The first day of Spring has arrived, new life, new growth and the promise of prosperity. Spring is a beautiful season. It’s the perfect day to contemplate the mythology surrounding Spring and what better than the myth of Persephone the goddess of Spring’s bounty.

Simoonah Sihr

Persephone
Adapted from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia www.enwikipedia.org
In Greek mythology, Persephone ( par’sefani) is also called Kore. She was abducted by Hades, the king of the underworld. The myth of her abduction represents her function as the personification of vegetation which shoots forth in spring fruits.

PERSEPHONE was the goddess queen of the underworld as wife of the god Hades. 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.

The story goes that Persephone also called Kore (the Maiden) is the daughter of Zeus and the harvest goddess Demeter, and queen of the underworld. One day when she was playing with her Nymph companions in a a meadow full of beautiful flowers, Kore was seized by Hades and carried off to the underworld as his bride. Her mother Demeter was bereft at her disappearance and accompanied by the goddess Hekate they carrying flaming torches throughout the world in search of her daughter.

On learning Zeus conspired in her daughter’s abduction she was raging, and refused to let the earth bare fruit until Persephone was returned. Zeus agreed, but because Persephone had tasted of the food of Hades–pomegranate seeds–she was forced to forever spend a part of the year with her husband in the underworld and part on earth.

Persephone’s annual return to the earth in spring is marked by the flowers bursting into flower and the new growth of the pastures and grain. When Persephone returns to the underworld in winter, earth sees the dying back of plants and the halting of growth…