Demeter

I thought I should talk a little bit about Demeter today for a couple of reasons. For one, she is one of the most revered and respected of the goddess for me personally. I found her to be inceridbaly strong willed which I greatly admire, and very powerful. She is a Greek earth goddess and thus is worshiped as a harvest goddess, she brings forth the fuits of the earth, particuarly grain, and it is said she tought man how to sow and plough so they could end thier nomadic ways, and thus she is heralded as the goddess who planned society.

Demeter is most well known for being the mother of Persephone, as most people proably know the story it is one of the best known of Greek myths. Persephone was kidnaped by Hades and taken into the underworld, to be forced to be his wife. When Demeter discovered her daughter missing she was deeply grivied and guised as an old woman she went to hunt for her child, when she learned the truth of her daughters dissaperance she was outraged. She demanded of the Gods that her daughter be returned to her, and she turned the land barren and would not allow any grains to grow untill the gods were forced to do something, so an arragement was made. For part of the year Persephone would be allowed upon the surface to be with her mother, and during this time the land was fertile and green, and for the other part of the year Persephone retuned back to the underworld, and for this part of the year, the land was baren and nothing would grow, and thus we have Winter and Spring.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about Demeter is becasue I do not celebrate the "traditional" or I should say Americinize version of Thanksgiving, for one reason, becasue I do not want to honor and celebrate the genocide of a culture and people, as cyincal as a view as that may sound. History is what it is. And for another I do not want to celebrate a Puritan holiday, even though Thanksgiving is not reguarded as being religious in anyway, it was started by the Puritan settlars whom came to this country.

So instead I celebrate Thesmosphoria an ancient Greek festival that was tradionaly held every year in Autumn, and is a festival of the harvest, and thanks giving in honro of Demeter.  

7:08 PM - 11/21/2007 - post comment

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