I sing of rich-haired Demeter, mother goddess, and her trim-ankled daughter, Persephone, whom Aidoneus swept away, given to him by all-seeing Zeus, the loud-thunderer.
Homeric Hymn to DemeterHeavy-headed, golden grasses of the high plain of Nyssa sway on the chorus of a gentle wind. Thousands of wildflowers spangle the richness of the waning year: white, purple, yellow, rolling in swaths of dilute color which curve off towards a sudden horizon, there to be met by a lapis sky backlit by the long rays of the retiring sun.
Shards of laughter tinkle in the air. Every tiny blossom turns its face to the horizon where the dancing grasses part and through them a perfect maiden crests the hill. Her body is long and slender, with muscular legs that flash through the tall green and amber stalks. Her short chiton is girdled and draped with flower garlands. A crown of blood red poppies lies upon her brow. Beneath it her honey-colored hair flies free, writhing in the freshened wind like serpents, like flame.
She is Kore, the Flower Maiden, whose birth summons the blossoms of spring, whose breath sings forth summer’s glories. Persephone by name, she is the immortal daughter of fair Demeter, the Corn Mother, bringer of sufficiency and plenty, whose season of glory is now. Sired by Zeus, King of Olympus and all its gods, Kore walks in the mortal world a divine princess, and all green things fawn upon her touch.
Kore’s emerald eyes fill with delight of the flowery meadow. “Oh, hurry, my companions! This is a beautiful place!” She surges forth through the glad grasses, a golden boat sailing a golden sea.
Four maidens labor over the horizon, all deep bosomed and also flowered, holding up long pearly skirts which wash about their knees like sea foam. The daughters of Oceanus cleave the waves of grass, a flotilla of plump feminity. They arrive at the top of the gentle slope and sink to the ground near an outcropping of dark rock drowned in the riot of fall blooms.
"Oh, Kore, you are so restless! We have climbed so high, look! We cannot even see the sea!" Euroynome's soft breasts heave gently, like the turning tide.
Kore smiles at her breathless companions. Her honeyed head bobs in the grasses as she bends to gather tiny flowers which swoon in the slender hands of the goddess who gave them life. Walking, she weaves them into yet another garland, then twines the meadowflowers around the poppies upon her head.
As Kore wanders, the daughters of Ocean doze. The day dreams and the lowering sun warms land and air. Kore looks back toward her playmates and sees only a deep depression in the restless amber near the steep rock face, which rises like a lonely atoll out of the grassy sea.
Helios in his descent casts long shadows as Kore wades through the sighing field, musing.
“What now, my flower children? When winter touches the land shall I also sink into the soil and sleep? Or shall I go with Mother to the City, there to walk upon cold marble in sandaled feet? Cloud washed Olympus has no glamor for me, nor does my friends’ salty sea home. What is more, I feel stirrings I cannot name, even as I weaken with the waning light.”
She arrives at the shadowed foot of the great black boulders and finds that they conceal a deep cavity in the Earth. Within that rock-strewn void nods a single, fantastic flower.
Kore gasps. Never has she seen such an exquisite blossom! Like a narcissus, but with petals as long as her hand which are black and blood red. It is a wonder, unique in all the realms of Heaven, Earth and Sea, unknown even to herself, the Mistress of flowers.
“How can this be?” she marvels. “Who made this wonder, who placed it here for me to find? Whose gift is this blossom of night?”
Alone in the tumbled stone cavity, it bows and beckons, aglow on its own in the deep shade. Kore approaches the magical blossom. Its fragrance fills the shadow.
Nearby the daughters of Ocean stir and heave themselves from the ground. They stand waist deep in golden grasses and call to Kore like sirens call to sailors.
“Kore! It’s getting late! Let’s go home!”
The Spring Princess hears, hesitates and turns, blinking in the wan light of the sun. “Yes, yes, attend me a moment more! I must have just one more flower!”
“Kore! Look, our baskets are full and overfull!”
Kore disappears from their sight amongst the jumbled boulders. The daughters of Oceanus gather their skirts and scramble across the broken ground.
Kore kneels and bends her face over the blossom’s sable throat. Its fragrance enters her head, all the joys of spring are reborn in her womb. All the songs of the summer swell again in her ears, and all the abundance of autumn and sorrow of winter hum and whistle in her heart. Its perfume is a song of circles and of love and giving and losing. It is a ballad of the balances of life. She is entranced.
Sweet Doris sees her first, standing like a karytid, with roses, saffron, violets, iris, hyacinth fallen about her feet. Kore holds one strange flower in her hand and gazes steadily into the gaping black hole before her.
“Kore!?”
The Maid of New Life stands unmoving as the Earth begins to tremble and lurch. Swirling vapors of darkness shot through with jets of red and glowing black well up around the ensorcled Kore. Obsidian boulders roll upwards out of the great pit at her feet, and with them unwholesome fumes and the shrieks of the rending Earth find their way into the light.
The terrified sea nymphs weep and hold each other, calling to Kore, but she is deaf to their entreaties, fascinated by what she sees. Rocks roll down the crest of the mound, crushing beneath them grasses and flowers as they flee the eruption of their thousands years bed. Through tear-filled eyes, Doris dimly sees six points of red light rising in the roiling darkness.
When at last the air clears, the light of Helios falls on three figures so black that only the liveliest sunbeams can avoid being absorbed into nothing. Only the freshest, most vibrant rays can leap off the hide of the two great horses as they dance and rear, and none at all survive the emptiness of the armor of their master in his chariot.
