Table of Contents
Demeter, the Greek goddess of grain and the harvest, matters to my research because her story ties the turning of the seasons to a loss in the underworld, and because Donnelly placed her among the gods of Atlantis. These are the pages where I wrote about her.
Mother of Persephone
On Persephone, daughter of Demeter and Zeus Hades takes Persephone to the underworld, and Demeter’s grief makes her neglect her duties, so that famine falls and growth on Earth stops. On The Sirens captivating voices and perilous allure the Sirens were once mortal maidens who served Persephone, the daughter of Demeter. The Olympian Gods has Demeter among the children Cronus swallowed, until Zeus, helped by Metis, made him bring them back up.
Demeter and Poseidon
On Despoina was primarily worshipped in Arcadia, particularly in Lycosura Despoina is the daughter of Demeter and Poseidon, at the heart of the Arcadian Mysteries, and her brother is Arion, the immortal horse born of the same union. On Poseidon and Erymanthos the people of Erymanthos revered gods of the land and fertility, such as Demeter, Artemis and Pan.
The gifts of Demeter
In Plato’s Laws by Plato, in Benjamin Jowett’s translation, the Athenian stranger imagines how the first arts of farming returned after the flood:
And may we not suppose that vines appeared, which had previously no existence, and also olives, and the gifts of Demeter and her daughter, of which one Triptolemus was the minister, and that, before these existed, animals took to devouring each other as they do still?
Plato, Laws, translated by Benjamin Jowett
Ignatius Donnelly, on The Aryan Colonies from Atlantis, traces the Eleusinian mysteries back to Plato’s island: Poseidon stood at their base, and the ceremonies were tied to seed-time and harvest and to Demeter, or Ceres, whom he calls an Atlantean goddess and daughter of Chronos, the one who first taught the Greeks to use the plough and plant barley.
Rites and Dark Mothers
The Three Little Pigs’ 3,000-Year-Old Secret explains that pigs were sacrificed to Demeter and Persephone in the secret Thesmophoria rites, including a pregnant sow buried alive for Demeter. On Mary of Bethany I quote Claire Heartsong’s Anna, the Voice of the Magdalenes, in which Mary of Bethany recalls being introduced during her training to the warrior goddesses she calls the Dark Mothers, Demeter among them, with Sekhmet, Durga and Kali.
Related pages
- Persephone, daughter of Demeter and Zeus
- The Sirens captivating voices and perilous allure
- The Olympian Gods
- Despoina was primarily worshipped in Arcadia, particularly in Lycosura
- Poseidon and Erymanthos
- Laws by Plato
- The Aryan Colonies from Atlantis
- The Three Little Pigs’ 3,000-Year-Old Secret
- Mary of Bethany
For every page I tagged with Demeter, see the Demeter tag archive.
