Demeter and Persephone

It seems as though the gods should be exempt from pain. It seems that way, but alas—even those above us must do their share of suffering, though it may look from our lowly vantage point that suffering is for mortals alone. In a way, perhaps, gods suffer more, as they have more to lose. They do not have the sweet sleep of death awaiting them, promising an end to pain if not now, then someday.

There was a goddess who was completely happy. Why would she not be? Under each of her footsteps flowers bloomed, grasses sprung up, rivulets of life-bringing water flowed. When her hand brushed a tree, its leaves spread waxy green and fruit ripened to red on its branches.

Her hair, long waves of copper, undulated behind her as she walked the earth. But she did not walk alone, for at her side was her daughter, her muse, her heart outside her body.

If humans saw them together, they had to look away, so piercingly bright was the love that flowed between mother and daughter. Of course there had once been a male counterpart, a god whose seed had ripened in the womb of the goddess, and of that ripened seed was this girl, this daughter. But the goddess had no need of him now, and it was just the two of them, a duet of beauty.

And though mortals needed to avert their eyes or be blinded by this vision, the gods needn’t look away. One god looked carefully, seeing what pleased him and determining to take it.

For him it was nothing to take life, and had the girl been mortal rather than god, he would not have had to act to possess what he desired. She would have come to him in time, as all souls do.

But as goddess rather than mortal, this girl would never descend into his realm … unless he caused it to be so.

And so he did.

A flower grew, unlike any other the girl had seen. White petaled and luminous, it had at its heart a purple bloom with a scent that called her to it. And when she reached down with her young hand to brush its heart, the earth cracked open at her feet.

She disappeared, and the seam of the earth resealed. The goddess mother heard only what seemed like the hush of wind, but when she leveled her gaze where last she had seen her daughter, nothing was there—naught but the flower, which, having played its part, wilted now, head down, as if ashamed.

In her fury, the goddess demanded the return of her daughter, but alas, the gods turned a deaf ear to her pleas. The earth dried and died under her feet as she mourned, her heart too swollen by grief to pay heed to the mortals’ predicament—and without her blessing, fruit did not flourish and seeds did not flower.

The earth was starving.

Made bitter by her loss, the great goddess clothed herself in the skin of an old woman and found refuge in the home of a mortal queen, where she played nursemaid to the infant prince. If her daughter was lost to her, then she would mold a god out of this boy’s mortal flesh, and so she clutched him to her breast and breathed her sweet breath into his mouth; she anointed him with ambrosia, and she lowered him nightly into flames, and as the days passed, she filled him with sweetness and burned away his mortality.

It might be that if his mother had not interrupted this ritual—finding them together over the fire and screaming in fear for her boy’s mortal soul—and if the goddess had succeeded in molding the boy into a god, maybe she would have overcome her grief, and her memory of her lost daughter would have faded.

But the mother-queen did spy the goddess at her nightly work, and scream she did, and the goddess tossed away her mortal disguise and stood brilliant and blinding in her beauty. And she remembered her own child and left the boy to his mortal mother and resumed her search for her daughter.

At last the earth could bear no more of her grief, and so the gods demanded that the daughter be released from its bowels. But just before she gained her freedom—right before she was reunited with her sweet mother—the girl goddess ate six seeds from the heart of a pomegranate, each seed splitting and spilling sweetness into her mouth, and those seeds destined her each year to six months spent underground.

Now, some say that she was tricked into eating the seeds, that whatever happened underground was against her will, that she returned to the surface and to her mother’s arms willingly and white-armed.

But perhaps the girl found pleasure in those dark rooms underground. It may be that, away from the gaze of her goddess mother, she warmed and responded to the underworld god’s touch. And when she placed the seeds inside her mouth, when she burst them with her teeth and savored their sweetness with her tongue—perhaps she knew exactly what she was doing.