![]() But what we do know is this – priestesses and initiates took on a fourteen day ordeal involving purification rituals, sacrifices, fasting, and ending in a procession from Athens to Eleusis. These rituals were some of the most sacred and therefore the most mysterious to the outside world. They happened sometime in September and commemorated the myth of Demeter and Persephone in conjunction with the seasonal changes of the earth (the springing forth of the crop and the harvest, etc.). The Eleusinian Mysteries were a set of important rituals that took place in Greece annually for at least one thousand years, according to. Needless to say, the myths illustrate the fact that Persephone has domain over death and can even send a person/soul back from the Underworld…should she feel the person worthy. Why she spends part of her year in the Underworld and the other part on the earth’s surface will be detailed in the story of Persephone and Hades below. She is the personification of the vegetation that shoots forth from the ground in the Spring and the crop that is harvested before Winter. She is Queen of the Underworld for one-third or one-half of the year (depending on the source), and for the other part of the year she returns to the earth and brings Spring. The Divine Maiden represents sacred polarity in the life and death dynamic. Her children are Zagreus and Melinoe (of whom may be a manifestation of the witch goddess Hecate) by her father Zeus. But in one myth, she is actually the daughter of Zeus and Styx. According to Greek myth, Persephone was born to Demeter and Zeus. Persephone is often worshipped alongside her mother, the earth goddess Demeter, and sometimes alongside her husband, Hades God of the Underworld. ![]() Persephone has many other names including Kore, Core, and Proserpina. Her name Persephone is related to phonon which means to bring death. And, while she is a symbol of the earth and the life it provides, she is also a symbol of death. Scholars believe this dynamic goddess originated in an agricultural-based cult in the Balkans. Thracia was a region in the Southeast Balkans in Europe in what is now parts of Macedonia and Bulgaria. Meaning, her worship was not born in Ancient Greece but Thracia. Like so many other deities of the Greek pantheon, Persephone is believed to have been a transport from a foreign land. Here we meet Persephone, explore her origins and myths, and learn how to work with her in our modern pagan practice. Her worship goes beyond Ancient Greece, stretching across bodies of water and continents. But they only begin to scratch the surface of who Persphone Goddess of Life and Death actually is. These labels evoke strong visuals and sensations from within the magical individual.
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