grain and order
Before bread, there was soil.
Demeter was the Olympian goddess of agriculture, grain and bread who sustained mankind with the earth’s rich bounty. Ceres is the goddess of agriculture and the harvest in Roman mythology.
Different names. Same soil.
Usually depicted as a matronly woman often clad in flowing draperies crowned with wheat ears and bearing a shaft of grain with a sickle or cornucopia. She was depicted as a mature woman often wearing a crown and bearing sheafs of wheat or a cornucopia and a torch.
Wheat in the hand. A tool for cutting. A horn of plenty. Food. Law. Seasons.
grain and law
I keep circling back to that. Food and law in the same sentence. Grain and order. It feels simple. Almost too simple. But agriculture is the basis of a well regulated social condition, and Demeter is represented also as the friend of peace and as a law giving goddess. So bread is not just bread. It is structure.
Ceres was the daughter of Saturn and Ops and the sister and consort of Jupiter. Demeter was the daughter of Cronus and Rhea and sister of Hestia, Hera, Aides, Poseidon, and Zeus. With Neptune ruling the seas, Pluto governing the Underworld, and Vesta serving as the goddess of the hearth, Ceres became the goddess of agriculture.
All things are Ceres’ gift. Ceres was the first to turn the glebe with the hooked plowshare; she first gave corn and kindly sustenance to the world; she first gave laws.
Demeter was the goddess of the earth and more especially of the earth as producing fruit, and consequently of agriculture, whence human food or bread is called the gift of Demeter.
Gift is the word that stays. Gift means dependence. It means we receive before we produce.
withdrawal and famine
The most prominent part in the mythus of Demeter is the rape of her daughter Persephone by Pluto. One sunny day Ceres’ daughter Proserpina and her nymphs were gathering flowers on the slopes of Mount Aetna in Sicily. Pluto reached out, grabbed her, struck the earth with his two pronged fork, opened up a crevice, and they descended into the realm of the Underworld.
Demeter wandered about in search of her daughter for nine days, without taking any nectar or ambrosia, and without bathing. Later that night, when her daughter failed to return home, Ceres became worried and began to search franticly for Proserpina, ignoring her duties.
I picture that wandering. No nectar. No ambrosia. No bathing. Just movement and grief.
As the goddess still continued in her anger, and produced famine on the earth by not allowing the fields to produce any fruit. She reproached the lands, calling them ingrateful and unworthy of the gift of corn.
A mother withdraws. The fields fail. Famine follows.
Zeus accordingly sent Hermes into Erebus to fetch back Persephone. Mercury was sent to Pluto to make a plea for Proserpina, and Pluto consented. However, she had eaten pomegranate seeds while in the Underworld. Persephone should spend only a part of the year in subterraneous darkness, and during the rest of the year she should remain with her mother.
During the time she is on earth, the harvests return and the trees and flowers bloom. The mythus of Demeter and her daughter embodies the idea that the productive powers of the earth rest or are concealed during the winter season.
Rest or concealment. Then return. It is not constant yield. It is rhythm.
mystery and initiation
At Eleusis she instructed Triptolemus, Diocles, Eumolpus, and Celeus in the mode of her worship and in the mysteries. There were a number of festivals and temples dedicated to Ceres in both Greece and Italy, the most notable being the Eleusinian Mysteries, celebrated in the fall. Other yearly festivals included the Thesmophoria and Cerealia.
Her worship consisted in a great measure in orgic mysteries. She presided over the foremost of the Mystery Cults which promised its initiates the path to a blessed afterlife in the realm of Elysium.
Mystery and harvest side by side. Work and afterlife in the same story.
The kidnapping of her daughter revealed an emotional side to Ceres, but there are two short stories that reveal a darker side of the goddess. Erysichthon made the mistake of cutting down Ceres’ sacred trees. Angry at his insolence, Ceres gave him an insatiable hunger, no amount of food could dull the hunger pains. The punishment of Erysikhthon who was cursed with an unquenchable hunger by the goddess for cutting down her holy grove.
Cut down the sacred grove. Receive hunger. It is direct.
Ceres was usually depicted as a matronly woman often clad in flowing draperies crowned with wheat ears. Demeter was often represented in a sitting attitude, sometimes walking, and sometimes riding in a chariot drawn by horses or dragons, but always in full attire, around her head a garland of corn ears.
Bringer of Seasons. Bestower of Splendid Gifts.
The English word cereal derives from the goddess’ name.
Breakfast carries the name of a goddess who once produced famine on the earth by not allowing the fields to produce any fruit. That contrast is hard to ignore.
All things are the gift of Ceres.