Persephone & Hades Revisited
/Happy 10 Year Anniversary from your friends at Spirits! To celebrate, we’re revisiting the subject of our first ever episode: Persephone and Hades. We look at the story through a decade of new experiences, life changes, and so much more. Thanks for joining us.
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of racism, death, animal death, blood, pedophilia, abduction, sexual assault, misogyny, and incest.
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Cast & Crew
- Co-Hosts: Julia Schifini and Amanda McLoughlin
- Editor: Bren Frederick
- Music: Brandon Grugle, based on "Danger Storm" by Kevin MacLeod
- Artwork: Allyson Wakeman
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About Us
Spirits is a boozy podcast about mythology, legends, and folklore. Every episode, co-hosts Julia and Amanda mix a drink and discuss a new story or character from a wide range of places, eras, and cultures. Learn brand-new stories and enjoy retellings of your favorite myths, served over ice every week, on Spirits.
Transcript
[theme]
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits Podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. For the last 10 years, people, for the last decade, we have been pouring a drink every week and learning about a new story from around the world. I remain Amanda.
JULIA: I am also still somehow Julia.
AMANDA: Hurray! Julia, Happy anniversary.
JULIA: Happy anniversary. Amanda, I cannot believe it has been 10 years since we released the first episode of Spirits.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. After one too many cocktails at the Jekyll and Hyde Club, RIP—
JULIA: RIP.
AMANDA: —in Times Square, where we drew the logo on a napkin and talked about the podcast we wanted to make together after being in the same city together, again, for the first time since we left high school. Here we are.
JULIA: Here we are. And, Amanda, I have to ask, do you remember what that first episode was?
AMANDA: I will never forget, both because it comes up by default a lot on podcast apps when you select the show.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: And also because when I share the show with people and they look through the episodes, they go, "I love it. It's Persephone and Hades."
JULIA: It is. And, you know, the story of Persephone and Hades has always had a very special place in my heart from when I first started learning about mythology. I just really loved this idea of a goddess that represented life and death, like could be both, could contain multitudes, if you will.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And I very distinctly remember some sort of book. It wasn't Edith Hamilton's Mythology, but it was one that I think my mom bought me because I wouldn't stop talking about Greek mythology. And the book kind of associated various different goddesses with, like, crystals and stuff. I cannot for the life of me remember what this book was and I haven't had any luck Googling it, but it must have been, like, in the late '90s or early 2000s. So if you know what I'm talking about, ConSpiriters, please message me. I want to see if I can find this book again.
AMANDA: I believe in us.
Juila: Ever since then, Persephone has captured my imagination. And so when we were discussing what the first episode of Spirits should be, I knew that child Julia would never forgive me if I didn't feature the story of Persephone and Hades.
AMANDA: And so, Julia, why are we touching on this topic again 10 damn years in?
JULIA: Because I think that if we have been doing this podcast for 10 years, and that is the first episode we ever did, I think we have grown a lot as both people and as a podcast.
AMANDA: True.
JULIA: And I think in order to celebrate 10 years, I want to approach this story again with all of the experience and the new lens that we've developed from a decade of doing the show.
AMANDA: We are no longer hunched very close together over a single Blue Yeti microphone on my couch. And I'm excited to see what else has changed.
JULIA: Listen, I loved hanging out in your studio apartment when we first started recording this podcast. It was great.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: However, I am glad for my back health that we are no longer trying to share a Blue Yeti microphone.
AMANDA: A thing we probably didn't think about when we were 23, but here we are.
JULIA: Absolutely not. I was not thinking about that in the least.
AMANDA: Julia, I'm so excited. And I won't spend the entire episode talking about how much we've changed and how much in our friendship has grown and intensified and stayed the same. Um, but I'm very excited to revisit this story with 10 years and coming up on 500 episodes of having done this damn thing.
JULIA: We are going to do this damn thing even more into the future, which is wild to me.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: We're not stopping at 10, baby.
AMANDA: Not anytime soon, y'all. We're gonna get this podcast into all the milestones, work permit, driver's license, maybe voting, maybe drinking. I don't know, we'll see.
JULIA: I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. Can you imagine doing this for another 11 years?
AMANDA: I can. It doesn't scare me.
JULIA: Good. I can't even picture what my life would look like in another 11 years from now. But to be fair, I couldn't picture this being my life 10 years ago when we started the podcast.
AMANDA: It's true, Julia, a lot will change and has changed, but I am still interested in this. I'm more interested than when I started and I am just— this is the best part of my week, every week, is getting to talk to you.
JULIA: Hey, thanks.
AMANDA: Tell me about Persephone.
JULIA: I'll tell you first about Hades. So when we did our It's All Greek to Me series and when we originally did the Persephone and Hades myth, I almost said 100 years ago, 10 years ago. I didn't really get into too much of the background on either of these gods and goddesses. And I gave a really, like, sort of straightforward version of the story. And this time because we've done the It's All Greek to Me series, where I didn't touch on Hades or Persephone, I wanted to give them both the same amount of depth as I gave the Olympians from that series. So we're gonna start with Hades. And Hades, as you may recall, is the oldest son of the Titans, Cronus and Rhea. And as a result, he was the first of his brothers and sisters to be eaten by his father, who, as you may recall, Cronus feared a prophecy that said that he would be overthrown by his children just as he had overthrown his father.
AMANDA: It's generational trauma, and I'm not gonna lie to you, Julia, Hades is giving eldest daughter energy, and that's something that I am a little bit, I don't know, let's say, experienced in.
JULIA: Hmm. Interesting, interesting. However, because he was the first to be devoured by his father, that also means he was the last to be regurgitated when Zeus began his uprising, aka the Titanomachy, which is the war between the Titans and the soon-to-be Olympians.
AMANDA: Julia, it's giving my least favorite way of taxing capital gains first and last out. It's not fair!
JULIA: I still don't know what that means, but I love it.
AMANDA: It means that if your granddaddy bought a stock 80 years ago and then you sell it today, you get to sell all the newer things that didn't appreciate in value before the OG.
JULIA: Oh. Okay.
AMANDA: So you get to hoard that wealth and not get taxed on it because you're like, "No, no, no, but the— one of the share that I bought, that was the one that I found on the street two days ago."
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: "I promise."
JULIA: Yeah. "Granddaddy did me a lot of favors back in the day."
AMANDA: Must be nice.
JULIA: So Hades fought alongside his siblings against the Titans armed with the Helm of Invisibility that was forged for him by the Cyclopes who also gave Zeus his Thunderbolt and Poseidon, his Earthquaking Trident.
AMANDA: Is there, like, um, poetic emphasis in the texts that the Cyclopes having only one eye are good at invisibility? Like, are those two things related?
JULIA: I don't think so. I like that as a theory, but they're more of, like, these craftsmen. They're these blacksmiths who can create these sort of otherworldly items that the gods then use to defeat the Titans.
AMANDA: Got it.
JULIA: So with these powerful weapons, the Olympians are able to defeat the Titans and they imprison many of the Titans, not all of the Titans, but many of the Titans, in Tartarus, which is the deep abyss within the Greek Underworld.
AMANDA: Still makes me think of the sauce and now I do great fish and chips.
