for
Demeter was the source of all growth. As she mourned,
the goddess withdrew her energy from the plants,
which began to wilt and shrivel.
So, it was said, Chloe (green one),
the happy earth, changed for the first time into
the yellow gold, autumnal Demeter.
The goddess wandered through the
dying earth until she came to a town near Athens.
There she took a job as nursemaid to the queen of
Eleusis, Metanira, whose son Triptolemos she wanted
to make immortal by smoking him like a log in the
fireplace. The frantic queen found her, and the disguised
goddess was revealed. Demeter stayed on in Eleusis,
however, often sitting sadly by a well as she wept
for the loss of her beloved daughter.
One day the queen's daughter Baubo
(or lambe) saw the sad goddess at the well and tried
to comfort her. Demeter refused all her consoling
words and so, to make the goddess smile, Baubo exposed
her vulva salaciously. Surprised, Demeter chuckled,
the first laughter the starving earth had heard from
its goddess in many months.
Shortly afterward, Persephone was
restored to her mother, and spring bloomed again
on the earth. In gratitude for the hospitality of
the Eleusinians, Demeter taught the arts of agriculture
to Prince Triptolemos and thereafter based her mysterious
rites at that city.
This Greek
story of the Great Goddess is clearly a seasonal
metaphor; it contains as well a beautifully tender
archetype of the bond between mothers and daughters.
A variant of the common Mediterranean
myth that explains how the earth loves and consumes
its own green growth, this legend is singular in
epitomizing this love, not in a sexual relationship
between the ever dying son and his mother, but in
a familial bond between the maternal Demeter and
her adored daughter Persephone.
This daughter, the springtime earth,
was really only another form of Demeter herself.
In Sicily, the identity of Demeter and Persephone
was canonical; they were dubbed Damatres ('mothers')
and were portrayed as indistinguishable. But the
most common form of the Great Goddess was a trinity,
rather than a pair of deities. Many scholars have
sifted through the famous Demeter myths, hoping to
find the third part of the feminine triad, the winter
earth, the aged crone, the hibernating seed.
Speculation has generally settled
on Hecate, who certainly seems to be the most crone
like of the possible divine figures in the story.
In addition, she appears at important junctures;
she was, for instance, the only one to witness Persephone's
disappearance. Because the omniscient earth, Demeter,
could hardly have been oblivious to happenings on
her surface, Hecate therefore seems to be an aspect
of Demeter as earth mother.
But earth mother is only one of
the possible meanings of Demeter's name. The second
part of the word unarguably means mother. The first
part, however, translates as easily into cereal as
earth, making her the goddess not of the earth's
surface but only of cultivated, food-providing plants,
parallel to the Roman Ceres.
If Damater derives from the words
for earth mother, the goddess would be another form
of Ge or Gaea. As such, she appears in some legends
mated to Poseidon, the husband of Da.
Whether she symbolized all the earth
or just its edible plants, Demeter was worshiped
in fireless sacrifices, demanding all offerings in
their natural state. Honeycombs, unspun wool, unpressed
grapes, and uncooked grain were laid on her altars.
Not for her the offerings of wine, mead, cakes, and
cloth, for Demeter was the principle of natural,
rather than artificial, production.
Her greatest festival, shared with
Persephone, was at Eleusis, where the Greeks annually
celebrated mysteries that brought the initiate into
a gracious and grateful relationship to the Mother.
At the three-day festival, the mystai imitated the
searching Demeter and rejoiced as, once again, she
was reunited with her daughter.
In their mimicry, they were at first
Demeter Erynes (angry), furious and sad at the loss
of Persephone; then they acted the happy role of
Demeter Louisa (kindly one), the mother transformed
by reunion. In other places and at other times, Demeter
bore other names: Kidaria (mask), Chamaine (soil),
and the powerful Thesmophoros (lawgiver), orderer
of the seasons of the earth and of human life as
well.
Find
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From 'Goddesses and Heroines'
by Patricia Monaghan (Used by permission. This text
is NOT included in the Goddess Oracle) www.patricia-monaghan.com
Illustration from The
Goddess Oracle Copyright Hrana Janto, used by permission
of the artist.
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