Persephone 珀耳塞福涅.docVIP

Persephone Abstract In Greek Mythology, Persephone also called Kore, is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest-goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld. She was also the goddess of spring growth, who was worshipped alongside her mother Demeter in the Eleusinian Mysteries. This agricultural-based cult promised its initiates passage to a blessed afterlife. Key words: Persephone goddess underworld Persephone is the goddess of the underworld in Greek mythology. She was the only child of the union of Demeter (goddess of the bountiful harvest) and Zeus, the mighty king of the Olympians. She was born when Demeter was Zeus’ consort, long before his marriage to the goddess Hera. By all accounts Persephone had an idyllic childhood, raised by her nurturing mother and played with her father’s other daughters, the Greek goddesses Athena and Aphrodite. Always a cheerful and compliant child, the little goddess Persephone was a parent’s dream. Like her mother, Persephone is a nature goddess, but her province is not the surface of the earth but the interior. Hence she is a goddess of the unconscious, of intuition and mystery. Her symbol is the bat and the pomegranate. Unlike every other offspring of an Olympian pairing of deities, Persephone has no stable position at Olympus. Persephone used to live far away from the other deities. In the Olympian telling, the gods Hermes, Ares, Apollo, and Hephaestus, had all wooed Persephone; but Demeter rejected all their gifts and hid her daughter away from the company of the Olympian deities. Thus, Persephone lived a peaceful life before she became the goddess of the underworld, which, according to Olympian mythologists, did not occur until Hades abducted her and brought her into it. She was innocently picking flowers with some nymphs, the Homeric hymn says, in a field in Enna when Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth. Later, the nymphs were changed by Demeter into the Sirens for not having interfered.