Greek Goddess Persephone

The story of spring and rebirth starts with metaphorical death and an underworld queen, the Greek goddess Persephone. Born to Demeter, goddess of the harvest, and the almighty Zeus, Persephone was a happy young maiden when her life was torn in two.

Hades, god of the underworld, fell in love with Persephone. Insistent on no one less for a bride, he stole her away to his realm beneath the earth. Two variable accounts of the abduction exist. In the more well-known version, Hades confessed his feelings for the lovely maiden to Zeus. The two then conspired to trap Persephone as she played in a field. Once she plucked a particular flower, the ground opened for her to fall beneath, into the dark realm. With the second version, three noisy giants trapped beneath a mountain alarmed Hades as they cried. After he arose to earth to investigate the shouting, he was spotted by Aphrodite as she sat near her son, Cupid. Vying to control more of the Greek kingdom, as this version of Greek mythology goes, Aphrodite instructed her son to shoot an arrow from his bow. As it struck Hades, he immediately fell in love with the nearby Persephone, prompting an immediate capture.

Regardless of how the abduction took place, Demeter was enraged and beside herself with grief. Instead of tending to her duties as goddess of the harvest, she searched obsessively for her daughter, refusing to eat or drink for days on end. When she discovered that the abductor was none other than her brother, Hades, whom she could not reach beneath the earth, Demeter vowed to keep the land barren until her offspring safely returned.

Zeus eventually intervened, dispatching his messenger Mercury to escort Persephone back to her mother. Hades agreed to let his wife return, but pointed out that like Demeter, Persephone had also abstained from food, except for four pomegranate seeds, fruit of the dead. This bound her to him, he claimed, at least for a short time. An agreement was reached. For each seed, Persephone would spend one month with Hades and the remainder of the year with her mother. Although this compromise was made, Demeter remained angry in her daughter’s annual absence. For one-fourth of the year, every year, the earth became barren. To celebrate the annual return, grains began to grow, flowers to blossom and plants to green in a season now known as spring.