JULIA: Fair enough. So after their victory, the three brothers, the sons of Cronus, drew lots in order to choose which realms they would rule. Zeus won the first choice and chose the sky. Poseidon went next and took the seas and then Hades received the Underworld, which meant all things beneath the earth as well as dominion over the souls of the dead that arrived in the realm of the dead, which is what the Underworld is.
AMANDA: Do we think he would have chosen that? Did we ever touch on that in the text?
JULIA: I don't think so. I think he got unlucky and ended up with the Underworld.
AMANDA: Short straw.
JULIA: I think pretty much every retelling of Greek mythology has Hades as, you know, "And poor Hades, he got the Underworld." But I think is often characterized as this person who takes great pride in the job that he does. He knows that it's important.
AMANDA: Makes the best of the least.
JULIA: So something important to stress that probably most people know, but something that I want to make sure we understand going into this episode, is that Hades is not the embodiment of death, but rather is the god of the dead. He is the king of the dead. He's the king of the Underworld. And those are important distinctions because the Greeks have an embodiment of death. Actually, there's quite a few embodiments and varieties of death. Uh, Thanatos being the general personification of death, but there's also various other embodiments of different types of death. Like the Keres who are these death spirits who embody violent death, for example.
AMANDA: And my favorite characters in Hercules, the movie, are old crones doing the snip-snip.
JULIA: So those are the Morai, they're the Fates.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: The Greek Underworld, which is sometimes also referred to as Hades itself, is Hades' domain and is made up of several different parts and inhabited by many of the Chthonic gods. Chthonic just meaning Underworld or death gods.
AMANDA: Uh, incredible. Is that what— where we get Cthulhu from?
JULIA: Wow, that's a great question. I don't know.
AMANDA: C-T-H-U-L-U.
JULIA: It's— so it is spelled C-H-T-H is the same as Cthulhu.
AMANDA: All right.
JULIA: So it's very possible that H.P. Lovecraft in his infinite racism decided to pull for that.
AMANDA: Probably. There's some Venn diagramming, Julia, between people obsessed with ancient Greek and the racisms.
JULIA: Hopefully I don't fall into that category.
AMANDA: I don't think so.
JULIA: So in early mythology, the dead were all sort of grouped together regardless of who they were in life or what they did in life. But later mythology adds a element of judgment in death, which leads to a variety of different "lands" within the Underworld. So we'll go through them very quickly because I think they're, like, somewhat relevant to understanding Hades and the Underworld, and how he rules there. So starting with the entrance of the Underworld, there's two important figures that we have to talk about when we're talking about the entrance of the Underworld. That is Charon and Cerberus. So Charon being the ferryman whom the dead pay a toll in order to be ferried across the River Styx to enter the Underworld. Probably know that the ancient Greeks would bury their dead with coins sometimes in their mouth, sometimes on the eyes, so that that would be the payment for Charon.
AMANDA: Among the coolest river names of all time. The River Styx? I mean, come on, that feels good in the mouth.
JULIA: Pretty sweet, pretty sweet.
AMANDA: It feels like Pocky, like, om, om, om.
JULIA: And then, of course, we have Cerberus who is the guard dog of the Underworld. And I would be remiss if I didn't also mention what I mentioned in our first episode, which is Cerberus' name means basically brindled, which means that Hades named his dog Spot.
AMANDA: Among the best things I've ever learned from this podcast, Julia.
JULIA: Incredible, right? Just so good.
AMANDA: We've been calling our dog Spot since truly the dawn of time.
JULIA: Truly, truly. Now, we talk a lot about Charon getting his payment to usher people across the River Styx, but Amanda, did you know we also have historical evidence that the Greeks would place a honey cake with the dead so that they could give Cerberus a little treat before they entered the Underworld?
AMANDA: Treat? Yes!
JULIA: Little treat!
AMANDA: Snacks for Cerberus, let's go.
JULIA: Cerberus was charged with stopping the dead from leaving the Underworld, less so with preventing people from entering, though that does feature in some stories, but his primary focus was, "Hey, you're not allowed to leave."
AMANDA: So more, like, the nanny sheepdog in, what is that, Peter Pan? Yes, then a guard dog preventing people from coming in.
JULIA: God. Is that dog literally called, like, nanny or nurse or something like that?
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: Nana, the dog's name is Nana. That's so good. Wow. Incredible. So the Underworld is also made up of several rivers, the Styx which we already mentioned, extremely cool name. That is also the river that the gods would swear oaths upon and that is the river that Charon would ferry the dead across.
AMANDA: Wow. It's like a final honor.
JULIA: That is. Truly. There is also the Acheron, which is the river of misery and woe. There is the Phlegethon, which is a river that leads into the depths of Tartarus, which is associated with punishment and also just happens to be a river of fire.
AMANDA: Cool. Um, respectfully, Julia, you can miss me with both of those rivers. I'll stick to the River Styx.
JULIA: That's fair enough. And then another important river is the Lethe, the river of forgetfulness and oblivion. And there are some stories in which the dead would drink from the Lethe in order to forget their previous lives.
AMANDA: Wow. That's a very powerful human urge, huh?
JULIA: Yeah, made it just. There are a few more locations that were honestly added later in the mythological canon. Besides Tartarus, which we already mentioned, there was the Asphodel Meadows, which were either a field of ash, which is sort of based on some ancient Greek wordplay, or a field of literal Asphodel, which is a type of white star-shaped flower that is associated with mourning. Mourning with a U, not mourning as in the beginning of the day.
AMANDA: Oh, shit, both of those are very striking images. I'm picturing like a cave top with, like, stalactites and stuff.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: And then just like an ethereal glow with these, you know, pointy, I'm assuming they're pointy, flowers poking up.
JULIA: Yeah, they kind of have, like, a cone shape and then those star white flowers sort of wrap around the cone. It's very pretty, honestly.
AMANDA: Right on.
JULIA: And then, of course, Amanda, there is Elysium or the Elysian Fields, which is basically the closest thing you get to paradise in the Greek afterlife. It is the place that Greek heroes aim to go when they die. And it is a place for those who have been judged righteous in life that spend their death there.
AMANDA: One of my favorite parts of learning about the Greek Underworld and learning a little bit more about Hades and the ancient Greek conception of death is that everybody goes there. Everyone ends up in the Underworld, in Hades. It's not this Christian conception of, uh, hell only for damned souls. And—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —one of the things that I definitely find myself knowing that common depictions of Hades and the Underworld don't.
JULIA: That's a great point, Amanda, because as Greek mythology really stresses, especially as we get into the sort of, like, epithets section of this episode. Hey, everybody dies.
AMANDA: Don't they just?
JULIA: There are a few animals and items that are associated with Hades and his worship. Black animals, but particularly sheep, were often sacrificed to Hades, which I think puts a whole new meaning on, like, the black sheep of the family because Hades is being portrayed as so different than his Olympian siblings.
AMANDA: And, Julia, gives a whole new context to my favorite shiny Pokémon of all time, Shiny Wooloo.
JULIA: Wooloo.
AMANDA: Wooloo, simply a sheep. Shiny Wooloo, just a black sheep.
