Persephone, daughter of Mother Earth, a Tale of Greek Mythology and the Underworld

Persephone, who later became the "Queen of the Underworld", is a terrific story in Greek mythology and one of my favorite myths.

Persephone was a young maiden, daughter of Demeter (Mother Earth) and Zeus (King of the Gods). Persephone was beautiful; all the gods wooed her--Hermes, Ares and Apollo, but her mother Demeter, the Goddess of the Earth, hid Persephone away; she lived peacefully on the bosom of her mother, Nature.

Persephone was innocently picking flowers with some nymphs in a field when Hades burst through the center of the Earth, dragging Persephone down through the cleft in the earth, the very crack of doom, down and down and down, to the Underworld, to be Hade's Queen. Hades had abducted Persephone to live with him in the darkness of the Underworld forevermore.

The nymphs who accompanied Persephone were turned into Sirens, to follow their peculiar doom, for standing by and not trying to help Persephone during the abduction by Hades.

Mother Nature, seeking for her missing daughter, was totally distraught. Life on Earth came to a standstill. Thus winter came, for the very first time: the crops didn't grow, and Mother Nature refused her bounty to the people as she searched everywhere for her lost daughter.

The hungry people cried to the gods, and Helios, God of the Sun, who sees everything, heard them. He told Demeter (Mother Nature) what happened and where Persephone went.

Zeus, pressed by the distraught Mother Nature and the by the other deities who were upset by the constant cries and prayers of the starving people, compelled Hades to return Persephone to Demeter.

But Hades tricked Persephone into eating four pomegranate seeds, and it is a rule of fate that whomever consumes food or drink in the Underworld is condemned to spend an eternity there.

A compromise was reached. Persephone spends four months per year in the Underworld as Hade's queen, and her Mother, Nature, mourns her. During that season the Earth is cold, and nothing will grow.

But every spring, Persephone returns to the world and is reunited with her mother, Nature, and the whole world bursts into the blooms of springtime, with the greatest joy.