Paging Persephone...

A Hellenic polytheist devotional blog

[the-rhapsodist]

Korecopia

[the-rhapsodist]

Persephone, Horned

[missinkart-deactivated20210117]

What if... instead of Persephone having to spend 6 months in the underworld hades had to spend 6 months above ground,,, could u imagine the gothic flower aesthetic....

[auphrodyte]

Look I know you love to portrait Hades as a broody boy with dark long straight hair but Curly Hair Hades is superior and deserves more love.

[mythsnet]

MYTHSNET MYTHOLOGY A-Z: [G] for Gaea

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

[thesolaceofsunlight]

Epithets of Hades

I’ve noticed that there aren’t many posts concerning epithets for Hades, and certainly no comprehensive ones, so I thought I’d make one. This is Hellenism focused, so all will be applied to Hades, even though the Latin ones would traditionally be for Pluto. Latin epithets are marked as (L). I translated some of these into more concise titles that convey their implications, and notes are made as necessary. Sources are at the bottom but are not linked so that this will still show in tags. I hope this helps everyone!

Related to his role as ruler of the underworld:

Hades Chthonius - Hades of the Underworld

Hades Polyxenos/Polydegmon/Polysêmantôr Aidonius - Hades, Ruler/Host of Many

Hades Pasiánax - Hades, the Universal King

Hades Adesius - Hades of the Grave

Hades Zefs Khthonios - Hades, Zeus of the Underworld

Hades Larthy Tytiral (Etrurian) - Hades, Sovereign of Tartarus

Hades Ánax - Hades, the King

Hades Polydegmenos - Hades, He Who Welcomes All

Summanus/Manus/Mantus (L) - Hades, Prince of the Dead

Niger Deus (L) - Hades, the Black God || Hades of the Infernal Regions

“Zeus of the Departed”

“The Other Zeus”

Related to his roles concerning death:

Hades Nekrodegmôn - Hades, Receiver of the Dead

Hades Agesilaos - Hades, Who Calls Man To The Underworld

Hades Nekrôn Sôtêr - Hades, Saviour of the Dead

Hades Hesperos Theos - Hades, God of Death and Darkness (for those who believe he and Thanatos are the same deity)

Related to his role as controller of the earth and its resources:

Hades Ploutos - Hades of Wealth

Hades Khamaizilos Dios - Hades of the Earth (“where he likes to be” is implied)

Hades Theôn Khthonios - Hades, the Terrestrial God

Tellumo (L) - Hades, Who Provides to the Creative (denotes creative power of the earth’s resources)

Tellus (L) - Hades, Who Provides for the Productive (denotes productive power of the earth’s resources)

Altor (L) - Hades, Who Nourishes

Other:

Hades Hagesilaos - Hades, Leader of the People

Hades Eubuleus - Hades of Good Counsel || Hades, the Consoler (supposedly references death as the end of sorrows)

Hades Adámastos - Hades, the Unconquerable

Hades Aidis - Hades, the Unseen

Hades Aïdonefs/Aidoneus - Hades, the Singer || Hades of Nightingales || Hades of Sleep || Hades of Light || Hades of Poets || Hades of a Girl

Hades Amenthes (Egyptian) - Hades, Who Gives and Receives

Hades Axiocersus - Hades the Shorn (he was depicted without hair where this was used)

Hades Clymenus - Hades, the Renowned

Hades Euclius/Eucles - Hades of Good Report/the Famous/of Good Fame

Hades Agetes/Hegates - Hades, the Conductor

Hades Moiragetes - Hades, Guide of the Fates

Hades Orkos/Orcus - Hades of Oaths, Hades, the Avenger of the Perjured

Hades Opheius - Hades, the Blind || Hades of Prophecy (as the blind augers of Messenia we’re dedicated to him)

Euchaites - The Beautiful-haired One

Rusor (L) - Hades, to Whom All Things Return

Salutaris Divus (L) - Hades, Restorer of the Dead

Saturnius (L) - Hades, Son of Kronos

Uragus (L) - Hades of Fire

Urgus (L) - Hades, Who Impels

Operatus (L) - Hades, the Concealed

Februus (L) - Hades, To Whom Purification and Sacrifice Is Offered

Hades, the Good and Prudent (not historical, but reflects how he was seen)