JULIA: Aw, but cute. I love that.
AMANDA: Very cute.
JULIA: Blood and other offerings would be dripped into either pits or cracks in the ground in order for it to get more easily to the god beneath the earth.
AMANDA: Cool.
JULIA: Speaking of black animals, he is also portrayed as driving a chariot that is drawn by four black horses and, of course, is often portrayed with Cerberus by his side.
AMANDA: Love a horse and a myth.
JULIA: And also, Amanda, snakes! He's often seen holding snakes or is accompanied by them in art. He also has a few plants that are associated with him, namely the cypress tree and the narcissus flower, aka the daffodil. The daffodil will be important later, so keep it in mind, remember. Now, there is not a ton of art from the ancient Greeks of Hades, which is understandably so. But when he is portrayed, it is often with his Bident, which is a two-pronged Trident.
AMANDA: Or like I call it a big, ol' fork.
JULIA: His Helm of Invisibility, which we already mentioned previously.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And a key, which is known as the Key of Hades and is essentially like a reminder that souls of the dead cannot leave the Underworld.
AMANDA: It's like I'm locking you up and I have the only key.
JULIA: Now you know when we did It's All Greek to Me, I loved doing a etymology corner and a epithets corner. So let's talk about Hades and his various epithets.
AMANDA: Yes!
JULIA: Now the actual origin of the name Hades is pretty uncertain, mainly because it has been associated with the meaning of "the unseen one" since the oldest antiquity, which honestly does feel like a kind of, like, cute, little treat when you keep in mind the fact that he has this Helm of Invisibility that was given to him by the Cyclopes.
AMANDA: Oh, my God, right? I'm here assuming like, yeah, it's because like the Underworld is something we don't want to see or deal with. Like, it's not in the realm of the sun and the sky and the water. He's also the invisible bitch.
JULIA: Exactly. So Socrates argued that Hades' came from "his knowledge of all noble things," but this writing was also in direct opposition to the writings of Plato and they might have just been beefing at the time. Some modern linguists, especially a historian named Martin Litchfield West, believed that the original meaning of Hades' name was "the one who presides over meeting up," as in eventually, all end up in the halls of the dead.
AMANDA: God of hangs and you know what— where we're always gonna hang, Julia.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: At some point, eventually.
JULIA: Everyone ends up there eventually. That's what I'm saying.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But he does have a few other names, though unlike the other gods those names might have been used as a placeholder for fear of invoking his true name and getting his attention.
AMANDA: Sure.
JULIA: So there is Pluton, meaning wealthy in reference to all of the riches that can be found beneath the ground. There are a couple of variations of Pluton, including like Giver of Wealth, which I think is also very interesting. There is also Agesandros, meaning he who carries all away, again, the universality of death.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: We also have Clymenus, means infamous. Polydegmon, which means host of many, again, very funny.
AMANDA: Julia, in some ways, death is the biggest dinner party in the world.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: The least exclusive invitation, but kind of the biggest party.
JULIA: There's also Chthonius, which is the subterranean. And then there's my, perhaps, least favorite, which is Zeus Katachthonios or Zeus of the Underworld, which just feels mean-spirited.
AMANDA: Yeah, that's real older brother energy, being like, "Yeah, that's my little brother, little me."
JULIA: Yeah, he's the king of the Underworld the way that Zeus is the king of the heavens, but you don't have to remind him that when referencing him. It's just me.
AMANDA: Yeah. No. Call Zeus the upstairs Hades. I don't think he's gonna like that.
JULIA: Yeah, no. He would hate that, honestly.
AMANDA: He would hate it.
JULIA: But for all that the Greeks may have been afraid of death and speaking the name of Hades, Amanda, he is often seen as a sort of passive and sometimes even altruistic figure in mythology. I would think of him as a sort of, like, benevolent but solemn king, right?
AMANDA: I mean, he's not grabbing people, right? Like he's not the devil, he's not the Grim Reaper. He's not like going up into the domain of his brothers to be like, "Yum, yum, yum. More souls for me." He's just— happens to be the president of the place where you gotta go.
JULIA: He did famously go up and grab one person, and that is kind of the point of this episode, but we'll talk about it.
AMANDA: Well—
JULIA: So basically he's, like, cool, but he expects all of his subjects to follow his law, but also held all of his subjects equally accountable and didn't give any sort of particular special treatment to any of the dead.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Unless they pissed him off.
AMANDA: Well, that's fair.
JULIA: It is, as I mentioned before, strictly forbidden for any of the dead to leave his domain and those who tried or did would be severely punished, especially if they're also living mortals who attempted to steal souls from his realm.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah. So we have quite a few examples of this. We have, uh, Sisyphus sort of famously cheated death several times, including chaining the god Thanatos and trapping him so that no one died until he was free.
AMANDA: A real bummer.
JULIA: He also managed to convince either Persephone or Hades, it depends on who's telling the story, where he, like, died and then— but before he died, he instructed his wife to throw his body into the street rather than give him a proper burial.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: So that once he got down to the Underworld, he's like, "Look at what my wife did. I wasn't buried properly. You have to send me back so I can scold her for being a bad wife."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And then when they did, he was just like, "And I'm not coming back. Deuces."
AMANDA: Sike.
JULIA: Until he died of old age and/or Hermes dragged him back down into the Underworld. At which point, Hades just fully punished him in the Sisyphean way, which is now he has to push a boulder uphill for the rest of his days and never reach the top.
AMANDA: Yeah, we're a few more months and/or decades of human life really worth an eternity where your name is literally synonymous with a thankless unending task.
JULIA: I mean, personally, I would say no.
AMANDA: Me neither.
JULIA: But that's just me.
AMANDA: Especially after having seen the Underworld. It's not even like he was trying to do some kind of bargain and be like, "I don't know if that really exists, whatever." But skepticism is not as rendered in myths in the past as it is now.
JULIA: There is a lesser known story than Sisyphus who literally— we still use his name to this day, right? This is the story of Peirithous. Now, he had pledged along with his buddy Theseus that he was going to marry a daughter of Zeus. Theseus is like, "Okay, I'm gonna go marry Helen." Went and did that even though Helen was 10 years old at the time. Fucking weird ,Theseus.
AMANDA: Don't do that.
JULIA: And so Peirithous sets his sights on Persephone.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Now, he travels to the Underworld in an attempt to steal the Queen of the Dead away, but is caught.
AMANDA: Oh, Persephone post-marriage.
JULIA: Post-marriage.
AMANDA: Oh. I thought he just happened to crush on the woman who Hades was gonna take.
JULIA: No, he said, "I'm gonna go steal the king of the dead's wife from him."
AMANDA: He said, "Bet."
JULIA: So as punishment, there's a couple of different versions of the story. Either Hades physically bound him to a stone within the Underworld along with Theseus, and then Hercules later had to come down and cut Theseus' butt off to pull him out of the Underworld.
AMANDA: Not the get along shirt of death.
JULIA: Yeah, or he fed Peirithous to Cerberus.
AMANDA: A great day for Spot.
JULIA: A great day for him. Great snack. He's getting honey cakes and all of a sudden he's got a full man. He's probably like, "This is the best."
