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Demeter
The Goddess
of the Harvest
• SYMBOLS: Wheatears; Winged-serpent;
Cornucopia (horn-ofplenty)
• SACRED PLANTS / FLOWERS:
Wheat (Greek "puros"); Barley
(Greek "krithe"); Mint (Greek
"minthe");
Poppy (Greek "mekon")
• SACRED ANIMALS:
Serpent (Greek "drakon");
Pig or Swine (Greek "hus");
Spotted-Lizard or Gecko
(Greek "askalabotes")
• SACRED BIRDS:
Turtle-dove (Greek
"trugon"); perhaps the
Crane (Greek "geranos");
Screech-owl (Greek
"askalaphos")
• Hades fell in love with Persephone, and with Zeus’ help secretly
kidnapped her. Demeter roamed the earth over in search of her,
by day and by night with torches. When she learned from the
Hermionians that Hades had kidnapped her, enraged at the
gods she left the sky, and in the likeness of a woman made her
way to Eleusis. She first sat upon the rock that has come to be
called Agelasttos after her, beside the well called Kallikhoron.
Then she went to the house of Keleus, the current ruler of the
Eleusinians. After the woman inside invited her to sit with them,
one old granny named Iambe joked with the goddess and got
her to smile. For this reason they say that the women at the
Thesmophoria joke and jest.
• Metaneira, the wife of Keleus, had a baby, which was given to Demeter
to nurse. Wishing to make it immortal, she would set the baby in the fire
at night and remove its mortal flesh. But because Demophon (the baby’s
name) grew so wondrously each day, Metaneira kept an eye on him,
and when she spied him being buried in the fire she screamed. The child
was thereupon destroyed by the fire, and the goddess revealed her true
identity.
For Triptolemos, the elder of Metaneira’s sons, Demeter prepared a
chariot of winged Drakones, and she gave him wheat, which he scattered
all over the populated earth as he was carried along through the sky ...
When Zeus commanded Hades to send Persephone back up, Hades gave
her a pomegranate seed to eat, as assurance that she would not remain
long with her mother. With no foreknowledge of the outcome of her act,
she consumed it. Askalaphos, the son of Akheron and Gorgyra, bore
witness against her, in punishment for which Demeter pinned him down
with a heavy rock in Hades’ realm. But Persephone was obliged to
spend a third of each year with Hades, and the remainder of the year
among the gods.