The Tales of Persephone: A Retelling of the Ancient Eleusinian Mysteries

By Melanie Lee

Persephone comes to life again (what she does best, after all) in this retelling of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Bronze Age religion of ancient Greece. This story of the human journey through the wisdom of the four seasons breathes new life into the archetypal guide that was left to us thousands of years ago. The map is still there.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 18, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365055256

Book preview

The Tales of Persephone: A Retelling of the Ancient Eleusinian Mysteries

Cover

The Tales of Persephone

A Retelling of the Ancient Eleusinian Mysteries

Copyright

Copyright © 2016 by Melanie Lee

All rights reserved.  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First Printing:  2016

ISBN 978-1-365-05525-6

Melanie Lee

P. O. Box 334

Topsham, Maine  04086

[e-mail]

Preface

And just what are the Eleusinian Mysteries?  They were initiations into the Demeter and Persephone religious system of ancient Greece.  Some say that their worship goes back all the way to the Bronze Age.  It’s important to remember that while in modern times we might refer to this as a cult or a myth, to the people who lived then, this was a real system on which they based the stages of their lives from birth to death.  And isn’t that the point of any religion?  To guide its participants along paths that are known to work for the fulfillment of their lives?

The Tales of Persephone was originally written in 13 separate chapters and published on my blog, In Pursuit of Maine, one at a time.  There were definite dates used for the publishing of each chapter, and a good many of those dates correspond to some of the celebrations or holy days of various modern myths.  Therefore, I have kept those dates exactly as they were when each chapter was originally published.

I’ve done this because I wanted to give a sense of the progression of the seasons of the year.  It was easy to do that when I was publishing each chapter separately on its special day, but when the chapters are all presented to the reader at once, that sense of progression of the seasons can easily be lost.  With the dates intact, the reader can see what I was trying to convey (the energies with which I was attuned) at the particular time of year each chapter was written.  The seasons of the year occur outside of us in the natural world but also inside of us, each in its own way.

Also, the reader might note a subtle intermingling of names and myths from other parts of the world, often separated by several centuries.  That was intentional because, after all, this story is as old as time.  The map is the same as it always was.  It’s only the names change now and then.

The Tales of Persephone is no longer available for reading on my blog.  I removed all the chapters about nine weeks after the final chapter was published.  The tales can now only be read in this book.  This is in keeping with Persephone’s perennial nature, and I think she would approve of it.

I hope you enjoy reading about Persephone as much as I enjoyed writing about her.  She is a multifaceted character and comes closer than any mythical character I know of to breaking through the stereotypical archetype so prevalent when dealing with the characters of deity.  Gods are, after all, constants.  Yet I believe there is a bit of Persephone in each of us, and we can’t say that about every god, nor would we want to.

May Day, 2016

Melanie Lee

Chapter I - Come Back to Me (March 6, 2015)

Down deep and snug in the underworld, Persephone sat on a diamond throne in a marble palace built just for her.  All around her, gems gleamed and sparkled in the walls.  She sipped her blackened wine and felt the coolness of the magic of fermentation as it touched her throat.  All is as it should be, she thought.

And yet somewhere . . . in her mind? in her heart? in her body? . . . she heard the faintest of sounds, the tinkling of a tiny bell.  Over and over the sweet little bell chimed mystically and hauntingly, barely audible.  She arose from her throne and searched the great hall but found nothing.  Yet she knew that whatever she was looking for would not be found in the great hall.

In a tiny chamber just outside of her bedroom, where she stored many of her precious gems, there was a small door in the very back.  It was an old chamber and an old door, and she was quite certain that no one knew of this door, save her.  Not even the Lord of Winter knew, so it must have been a great secret, indeed.  In fact, she had all but forgotten about it herself.  It was to this door that she felt herself drawn, listening to the faint tinkling of the bell.

When she opened the door, she found a small passageway into the raw Earth, just as she had left it so long ago--so long that she could not remember when.  She stepped into the passageway and closed the