AMANDA: It's got bones. It's like, "Oh, my God, use some of those honey cakes to sop up the marrow, why don't you?"
JULIA: In Edith Hamilton's telling of the story, though, Hades tricks him into sitting in a "chair of forgetfulness."
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: In which once one sat in it, it made you forget everything about your life and basically just, like, creates a thoughtless husk of a person, right? So it is said that Peirithous has been sitting in this chair forever, forgetting his mission to kidnap Persephone, forgetting who he even is.
AMANDA: That is a very powerful deterrent, I would imagine, to other souls who can at least remember their life in all its ups and downs.
JULIA: Now, there is only one example that I can recall where Hades relented for a spirit of the dead to be taken from his realm by someone who's living. And you can probably guess what it is if you're a fan of Greek mythology, but that is Orpheus and Eurydice.
AMANDA: Famously, subjects of Hadestown.
JULIA: Famously. As you might recall, Eurydice died of a snake bite and her husband, the musician Orpheus, entered the Underworld and used his charming music to convince Hades and Persephone to allow Eurydice to return to the land of the living with her husband, so long as he did not turn back to look at her on his way out.
AMANDA: Well, bitch couldn't even do that.
JULIA: Yeah. Orpheus fails to do so, Eurydice returned to the Underworld. Whether or not Hades knew that Orpheus would fail, kind of subject for debate, depends on who's telling the story. That's Hades for you. But let's talk about the other half or perhaps third that makes up this story and that is, of course, Persephone.
AMANDA: Do it. I'm very intrigued about this missing third.
JULIA: Now, we don't get a ton of origins for Persephone, at least from a mythological perspective. Her story in most mythology and tellings only really starts to dig deeper into her in her foundational myth, which is of course her abduction by Hades.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: What we do know is she is often claimed to be the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, though Demeter seems to be the primary parent in raising her.
AMANDA: Classic Zeus, am I right?
JULIA: I was gonna say, which makes sense, Zeus is a very absent parent in most of mythology.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. We don't call him the fuck father because he's great at parenting, folks. We call him that because he's the father of all fuck- boys.
JULIA: Uh-huh. And he has left a lot of children in his wake.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm. Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Now, we know very little about the union that led to Persephone's birth. It's not really commented on by these tellings of the story. But Persephone, before the abduction, is described as the personification of vegetation, especially crops, and also the maiden of spring, right? Which is funny to call her that because it's before the seasons are really invented.
AMANDA: That's true, Julia, but one of the things that I have really come around on in my character development since we did this episode the first time is appreciating winter and spring as the light gathering, building up of energy that then can burst forth in the more beautiful summer season. Like spring might be, you know, a mulched, frosty garden bed, but we have that little bit of daffodil or onion or whatever, like, about to pop up through the soil. And that's something that I have a lot more appreciation for now than I did.
JULIA: Amanda, you nailed it.
AMANDA: Aw.
JULIA: As always.
AMANDA: Thanks.
JULIA: So Cicero describes her as "the seeds of the fruits of the field."
AMANDA: There you go.
JULIA: And the symbolism, as you pointed out, is very apparent. She embodies the crops that sprout in the spring, are harvested when fully grown.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: A real symbolism of, like, a girl becoming a woman, right?
AMANDA: Yeah, or a woman as like mostly worthy of caretaking until she is, like, given off at her peak as a prize and sort of, like, her value, you know, diminishes after that.
JULIA: Uh-hmm. And then she disappears when the earth is sewn only to reappear again in the spring.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Symbolism, baby. Symbolism.
AMANDA: Symbolism. We love it.
JULIA: Now, the origins of Persephone's name are also sort of difficult to parse, much like Hades, though this is based on the fact that there are so many different ways it is written in ancient Greece, which suggests that the name probably has a pre-Greek origin.
AMANDA: Gotcha. Because it was, like, not originally a name transliterated with those characters. And so they're kind of like, "Uh, put a K-H on it, put a C-H, Tonika, I don't know.
JULIA: Precisely, you nailed it. So there is a Swiss linguist named Rudolf Wachter who suggests that her name comes from a Proto-Indo-European root which roughly translates her full name to Striker of Corn or perhaps better translated, Thresher of Grain.
AMANDA: Oh, shit.
JULIA: Yes. So she is like fully a, like, agricultural, agrarian goddess from the beginning.
AMANDA: And, again, it makes all the sense in the world that, poetically, the domain she goes to is the one defined by a lack of light. Whether you are in the—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —sky, the source of the sun, or in the water, a place that can transmute and be lit from above, but also has its own sources of luminescence, neither of those is where she's gone.
JULIA: Well, Amanda, I'm so glad you mentioned that because there is also another linguistic theory which associates her name with this Albanian dawn goddess. And it suggests that her name can be traced to another root meaning, "She who brings the light through."
AMANDA: Albania has entered the chat. Let's go.
JULIA: Isn't that cool? I'm so glad you were like—
AMANDA: So good.
JULIA: —"Let me talk about light." I'm like, "Oh, girlfriend, I got you set up."
AMANDA: So good.
JULIA: Bumps at spike, baby. Persephone, much like her husband, has a variety of names, which are also used to, essentially, avoid speaking her true name aloud.
AMANDA: That's just polite. Like, when you meet a woman that you really like, just don't ever look at her directly or say her name directly is kind of what I've been trying to do.
JULIA: I mean, that's great advice. So most commonly she is referred to as Core or Cora, which is the maiden.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But also oftentimes she is referred to as Nestis, which is the fasting one.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: Which I think is interesting, because when you think about it, when those winter months are tough, you try not to eat as much. And also when you think about it, Persephone eating the food of the Underworld, essentially means she has to stay in the Underworld. Not eating is interesting. I don't know.
AMANDA: Yeah. Is she fasting perhaps when she is above ground and waiting to go back below? Hmm. Ambiguous.
JULIA: Or vice versa. So her epithets are also divided depending on what role she is playing, whether she is in the form of her goddess of spring or she is her goddess of the Underworld, right? So as the spring goddess, she is Auxesia, meaning increase, which is basically invoked for those who wanted to see growth or prosperity, and so would pray to her. There is Soteira, which means savior and is also sometimes used as well as Azesia. which meant to seek or sometimes even to dry fruits.
AMANDA: Well, that's fascinating. I am a little bit stuck—
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: —on the name Soteira, which does sound like a cryptocurrency, but I'm going to try to move past that.
JULIA: It does kind of sound like a cryptocurrency, you're right. This also is kind of interesting because it is a reference to plant growth and the harvest and stuff like that, so that's when she would evoke those names.
AMANDA: Indeed.
JULIA: As the goddess of the dead she is Chthonia or she of the earth, which is a reference to her being both the daughter of Demeter but also being the goddess beneath the earth. She is also known as Hagne or pure, and Melitodes or sweet as honey.
AMANDA: Ugh, I love it. I love a honey-based word.
JULIA: And then finally, she is also most formally Despoena or the mistress of the house in reference to her as consort to Hades and also mistress of his household.
AMANDA: And we all know, Julia, it is the mistress of the house who is truly in charge.
