Child of the Air (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
child_of_the_air) wrote2017-09-23 11:29 pm
child_of_the_air) wrote2017-09-23 11:29 pm
Persephone, Prometheus, and the Turn of the Seasons
The Greek myth that everyone knows about the seasons is the story of the abduction of Persephone to the underworld, and her mother Demeter's long search for her daughter. Demeter arranges her daughter's release, but only after Persephone has caved in and eaten six pomegranate seeds, condemning her to stay in the underworld forever. As a compromise, Zeus allows her to live six months of the year with her mother and requires her to live six months of the year in the underworld.
This myth isn't just well-known among Americans: it was central to, among other things, the Eleusisian Mysteries, the most important of the Greek mystery initiations. These were more about the underworld and life after death than about the seasons: Persephone isn't just a nature goddess, but also the Queen of the Underworld, and strongly associated with Hades, her abductor and sometimes husband.
My own pagan practice, however, isn't built on a traditionalist reconstruction of Ancient Greek religion. I do read the writings of some Hellenic Reconstructionists, and I am often informed by their understandings but, aside from the practical difficulties--I have no way of making the burnt offerings so central to Ancient Greek religious practice--historic reconstruction doesn't feel right to me. Instead, what I practice is a sort of bastardized Hellenism, and is, as much as anything, an attempt to use Greek names as labels for the gods I worship because I don't have any other names for them.
In any case, my own association with the turn of the seasons--and specifically with the equinoxes, though weather here doesn't really get fall-like for another month--is with a duality of Persephone and Prometheus. Prometheus brought fire to humanity, and was bound and tortured for a time on Zeus's orders in punishment, until Hercules broke his chains and freed him. Besides the fact that they are both gods who are associated with a form of captivity, they are both gods who are associated with bringing humanity something associated with warmth and light: fire in Prometheus's case, and the warm growing season in Persephone's case.
I've come to think of winter as the season of human-made fire just as summer is the season of warmth from the sun, and so treat Persephone and Prometheus as a pair: in summer, Prometheus is bound while Persephone walks the earth, while in winter, Prometheus returns to give us fire, but Persephone returns to the underworld. This leads to the equinoxes being a sort of changing-of-the guard observance, greeting one of them and saying farewell to the other.
Unfortunately, I haven't managed to come up with a well-considered ritual practice for the equinoxes, though I have some ideas. If anyone wants to make suggestions, I would appreciate them.
This myth isn't just well-known among Americans: it was central to, among other things, the Eleusisian Mysteries, the most important of the Greek mystery initiations. These were more about the underworld and life after death than about the seasons: Persephone isn't just a nature goddess, but also the Queen of the Underworld, and strongly associated with Hades, her abductor and sometimes husband.
My own pagan practice, however, isn't built on a traditionalist reconstruction of Ancient Greek religion. I do read the writings of some Hellenic Reconstructionists, and I am often informed by their understandings but, aside from the practical difficulties--I have no way of making the burnt offerings so central to Ancient Greek religious practice--historic reconstruction doesn't feel right to me. Instead, what I practice is a sort of bastardized Hellenism, and is, as much as anything, an attempt to use Greek names as labels for the gods I worship because I don't have any other names for them.
In any case, my own association with the turn of the seasons--and specifically with the equinoxes, though weather here doesn't really get fall-like for another month--is with a duality of Persephone and Prometheus. Prometheus brought fire to humanity, and was bound and tortured for a time on Zeus's orders in punishment, until Hercules broke his chains and freed him. Besides the fact that they are both gods who are associated with a form of captivity, they are both gods who are associated with bringing humanity something associated with warmth and light: fire in Prometheus's case, and the warm growing season in Persephone's case.
I've come to think of winter as the season of human-made fire just as summer is the season of warmth from the sun, and so treat Persephone and Prometheus as a pair: in summer, Prometheus is bound while Persephone walks the earth, while in winter, Prometheus returns to give us fire, but Persephone returns to the underworld. This leads to the equinoxes being a sort of changing-of-the guard observance, greeting one of them and saying farewell to the other.
Unfortunately, I haven't managed to come up with a well-considered ritual practice for the equinoxes, though I have some ideas. If anyone wants to make suggestions, I would appreciate them.