#hymns to hades

[wayfind-er]

Part of Hymn 18 to Plouton

[...] O' Plouton, holder of the keys to the whole Earth. To mankind, you give the wealth of the year's fruits; yours is the third portion. Earth, Queen of all, seat of the Gods, mighty lap of mortals.

Your throne rests on a dark realm, the realm of distant, of untiring, of windless, and of impassive Hades; [...] Holiest and illustrious ruler of all, frenzied god, you delight in the respect and in the reverence of your worshippers.

I summon you, come with favor, come with joy to the initiates.

Divider by @/v6que

[sunshines-child]

one thing I’ve realized is that the modern day has seriously screwed with the perception of Hades and Persephone. The whole myth was created to talk about a mother’s grief, most likely written to console mothers who had to give their daughters away for marriage. But the modern day has now made it a cutesy emo misunderstood guy x rebellious girl fighting against her strict mother, villainizing Demeter. And because this is all it’s known now, the moment someone brings up the original myth, they immediately get quieted or insulted.

[gotstabbedbyapen]

[laurasimonsdaughter]

Red drops fell onto the frozen earth. Dripping off the knuckles of Demeter’s shaking fist, the pomegranate crushed between her fingers.

"You tricked her." Her voice was barely a breath, but it was in every howling gale sobbing in the barren trees.

Hades, lovesick, pained yet unrepentant, met her eyes without a word.

"So be it." The parched ground groaned under Demeter's feet, but she did not hear it, her eyes fixed on Hades' stoic face. "You took my child from me, then take all to keep her company. I shall not nurture earth she does not walk upon."

For the first time, Hades started back, but Demeter was turneding away from him already, casting her sunken eyes to the heavens.

"I will be deaf to their pleas, like you were to mine!" her voice screeched, and breaking, shuddered on: "And there won’t be a parent among them, even as they curse my name, who can swear they would not have done the same..."

Silence fell. And the wilting earth wept. Until a voice came from the dark like a song and Hermes, swift-footed, emerged from the mouth of Hades.

"Six seeds, dear uncle, sweet aunt of mine. Only six out of a whole fruit..."

His smile was winning, but his cunning eyes were wide. As wide as the as the vast fields, ploughed to breaking in human desperation, that stretched lifeless past every horizon.

"Six seeds...six months..." He looked from the lord of the dead to the mistress of the harvest. "Six months above, with her loving mother, six months below, with her faithful husband."

The very breeze held its breath as hope and fury mingled in Demeter's eyes and Hermes bowed, his knuckles pale around his winged staff.

Hades stood, silent, and then quickly stepped, allowing Hermes to pass. And behind him, led up the endless steps of Hades, came Persephone. Dressed in rayments as fine and dark as the night.

"Mother!"

It was a commonplace cry. Cried by every fledgling tumbled from the nest, every cub turned around in the woods, every child lost in the dark. But the whole world breathed as Demeter answered.

Hades averted his eyes, Hermes grinned at the sky, and holding her daughter once more, tears finally welled in Demeter's frozen eyes. Raining down upon the earth, where grass began sprouting between Persephone's feet.

[that-guy-in-the-chiton]

The Stolen Bride

[cymorilcinnamonroll]

Hymn to Demeter Graphic Novel Sneak Peek

Written by Allister Nelson (c'est moi), illustrated by my bestie EJ Strunck @ejstrunck. Ever wondered where the myth of Hades and Persephone came from, and what exactly Demeter was up to a-searching for her abducted daughter? Well, the original myth makes little mention of Hades and Persephone, and the Homeric Hymn to Demeter chronicles a grieving, bereft yet powerful mother Demeter's journey in this classic "found feminism" tale of first love, gambling with gods, friendship, and watching your child go farther than you can take them <3

[vineyardofgod]

Demeter's pain.

I think we can all admit Demeter's pain, and anguish and sorrow is incredibly overshadowed by the medias admiration toward Hades and Persephone's separate relationship.

Persephone did not go willingly with Hades to the underworld. [fact]

Persephone was gathering flowers in the vale of Nysa when Hades "in a chariot pulled by black horses, emerged from the underworld and whisked her away unnoticed". She was abducted and snatched away from her home and her mother; Demeter heard Persephone's screams and cries as she was carried away but she was unable to find her. Demeter was understandably distraught and overcome with anger when she had found out from the sun god Helios that he had watched Hades abduct her daughter; whilst furious she caused a great famine and drought to spread across the entirety of Greece.