JULIA: Damn right. Damn skippy. Well, Amanda, that's what I have on sort of the background of Persephone and Hades. And here is where we will take our quick break before we get into the story of the abduction of Persephone by Hades. So let's go grab our refill.
AMANDA: Let's do it.
[theme]
JULIA: Hey, this is Julia and welcome to the refill. We are continuing to donate our ad space for the foreseeable future to small businesses and mutual aid efforts in Minneapolis that benefit immigrants, protesters and activists. If you are a podcaster and you want to join us in this effort, please go to bit.ly/mnpodcastads, all one word, all lowercase. This week, I want to highlight for you Birch Bark Books & Native Arts. They are a small independent bookseller that is located in Minneapolis. They have a wonderful collection of books that you can either purchase online or if you just want to support the store financially, you can just buy a gift card through their website. They seem like wonderful people and their business has been a really strong supporter of the protests that are happening in Minneapolis. So check that out. You can find a link in our episode description or you can go to birchbarkbooks.com. We want to thank, of course, our patrons in this episode. Thank you to our newest patrons, Peter and Fantasy Junkie. [33:20] You join the ranks of our supporting producer-level patrons like Uhleeseeuh, Hannah, Scott, Anne, Matthew, Lily, and Wil. And of course, our legend-level patrons, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Audra, Sarah, Bea Me Up Scotty, Morgan, Bex, Rikoelike, Chibi Yokai, and Michael. If you too would like to join us on Patreon, you can go to patreon.com/spiritspodcast today to sign up for a free trial or to get cool rewards like ad-free episodes, recipe cards for every episode, and so much more. Check it out. And, of course, we want to tell you about another show here at Multitude. Wow If True is your one stop internet culture shop explaining how, what's happening online shapes the real world and they are the internet experts and real-life besties to unravel it. Tech culture journalist Amanda Silberling and science fiction author/attorney Isabel J. Kim, Esq. More importantly, they are the only podcast that will mention Neopets and Horizontal Mergers in the same episode. They're asking and answering your burning questions about the internet, like why are the edge lord tech bros literally everywhere, even in the White House? They also have a very exciting episode that I just edited for them, which is a crossover with another sister show here at Multitude, American Medieval, all about the Trend of the Medieval Online. I think it's a really cool episode and if you liked our episode with Professor Matthew Gabriele a couple weeks ago, I think you're really gonna like that one. So check that out. Check out Wow If True wherever on the internet you find your podcasts. New episodes every other Wednesday. Hey, it's Julia. I really love cooking and I really love getting to spend time in the kitchen making like interesting and complex meals. And I would do that every day if I could, but sometimes my schedule simply does not allow it. And on those nights where I need to throw some dinner together but I do not have time, I rely on Marley Spoon. Something that I really love about Marley Spoon is that it actually adapts with you. Some nights, you can cook. Some nights, you can just heat stuff. Some nights, you just need dinner done fast, and they have options for all of those. So the meals fit your schedule, not the other way around. And I also love that they give you over a 100 recipes to choose from each week. We're talking comforting classics like chicken milanese with a cucumber-arugula salad to fresh, balanced dishes like a Everything Bagel Salmon with truffle, chive, potatoes, and green beans. One of my recent meals from Marley Spoon was their Harissa-spiced steak. I had roasted parsnips and green beans. It was incredible. Now this new year, fast track your way to eating well with Marley Spoon. Head to marleyspoon.com/offer/spirits for up to 25 free meals. That's right, up to 25 free meals with Marley Spoon. That's marleyspoon, M-A-R-L-E-Y-S-P-O-O-N, .com/offer/spirits for up to 25 free meals.
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[theme]
JULIA: Amanda, we are back. And of course, our cocktail for this episode has to be a pomegranate cocktail.
AMANDA: I would be disappointed if it wasn't.
JULIA: And because Hades is the king of not only the Underworld, but also all of the riches beneath the ground, I found a cocktail called the Uncut Gem that I'm going to do a variation on here.
AMANDA: Uncut Gem.
JULIA: Uncut Gem. That's such a, like, throwback reference that no one is gonna get.
AMANDA: It's aural, A-U-R-A-L stem that ain't leaving my brain.
JULIA: So normally, the Uncut Gem, I'm not gonna do it in the voice again, is made with a new make spirit. Do you know what a new make spirit is, Amanda?
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: So this is, essentially, a unaged spirit, usually very high-proof, like 60% to 70%.
AMANDA: Oh, and like the moonshine variety.
JULIA: Yes. And it is made during whiskey distillation before the spirits are placed in a cask to mature. So it's basically like a—
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: —first-proof, high-proof whiskey before it is aged in whiskey barrels.
AMANDA: I have definitely smelled, if not tasted, that during tours of whiskey distilleries, including the late great Van Brunt in Red Hook, New York.
JULIA: Hmm. RIP. RIP to a real one.
AMANDA: Love you, guys.
JULIA: However, looking at this cocktail, I think it works better with a well-aged spirit.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Maybe like a dark rum or a bourbon, depending on your preferences. I know I would go dark rum, but other people might enjoy like a bourbon or rye here. Then it is balanced out with a bit of raspberry liqueur. Traditionally, it calls for creme de framboise. You could also do Chambord if you're feeling fancy and that's what you have in your liquor cabinet already. And then, of course, pomegranate juice. And then also, this is very important because it helps balance out the whole thing, a few drops of saline solution, kind of adds that little, like, savory into the sweet.
AMANDA: Ooh.
JULIA: You also probably could swap out the Chambord or the creme de framboise with a pomegranate liqueur like a Pama, to really kind of drive home that pomegranate flavor. But do not forget the saline solution. A few drops of that makes an entire difference to your cocktail.
AMANDA: I love when a recipe creator is like, "Bitch, don't fuck with me. Listen to me. Skip some stuff, but not this one."
JULIA: "Listen to me. You're gonna think it's way too sweet otherwise. You need a little bit of the saline solution, like two or three drops max."
AMANDA: I recently checked America's Test Kitchen's Slow Cooker cookbook out of the library because it is the depths of winter and it feels like a good time to make a nourishing meal. And I looked up their tortilla soup and they had a note like that where they were like, "Don't skip the garnishes. The dish depends on the garnishes."
JULIA: Yes. I feel that. I love when cookbook writers are very sassy about it too, like Anthony Bourdain's pretty famously sassy about that. Uh, I also have Matty Matheson's, like, soup, sandwiches and salads book.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: And his descriptions are wild. If you have a second to, like, just pull it out of, like, the Libby app or your local library—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —read the descriptions because they're so fucking funny.
AMANDA: I 100 % will. And I must say that his, uh, steak and seafood spot in Toronto is one of the best restaurant meals I've ever had.
JULIA: Sick. I have to go there at some point.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: All right, Amanda, let's get on to the main event, shall we?
AMANDA: Let's do it.
JULIA: The story of Persephone in Hades. So this, as I mentioned, is sort of the foundational myth, especially for Persephone, and it is a etiological story.
AMANDA: Ooh, what does that word mean?
JULIA: This comes from the Greek word meaning giving a reason for.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: So this is a story, as you can imagine, that the Greeks told in order to give a reason for why the seasons change.
