In a previous post, “Demeter and the Birth of the Holy Child,” I explored the connections between the Goddess of Agriculture, the Virgin Mary and the celebration of Christmas. Both Demeter and Mary echo the life-giving qualities of the Mother Goddess. Also, they are both associated with the age-old concept of the Sacred Marriage, the union between Earth and Sky. Demeter was impregnated by Zeus and Mary by Yahweh, both of them sky gods. This essay sheds light on the Sacred Marriage aspects of Gaia and Demeter.
Two stand foremost among humans:
Goddess Demeter—call her Earth if you like—
who nourishes mortals with solid food;
the other one came later, Semele’s son,
who discovered the liquor of the grape,
and brought it to mortals, giving
the poor fellows surcease of sorrow…[1] Euripides, Bacchae
Strange as it may sound today, religion and food were once intimately connected. Ensuring adequate provisions for survival has been a major concern since the dawn of humanity. Since all food ultimately comes from the Earth, it came to be regarded as a generous Mother Goddess who nourishes her offspring, human or otherwise. As such, she had to be propitiated and thanked, in order to continue providing. It is barely stretching the imagination to think that rituals and offerings may have first been invented for this purpose.
It is well known that in the Greek tradition, the Earth Goddess, called Gaia (or Ge), is the “mother of the blessed gods and mortal humans,” the “all-giving” and “all-nourishing bringer of fruit,” as revealed in the Orphic hymn in her honor. She also appeared as Demeter, the Olympian goddess of agriculture, whose name can be interpreted as “Earth Mother” (Ge Meter).[2] She continued to represent Gaia’s bountiful aspects until the violent destruction of her cult in the late 4th and 5th c. CE.
Those who practiced the Orphic Mysteries sung a hymn which vividly echoes Demeter’s life-sustaining essence, her power to offer prosperity, happiness, and even health:
Deo, universal mother, goddess
with many names, venerable Demeter,
nurturer of children, source of happiness.
Wealth-offering goddess, nourishing the corn,[3] giver of all,
joyful in peace and in laborious work,
creating abundance in seeds and heaps of grain,
mistress of the threshing floor, with fresh fruit filled.
You dwell in Eleusinian holy vales,
delightful, lovely, nurturing all people,
you, the first who yoked the oxen to the plough
and offered mortals pleasant, happy lives.
Giver of growth, Bacchus’s companion in feasts,
splendidly honored, bearer of the torch.
Pure, delighted with the summer sickles,
chthonic yet manifest, favorable to all;
mother of good offspring, children-loving,
venerable, maiden who nourishes boys.
Yoking your chariot with serpent reins
dancing around your throne in bacchic frenzy,
mother of one, goddess with many children,
reverenced by mortals, many are your forms,
filled with flowers and sacred leaves.
Come, oh blessed one, pure,
with summer fruit,
bringing desirable order and peace,
joyful riches, too, along with our queen, Health.[4]
The Sacred Marriage
The Orphic hymn calls Demeter “mistress of the threshing floor,” “delighted with the summer sickles,” “pregnant with summer fruit” revealing her intimate connection with the season of the harvest. Other descriptions, though, are unfamiliar and somewhat unsettling. She appears as “Bacchus’s companion in feasts,” “yoking her chariot with serpent reins, dancing around her throne in bacchic frenzy.” This ecstatic image brings to mind the Maenads, worshippers of Dionysus, often half-naked, communing with the Divine as they released their sexual energy in unbridled dancing.
Such a portrayal seems strange at first, since Demeter is usually portrayed as a modest mother, her sensual aspects hardly appearing in myths. Yet her sexuality and her role as provider of food are closely interconnected. Hesiod narrates how she “was joined in sweet love with the hero Iasion in a thrice-ploughed field in the rich land of Crete, and bare Ploutos.”[5] Not surprisingly Ploutos means “wealth,” since in an agricultural society prosperity relies heavily upon the fertility of the earth.
As in many other myths, we can discern here the motif of the Sacred Marriage. A similar theme was repeated during the Eleusinian Mysteries, where the priest was said to cry out “Hye kye!,” while libations where being poured.[6] Hye means “rain!,” a command, a call to Zeus, who was once the lover of Demeter. Kye means “conceive!” This ritual cry revealed the notion that the Earth Goddess will be impregnated by precipitation, symbolizing the sperm of the Sky God. There is some evidence that the Hieros Gamos between the two was ceremonially re-enacted during the Mysteries at Eleusis although scholars debate this.
The same concept is manifest in a fragment from the Danaids, a now lost play of the famous tragic poet Aeschylus. There Gaia, also called Chthon, is united with the Sky God Uranus:
The pure Uranus longs to mate with Chthon,
and Gaia, in love, marriage seeks
thus rain falling from the moist Sky
impregnates her and she bears for humankind
grass for sheep and the wealth of Demeter.[7]
The body of a woman and the body of the Earth seemed similar to the ancient mind: the one gave birth to human children, the other to plants. They both ensured the continuation of life. In Greece up to this day agricultural products are sometimes called gennimata, “things born” from the land.
Originally published in Witches and Pagans.
This essay is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
NOTES
[1] Semele’s son is Dionysus—notice that he is identified by his mother’s name, not his father’s. The above verses are from Euripides’ Bacchae 274-281, translated by the author.
[2] Hesychius of Alexandria, Dictionary (Athens: Georgiadis, 1975), s.v. “Demeter.” Henry G. Liddell and Robert Scott, authors of the Great Dictionary of the Greek Language (Athens: Ioannis Sideris, s.v. “Demeter”), also mention this etymology, although they do not agree with it.
[3] The word corn is used here to mean “wheat.”
[4] Orphic Hymn 40 to Demeter, translated by the author.
[5] Hesiod, Theogony 969, translated by the author.
[6] Aristotle in Synesius, Dio 10.
[7] Aeschylus in the Danaids, fragment 43, quoted in Athenaeus 13, translated by the author.