fun of the tale comes from hearing kidnapping and rape of derworld and the mourning of her the ways in which women learn to (often called Kore) by , god of mother, to several layers of reading, subvert the rules, twist the politics to the Underworld, with the approval each of which is very interesting- their own advantage, and triumph as of , and the mourning of beginning with the psychological "uppity women" who can teach us a , her mother, the grain god- reading of the life cycles of both the trick or two. dess, who refused to allow food to young , the kore (maiden), grow and threatened to wipe out and of the older goddess, Demeter. She& WiAinson is University Pro- humanity until Hades was persuaded She talks here about the sexual matu- fessor Emerita, founding Director of to let Persephone come back to be ration and breaking away from the the Centrefir Feminist Research, and with her mother. Hades gave- her a mother of adolescent women as re- Coordinator Women i Studies pomegranate seed (symbolic fruit of flected upon in the story and also the Atkinson, 1983-2001, York Univer- fertility and marriage) to eat and as a reaction ofolder women to the matu- sity, Toronto. result Persephone was obliged to ration of their daughters. spend part of each year in the under- She then reads the hierosgamos- world. A good translation is by the of sexual union of the god- Charles Boer The Homeric Hymns dess of fertility with a god or human (Spring Publications 1970),but there man to bring back the fertility of the are many. This story is for us, al- Earth. It is Persephone who has sex, though less so than fir the Greeks, a and she who is the power of fertility. THE NARCISSUS foundation story of patriarchal fam- Suter argues that Persephone is the AND THE ily relations, in which the whole ac- older goddess and Demeter, who POMEGRANATE: tion centres on decisions made by participated in hierosgamoi in other AN Gods-Zeus and Hades-and the places, was later coming to Eleusis. ARCHAEOLOGY female characters are secondary to The link between the suppression of the main action, particularly the hieros gamos and other sexual OF THE HOMERIC Persephone, who is a trophy or prize, , not just in Greece but also in HYMN TO but not an independent actor. other parts of the Mediterranean DEMETER Suter takes apart the poem, first of world, as part of the patriarchal sup- all, dividing it into the Olympian1 pression ofwomen deserves a deeper Ann Suter patriarchal telling which frames an exploration, although Suter does not Ann Arbor: University of Michigan older and dealing with the two go beyond the poem and related Press, 2002 parts separately. The Olympian frame Greek material to undertake it. of the story gives Zeus and the gods Suter looks at the competition REVIEWED BY SAMUEL power, whereas they are insignifi- between Demeter and Persephone cant figures in the older story. She and the relative ages of their cults at WAGAR makes a strong argument for consid- Eleusis. She surveys similar stories ering the usual story, the abduction, and the archaeological evidence from I took part in a reconstruction of the a later adaptation by the seventh around the Greek world to place the at a religious century BCE poet involved in the Hymn into its historical context- retreat earlier this year. The religious rethinking which subordi- when and for what reasons it likely Eleusinian Mysteries were an initia- nated the local , often god- was composed, what older materials tory series of rituals carried on in the desses, and their rituals and festivals it was constructed from and what town of Eleusis for a thousand years to the Olympian pantheon. Suter great gaps in the evidence remain. (from the eighth century BCE to their does not embrace the idea of the She finds evidence of power strug- suppression by the Christians in the "Indo-European invaders" but sees gles between the Olympian and pre- fourth century CE). They have been the development of the patriarchal Olympian deities, and also between understood to be based on the story and Olympian pantheon as indig- Persephone and Demeter-under- recounted in the seventh-century BCE enously Greek. She also sees the evi- cutting the traditional understand- Homeric Hymn to Demeter. There dence of direct links to the primor- ing of a cooperative mother-daugh- was some provocative and interest- dial Great Goddess in cultus as weak. ter pairing (except subsequent to the ing rethinking of the foundation Her survey of the linguistic evidence poem). As well, she finds no con- myth of the mysteries and I was and the archaeological material is vincing evidence of paired worship intrigued, so I asked for a list of quite good and she backs up her ofthese two deities prior to the poem recommended reading. points here convincingly. anywhere in the Greek world - the Everybody is vaguely familiar with She then subjects the older story, theory that sees them as aspects of the usual telling of the story: the of Persephone's descent to the Un- the same goddess or of the poem as

