Demeter and Persephone

How would you feel if the god of hell stole you from the world that you know, love and feel comfort in and took you against your will to live with him in the dark, unfamiliar scary depths of the Underworld? It would be terrifying, foreign and maddening. The relationship between Demeter, Persephone and Hades is a very interesting and eye-opening story. It also explains the seasons, marriage, innocence, and temptation. It all starts with Demeter, the Mother of the Earth. Unlike other goddesses, she lives on earth and can feel human emotions. She portrays motherhood, is nurturing and offers protection. She has a daughter named Persephone who she loves with all her heart. Persephone represents spring, rebirth, purity, innocence and being impressionable. While Persephone innocently loves life without a scare in the world, Hades comes up to earth, sees the beautiful girl and steals her away from the life she loves and knows. Hades represents death, intimidation and temptation, sin and jealousy.

To begin the process of really getting to know the myth and the characters in it we need to know and understand the three levels of interpretation. They are natural, social and psychological. The natural level is all about the big picture and how the world sees the character. It is the universal understanding of the story. A natural story explains nature and why things are the way they are. On a social level, we dig a little deeper. It is more local; its the level between the world and individual. It may support religious beliefs or represent a social event or why some people or animals behave the way they do. The deepest level of interpretation is psychological. This is the individual level. Many emotions and feelings that myths represent are psychological. It also explains the reason for needs and desires.

Demeter can be analyzed in three different levels, natural, social and psychological. On the natural level, Demeter is the Goddess of Corn and the Earth. She provides food and crops. Aside from the big picture, Demeter also stands for agriculture and the growing of crops to survive and having good soil to grow food and live. On the psychological level Demeter is nurturing, caring, loving, protecting and safe, which is evident by the way she cares for her daughter who she loves more than anything. When her daughter is forcefully taken from the earth she then represents loss, grief sadness and suffering. Which is different because most Gods live on Olympus and do not have or need to experience these emotions, or any emotions for that matter.

Demeter is not the only one that has a physiological level. Persephone is known widely as spring, flowers, trees, newness, babies, rebirth and everything pretty and good. On a bit deeper level we see that she is also about happiness, growth, beauty, innocence, virginity and purity. Persephone can do no wrong. On a very deep level, psychological level, she represents love, being a daughter, being in the teenage learning period and being impressionable and adventurous. After she is taken away from everything she loves, she changes a little bit and this represents loss and guilt, shame, sin, being tempted and falling into temptation.

Hades can also be analyzed on these three levels. On a large level he is seen as the God of the Underworld, and god of death and the god of cruelty. The thing about Hades is that he is just and fair but that is rarely what he is categorized as. On a social level, we see he is intimidating and tainting and also evil representing sin and temptation. But if we really dig deep into the inner realms of Hades and all that he stands for, we can look past the stereotyping and see that he is also lonely, self conscious, fearful, and compassionate. He is also jealous of the gods who get the glamorous life of Olympus, which is very understandable.

So even though it may seem like the story of Demeter and Persephone is solely about how the seasons change from summer to winter, when we dig deeper and try to relate to the characters on a personal level we find that we can learn much more than we thought possible. If we can relate to Hades and how he feels being stuck, lonely and jealous in the Underworld maybe we can start to understand why he took a beautiful, loving, young girl to sit with him at the throne. He may even be a great husband but when we characterize him as evil, dark and cruel we can not always see past that and really relate. So that is why it really helps to understand when we look at the three levels. This proves that in order to really understand mythology we must try to reach deeper into the stories and find out who the gods really are. Not only will it be easier to understand but it will also make learning more fun and interesting.