Demeter

Demeter (Δημήτηρ, Roman Ceres) is the Olympian goddess of grain, of the cultivated earth, of the fertility of the field and the mother-daughter bond. The myth that gathers her figure in the tradition is the rape of her daughter Persephone by Hades, Demeter’s grief-quest across the world, her withdrawal of fertility from the earth, and the eventual compromise that gives Persephone to the underworld for a third of the year and to her mother for two-thirds — the myth on which the Eleusinian mysteries centered and which the depth tradition reads as the canonical Greek figure of the mother-daughter separation.

In archetypal reading, Demeter stands for the configuration of the feminine in which maternal love, earth-fertility, and the refusal to accept the violation of the daughter are gathered into a single figure. She is the Great Mother in her tender-fertile aspect rather than in her devouring aspect, and her mourning is the archetypal form of maternal grief. See demeter-persephone for the dyadic relation on which the mystery cult centered.

Relationships

• demeter-persephone
• mother-archetype
• neumann-great-mother