You quite literally cannot imagine the he hurt ; the intense feelings of betrayal and resentment she definitely felt towards her brother in those moments must have been overwhelming. Demeter was probably scared if not absolutely terrified for her daughter who was most likely only used to the mortal world. She refused to bring back summer and spring until her daughter as home safe.

[heart-wit-strength]

Lord of the Dead Marcy, and Bringer of Spring Anne that I did for me and @wren-writes-things's Hymn to Sasha Waybright AU

Loosely based on the greek myth of Hades & Persephone, where Anne heads to the Underworld to get help reviving the Plantars killed by the wrath of Sasha, Goddess of Harvest. And eventually subjected to a devious pomegranate offered to her by Marcy, trapping Anne to her world.

[Designs by Wren. A small birthday present for them, also because this au has had me on a constant chokehold <3]

Taglist: @cowcowwow @hey-its-puddlesock @blightcedas @yourpersonaltimebomb @darcysd20 @waybrights @lili250307 @amisplacedalphabet

[theoi-crow]

The original Hymn to Demeter (aka the Hades and Persephone myth) is a lot more empowering than the modern retellings of the myth!

Reducing Demeter's role in her own myth not only hurts the original culture whose myth modern authors have distorted but it also cheapens the very empowering message that shook ancient Greece!

The reason why this story has always stood out was because it was a story about a loving mother caring for her daughter's well being by fighting the world along with every god that got in her way.

Modern retellings disregard the original context and choose modern topics like the difficult relationship between an overbearing mother and a tired daughter who dreams of freedom. Without proper historical context, they superimpose their own complicated relationship with their mothers and assume their desire to leave the house they were raised in might also be true for Persephone. These retellings show that modern authors don't understand the difficult life ancient Greek women had to face.

To an ancient Greek mother, the death of a daughter was NO different than her daughter's wedding because she was expected to be okay with never seeing her daughter again.

This is why Persephone marries the god of the Underworld. As a goddess that cultivates the earth by creating life, this was the one place Demeter could not visit at the time of Persephone's kidnapping.

The marriage between Persephone and Hades also represented young girls who died before they were able to marry because young girls who died before their wedding were buried in their wedding attire and were called the "brides of Hades" with their deathbeds also being described as their eternal bridal chambers: (Source Link)

There's an example of this custom in Sophocles' Antigone when the king of Thebes, Creon, sentences his niece Antigone to death and as she is getting ready to die she describes her death prison as a bridal chamber and says Persephone's name: (Source Link)

This was also a time period that placed a higher value on sons over daughters! This was a world that ignored the pain of a mother losing her daughter but that same mother was expected to mourn her son via performing an elaborate ritual that required her to tear out her hair and scar her face: (Source Link)

Also, most women in ancient Greece did not have a say in who their daughters married and since it wasn't unusual for grooms to come from out of town they often didn't know where their daughters would be living. The details of the marriage was between the groom and the bride's father who were often close in age, which is why Hades is older than Zeus since Zeus is the youngest of Chronus' children.

Neither the mother nor daughter knew about the arrangements between the father and the groom so bridal kidnappings were very common as well. The kidnapping of the bride was also an ancient Greek custom, which is why Hades kidnapped Persephone when Demeter wasn't looking.

Marriage was also a defining feature of a girl turning into a women so most brides were married by the time they were 14 though some we're younger while others were a bit older depending on the law and political arrangements: (Source Link)

So if Hades went through the proper channels to marry her, then why is it so empowering?

Even though Hades and Zeus followed tradition to pass Persephone from the realm of the living to the realm of the dead without telling Demeter, Demeter broke customs because of the love she had for her young daughter. She was supposed to quietly accept Persephone's fate especially since the most powerful gods among the Olympians were the three kings so who was she to fight two out of the three kings?

Demeter understood her predicament but when Zeus told her there was nothing she could do about it. She did just that. She stopped and did NOTHING.

