I want you to remember the myth of Demeter, and once again take a look at what happens. First
there is the appearance of a girl which is famous as slender-ankled, as a kind of adjective that
describes Persephone, and shows that she’s very beautiful and that’s why when Hades takes
side of her he wishes to have her as his queen. And then there is this pact between brothers,
Hades and Zeus, and because Persephone is daughter to Zeus and Demeter, Zeus easily
accepts to give her to Hades as wife, and he makes this promise that he would have
Persephone as her queen. So the two brothers, in this story, are against their own sister and her
daughter.
There is this pact between two divine forces against another divine force. So this is the reason
why Demeter suffers a lot because nobody dares reveal what has happened to Persephone, and
the only power that can reveal that is Helios, the god of the skies. He knows everything
because he observes everything up there.
So this is part of an agony of Demeter. Now probably you know that Demeter stands for
agriculture and fertility of the land, and therefore she is a very important goddess to the Greeks,
and it seems whenever there is lack of food or the plantation suffer, people ascribe it to the
anger of Demeter. Their life depends on her support of their plantations.
But this is not only Demeter who represents fertility, Persephone is also associated with the
same sort of forces of life and fertilization, because it is her coming back to earth which makes
Demeter allow the earth to grow plants. So we can say that Demeter and Persephone are not
two absolutely distinct deities. Somehow in some versions of this story Persephone is an
extension of Demeter’s power. So both of them represent the power of fertility and fertility is a
life force, so they stand against the power of death, in the same way that Persephone is in
constant battle and struggle with death. As daughter being the extension of power of the
mother, if we consider them as a sort of unity, we can say that Persephone is the soul of
Demeter. What happens to Persephone suggests that Demeter’s soul is taken into the
underworld .
So now, the underworld is world of the dead, it is a world in which you are cut away from the
realm of the living. In a similar manner when you sleep and you dream you are dwelling in a
realm which is separated from the realm of the living people. In one sense and in many
different cultures in the Hellenistic culture and later on in English culture.
There is a sort of similarity and correspondence between the world of the dead and the world of
dream. What occurs to Demeter is that part of her soul travels to the world of the dead and
during this while she becomes totally inactive. This inactivity which is very interestingly based
on Greek norms of behavior for different genders, men and women, results in an inversion of
roles. The “Eleusinian mysteries” is a sort of religious ritual that women practice. Of course it
is mentioned that it’s a sort of ritual in which also other people are invited, not simply just
women, but also men and children and a lot more, but the central figures are women and this is
very interesting because it suggests that suddenly women acquire the place of the pubic man.
There is the Greek mentality about the space of women and the space of men. Men belong to
the outer world, the world of the conflicts and wars and politics, women belong to the sphere of
the home but during the ritual which is associated with Demeter and Eleusinian mysteries,
women for about ten days, which is in correspondence with the ten days that Demeter was
looking for her daughter, take responsibility of everything .
They become the influential figures and in the same way the very first day starts with a sort of
offering of the leftovers of a pig (those parts of the pig which are not edible and are turning
corrupt) suggesting that a nature of corruption has started .
This is in the minds of the Greek people that there is a relation between taking power of
femininity over with the world of the dead and the world of the dream, the world that is cut off
from the world of politics and reality.
So what happens during this time is that Demeter is not performing her responsibilities towards
the earth and fertilization. So she has turned inactive, it’s like she is in a sort of dream, and a
sort of coma and during that time when she comatose her soul, Persephone is experiencing
something which is hidden from all the rest .
In the story of Persephone there is a nice representation of the division between the upper and
the lower worlds. when she is with Hades in his chariot suddenly the earth opens and she’s
taken down, this is exactly the moment when she starts to scream and everybody hears her
scream including Demeter. So there is some nice division between the upper world and the
lower world.
Persephone as the extension of Demeter and as her soul is roaming in a world from which not
ordinary people have knowledge of. So we can metaphorically say that she is the exploration of
soul of Demeter into some mysteries. This is itself a sort of interesting theme that occurs in
many different stories, it occurs in the story of king Midas in another way.
Gift or Punishment?
1. Midas
King Midas is offered a gift by Dionysus for the sort of support he has shown to his godfather,
and he asks for something; he asked for the ultimate knowledge that he likes to possess, that
is he likes to embody a power to transform matters. This is sort of the power that is beyond the
rules of nature, & beyond the abilities of ordinary men. Therefore he’s asking for something that
makes him stand beyond his own limitations. He wants to transcend his own limitations and to
fulfil and indulge in his own desires. The endowment of the power leads to a sense of tragedy.