Negative (but everything can be twisted sometimes):

Hades Agesander - Hades, Who Carries All Away (this references the Persephone myth; included because it exists but I’m not sure you’d want to use it)

Hades Clotonius - Hades, the Infernal

Hades Stygius - Hades the Hateful

Feralis Deus (L) - Hades, the Cruel God

Hades Agelastus - Hades of Melancholy Countenance

“Hades, the Tearless”

“Hades, the Implacable and Adamant”

Given by Poets:

The Grisly God (Homer)

Ruthless King (Homer)

Infernal [Zeus] (Vergil, he said Jove)

Stygian [Zeus] (Vergil, same as above)

Sources:

Hellenic Gods (dot Org)

Brown, Robert (1844). “The Religion of Zoroaster Considered In Connection With Archaic Monotheism” (also known as Wikipedia citation)

The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization

[sarahyhyhy]

Original Persephone Myth:

Demeter keeps Kore (means maiden) basically locked up in Sicily, she’s not allowed to leave or wander around. When Kore is not helping her mom with the yard she spends her time singing. Meanwhile, Hades (a socially awkward and soft guy) spends his time alone in a land he didn’t want, compelling to his tedious chore designated to him by Zeus, and spending time with his only companion: his dog, Cerberus (means spot). But one day he hears a beautiful female voice singing, and he finds himself waiting every day for the moment he can hear it again. Eventually, he decides to sing back, and they sing to each other every night after that. Kore is left to her own devices one day in the yard and she sings and waits to hear the other voice, when she does she follows it until she finds the place it emanates from: a crack in the soil, and she decides to jump in. Hades is confused to see a living person in his realm, and when he realizes it’s the owner of the voice he loves he doesnt know what to do with himself. They spend months together, they fall in love and they marry, Kore becomes the queen of the underworld, she willingly eats pomegranate seeds so she can stay with Hades. Meanwhile, Demeter is looking for her daughter everywhere and not fulfilling her duties so the earth goes bare, when she gets word of her daughter’s whereabouts she throws a tantrum and Zeus goes to retrieve Kore. He finds that Kore is married and happy and she doesnt want to leave and she can’t leave because she ate underworld food, but he finds a loophole in the thing and says Kore is to return six months with her mom every year because she only ate six seeds and each one bides her to the underworld a month. He does this so Demeter will leave him and the rest of Olympus alone and do her fucking job. Also, everyone in the underworld is more afraid of her than his brother, she is feared but loved, and she is more powerful and so he decides to change her name to Persephone (means death bringer).

The Popular Version:

Demeter is the best mom ever and one day sends Kore to pick some fruit. Hades, the most vicious of gods, sees her and is so overcome with lust he kidnaps her (in some versions she is underage), rapes her and forces her to marry him and eat six pomegranate seeds so she wont be able to leave him, he also changes her name. Demeter asks Zeus for help and when he finds out she ate the pomegranate he works around a loophole and he decretes that Persephone will be tied to the underworld only one (1) month for each seed she ate, therefore she’s able to leave the underworld and go back to earth and her loving mom the rest of the year.

The original is better and more heartbreaking and I wish more people knew it.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

What will win: The Homeric hymn to Demeter + millenias of Greek heritage of respecting the gods. VS A webtoons comic of the 21st century, made by an Australian, with ugly designs and awkward poses.

P.S. Cerberus doesn’t even mean spot in Greek

[thrassa-deactivated20220306]

Honestly, the amount of people believing that Smythe, a woman who has nothing to do with the Greek culture, just magically discovered the “truth” about Hades and Persephone is concerning. Oh, I’m sorry she “read” the Illiad, that must be enough. She has gained all the knowledge in the world.

Fun fact: Persephone’s story was not only created to explain the changing of the seasons but to show how marriages worked back then.

The groom asked for the father’s permission. The mother did not need to be consulted. The bride to be did not need to be consulted.

The groom traditionally offered a gift to the bride (in Hades’ case it was the flower he left in her field) by accepting that gift, the bride was accepting the marriage (Persephone plucked the flower from the earth, accepting the marriage without realising it).

The groom sometimes lived far away and so, he took the bride away from her home, took her away from her mother.

After the marriage was over, the groom gifted his bride with yet another gift.

