Kore, Beautiful daughter  of the Grain Goddess, In your innocence,  Nameless, uncommitted,  We see all our possibilities Like the flowers of the field, Fair, yet perhaps never to bear fruit. In this time of darkness and waiting We are like Shades Yet uninitiated into the Mysteries. Come, Queen of the Underworld, Claim your crown, Guide your people Through the darkness and into new life. ©2003 Christa Landon

Theia (Goddess)  by purecreature  Death will not hold me  Ice and cold will not halt me  Frost and snow will not slow me.  Mother, I love you.  Mother, I am coming.  As lost souls dance listlessly  As sunless skies beat down on me  Even in the heartland of his power  I can hear your rage  I will not be afraid  By the fire of my holy bloodline,  By the strength of my slender limbs,  By the warmth of Ge  And the might of Rheia,  By the light of Hekate, I swear,  I prove myself worthy of your grief.  Your sacred caves, I never knew  I refused knowledge of the blessed darkness  I wanted only nectar and cloudless skies  And for my efforts, Kore is gone,  The springtime maid bought low,  The dark from which I fled  Is now the fountain of my soul.  I am a Queen, Persephone,  And I can no more deny the crown  Then I can unlearn the knowledge I have gained  By trial of night and fire and pain  And the power I have gathered here in the night  Sets my feet firmly on the path to the day  I will feel your embrace yet,  And I will warm the icy tracks of your tears  Mother, please, do not cry.  Mother, I love you. Visit www.templeofdemeter.com for more!

Principle Surviving Ancient Texts Apollodorus,  Library 1.1.5-1.2.1, 1.5.1-3,       1.6.1, 2.5.12, 2.6.1, 3.12.2, 3.6.8, 3.7.1,       3.12.1, 3.14.7 Apollodorus, Epitome 1.23, 3.14.4 Apollonius,  Rhodius,   Argonautica Aristophanes,  Women Celebrating the           Thesmophoria Euripides, Helen 1301-1368 Hesiod, Theogony  767-774, 908-911,          965-974 Homer,  Iliad 9.457, 9.568 -----,  Odyssey 5.125-128, 10.492-495,      10.510, 11.213-218, 11.225-257,      11.632-635 Homeric Hymn to Demeter 2, 13 Hyginus, Fabulae 83, 141, 146, 147 -----,  Poetica Astronomica 2.4, 2.25 Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.341-571, 6.118-119,       8.738-878, 9.422-423 Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.13.8,       1.14.3, 1.37.2, 2.5.8, 8.15.1-4, 8.25.2-8,       8.37.6-9, 8.42.1-13

Also see our virtual temple to Demeter and Persephone

To learn more about Kore/Persephone/Proserpina, read:

Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Several English translations exist. My favorite is Charles Bohr's translation (Chicago: Swallow Press, 1970.)

Barbara Ardinger, Goddess Meditations pp119-124. (St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1998).

Jean Shinoda Bolen, Goddesses in Every Woman, Ch. 10. (NY: Harper & Row, 1984).

Christine Downing, The Goddess: Mythological Images of the Feminine, pp. 30-50. (NY: Crossroad, 1984.)

Patricia Monaghan, The Goddess Path, p 137-148. (St. Paul: Llewellyn, 1999).

Ovid, Metamorphoses, V, 337-662.

For more ancient texts and images: http://web.uvic.ca/grs/bowman/myth/gods/persephone_t.html

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Updated March 30, 2005

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