Topaz’s Whimsical Tales

Persephone

It happens every year; the warmer seasons fade to autumns docile colors and temperatures that soon bow to winter’s howling nipping winds.

Reminding us that Persephone is starting her journey to the underworld to be with Hades; causing her mother Demeter to grieve and the earth lose her luster of spring and summer.

It is said that the reason for the colder months is just the anguish of an ill-be-gotten mother whose daughter was taken from “under her nose”.

The story goes as such; Hades; lord of the underworld; had fallen in love with Persephone; daughter of Zeus and Demeter; and had asked Zeus for her hand. Zeus fearing Demeter’s reaction told Hades that he may not have it.
Hades then decided that he loved Persephone so much that he couldn’t live with out her and on day decided to whisk her away to the underworld, by thrusting through a cleft in the earth and grabbing her as she picked flowers with some nymphs.

Demeter being distraught with grief and anger punished the nymphs for not assisting her daughter in her time of need; by transforming them into the sirens we know today. But that was not all she had also stopped tending to the plants and spent her time searching the world for her beloved daughter, when Helios; the sun who sees all; told her what had happened.

Zeus; under pressure from Demeter and the starving peoples of the earth; demanded that Hades return Persephone to her mother. Hades refused; causing Zeus to exercise his power and authority with his brother decreed that their marriage be null and void as long as Persephone ate nothing of the Underworld’s food.

Starving Persephone gave to Hades’ temptations with a pomegranate, and consumed a few seeds thus causing her marriage to Hades to be consummated in the eyes of the Olympians.

Waiting until Demeter and her daughter were once again united; Ascalaphus informed the other gods that Persephone had eaten the pomegranate seeds.

But it was the Fates rule that no one who had eaten from the gardens of the underworld would be aloud to return, and to save the peoples of the Earth Zeus, Hades, and Demeter made a deal. Persephone was to spend half of the year with her mother, and the other half of the year with Hades as queen of the underworld.

Her return from the underworld marks the beginning of spring, summer is the time that Persephone and her mother get to spend together, her journey back brings the beginning of autumn, and winter is marked by the number of pomegranate seeds that Persephone had consumed. So it is believed that autumn and winter are a form of a mother‘s grief of a “lost” child.

Thus reminding us that there is greater meaning to what we see as trivial things and the reasoning behind the season changes.