| The River Dragon's Lair> FaeryLand> Persephone and Hades |
| Persephone and Hades |
| Persephone was the daughter
of Zeus and Demeter. She was gathering the flower Narcissus in a field
one day when Hades abducted her. Hades, after becoming overwhelmed with desire for Persephone, arose in his chariot from a fissure in the ground. Demeter, goddess of the harvest was heartbroken and went in search of her daughter, while she searched the crops withered and died. She eventually found information about her daughter from a young boy called Triptolemus, who was tending his fathers cattle with his brothers, the three saw a strange drama enacted, The earth suddenly gaped open, a chariot drawn by black horses appeared and dashed down the chasm. The chariot-drivers face was invisible, but he was tightly clasping a shrieking girl. In reward for this Demeter gave him seed-corn, a wooden plough, a serpent drawn chariot and sent him to teach the world the art of agriculture. While in the underworld Persephone was offered pomegranate seeds by Hades, She accepted thus becoming bound to both him and the underworld. He treated her well and made her his queen, Despite this Demeter allowed the earth to fall barren and refused to restore it to its former abundance, for she could not accept the change. Eventually, when it seemed that mankind might die from lack of food, Hermes arranged for Persephone to be with her mother for nine months of the year and she ruled in the underworld with her husband for the remaining three. Demeter never came to terms with this arrangement and during the three months every year that her daughter is away she allows the world to grow lifeless and cold, and when Persephone returns again the world again springs to life. Persephone's Symbols are: the pomegranate |
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