Of Peace with bonds of harmonious love….

Come, ye Powers who dwell above
Unforgetting, our witnesses be

Of Peace with bonds of harmonious love –
The Peace which Cypris has wrought for me

Alleluia! Io Paean!
Leap in joy – hurrah! hurrah!
‘Tis victory….

There the holy chorus ever gladdens,
There the beat of stamping feet,
As our winsome fillies, lovely maidens,

Dance…

Like the Bacchae’s revels, hair a-streaming.
Leda’s child, diving and mild,
Leads the holy dance, her fair face beaming…

Literature: Lysistrata by Aristophanes
Images: click image for artist link

The Story of Demeter and Persephone

The maiden, Persephone, daughter of the Earth Goddess, Demeter, is out picking flowers in a meadow when the earth opens up and out charges Hades, God of the Underworld.  He scoops Persephone up, and the Lord of the Dead (not the devil or Satan mind you) plunges back down into the Underworld.  When Persephone is late, Demeter goes out searching but can find her lovely daughter nowhere.  Demeter, the great Goddess of grain, harvest, and fertility lights a torch and scours the earth into the night. After nine futile days of searching, she comes across an old lady, the quintessential Hecate, a crone of great knowledge of the earth and its going-ons (the harbinger of bad news and good) and the Goddess of the dark moon, the crossroads of life.  She explains to Demeter that Persephone has been abducted.

Demeter grows full of rage and gives up her divine earthly duties, allowing the crops to dry up and wither, the earth to become a cold wasteland.  She disguises herself as and old woman and travels to the town of Eleusis where she wallows in despair.  Zeus, the great God, notices this and tries to talk some sense into Demeter.  Hades will make a nice son-in-law, he says.  She needs to lighten up and let the crops grow.  Demeter will not budge.

The earth becomes so desolate and wasted Zeus has no choice but to consult with his dark brother of the underworld and orders Hades to give up Persephone.  Persephone prepares to leave, but Hades loves her and does not want to give her up completely. They have one last meal together, and the Lord of the Dead slips some enchanted pomegranate seeds into Persephone’s food.  She swallows the seeds, which ensures her return to Hades domain for a third of each year.

Persephone and her mother are reunited on the first day of Spring.  Demeter can sense some changes in her young daughter.  Demeter is not happy when she learns about the pomegranate seeds, but Persephone insists she did not know and that she does not mind in any case to go back to see Hades.  Demeter stops her mourning and allows the earth to flourish again. After all, her daughter is back. Not the same innocent girl who picked flowers without a care in the world, but a woman transfigured by her experience.

This is my favorite mythological story about a mother and daughter reunion, about a daughter’s growth and change, about the seasons of the earth as they were formed by the mythic gods.

Story is inspired by an excerpt of Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd

Images:
Persephone by Blackeri
Hades and Persephone by Sandara

Le Petit Chaperon Rouge…

The more I look into fairy tales…the more I love.  I’m currently working on my book of fairy-tales re-told, but here’s a piece on the Little Red Riding Hood traditions from The Annotated Brothers Grimm by Maria Tatar:

“ The French and German titles for the story–”Le petit chaperon rouge” and “Rotkappchen –suggest caps rather than hoods.  Psychoanalytic critics have made much of the color red, equating it with sin, passion, blood, sexuality and thereby suggesting a certain complicity on the part of Red Riding Hood in the symbolic seduction enacted in the tale.  But these views have been rebutted by folklorists and historians, who point out that the color red was first introduced in Perrault’s literary version of the tale and that it can have political as well as moral associations.  These days, a girl wearing red produces a nearly automatic association to the story, and advertisers ceaselessly exploit that allusion as they turn Little Red Riding Hood from a childish innocent into a red-hot femme fatale.”

 Lil Red Riding Hood by Karri Klawiter www.redbubble.com

Out of the Ashes: The Symbolic Story of Cinderella

We again find our fairy tales are so much more than kids stories.  “The fairy tale fo the cinder-maid originated as an anti-ecclesiastical allegory repeated by real ‘fairies’ –that is, pagans.”  Ella was the daughter of Mother Earth and her ugly stepsisters were considered the church’s darlings, the military aristocracy and the clergy. 

“An early German version of the story said Cinderella’s real mother, the Earth, though dead, sent from her grave a fairy tree in answer to her daughter’s prayer.  This tree produced golden apples, fine clothes, and other gifts.”  Thus the “fairy godmother” of the tale may have been the ghost of the mother. 

Beautified with her new riches, Cinderella won the “prince” who represents mankind, and their union was symbolized by fitting her foot into a shoe, which was a common sexual allegory.  The Eleusinian Mysteries signified sacred marriage by placing a phallic object in a woman’s shoe.  The glass slipper perhaps stood for the Crystal Cave by which pagan heroes entered. 

Like other secret medieval prophecies of the overthrow of the rich, powerful theocracy, the downfall of Cinderella’s ugly stepmother and stepsisters may have been intended as a prophecy.”

Source: The Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets

Photo: Cinderella by Citron Rouge at Deviant Art

Who’s the Fairest of Them All?…

 

Haunted, and happy, is how I describe the feelings surrounding my November 12. 2008 blog about The Real Snow White.  It is one of the most popular articles I’ve written about a real life young woman named Margarete von Waldeck, who’s life was cut short mysteriously from an apparent poisoning back in 1554.  She was 21.

When Googling her name my blog site, The Wit Continuum, appears twice on the first page, which is pretty cool, but I wonder how many people are really interested in this infamous person of history.  Was she really the inspiration for the Grimms fairy tale Snow White?  The parallels are interesting to say the least. 

It seems there may be serge in historic discovery going on here by factions unknown.  Continuing the search for more info…and seriously thinking about starting my own Margarete Von Waldeck blog club.  But what do you do with a dead girl?