She stopped cultivating the earth, she stopped making things grow, she stopped feeding the humans and the animals used for sacrifices and soon everything and everyone started dying.

Hades had an unexpected influx of the dead all repeating Demeter's message of longing to see her daughter and Zeus started getting harassed by gods who panicked about their worshippers dying, losing more worshippers who thought this was their fault and losing sacrifices. Both gods were being pressured to give in to Demeter's demands.

The hymn to Demeter was so impactful it became a secret cult: Not only did she win the ability to see her daughter for part of the year but Demeter's love for Persephone became so legendary that it kick-started the Eleusinian Mysteries (LINK) which also established the Elysian Fields since it was believed that heroes who had proven their worth and those initiated into the mysteries would be granted access in the afterlife (this is often described to be the closest place to an Abrahamic heaven) : (LINK)

Prior to the kidnapping of Persephone, Hades only had one area for dead humans which is described as such a miserable place that in the Odyssey, Achilles said he would rather be a slave to the poorest man in the land of the living than be in the land of the dead: (LINK) so we can date the beginning of the Elysian Fields becoming a prominent feature of Hades after the Odyssey was written (8th century BCE).

Allowing Demeter to be the main character in her own hymn gives a voice to mothers and ancient women

so by reducing Demeter's role you reduce their voices as well. By taking away Demeter's achievements and importance you take away the struggles real women had to face.

By making Demeter seem overbearing and Persephone tired of being "trapped" by her mother you not only lose the context that Demeter had been previously raped by both Zeus and Poseidon so she feared Hades might be doing the same to her daughter but you cause a rift between the relationship of these two goddesses whose love for each other was so strong it rearranged the original map of the Underworld and caused a climate shift that now featured Fall and Winter.

Demeter's myth also explains ancient marital customs and death rites:

By making Persephone seem like a willing participant in her own marriage you are stripping the meaning of these old traditions. It was very rare for a bride to have a say in who she was marrying, that was between her future husband and her father (or whichever man was the head of the household at the time).

Persephone also represents the cruelty of sudden death taking girls who never got to marry so making her a willing participant makes her seem like she's eager to take her own life in order to get away from her mother which might be how some modern people feel about their toxic relationship with their own mothers but it strips the ancient cultural context and meaning.

By changing the role of Demeter you lose the historical context attached to the original myth. You lose the struggle these women had and cheapen the severity that comes with losing a loved one and being forced to accept that you will never see them again. By making Hades seem like an ideal husband you lose Persephone's dilemma of having to accept that she'll never see her mother again and she never even got to say goodbye. And by doing the kind of retellings that are seen today you lose the fact that in the original myth neither Persephone nor Demeter consented to this arrangement because ancient women were not allowed autonomy over their bodies or their fates so:

Demeter forcing both Zeus and Hades to return her daughter she forced them to acknowledge their autonomy and although not entirely successful she gave ancient women a fighting chance

[apiswitchcraft]

orphic hymns to Prosperine and Pluto

i should mention that i did NOT write these!! they are from like the 1st century AD lol

PROSPERINE:

Daughter of Jove, almighty and divine, come, blessed queen, and to these rites incline:

Only-begotten, Pluto's honored wife, O' venerable Goddess, source of life:

'Tis thine in earth's profundities to dwell, fast by the wide and dismal gates of hell:

Jove's holy offspring, of a beauteous mien, fatal, with lovely locks, infernal queen:

Source of the Furies, whose blest frame proceeds from Jove's ineffable and secret seeds:

Mother of Bacchus, Sonorous, divine, and many-formed, the parent of the vine:

The dancing Hours attend thee, essence bright, all-ruling virgin, bearing heavenly light:

Illustrious, horned, of a bounteous mind, alone desired by those of mortal kind.

O, vernal queen, whom grassy plains delight, sweet to the smell, and pleasing to the sight:

Whose holy form in budding fruits we view, Earth's vigorous offspring of a various hue:

Espoused in Autumn: life and death alone to wretched mortals from thy power is known:

For thine the task according to thy will, life to produce, and all that lives to kill.

Hear, blessed Goddess, send a rich increase of various fruits from earth, with lovely Peace;

Send Health with gentle hand, and crown my life with blest abundance, free from noisy strife;

Last in extreme old age the prey of Death, dismiss we willing to the realms beneath,

To thy fair palace, and the blissful plains where happy spirits dwell, and Pluto reigns.

