nour of the goddess
Demeter. She was a daughter of Kronos. She had given to Zeus a
daughter, Persephone, before his marriage with Hera. Persephone, while
playing, was carried away by Hades (Pluto), the god of the infernal
regions. Demeter wandered far and wide over the earth, seeking her
with lamentations. Sitting on a stone in Eleusis, she was found by the
daughters of Keleus, ruler of the place; in the form of an old woman
she entered the service of his family, as nurse to the queen's son.
She wished to endow this boy with immortality, and for this purpose
hid him in fire every night. When his mother discovered this, she wept
and lamented. After that the bestowal of immortality was impossible.
Demeter left the house. Keleus then built a temple. The grief of
Demeter for Persephone was limitless. She spread sterility over the
earth. The gods had to appease her, to prevent a great catastrophe.
Then Zeus induced Hades (Pluto) to release Persephone into the upper
world, but before letting her go, he gave her a pomegranate to eat.
This obliged her to return periodically to the nether-world for
evermore. Henceforward she spent a third of the year there, and
two-thirds in the world above. Demeter was appeased and returned to
Olympus; but at Eleusis, the place of her suffering, she founded the
cult which should keep her fate in remembrance.

It is not difficult to discover the meaning of the myth of Demeter and
Persephone. It is the soul which lives alternately above and below.
The immortality of the soul and its perpetually recurring
transformation by birth and death are thus symbolised. The soul
originates from the immortal--Demeter. But it is led astray by the
transitory, and even prevailed upon to share its destiny. It has
partaken of the fruits in the nether-world, the human soul is
satisfied with the transitory, therefore it cannot permanently live in
the heights of the divine. It has always to return to the realm of the
perishable. Demeter is the representative of the essence from which
human consciousness arose; but we must think of it as the
consciousness which was able to come into being through the spiritual
forces of the earth. Thus Demeter is the primordial essence of the
earth, and the endowment of the earth with the seed-forces of the
produce of the fields through her, points to a still deeper side of
her being. This being wishes to give man immortality. She hides her
nursling in fire by night. But man cannot b