He turns everything into gold when he touches them. His dear daughter, his beautiful garden of
roses. Everything turns into gold, and he suffers to a great extent. So this is the point in which
for being a helpful figure or creature, he is endued with a gift that turns out to be a suffering.
2. Demeter
In the same way Demeter, who is the most helping deity for the Greek people, seems to suffer
with a gift which is Persephone. Persephone is a gift but also she turns into her punishment as
well.
It is possible to see at the depth of these two very different stories something similar.
A Lesson on the Truth of the World
Both Demeter and Midas learn something about the truth of the world and the creation that
turns them cold :
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Demeter learns that Zeus as a masculine powerful deity can ruin her life by
overpowering her.
King Midas also learns that the ultimate gift that he can receive from the world is
nothing.
We can say that both of them encounter the void of creation.
The Post-Goal-Achievement Nihility
It is very much like saying that (this is something many different mythologists talk about) that
when people desire to turn into an over-Reacher, up to the point where they have not reached to
their wish they assume that reaching it is what they truly want and this is the point of absolute
power, very much like becoming a god.
But the point is that as soon as they turn into what they desired to be, in possession of the
ultimate powers that they think if they possess they would be transformed into something
phenomenal, something extraordinary and to transcend all limitations, when they become
godlike what they start to learn is that no more the concept of being divine or having access to
truth matters to them, because they transcend the world of binaries, the world of
differentiations and concepts and they dwell in a world of absolute everything.
This is itself a void, because it is only for the world of binaries, the world of people that such
concepts seem to have significance. Once you have transcended them you encounter an
absolute existence, which is itself a void. We can say that people encounter the nothingness
which exists beyond the force of creation, and that is a hard lesson.
In a similar manner, some people in their dream experience things that on the surface might
seem ridiculous and insignificant or totally irrational, but if you interpret it into its depth as
Freud for example proposes, then you might have knowledge of things that would disturb you.
How Myths and Dreams Are Similar
Very much like the myth of getting transformed to absolute power which leaves people cold,
the dreams in their revelation of what they truly mean, they reveal something about the depth of
human psyche which may leave them frightened and in a panic about themselves. So, similar
mythic stories like that of Demeter, and that of king Midas, and very much like the story of
Oedipus (Oedipus rex) are confrontations of different agents with the emptiness of the world,
but the reactions are different.
The Story of Oedipus Rex
To give you a gist of king Oedipus’s myth and also to emphasize the difference in attitude or
response that exists between different figures when they confront the void of the cosmos I will
tell you the story briefly:
Oedipus is confronted with an oracle who tells him he will commit the biggest sins, he will kill
his father, and marry his mother. He tries his best to avoid that, but finally it happens without
him knowing it and really intending it. So he is the one who looks for the person who has
committed the crime and he comes to this understanding that he himself has done all that. In
response to what has happened to him, he makes himself blind.
*Very Important*
Reactions to Nihility
So there is a sort of comparison between what happens to Demeter for example, and what
happens to Oedipus or king Midas:
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Midas and Oedipus represent yielding to the fate when they encounter the void of
existence and creation, and the nothingness at the background of the world, they give
in. Midas in one version of the story is totally destroyed; in the other (the story of the
ass’s ears) he suffers and he gives in to that suffering. Oedipus also participates in his
own suffering by blinding himself.
But this is not the way Demeter responds to this. She starts to revolt. First, it is said that
Zeus has been behind this plan of abduction of Persephone. So Demeter uses her
powers to force Zeus to do what she wants to do. Although the whole plot is not
reverted incomplete, because Hades deceives Persephone by making her eat something
from the underworld (a pomegranate), she has to turn back to him. But finally she also
has her own wish by making Persephone come back to her every year. This is the force
of resistance. A resistance to an interpretation that is imposed.
So we have two different perspectives that point out to possible responses to a fatalism you
might encounter in mythic stories or in discourses about interpretation of dreams:
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In one, you might have this perspective that, an interpretation of a dream content
determines and acts very much like the fate. In this version, you encounter the
interpretation as the essence of what you are. (deactivating)
In the other, like the story of Demeter we have resistance of the necessity for
transformation of the person when she encounters injunction of the fate in the form of
an interpretation. In this version, you encounter the interpretation as a possibility and
therefore you are empowered with the potential to change the course of events.
(enabling)
These two different responses tell us that myth can be enabling, it also can turn deactivating
and act as a sort of a discourse of ideology that you cannot escape from its power. So both
ways ae possible.