PLUTO:

Pluto, magnanimous, whose realms profound are fix'd beneath the firm and solid ground,

In the Tartarian plains remote from fight, and wrapped forever in the depths of night;

Terrestrial Jove, thy sacred ear incline, and, pleased, accept thy mystic's hymn divine.

Earth's keys to thee, illustrious king belong, its secret gates unlocking, deep and strong.

'Tis thine, abundant annual fruits to bear, for needy mortals are thy constant care.

To thee, great king, Avernus is assigned, the seat of Gods, and basis of mankind.

Thy throne is fixed in Hades' dismal plains, distant, unknown to rest, where darkness reigns;

Where, destitute of breath, pale specters dwell, in endless, dire, inexorable hell;

And in dread Acheron, whose depths obscure, earth's stable roots eternally secure.

O' mighty dæmon, whose decision dread, the future fate determines of the dead,

With captive Proserpine, through grassy plains, drawn in a four-yoked car with loosened reins,

Rapt over the deep, impelled by love, you flew 'till Eleusina's city rose to view;

There, in a wondorous cave obscure and deep, the sacred maid secure from search you keep,

The cave of Atthis, whose wide gates display an entrance to the kingdoms void of day.

Of unapparent works, thou art alone the dispensator, visible and known.

O' power all-ruling, holy, honored light, thee sacred poets and their hymns delight:

Propitious to thy mystic's works incline, rejoicing come, for holy rites are thine.

Dividers by @vibeswithrenai

[sea-owl]

You know I love reading and hearing different myths, I love seeing retellings of those myths but there is one myth in my personal opinion that is never done justice and frankly some opinions on it give me the ick.

That myth is the Homeric Hymn to Demeter aka the Abduction of Persephone.

Now I know these stories have been passed down for ages, often changed or differ from region to region, but a lot of people use the Homeric hymns as a source and a base for their retellings.

The Hymn to Demeter is a story of a mother's grief as her daughter was ripped away from her without her consent nor any warning from Persephone's absent father Zeus. Zeus, who during those times had more say over what happens to Persephone than Demeter who loved and raised her daughter.

In the Hymn, Demeter basically went to work and came home to find her daughter missing. She was then searching for her daughter for days with no answers until one of the other gods took pity and told Demeter that Persephone had been taken by Hades. She begged to have her daughter brought back to her, but when she was denied, Demeter went on strike, her grief too great. Without her doing her job, crops died, people starved, and the gods were not receiving offerings. In a time where Demeter should have been powerless, she instead took back that power and was able to see her daughter again for half a year.

Onto Persephone's side of the Hymn she doesn't really have a voice. Literally, she doesn't speak at all during the Hymn, and she is constantly confused and swaying back and forth on the line between daughter and wife. Which thinking about this now, I can see Persephone still playing this balancing game between her split times of the year she has with her mother and husband.

As for why I don't like many retellings of this myth is the fact that a lot of people want to raise up Hades and sometimes give Persephone more agency at the cost of demonizing Demeter and her grief. This often happens by turning Demeter into the controlling mother / mother in-law from hell. Girl was grieving her daughter being ripped away from her and y'all turned her into a monster.

I think there is a way to highlight a love story between Hades and Persephone and give Persephone more agency without demonizing Demeter, but it takes careful balancing act. One that probably involves holding Hades responsible for his part and putting some blame on Zeus, too.

[mydearlybeloathed]

thinking about persephone again

[i encourage everyone to read the homeric hymn to demeter its my favorite piece of literature and i think about it frequently.]

thinking about how she was simply a young girl picking flowers. something that should have been her sanctuary. she's a goddess of life. her mother is demeter. why should she be cautious in the arms of the earth that built her?

about how she was betrayed by her father, her grandmother, and her uncle all in one day.

"He seized her against her will, put her on his golden chariot, 20 And drove away as she wept. She cried with a piercing voice, calling upon her father [Zeus], the son of Kronos, the highest and the best. But not one of the immortal ones, or of human mortals, heard her voice. Not even the olive trees which bear their splendid harvest."

those lines always crush me.

