The Eleusinian Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone Part 2
40 Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion Keller: Fertility, Sexuality, and Rebirth 41 Persephone gathers three sheaves of wheat and three poppies, their own actions the fertility of the Earth. This magic probably included takes the torch Demeter has prepared for her, and begins her descent invocations, singing, dancing and lovemaking, the people celebrating their down into a deep chasm into the underworld. After a long journey, own sexuality in harmony with the creative powers of nature, as natural, she comes to a place where many spirits are milling about, moaning. human and divine. A story related by Homer in the Odyssey tells of the She moves among them, and after preparing an altar, she beckons them to her, saying, “If you come to me, I will initiate you into your EartWGrain Mother making love with Iason of Crete: new world.” As each spirit approaches, she embraces the form and So too fair-haired Demeter once in the spring looks deeply into the eyes, saying: “You have waxed into the fullness did yield of life, and waned into darkness, may you be renewed in peace and To love, and with Iason lay in a new-ploughed wisdom.” field. After several months, Persephone decides she will return again . to the upper world. Her mother Demeter has grown sorrodul, her In Homer’s poetry, Demeter yielded not to Iason, but to her own feelings of bountiful energies departing from the earth, leaving it barren, with love, an experience conveyed by the word thoicnios, one word translated as no crops growing to feed the humans.
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