Goddess of the Week: Persephone

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Oh no! The goddess queue is empty! We need a goddess of queues. We need a goddess who knows all about waiting. That would be Persephone, the Greek goddess of Spring.

Maybe you know Persephone's story. It's pretty creepy. Old man Hades (god of the underworld) snatches young thing Persephone and grabs her down to hell to make her his wife. Persephone's mom, Demeter, gets really mad and threatens to destroy all plant life. (She was the goddess of agriculture.) Of course, if all the plants died, all life would die. Zeus (who had actually been in on the kidnapping even though he was Persephone's own father) decides to broker a deal. He talks to Hades and Hades agrees to let Persephone go.

Alas, poor Persephone had eaten three pomegranate seeds, even though everybody knew you weren't supposed to eat food in the underworld. Eating food from the underworld was like eating all your Halloween candy in one sitting. It was a bad idea. Everywhere you went people would say, if you go to hell, don't eat the food. The food will look good. It will look REALLY good. But don't do it. It will only end badly. But, just like kids will eat all their Halloween candy if given the actual chance, she ate the pomegranate seeds. And just like kids who eat all their Halloween candy in one sitting learn an inalienable fact of life about the stomach-churning consequences of eating too much candy, Persephone experienced a fact of life (and death) as equally inalienable: if you eat the fruit of the dead, you have to be dead, no matter what Zeus says. Still, Zeus is Zeus, and he worked out a deal. She had to stay in hell one month for each seed that she ate in the underworld. So she spends three months in hell every year (that would be winter), and the other nine months she gets to frolic as she wishes on the lovely earth.

The point is, Persephone knows all about waiting. Every winter she goes to the underworld and waits for spring. It's a long and dark wait, but, apparently, the food is excellent. Persephone reminds us that we all have winters. You can't hurry through winter. Some things have their own time, and we can neither rush them nor slow them down. We can only wait. But winter ends, and spring comes. Without fail, it comes. The best thing to do is hunker down and wait it out. Cookies help.

  Channel this goddess: When standing in line, when the wait seems interminable, when you really need a little sun. 


 Need a goddess! The queue is empty! Now is the time! Free! Free! Free! Post a comment explaining what you need or want a goddess for. Then check back in a week or two and see what you got.