"So long as the earth and the star-filled sky were still within the goddess’s [Persephone’s] view, as also the fish-swarming sea [pontos], with its strong currents, 35 as also the rays of the sun, she still had hope that she would yet see her dear mother and that special group, the immortal gods. For that long a time her great noos was soothed by hope, distressed as she was."

noos means mind, if im correct. she still has hope in the gods. even after this terrible act upon her. at this point her innocence is still intact as she longs for her mother.

"And the Lady Mother [Demeter] heard her. 40 And a sharp akhos seized her heart."

if im not mistaken, akhos translates to a terrible grief. quaking rn this isn't a love story this is a tragedy.

over and over demeter begs for respect from her fellow gods and goddesses, pleading for help in the search for her daughter. and no one dared to listen to her until the wrath and will of demeter could no longer be ignored.

the wrath of a mother cast the earth in wilting death, and olympus could no longer ignore her.

and even then, when they called upon her, she did not listen till they threw down their pride and obeyed her.

and when they finally heed her words, hades obeys, but not without a trick. he litters persephone with sweet words of how he is to be good to her... until she rushes to leave, and the sharade falls flat.

“So then, Mother, I shall tell you everything, ........ I sprang up for joy, but he, stealthily, put into my hand the berry of the pomegranate, that honey-sweet food, and he compelled me by biē to eat of it."

biē.

biē translates to force/violence. I CANNOT BE NORMAL ABOUT THIS STORY. PERSEPHONE DID NOT CHOOSE THIS LIFE.

even when demeter does everything in her power, even when she forces the hand of olympus, the love of a mother is not respected by the gods. the patriarchy of olympus is very evident.

.

don't get me wrong, i enjoy many modern interpretations of hades and persephone. but ive yet to see one done right. but i didn't write a whole ass essay on why modern interpretations miss the point of the original story for nothing. shaking the bars of my enclosure rn.

i cannot wait to learn greek and latin ill be unstoppable once i can read it without a translation. one day ill be in the room where this discussion can be had and i can get all this passion out of my head.

[katerinaaqu]

Okay this heartbreaking idea came from a discussion I had with my dear friend @artsofmetamoor while talking about the second part of my fic The Death of Odysseus (P1 , P2 , P3 )

Okay my talented friend brought up Astyanax appearance in my third part of the story and she mentioned how terrifying it would be for a baby like Astyanax arriving to the Underworld based on my descriptions on the underworld and all. And knowing the image of Hermes as not only a sender of souls to the underworld but as a god that is associated with youth a lot and all...

Now Imagine Hermes having the boat to the underworld filled with all the babies and children that prematurely died and making sure they all arrive safely while being entertained or lulled to sleep with stories and all or playing with them so they won't get scared!

Guys I am crying!!!!!

😭😭😭

[regent-overthinker]

I don’t care I’m going to say it

A lot of what you guys pretend is Hades and Persephone, is everything Eros and Psyche already are

[thewhisperofzagreus]

But when you came, highest of the gods, your growl rumbled deep within me. The light of your sapphire eyes illuminated path, revealing the mystery of shadows, taking me out of pain. I saw your sharp fangs rip through our roads, I saw your venom kill the cruelty. For that, I call you Zagreus. I call you Lord Sabazius. I call you the Devourer of them all.

— Hymn to Zagreus

[im-not-buying-it-ether]

I find the idea of the OG Persephone and Hades story that Persephone isn’t really the goddess of spring kinda funny

Like, her mother Demeter is responsible for that, she kills the world while missing her daughter creating the first winter and starts spring herself when Persephone is able to return. She isn’t a goddess of spring, her only role in the whole season is to be the catalyst that makes her mom bring spring around and outside that she’s only ever the queen of the underworld.

Before her marriage she was basically an undetermined goddess of nothing until she married Hades and got the underworld association, even just ignoring the history where she is probably an older idea than Hades and she predates him as an underworld goddess, it makes her fully a queen of the dead who gets a spring and summer time separation/vacation to spend time with her mom so people aren’t dying all the time.

Which, itself is a fun concept that the only reason we have a dependable cycle of seasons and not an eternal winter that would kill all of us is because the queen of the dead leaves the underworld so her mom doesn’t kill everyone