Hades’ gift was the pomegranate, a fruit that symbolised marriage and sometimes sexual relations. By eating the fruit, she became his wife in every meaning of the word.

And yes, back in ancient Greece, they were thought to be a loving couple and were often depected as such. However, that does not mean that their story had started quite as merrily.

Now, Demeter was a mother, one who loved her daughter greatly. Guess what? Mothers did not feel great joy when their daughters married, especially if it meant not seeing them because they now lived far away. They lose a child.

Demeter lost her child and did everything in her power to find it. As if that pain wasn’t enough, the other Gods lied to her about not knowing what had happened to her daughter.

If you were in her place, would you be so casual about it? Would you let this man, your brother, marry your daughter and not say anything? If you did speak up, would that make you a helicopter mom?

To end this, there’s no “older version” in which she went to the underworld on her own and stayed there just because she liked it. Hades is not a soft boy, he is a God and deserves to be treated as such. You wouldn’t call Jesus a peace loving hippy, would you?

Now tell me that twisting a myth while using baseless facts doesn’t spread ignorance.

Go read a book bro, you’re embarrassing yourself.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

💗💗👏👏

[thrassa-deactivated20220306]

One more thing I noticed when reading this again. “Hades the most vicious of the Gods” and “he changed her name”

Both are a big no.

Hades did not change her name.

Also, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, King of the dead, the receiver of many, the unseen one, was not quite as vicious as you paint him to be. He was a just God, he ought to be considering his line of work.

Now Persephone, or “Sephie” “Percy” or whatever you crazy kids call her these days was, as her name suggests, the slightly more vicious one. And I don’t mean vicious as in the odd, red eyed little Mary sue with laughable temper tantrums and murdering tendercies the “all knowing Homer of our days” (what a joke by the way) tries to portray.

[alatismeni-theitsa]

I think hades was a fearsome, warrior god, but not exactly “vicious”. But our ancient invoked Persephone when they wanted to curse someone so maybe she had that vicious side.

“Homer of our days” 😂 😂

[greek-mythologies]

@sinsontheskin Thank you so much for your commentary, it was very interesting :) I won’t comment on anything you said but while reading it, I remembered that a lot of “traditional” wedding practices in modern Greece (as in, up to the 1950s/60s) also bear lots of similarities with the ones you described here.

“The groom asked for the father’s permission. The mother did not need to be consulted. The bride to be did not need to be consulted.“ This is basically the “ask the father of the bride for his daughter’s hand in marriage” thing. It doesn’t matter if the mother wants her daughter to marry him or not. What the father says is law because he’s the man of the house.

“The groom traditionally offered a gift to the bride (in Hades’ case it was the flower he left in her field) by accepting that gift, the bride was accepting the marriage (Persephone plucked the flower from the earth, accepting the marriage without realizing it).“ Again, this reminds me of some sort of gift that the groom normally brings when he comes to ask the bride in marriage in front of her family or when he’s about to get engaged to her. I won’t connect that to the engagement ring though because that’s a different thing (which I also ain’t sure if it actually existed in Greece or if it was just another ‘modern’ added element to our culture).

“The groom sometimes lived far away and so, he took the bride away from her home, took her away from her mother.“ I was reminded of Crete and Mani when reading that, because there it was rather common up to the 1960s that the groom would abduct his bride either to convince her family that he should be the one to marry her or because they refused to marry her off to him and he and his bride loved each other so much that he had no other way. (or he loved the bride so much in any case, the bride may have despised him in some cases).

“Mothers did not feel great joy when their daughters married, especially if it meant not seeing them because they now lived far away. They lose a child.“ Don’t get me started on the endless mother/daughter separation scenes in Greek folklore. It doesn’t matter if it’s a traditional Greek song or a fairytale or a movie from the 1950s. A daughter’s marriage is always connected with separation from the mother to this day. There’s also this famous lyric from pretty much all traditional Greek wedding songs: “Today, the mother parts from her daughter” (Σήμερα αποχωρίζεται η μάνα από την κόρη). 

And to add to that comment you made defending Demeter’s behavior: if my own daughter was abducted by my brother and then the rest of my siblings and their children kept making fun of me and yet I had the means to take revenge on them by basically starving off their mortal subjects to show them the level of my grief, believe me, I’d have done exactly what Demeter did.

