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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.