Demeter is part of the Greek Pantheon of Gods and Goddesses of Mt Olympus.

She is known as the Mother Goddess and also the Goddess of Grain. She is most well-known by the myth of Demeter and her daughter Persephone. Persephone was the child of Demeter and Zeus.

As a maiden, Persephone was abducted by the God Hades, and taken to the underworld to become his bride. Demeter heard her daughter’s cries as she was swallowed up by the earth and brought into the darkness of Hades’ world. Demeter searched for nine days and nights, without sleep or food in search of Persephone. Heliope, God of the Sun, then told her that Zeus had allowed Hades to abduct her and make her his bride. Demeter’s grief was so great that she could only wander the earth in despair.

At her Temple in Eleusis she sat, in hopeless depression at the loss of her child. She stopped functioning as the nurturing, mothering Goddess, causing crops to fail and no children to be born. Famine threatened the destruction of humanity. Zeus had to do something! He allowed Persephone to be brought to Demeter to finally end her grief and restore the earth’s abundance. But poor Persephone had eaten pomegranate seeds given to her by Hades and could only spend two-thirds of the year with Demeter. She had to return to Hades for the other third. This is said to be our cold, dark, winter months when crops stop growing and the landscape becomes barren.

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