BTW, wasn’t Cerberus supposed to be a three-headed dog?

[thattransoracle-deactivated2020]

jeez did Persephone get to come back early or something

it should not be 72° in Texas at the height of winter

also, for those who don’t know, Poseidon is currently waging war on Jakarta and the city is sinking by 10in every year and it’s estimated up to 95% of the northern part will be underwater by 2050 so y’know food for thought on how climate change is a fucking bitch that we need to fight right damn now

[pomegraniteseeds]

we are basically Persephones animal crossing town

[captain-chaos-turtle]

2020 is the Year of Persephone

New Beginnings for Everyone

[pagingpersephone]

Persephone and Demeter aesthetic: Summers with Mom

[demeterspriestess]

Demeter, Bearer of Fruit,

We thank you for this Harvest That You have given us, All-Nourishing Artist.

At our humble table, We offer You a seat. We have set Your place For You to eat.

May You bless the growth Of Crop and Life. May Winter be short, And free from strife.

Great Mother, We thank you. Queenly Goddess, We honor you.

[teawiththegods]

The first meeting of the Hellenism Study Group will be Sunday September 8th at 6:00pm EST 😃

The topic we will be discussing is Daily Worship ✨

The discussion will be held over on my YouTube Channel (The Pastel Priestess) through YouTube Live Stream. Feel free to subscribe now if you wish because I’ll be scheduling the live streams so it sends out reminders and notifies my subscribers when I go live! And while you’re there you can listen to my podcast Tea With The Gods if you haven’t already! 😁

This discussion group is opened to everyone (Hellenic polytheist or not. Beginner or long time worshiper.) If you’re interested, please feel free to join us! And there’s no requirement to participate in the actual discussion. You are free to sit back and absorb the information provided, but of course sharing your experiences and asking questions of the group is strongly encouraged! 👍🏻

All I ask of everyone who joins the discussion is to be respectful of one another (esp me bc this is my first time doing anything like this! 😅) As with all the spaces I create, I wish for this to be an inclusive and safe space for our community. 💕

The video of the live WILL be available afterwards both for those who couldn’t make the discussion as well as for everyone to be able to look back on it either for reference or to go through the comments they may have missed! So no worries, loves! No one will be missing out! ✌🏻

Any questions about the group please feel free to message me! 😊

I hope to see you all there! 😘

[demeterspriestess]

Festivals I Celebrate

I’m not going to share my rituals in this post, it would be too long. This is just a summary of the festivals I regularly celebrate, how they were celebrated in ancient Greece and a bit about how I celebrate them. Unfortunately, many of the festivals related to Demeter were kept secret on punishment of death. We know some things that they did and can infer meaning from that. And I definitely don’t want to perfectly recreate these rituals. I don’t eat pork. I don’t want to sacrifice a piglet. I don’t fast for personal health reasons. But I believe historical context is important. Many festivals in Ancient Greece were celebrated over many days or on different dates across Greece. This just isn’t functional in the modern world. I chose to celebrate many of them on equinoxes and solstices because the festivals generally represent the changing of the seasons and we use those dates to represent the start of seasons. Likewise, so much of the Greek calendar was based on astronomical occurrence (lunar and solar cycles, constellations, etc.) that the ancient dates just aren’t accurate anymore. I’m not an astronomer, so I’m not going to try explaining precession, instead you can read this helpful article on Hipparchus, the ancient Greek astronomer and mathematician who discovered it. If you would like to read further on the complications of the Ancient Greek calendar system, here is a helpful article!

Keep reading

[demeterspriestess]

The Pillars of Hellenic Worship

Timothy Jay Alexander says there are seven pillars of Hellenismos: Ethike Arete (ethics), Eusebia (reverence of the Gods), Hagneia (ritual purity by avoiding miasma), Nomos Arkhaios (observance of tradition), Sophia (pursuit of wisdom and truth), Sophrosune (control of self through deep contemplation), and Xenia (hospitality). I’ve seen people say there are nine pillars, some say four, some say “what pillars?” Personally, I think it can be simplified into two categories: ethics and reverence.

Keep reading

[thewalkingnerd]

Modern IRIS, greek goddess of the rainbow and messenger of the gods.

[khtheological]

Dione, the feminine Zeus!