AMANDA: What a helpful word!
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: There are so many stories that fall under that.
JULIA: Exactly, exactly. That is, like, such a foundational thing to mythology, is part of the reason most cultures started telling stories in the first place was to explain the natural world around them. So why the seasons change is important for people to understand, and so that is why we have the Persephone and Hades story.
AMANDA: So cool. And, yeah, think about all of the stories we've talked about explaining the movement of celestial bodies, the changing of the day, the seasons, uh, a lifetime. Fascinating, etiological.
JULIA: Or, like, even just like, why do we die?
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Like, do we always die? Sometimes the answer is no. Sometimes—
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: —the answer is yes. And I just think that is really interesting that there is a whole study. The ideology is the study of, like, giving a reason why things happen. God, it's so cool.
AMANDA: Fascinating.
JULIA: There are some versions of this story that start with Demeter denying all suitors for her daughter. And in these stories, many of the Olympian gods approach Demeter with an offer to marry Persephone. Hermes, Apollo, Ares, Hephaestus, all make offers for her as well as Hades, though Demeter turns all of them away. I think there's a certain amount of, like, overprotection that comes from Demeter. Demeter often doesn't have a lot of children in the mythology, and so Persephone being this, like, her one kid at this point, maybe in the pathology, depending on, you know, the canon and everything is— she is very protective of her. They have a great relationship. You know, obviously, Zeus is not super in the picture in raising this daughter, and so she has a lot of emotional connection to her, right?
AMANDA: One thing that raises my flags now that didn't 10 years ago is kind of, like, the ways that mythology sometimes blames femininity and motherhood and protectiveness on the fates of their daughters. Like, it's something that Demeter did wrong in raising Persephone or stewarding her to bring up some land management vocabulary here. And that's what kind of results in like, "Oh, well, you thought Apollo wasn't good enough for her. Let's see what turns out." But reserving judgment.
JULIA: Yes. So in some stories, also her protection comes from the fact that she received a warning from the god, Astraeus, who gave a prophecy that Persephone would be essentially, like, raped if she was not protected.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: And as a result, there are many different versions where Demeter is this sort of, like, overprotective goddess over her daughter. And that's why in many stories, Persephone is almost always accompanied by other, like, nymphs or handmaidens or something like that. And it's only when she is alone that Hades is able to steal her away.
AMANDA: Real girlies going to the bathroom together vibe.
JULIA: It truly is. So here's how Edith Hamilton— and I'm going to be quoting Edith Hamilton because her poetry and the prose that she uses in telling the story is just beautiful. Seriously, if you haven't picked up Edith Hamilton's mythology, I think I've done something wrong to the listeners. If you haven't picked that up yet and started reading it, it's fantastic.
AMANDA: spiritspodcast.com/books.
JULIA: So here is Edith Hamilton's telling of Persephone's kidnapping. "She was gathering flowers with her companions in the vale of Enna in a meadow of soft grass and roses and crocus and lovely violets and iris and hyacinths. Suddenly she caught sight of something quite new to her, a bloom more beautiful by far than any she had ever seen."
AMANDA: No girls, a daffodil, run away, run away!
JULIA: "A strange glory of a flower, a marvel to all, immortal gods and mortal men. A hundred blossoms grew up from the roots and the fragrance was very sweet."
AMANDA: Uh-uh. Looks like ant-eater. Don't trust it.
JULIA: "The broad sky above and the whole earth laughed to see it and the salt wave of the sea. Only Persephone among the maidens had spied it. The rest were at the other end of the meadow. She stole toward it half fearful at being alone, but unable to resist the desire to fill her basket with it. Wondering, she stretched out her hands to take the lovely plaything. But before she touched it, a chasm opened in the earth and out of it, coal-black horses sprang, drawing a chariot and driven by one who had a look of dark splendor, majestic and beautiful and terrible. He caught her to him and held her close. The next moment, she was being borne away from the radiance of earth in springtime to the world of the dead by the king who rules it."
AMANDA: It's kind of hot, Julia. It's kind of hot.
JULIA: Now, quick pause to say in this version of the tale, Hades actually approached Zeus to assist him in stealing Persephone away.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Zeus, therefore, was the one who brought about the Narcissus flower in order to, with its beauty, lure Persephone away from her companions, which gave Hades his opportunity.
AMANDA: So Hades, like, pulled a fast one and after Zeus was like, "Look at this beautiful flower, it looks like the sun." Hades is like, "No, no, no." [46:27]
JULIA: Yes. Exactly.
AMANDA: Is my prose the same as Edith Hamilton, Julia?
JULIA: Totally. Nailed it.
AMANDA: Thank you.
JULIA: Also just keep in mind, this is a daffodil.
AMANDA: It's not the most elegant flower I've ever seen. I meant when I said it looks like an ant eater.
JULIA: Yeah, but apparently, Amanda, a strange glory of a flower, a marvel to all immortal gods and mortal men.
AMANDA: I mean, it sure does look unusual. So if I were only looking at other types and then I saw a daffodil, I'd probably be like, "Is that a mistake?" But, you know, one person's mistake is another person's work of art. Isn't that what— uh, what's his space always said? No mistakes, just happy accidents.
JULIA: Oh! Bob Ross. Yes. All right. Hamilton continues, "The high hills echoed her cry and the depths of the sea and her mother heard it. She sped like a bird over sea and land seeking her daughter. But no one would tell her the truth. No man nor god, nor any sure messenger from the birds. Nine days Demeter wandered, and all that time she would not taste of ambrosia or put sweet nectar to her lips. At last she came to the sun and he told her all the story. Persephone was down in the world beneath the earth, among the shadowy dead."
AMANDA: The sun talked to her?
JULIA: So Helios, who's the—
AMANDA: Ah.
JULIA: —embodiment of the sun. So at this point, the story has shifted away from the perspective of Persephone and Hades ,and focuses more on Demeter's perspective. Now remember when I made a reference to Persephone being a third of this tale rather than half of this tale?
AMANDA: Hmm. This is a story about a mother and her daughter.
JULIA: Exactly. This is a story as much about Demeter as it is about Persephone and Hades.
AMANDA: All right.
JULIA: I also want to include a quote from the Homeric hymn to Demeter about this portion of the story where Helios tells a grieving Demeter that Hades is a worthy husband for her daughter.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: So he says, "But goddess, give up your strong grief, let go of your infinite anger. Hades isn't an unsuitable son-in-law among the gods. Lord of the many dead, your own brother from the same seed. As for honor, he won the third share back when the division was made and now lives among those whom he was allotted to rule."
AMANDA: Okay. Helios is just like, "Listen, I know you're upset, but—"
JULIA: She can do a lot worse.
AMANDA: "—she'll be okay."
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So here we get a little sojourn, I suppose, of Demeter and her grief over losing her daughter and her time as she searches listlessly for any sign of her. Now, we talked pretty substantially about what she got up to during our Demeter episode of It's All Greek to Me, so I won't linger too long on any of the particular details, but some of the most important tales feature her role as a mother and as a grieving mother in particular. So for example, there is a particular story that features her while disguised. So she has left Olympus, she has disguised herself as an old woman and is traveling across the land in her grief, looking for Persephone.
