The Narcissus and the Pomegranate: A New Look at Demeter and Persephone

by Dawn Work-MaKinne

In the years before I turned, both personally and in scholarship, toward the Germanic path, Persephone was the goddess to whom I was closest. It was from Persephone that I learned about the holiness of the work of the Underworld, of the place under the earth where what is dead awaits rebirth. I treasured Charlene Spretnak's retelling of the classical Greek myths, where Persephone was not raped into the Underworld, but undertook the journey willingly, to serve the souls who were waiting there in confusion and grief. I didn't relate much to Persephone as Kore, the maiden goddess of springtime, the daughter for whom Demeter grieved. I never gave much thought to her partnership with Hades. For me, Persephone stood alone, a goddess of tremendous power in my life, working her chthonic magic.

So I was especially interested in the publication of Ann Suter's The Narcissus and the Pomegranate: An Archeology of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. One thing about being a Ph.D. student is that I'm always reading scholarly works. And since there are so many wonderful scholars out there, I often find myself saying, "I wish I'd written that!" This is one of those works I wish I'd written.

To understand Suter's work, let's begin with a brief retelling of the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone as found in The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which was composed sometime around 600 B.C.E. Gaia, at the will of Zeus, makes a narcissus bloom, and as Demeter's daughter reaches out to pluck it, the earth opens, and Hades reaches forth and abducts her. Demeter finds that Zeus has given Persephone to Hades, and withdraws from the assembly of the gods to walk the earth in her grief. Demeter goes to the city of Eleusis, and there comes to the family of Metaneira, and nurses her baby Demophoön. Demeter secretly begins the process of immortalizing the baby by placing him in the fire. Metaneira comes upon this and cries out, angering Demeter, who reveals herself as a goddess. She orders the city to build her a temple and perform rites to her. Still grieving, Demeter withdraws into her temple, and the earth is blighted and the people famished. The gods of Olympos try to cajole Demeter to return her fruitfulness, but she refuses, and Zeus sends Hermes to beg for Persephone's release from the Underworld. This Hades will allow, but we meantime find that Persephone, although longing for her mother, has eaten one pomegranate seed. She is thus bound to spend one-third of her time in the Underworld with Hades and two-thirds of her time with her mother in the upper world. Mother and daughter are reunited, with great joy. Demeter restores the earth, and Zeus comes with offers of honors for Demeter. Demeter instructs the people of Eleusis in the practice of holy mysteries, and Demeter and Persephone go to dwell beside Zeus at Olympos.

The first thing Suter points out about the story is what she calls the "Olympian frame." If you look at the narrative, you will notice that the poet is attempting to introduce Zeus and gods of Olympos as figures of importance into a story that not only doesn't involve Zeus, it doesn't even really involve men. Stories about the goddesses are framed by beginning and ending them with activities of Zeus that are basically "pasted on." In the core stories, the stories in the center of the Hymn, women control all the events. In the Olympian frame, Zeus is said to will the events. But in strict point of fact, the Olympian frame can be taken out of the Hymn, leaving the core stories intact.

There are two core stories in the Hymn: that of Persephone's abduction into the Underworld, and that of Demeter's visit to the family at Eleusis and attempt to immortalize Demophoön. As Suter looked at the narrative structure of the Hymn, she found it rather strange. Why, she wondered, were these two rather unrelated stories placed together in the Hymn? If you really look carefully at the narrative, the story is basically about Demeter's coming to Eleusis and giving the people the Eleusinian mysteries. Why do we need the story of Persephone in a hymn which seems to be about the founding of the Eleusinian mysteries? Why are there two goddesses in the Hymn to Demeter? Suter's thesis is surprising: "The concern of the Hymn is Demeter's takeover of Persephone's powers as a fertility goddess." The two goddesses need to be in the Hymn because of a power struggle between a cult of an older, powerful Goddess of fertility and the Underworld who had been worshipped at Eleusis, and Demeter's cult, the newer cult arriving at Eleusis. The Hymn is designed to show Demeter as the victor in this power struggle, with Persephone, the older, powerful fertility and Underworld goddess, in submission as the daughter of Demeter.

