Descent Myths from Transitions one

Descent Myths

Demeter and Persephone

In Greek mythology Demeter, the goddess of the harvest (Ceres her Roman equivalent) who presided over grains, fertility, the cycle of life and death and the seasons,  and her daughter Persephone, were the central figures in the Eleusian descent Mysteries.

Hades, god of the underworld, fell in love with Persephone and tricked her into his realm by opening the earth under her as she plucked a flower, and made her his queen. Demeter blamed the earth for the loss of Persephone and refused to nourish it. The earth began to die.

During her quest  for her stolen child she met a boy, Triptolemus or in another version Demophoon with whom she was so taken that she tried to render him immortal by placing him in flames but was prevented by his mother. She asked help of the sea god Poseidon but was raped by him disguised as a stallion and gave birth to twin horses.

Still mourning the loss of her daughter Demeter blamed the earth as Hades was out of her reach. But the fountain Arethusa said she shouldn’t blame the earth for it had opened to the underworld unwillingly. Zeus sent Mercury to demand Hades should release Persephone.

Hades agreed on the condition that Persephone suffered as much as her mother and not have anything to eat or drink. But Persephone had already eaten the pomegranate seeds which he had given her. A compromise had to be met. Persephone should spend a half (or two thirds) of the year with her mother, restoring nourishment to the earth, the rest as Queen of the Underworld.

Isis and Osiris

King  Osiris was killed by the jealous Set who tricked him into a coffin which fitted only him. The coffin was thrown into the Nile. Isis, wife and sister of  Osiris, found the coffin but Set stole it and cut the corpse into 14 parts one part for each of the year’s full moons. These were scattered all over Egypt to prevent Osiris from being honoured even in death. Set’s wife, Nephthys helped Isis recover the body parts. Only the penis was lost, eaten by fish. Nephthys made a gold phallus to complete Osiris who could now die decorously to became Lord of the Dead and the afterlife.

Orpheus and Eurydice

Orpheus was a great musician and poet who charmed all who heard him On their wedding day, Orpheus’ wife Eurydice was fatally bitten by a snake. The sad music Orpheus played made the very gods weep. They advised him to play for Hades and Persephone, Monarchs of the Underworld. Hades was so moved he allowed Eurydice to return to life with Orpheus but, on one condition: he must walk in front of his wife and not look back until they both reached the upper world. Inevitably

Orpheus did look back. Eurydice vanished forever, or in other versions was turned to stone. Later Orpheus was killed by women who couldn’t hear his divine music.

This is the story from Virgil’s time. Other writers (according to Phaedrus in Plato’s Symposium) suggested that Eurydice was an apparition and Ovid that her death was caused by dancing with naiads on her wedding day.

Instead of dying for love to be with the one he loved was Orpheus mocking the gods by trying to get her back alive from Hades? Was his love untrue? Perhaps the gods only gave him the apparition of his former wife in the underworld, and mocked him further when he was killed by women who could not hear his divine music.

Orpheus’ descent to underworld paralleled in:

Sumerian myth of Inanna’s  Descent to the Underworld which tells of Inanna, the goddess of the sky abandoning heaven and earth to descend to the Great Below

Japanese myth of Izanagi and Ixaname

Mayan myth of Ix Chel and Itzamna

North American Nez Perce tribe’s trickster, Coyote.

Biblical story of Lot’s wife when escaping from Sodom

The warning of not looking back found in the Grimms' folk tale Hansel and Gretel