AMANDA: Really gives it a different flavor when you realize that she's probably, like— I know she's a goddess, but she's not an old woman. She's like probably in her late 40s, maybe.
JULIA: Just like appearance-wise, yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah, yeah.
JULIA: While she is in disguise, she's invited into the home of a family and she is nursing a child, and she attempts to grant immortality to this child only for the mother to discover that the process of granting immortal youth to this child involves laying the child in fire.
AMANDA: Oh.
JULIA: Which doesn't harm the child because Demeter anoints his forehead with ambrosia, which protects him, right?
AMANDA: But the mom is—
JULIA: But it's like a literal trial by fire.
AMANDA: But I understand the mom being like, "Hey, wait now."
JULIA: So she screams for the goddess to stop and then Demeter reveals herself to the woman in anger and demands a temple be built for her in order to win back the favor of her heart.
AMANDA: She was like, "Look, I'm trying to do something nice for you here. Now build me a temple."
JULIA: Exactly. So the temple was built and that is where Demeter was said to reside in her grief, away from Olympus and away from the other gods.
AMANDA: And man, Julia, doesn't it hit a little bit different to think about just getting to, like, share a home with your grief for a while and as long as you need to, and put everything else to the side.
JULIA: Yeah. Seriously, seriously. The problem with that, Amanda, is that while she was away—
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: —nothing would grow, right? As Edith Hamilton puts it, "That year was most dreadful and cruel for mankind over all the earth. Nothing grew. No seed sprang up, in vain the oxen drew the plowshare through the furrows. It seemed the whole race of men would die of famine. At last Zeus saw that he must take the matter in hand. He sent the gods to Demeter one after another to try to turn her from her anger, but she listened to none of them. Never would she let the earth bear fruit until she had seen her daughter."
AMANDA: Hmm. And doesn't it hit different after this past decade of, at least for me, really realizing how women and women's labor and feminized labor upholds all of the world, particularly in societies where we don't let society take care of people and we outsource that work to women, families, feminized labor. You may not appreciate us when we're doing it, but you sure do notice when we stop and, wow, that's a powerful image.
JULIA: 100 %. Right on the money as always. So seeing that all of this was clearly not working, Zeus realized that Demeter would not be persuaded, but maybe his brother could be persuaded. So he called on Hermes, who as the messenger god often traveled is a psycho pump, right? He traveled between the world of the living and the world of the dead. So he calls on Hermes to go to the Underworld and ask Hades permission for his wife to return to see her mother so that the earth could once again grow.
AMANDA: "Hey, quick question, no worries if not, but—"
JULIA: I can't picture Hermes saying, "No worries if not."
AMANDA: I'm really inserting myself into this character.
JULIA: So Hamilton continues, "Hermes found the two sitting side by side, Persephone shrinking away, reluctant because she longed for her mother. At Hermes' words she sprang up joyfully, eager to go. Her husband knew that he must obey the word of Zeus and send her up to earth away from him, but he prayed her as she left to have kind thoughts of him and not be so sorrowful that she was the wife of one who was great among the immortals. And he made her eat a pomegranate seed, knowing in his heart that if she did so, she must return to him." Now, you might be wondering what that sounds like for Hades to say like, "Hey, please think of me kindly. I am your husband."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Don't worry. We have a Homeric hymn for that. So Hades says in this hymn, "Go now, Persephone, to your dark-robed mother. Go and feel kindly in your heart towards me. Be not so exceedingly cast down, for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to Father Zeus. And while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods. Those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished forevermore."
AMANDA: It's like, "Baby, baby, it's not so bad."
JULIA: "It's pretty cool here. I'm just saying, like, you're getting a lot of respect being my wife, as you well deserve."
AMANDA: "Now I did, like, abduct you without your consent and that is not a small thing, but—"
JULIA: "But, you know, you still have a cool job now and you're my companion."
AMANDA: "Yeah, and people don't give you good gifts, they'll have to answer to me."
JULIA: So from here, Hermes takes Hades' carriage and Persephone and returns to the world of the living, bringing Persephone to Demeter's temple so that the two can be reunited. The two embrace and they spend the day talking to each other, recounting to the other what happened in their absence. Now, when Persephone tells her mother about the pomegranate seed she ate before leaving the Underworld, Demeter is distraught because she knows that eating the food of the Underworld would bind Persephone there at least in some part. Still, Demeter did not want to return to Olympus and so Zeus sent one last messenger to the goddess which was their mother Rhea. And so Rhea tells Demeter, "Come my daughter for Zeus far-seeing loud thundering bids you. Come once again to the halls of the gods where you shall have honor, where you shall have what you desire, your daughter to comfort your sorrow as each year is accomplished and bitter winter is ended. For a third part, only the kingdom of darkness shall hold her. For the rest, you will keep her, you and the happy immortals. Peace now. Give men life which comes alone from your giving." So this is kind of where we get the established, "Hey, Persephone would have to spend four months of the year within the Underworld with her husband but could then spend the rest of the time among the Olympians and on Earth." Now, Demeter would still mourn her and Persephone felt guilt for the desolation that her absence had brought to the Earth. And so when she returned, she filled the world again with greenery and flowers and fruit and crops. And then also, because she was like, "Man, I feel bad that winter apparently is going to now happen every year." So that men would not starve while she was away, she went to the city where her mother's temple had been built and she taught mortal men there how to sow corn, not maize, but like cereal grains, right?
AMANDA: There you go.
JULIA: To keep their stomachs full in the winter months.
AMANDA: Etiology for us.
JULIA: Right? And I think Edith Hamilton wraps up the story really nicely if you'll allow me one last Edith Hamilton quote here.
AMANDA: Please.
JULIA: "Persephone was the radiant maiden of the spring and the summertime, whose light step upon the dry, brown hillside was enough to make it fresh and blooming. As Sappho writes, I heard the footfall of the flower spring. Persephone's footfall. But all the while Persephone knew how brief that beauty was, fruits, flowers, leaves, all the fair growth of the earth must end with the coming of the cold and pass like herself into the power of death. After the lord of the dark world below carried her away, she was never again the gay, young creature who had played in the flowering meadow without the thought of a care or trouble. She did indeed rise from the dead every spring, but she brought with her the memory of where she had come from. With all her bright beauty, there was something strange and awesome about her." Edith, goddamn.
AMANDA: Always worth a seat at your fantasy dinner party because she would just spit like that, you know?
JULIA: She just spits straight fire, you know?
AMANDA: So good.
JULIA: And God, like the idea too of, like, Persephone is changed by her time.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Persephone is, yes, when she returns each spring, still that bright beauty, but the fact that there is something darker, something unknowable, untouchable about her is, God, such incredible fucking imagery, right?
AMANDA: It's really the shadow that makes the highlight stand out. It's the underline that draws attention to the beautiful thing. And as people, I'm sure we'll get into it, who have a decade more of life under our belts, it's something that speaks a lot to me about this myth, particularly because the sole moment that Persephone strayed away from her mother and that horde of nymphs, she was sucked into somebody else's control. And so what would it have looked like for Persephone to be a woman under her own means? We kind of only know in the context of her as someone's wife and daughter, figuring out some kind of independence. We don't get to see her outside of either of those roles.