Suter believes that the cults of Demeter and Persephone may have been very similar, which would have helped the poet to combine the two. Both were goddesses in hieros gamos, or sacred marriage, the sacred sexual union of fertility goddess with her consort that guaranteed the fruitfulness of the earth. This hieros gamos was originally between a highly powerful earth goddess and a less important consort, but later stories, as the society became more patriarchal, reflected more violence in the rite. Both Demeter and Persephone had experience of rape by consorts; Suter notes that, "The transformation of the willing goddess 'with passion' into the rape of a reluctant goddess may reflect the resistance of the worshipers of the goddess to the inroads of a new religion that made the god paramount."

Suter is suggesting that Persephone was a manifestation of or a descendant of the earlier Bronze Age goddesses of fertility and the Underworld, of birth, death, and regeneration, the great goddess described by scholars such as Gimbutas. Cult evidence shows that Persephone was worshipped independently of Demeter. Demeter, on the other hand, may always have had a "Kore" or "Maiden" version of herself. Suter stresses that it is important that this dyad of the earth or corn goddess is not Mother and Daughter, but Mother and Maiden, older and younger forms of the same person.

The Narcissus and the Pomegranate has an apt subtitle: "An Archaeology of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter." This book reads the Homeric Hymn and takes its measure in every manner possible. Just as an archaeologist would rope off a site, carefully dust off an artifact, photograph it from every possible angle, and take its every measurement, Suter has extracted all possible information from the Hymn. Those of us who enjoy research can have fun just savoring the play and variety of methodologies: literary analysis, psychoanalytic theory, anthropological models, mythology, linguistic and inscriptional evidence, and archeology. Although feminist theory is not given its own methodological chapter, a feminist sensibility runs throughout.

Well, what of thealogy and the contemporary goddess movement? For the past twenty or thirty years, goddess women, authors, ritualists and artists have made meaning of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, the mother and her abducted maiden daughter, their parting that creates a barren season of grief, and their reunion that brings new life. This has been, deservedly, one of the most powerful and popular goddess myths of the newly-born-very-old religion that is goddess reverence. Scholarship like Suter's need not, indeed probably cannot, eclipse the power of a myth that feeds our souls in so many ways. But it might make some interesting storytelling, artwork or ritual to play with new possibilities based in Suter's reading of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter.

Suter's scholarship has given me new ideas about the mythology of Demeter and Persephone. Especially, I have been re-envisioning Persephone's mythology without the presence of Demeter. What if Persephone is a Goddess of the Earth, and under the Earth, where the seeds draw their power to grow? What if her powers over the spring's regeneration come directly from her powers as Queen of the Underworld? What if she reigns supreme in the Underworld, and the presence of a consort for the hieros gamos is a God meant to spark the creative potential of the reigning Goddess? What if Persephone is not Daughter, but Queen? What if the Mysteries at Eleusis were originally Hers?

I have questions, too, about possibilities for Demeter. What if she is not only Mother, but both Mother and Maid? What if she is not grieving for her daughter, but grieving for a younger Self that is continuously lost and renewed? What about her powers to bestow immortality that are constantly misunderstood by humans who don't have the long sight of the Goddess?

Not that I think our beloved myths of Demeter the Mother and Persephone the Daughter should simply be abandoned. Scholarship can enrich us and give us new ideas, while we still value what has deep meaning for us. This new scholarship may caution us not to declare our myths "archetypal," or somehow hard-coded in our selves and psyches, when our myths are, like our scholarship, products of a specific time and place. Our understandings will change over time, and our art and ritual and story and mythmaking will grow and change with the needs of our souls. For me, Suter's work has been magical, bringing a scholar's mind to things I had only intuited. I think a part of me has eaten just that one pomegranate seed and will always belong in some small sense to Persephone.

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