He steps down and calms the sunblind horses with a touch of his gold-ringed hand. His cloak swirls around him like a tempest on a benighted sea. He raises his eyes to her. Fierce black hair crowned with gold atop a face so fair that the sunlight hungrily leaps upon it. A noble brow overhangs deeply dark, troubled eyes, which meet and hold those of the ensorcled Kore. In that long moment worlds are born.
The four nymphs fall to their knees in fear and dread, for they know they are in the presence of the Dark Lord, ruler of Erebos, master of Tartarus, host of the numberless dead: Hades. Terror fills their hearts and minds and they wail as one. The trance that binds the Maiden of Life to the Lord of Death is shattered.
His voice is strong and tender. “Fear not, wondrous maiden. I have come to make you my wife and queen, and to take you to your destiny, to…to our vast, wondrous realm, filled with noble subjects.”
Persephone does not speak. Lord Hades steps closer and drops to one knee. “Only you can slake my loneliness and take from me my sorrow. I will love and worship you as my bride, honor you as my queen. Oh, come with me and rule by my side!”
A startled glimmer of comprehension sparks in the Flower Maiden. She takes a sudden breath, as if after a deep sea dive and casts away from her the fateful flower. Her eyes widen impossibly large and her mouth is round. “No! Oh, no, I am not ready to marry! And never will I depart this world of sunlight and flowers, and never will I go to your shadowed realm!
I can never leave my Mother, great Demeter! She would grieve without me!”
Hades, King of Erebos, whose name is also Aidoneus, stands at her side. His crimson cloak gently wafts to her senses the dark bouquet of the man-god who is Lord of the Dead. The sweet floral fragrance of the Maid of New Life fills the god’s head also, and their eyes enter again into their embrace. All he can see is her face; all he knows is that he worships her. He gently takes her hand.
“Do not fear me. I…I shall not be a bad husband for you — who could be better? I am brother to your father Zeus andyour mother Demeter…and I adore you. I ask you: be my queen. Rule over all who dwell in Erebos and enjoy great honor among the immortals...”
He kisses her fingers.
The feeling of his lips on her skin has no precedent. Her maiden heart is a rolling drum in her maiden breast and her breath becomes a wild thin, difficult to catch. “What!? I will not go with you into your dread realm! I am my mother's daughter! My father will not allow this outrage!” She feels heat rising in her face, her bosom, and in the swelling flower of her maidenhood. The Flower Maiden burns with divine passion.
Hades is beyond thought, helplessly immersed a torrent of emotion as strong as battle rage, and more powerful yet because of its utter novelty. He tenderly draws her to him, and around them floats his bloodsilk cloak.
“Let me taste from your lips the sweet nectar of life!”
His face draws nearer, very near. They breathe each others’ breath, drown in each others’ eyes, emerald and jet. The goddess Persephone glimmers into being in the heart of the maiden Kore. She rises into the profound depths of the heart of forever. Dark Hades falls into her upturned face, falls, feeling for the first time the bliss of life ever-new. He bends his proud head to her.
The mouth of the fathomless Lord of the Dead touches the nectar lips of the Lady of New Life. For one tiny eternity they are astonished…then they tumble into saturated bliss, divers in the swirling wonder of dark and light, living and dead, male and female, then and now. Divine ecstasy radiates through the four worlds and the three time as the poles of the very field of life meet, unite, and surrender to each other in the holy imperative of Love. She, who embodies the green world which springs forth from the fertile soil, meets he, who embodies all creatures who sink back down.
Does not the Earth move? Even the sun, great Helios, cannot avert his gaze. Even the flowers stare, even the wind pauses and sighs. Even the miserable nymphs are silent as untellable moments pass.
Their lips, so gently and so rarely met, part at last and Persephone swoons upon the strong arm of Hades Aidoneus, the glorious Host of Many. He lifts her with infinite tenderness and, mounting his chariot, turns to the four sisters who are weeping quietly and clinging to each other.
“Hear my words, pale daughters of Oceanus, and also all you who have witnessed: this is done with the full knowledge of Zeus, the loud-crashing, the wide-voiced, my brother! Speak no word of what has occurred here, neither to mortal nor immortal, and especially not to the Grain Mother, Demeter!”
The daughters of Ocean fall on their faces in the fragrant grass. They wail softly, for they understand perfectly that their days in the sun are over if they tell Demeter what they have seen. Her rage would surely kill them, and then they would go straight to Erebos, where they would become subjects of…
They clutch the broken grasses before them. “We swear, great Lord, by Hestia we swear, we will tell no one. Please, Lord…”
Persephone is rising through an ocean of dark and breathless peace. She breaks the surface where the light is very bright. She opens her eyes and they fall upon his hard, handsome profile. He is shouting to someone.
Hades snaps the golden reins and the fierce sable horses plunge their diamond hooves into the dark soil, which splashes up as if it were living water. The shadow stallions dive into the Earth, drawing the royal chariot after them.
Persephone feels no twinge of fear until the waves of earth rise around her. Then she cries out once:
“Mother!” Her voice whips cleanly through the three times and the four kingdoms, then is gone. The ever-giving, ever-receiving Earth, womb and tomb, smothers the light of the world from the emerald eyes of Persephone.
Helios sees with his one great Eye, and ancient Hecate of the silver veil also hears, deep in her cave where she dwells. Sun and Moon lower their gaze and wonder at the folly of their king. They shudder with dread of the wrath of Demeter and fear for the poor mortals who will surely be caught between.