JULIA: And I think that is probably true, but I also think that much like in life, even if the, I suppose you could say, traumatic experience of Hades kidnapping her didn't happen, something else would have shaped her, would have been the thing that— as Edith Hamilton says, "She was never again the gay, young creature who played in the flowering meadow without a thought of care or trouble."
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Like, because just life happens to you regardless of how well protected you are, how much you try to be, you know, carefree and innocent. Like life just sort of happens regardless. And I think that is something that is also something I can take away from this story after 10 years of life happening to me.
AMANDA: Yeah. And without life happening, she wouldn't have that bright beauty, that strange and awesome quality.
JULIA: So there are a few other stories that feature Persephone and Hades. One of my favorites is about the nymph Minthe, who was said to be a mistress of Hades before he married Persephone.
AMANDA: Uh-oh.
JULIA: Now, when Minthe started spreading rumors around the house of Hades that the king would put aside his wife and take her back into his bed—
AMANDA: Uh-uh.
JULIA: —Persephone trampled her and transformed her into the sweet smelling plant mint.
AMANDA: Oh. Okay. And that explains why mint grows like a bitch. Mint always comes back. You think mint is out of your garden? No, it's not. It never is. Contain that.
JULIA: You have to. You have to put that in a container.
AMANDA: If you— if— one day, you think you're gonna put a mint plant in the ground, imagine me, Amanda McLoughlin, in 2026 going, "Don't do that."
JULIA: "Bad idea."
AMANDA: "Bad idea."
JULIA: So what's interesting too about Persephone and Hades is unlike most of the gods, they don't have, like, a brood of children.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Honestly, oftentimes in the, like, "canon", they are seen as a childless couple, though there are a couple of, like, very rare and not often mentioned sources that say that Persephone and Hades have a son named Zagreus who players of the Hades games might recognize that name.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: There are very few sources that really talk about Zagreus. He's not featured in any particularly, like, large myths. But Persephone is also said to be the mother of Melinoe, who, as fans of Hades 2, probably recognize that name as well. But, again, very few sources that actually even mention Melinoe and also in the sources that do mention her, she is said to be born to Persephone after Zeus disguised himself as Hades and then impregnated her.
AMANDA: Oh. That's— no. I mean, classic Zeus.
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: But don't do that.
JULIA: Yes. I mean, classic Zeus, know, Greek mythology, the incest is always there, doesn't matter. And then—
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: —you know, just sort of classic Greek mythology in general.
AMANDA: But you're right, very uncommon for a couple not to have, like, a number of important and clearly established children.
JULIA: Yes, especially like biological children.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: So I think that's very interesting about them. Just worth mentioning. But Amanda, you know, coming at the story again after 10 years is interesting, to say the least. And I think, for me, part of, like, growing up is realizing that the story of Persephone and Hades is much more about the feelings of Demeter as a mother than it is necessarily about the relationship between Persephone and Hades.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: I mean, the majority of the story is told from Demeter's perspective. It is about the way that the world changes as a result of Demeter's grief and sorrow. And we spend way more time in the story following Demeter's search for her daughter and the grief that she's experiencing than we do in the Underworld with Persephone and Hades. But I think it's also about realizing how much an experience can change you.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: Like, again, I'm going to quote Edith Hamilton's description of Persephone again. which is, "She did indeed rise from the dead every spring, but she brought with her the memory of where she had come from. With all her bright beauty, there was something strange and awesome about her." And I think that rings true in a way that maybe didn't ring for me when I first read it as a kid, or even the way that it did when we first did this episode 10 years ago. And I think that's sort of what I look at when revisiting the story and being like, "Wow. Shit does change ya, huh?"
AMANDA: Maybe we can return to another agricultural metaphor, Julia. Something that I think about again and again, which is that farmers don't really grow crops. They're really in the business of growing soil. And without healthy soil, without nutritious soil, dense soil, you can't really grow that productive of crops or that nutritious of crops.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Soil is a layer cake of the past, in like the no-till gardening method, you don't even turn over all those layers, but instead every single season, the original, you know, fertility and things that the soil came with leaches away. But then on top of that are the crops from last year and they're degrading and becoming part of the soil to feed what comes next. And all winter, it's sitting there, not just being dead or sterile, but waiting. There's still life in there. There's still bugs and microbes and stuff that makes the soil work and give life in the next cycle. And in fact, starting over from scratch or having some idea of, like, pristine soil that's never been touched and never been harmed and sterile is not gonna yield anything. And so as I get older and as I add on to the layer cake of my own life and experience, there is something to be said for the stuff I look back on, for the crops that didn't work out, for the root-knot nematode that took out my tomatoes, for the spider mites that, you know, plagued my pothos. Like, it's all part of it. And, like, taking out an ice core from the Earth where you can see all of the layers of atmosphere and stuff and gunk that went on way, way, way before we were even around to experience it. There's something about revisiting a tale over and over again and seeing what layers of your life it activates, that makes something nutritious and productive and bountiful.
JULIA: Yeah. And I think there is something too about revisiting stories at different times in your life, as you mentioned, that helps you realize the things that you maybe didn't even realize you were grieving.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: You know? I think that is something that I really take from this story in particular because it is probably one of those stories that I have revisited in so many times and periods of my life. And I am very grateful that I get to do that in a way that feels like I can have a conversation with someone else and also be able to share that information and those feelings and emotions with other people.
AMANDA: And none of it's wrong, right? Like our interpretation 10 years ago, the things that snagged us and interested us aren't wrong. The story as we tell it now in 2026 probably looks extremely different to the first recorded versions or even more importantly, the unrecorded versions that people told each other in the myths development, but that counts. Like this— you know, we're participating, we're feasting from the layer cake of experience here, to extend the metaphor, as we return— that's the whole point of the show. It's like these stories are around because they matter, and because they matter, we want to dig into them. And I think this was a fabulous idea for an anniversary episode, Julia. I'm so grateful to be here with you. And I honestly can't wait to see what about this story stands out to me 10 years from now.
JULIA: We will come back to this one 10 years from now. If we're still making Spirits 10 years from now, hell yeah, we're going to tell that Persephone and Hades story again.
AMANDA: That's the thing, man. The stories go with you and they strike you anew a little bit differently, depending on the light of each particular day.
JULIA: Yeah, truly. And hey, Amanda, I'm so glad that I've gotten to make this podcast with you for 10 years.
AMANDA: I love you, Julia. Thank you for saying we should make a podcast together and deciding to share your love of all things mythology with me.
JULIA: Thank you for saying yes. And ConSpiriters, thank you for hanging out with us, whether you were here from episode one, which goddamn if you were, hot damn.
AMANDA: Impressive.
JULIA: Even if you found the podcast in this episode, thank you for joining us. Thank you for being part of our decade journey. And I hope that you get to revisit stories like this with fresh lens and new experiences in your heart.
AMANDA: And remember, folks, next time you see 100 daffodils poking out of the hard spring ground—
JULIA: Stay Creepy.
AMANDA: —stay cool.
JULIA: Later, Satyrs.
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