Daughter of Cronus and Rhea, Demeter was the goddess of agriculture and, especially, of cereal cultivationknowledge that he taught to humans. An ear of wheat was precisely the attribute with which it was represented.

with his brothers Zeus, Hades and Poseidonand her sisters Hera and HestiaDemeter belongs to the divine generation of the Olympians. In the division of the world that all of them once imposed on the preceding generation, that of the Titans, the fertility of the cultivated fields and the course of the seasons corresponded to it.

Goddess Demeter and her offspring

Demeter was not a goddess especially prone to affairs. Even so, her brother Poseidon required her to love him so insistently that she, to escape his harassment, transformed into a mare and ran to take refuge among the horses of a king. It was useless, because her brother discovered her and, metamorphosed into a stallion, covered her. They were born like this horse Arion and a maiden known as Despena (the “Lady”), whose real name could not be revealed.

Demeter had yet another daughter, this one from a relationship with another of his brothers, Zeus. Since she was born, that girl, called Persephonewas the most precious of gifts for his mother.

Demeter and the abduction of Persephone

Persephone is the key figure in the most important myth involving Demeter. Another of its protagonists was the third brother of the goddess, Hades, the god of the underworld and the dead.

The trigger for everything was passion that Hades felt for Persephone. Aware that a girl full of life like her would never agree to accompany him to his gloomy kingdom, the god decided to kidnap her. And that’s what he did: one day when Persephone was alone and carefree picking flowers in the field, Hades made the earth open and dragged it into its depths.

Seeing that her daughter did not return, Demeter became worried. He began searching for her all over the world, increasingly desperate due to the lack of news about her. In the end, decided to abdicate his duties and let the Earth become a frozen wasteland.

Demeter and the passing of the seasons

The situation became so serious that Zeus, fearing that humans would die and that the gods would be left without their offerings and sacrifices, ordered Hades to return Persephone. But this one, given that she had eaten a few pomegranate seeds, was now forever linked to the underworld.

However, a compromise solution could be reached: The young woman would spend half the year with her mother and the other half with her husband. Thus, the months that Persephone spends with Demeter correspond to those of spring and summer, when nature is fertile and generous, while those she spends with her husband are those of autumn and, above all, winter, when everything becomes barren and sterile.

Demeter and the art of agriculture

Another myth relates that, during the period in which she was searching for her daughter throughout the Earth, Demeter took the form of an old woman and went to work as a nurse to the children of King Coeleus of Eleusis. He wanted to make the eldest, Demophon, immortal, for which he fed him ambrosia, the food of the gods, and scrubbed his body with burning brands. But he had to interrupt that process after the child’s mother saw what he was doing to her and thought he wanted to kill him.

Later, once Persephone had recovered, Demeter taught another of Coeleus’ sons, Triptolemus, the secrets of agriculture and how to grow the most precious of cereals: wheat. Not only that, but he also ordered him to transmit that knowledge throughout the world.

For that gift he made to humanity, the goddess She is usually represented with an ear of wheat in her hand..

Cult of the goddess Demeter

Demeter’s main place of worship was in Eleusisa town near Athens. It was there that Triptolemus instituted the so-called “mysteries”, a name that is not gratuitous: the entire cult was surrounded by such well-preserved secrecy that hardly anything is known about it. The only thing was that it celebrated the cycle of life, death and regeneration behind the myth of Demeter, but also of Persephone and Hades.

One of its most important moments was the great procession that, starting from Athens, reached Eleusis through the Sacred Way.