176 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME reflecting long-standing cult prac- History M, 49 years old, Green,fd- from trips abroad. It brings them tices is not supported. The practices ther of two teenaged boys, Lives in Van- back to memories ofchildhood, fam- of the Eleusinian Mysteries may not couver, and is currently researching ily and friendship, or encapsulates a have included Demeter at all prior to '%ierosgamos"andsexualmysticism in time, event or memory. As described the period of the poem's composi- . by the authors: tion, and Suter presents strong evi- dence that the hierosgamos involving [The possessions] create awom- Persephone and / Hades was en's history which, while it the centre of the earlier rites. might not appear in textbooks The amount of material Suter sur- TREASURES: or museums, informs how veyed is impressive. She applies sev- THE STORIES women live their lives; how they earn their living; how they eral well-developed layers of analysis WOMEN TELL to the poem. I had already been think; how they relate to their persuaded of a feminist reading of ABOUT THE foremothers, their daughters, the story emphasizing Persephone's THINGS THEY KEEP their friends and lovers. Women independent power as Goddess of save possessions from their own the Underworld (see Iliadand Odys- Kathleen V. Cairns and Eliane Leslau lives and the lives of others to sq)and her free choice to take Hades Silver man create both a personal and a as her consort, but on the basis ofless Calgary: University of Calgary Press, collective narrative. As one of evidence than Suter presents here. 2004 our participants, Paddy, put it, Suter's reading of the poem is ar- 'This is who I am, and this is chaeological and literary and so she REVIEWED BY STEPHANIE where I come from, and these did not include the ecological shift in are my people.' The keepsakes DlCKlSON Greece that precipitated the Dark comprise a story she tells herself Age out ofwhich the Olympians and and sometimes tells others. the suppression of the The items which women surround These stories create meaning emerged. The deforestation of an- themselves with-either kept tucked for individual women, sustain cient Greece resulting- in away in a shoebox under the bed or the private culture of women, desertification and a rapid decline in radiantly sitting atop her writing and encourage women to enter population surely altered the view- desk-are full of stories about the the public realm. point of people about the all-be- women who own them. nevolent Mother Earth goddesses.- They might be held onto for a The stories that unfold are frank My reading of Suter was informed number of reasons-sentiment, prac- attempts to immortalize tender mo- by Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy ticality, or aesthetic pleasure. But do ments, everyday tales of lost loves, and Roberto Calosso's The Marriage not mistake them for mere knick- former lives lived and heirlooms of Cadmus and Hamzony, and the knacks or tchotchkes. These items not passed through the generations. Most understanding of the gods presented only hold profound meaning for the are touching, but more often heart- in Greek drama-Euripides' The women who possess them, but can breaking, such as Carol's memory of Bacchae and Aeschylus' Oresteia par- help define and describe them by her father's gift of a scapular: ticularly-and the Homeric and what events led them to this artifact Orphic Hymns. By rethinking this and how it's transformed them. I went on an exchange trip when foundation story, considering the free Through candid interviews with I was in grade school to Trini- choice of the young woman goddess over one hundred women with vary- dad, and, as I was leaving, my to rule over death and rebirth with ing backgrounds and interests, we dad went out and bought this her chosen consort, patriarchal fam- are invited into the front rooms and for my birthday. He always used ily relationships, including the domi- backyards ofwomen across the coun- to give my mom money for nation of the elder over the younger try to hear the stories ofhow they and Christmas or birthday presents, members, are challenged. By reawak- their items were united. and she would go shopping. I ening the joyful embrace of death by These stories are vital, not only can still remember sittingin the life, the mysteries can still move us. from a historical perspective but be- house, and he just made me so Beneath the misogyny and the 01- cause they remind women of their nervous, and I remember sit- ympian overlay there are still some need to have meaning in their life, ting there and opening it and wonderful things to learn from the whether it is evoked by a grandmoth- he said, 'I got that myself.' And Greeks. er's dress or dog tags from a beloved it still chokes me up because he pet, sheet music from Czechoslova- - it just made me feel good to Samuel Wagar is a Wiccan , kia or a collection of fridge magnets think that he was thinking of

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