Yeah, I’m using my psycho-analysis toolbox here because my mind totally sees a scene of Demeter lying on Freud’s couch there. She makes him impervious by dipping him in Lethe, feeds him ambrosia, food of the Gods, and seems to displace all the nurturing she could have done for her own daughter Persephone, who ‘died’ as an immortal, by making Demophon, a mortal, into an immortal. “Freud thinks that hidden messages inside a myth are always going to be about just you and me as individuals, developing, working our way through a developing, the developing of our psychological state.” Demeter plays foster mother to Demophon and takes care of him as though he’s immortal. To placate you, here, you can have my niece Persephone and reign over souls of the dead with her by your side.’Īnd then we have Demeter disguised as an old lady going about her miserable state and wandering through human cities. ‘Uh, you drew the short end of the stick, Hades, and got the Underworld for all eternity. The fact that Zeus allowed Hades to abduct Persephone (it mentions in the Hymn to Demeter that it as part of the deal he made in divy-ing up the realms of the universe) - makes it Pile, High, and Deeper full of Freudian repressed subconscious/taboo desires.
Uranus lies with Gaia and Kronos castrates him, silencing him forever.
Persephone prances in the meadow and grabs a flower, Hades abducts her in a chariot and effectively makes her queen of the dead (‘killing’ her). The cartoon my mind throws up of Hades making Persephone eat a (surreal, Dali-an) pomegranate, and thus robbing Demeter of her offspring (and fertility) for a part of the year… reminds me too much of everything we read just in Hesiod’s Theogony of Kronos and Zeus overwhelming their parents with acts of violence to exert their reproductive supremacy and propagate the universe. Painfully aware that Myth and Ritual go hand-in-hand in Ancient Greece *this isn’t intended to be cavalier*… Giving credit to Structuralist or Functionalist interpretations… Ultimately, I gravitate to my Freudian psychoanalytical toolbox to best interpret this myth. The story seems to functionally explain the restoration of fertility to the planet according to the seasons and how Demeter Establishes Her Eleusinian Mysteries.
It covers the abduction of Persephone, Demeter’s grief and anger, her arrival at Eleusis, nursing Demophoön at the home of Celeus and Metaneira, Zeus’ order to Hades, the return of Persephone for parts of the year to her mother’s realm. The lengthy Homeric Hymn to Demeter provides the most important and complete information about Demeter, goddess of Fertility. Homeric Hymns are among the oldest monuments of Greek literature.
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