Speaker 1: Hello, Welcome to another episode of Let's Talk About Myths, Baby,
Speaker 1: and it is totally growing on me. Singing it like that.
Speaker 1: My God, it's a lot more fun. I don't know
Speaker 1: why I didn't do it from the beginning. It's crazy. Really,
Speaker 1: this is the podcast where I live all of lover
Speaker 1: myth fiend, possessor of an absolutely useless be a in
Speaker 1: classical civilizations, tell you all about the wonders of ancient
Speaker 1: Greek mythology, the ancient mythological world itself. What a wonderful
Speaker 1: world it is. So this episode is a bit late, Frankly,
Speaker 1: I've got a lot going on right now. Also, there
Speaker 1: will be a mini myth this week for the same
Speaker 1: reason catillot going on. But I'm here to present you
Speaker 1: with a super fun myth to tide you over. No
Speaker 1: more mythological yearning for the nerds out there. Who am
Speaker 1: I kidding him? Always yearning from mythology, says the woman
Speaker 1: who answered a number of random mythological questions from friends
Speaker 1: over the past couple of days. I'm making a name
Speaker 1: for myself as a super nerd, and I'm totally okay
Speaker 1: with that. This is episode six. Don't piss off moms,
Speaker 1: and don't eat the pomegranate. Important life lessons. Today, we're
Speaker 1: taking a trip to the underworld with the story of Hades, Persephone,
Speaker 1: and Demeter, and it is through Persephone that we will
Speaker 1: learn why you shouldn't eat things strangers hand you in
Speaker 1: the underworld. Take note, friends, I know this is something
Speaker 1: you're all planning to do in the very near future,
Speaker 1: but please refrain now. Hades, as we learned in the
Speaker 1: first episode of the podcast, is the god of the underworld,
Speaker 1: the dead and riches all the good stuff. He's a
Speaker 1: super happy dude. Hades is one of the Olympians, though
Speaker 1: he's the only one who resides outside of Mount Olympus.
Speaker 1: He lives in the underworld. He is, of course, the
Speaker 1: brother of Zeus, Poseidon, Hara, Hestia, and Demeter kind of
Speaker 1: got the short end of the stick when he Zeus
Speaker 1: have Poseidon divvied up the realms. I don't know that
Speaker 1: Hades was ever quite content with where he ended up.
Speaker 1: I don't know that anyone picks that for their life. Now,
Speaker 1: let me just make a clarification. Hades is the god.
Speaker 1: He's not the place. I say this because I like
Speaker 1: to think most, if not all, of my listeners have
Speaker 1: seen the movie Bring It On, because why wouldn't you have?
Speaker 1: In any case, the scene where Torrance drops the spirit
Speaker 1: stick and the random angry cheerleader tells her she's going
Speaker 1: to Hades has always really bothered me. So, you know,
Speaker 1: just Bring It On is not a reliable source for
Speaker 1: mythological information. Just f y I the underworld being. The
Speaker 1: actual location is also known as Airbos, and it's a
Speaker 1: lovely place, very lively and joyful. Lots of darkness and fire.
Speaker 1: You know, the drill. There are five rivers that run
Speaker 1: through it. We've all her to the river Sticks. It's
Speaker 1: the River of Hatred. The Asheron is the River of Payne. Typically,
Speaker 1: this is the river that the famous ferryman Sharon brings
Speaker 1: you across once you've died. It's why the ancient Greeks
Speaker 1: buried many of their dead with coins on their eyes,
Speaker 1: so that they could pay shower on the fairy toll,
Speaker 1: dying it free. You know, Sharon is a cool guy.
Speaker 1: He's just horribly filthy, utterly disgusting, and his eyes like
Speaker 1: just a fire, a pretty mangy beard and a dirty
Speaker 1: old cloak. Definitely the dude I want greeting me when
Speaker 1: I die. The Leffe is the river of forgetfulness. It's
Speaker 1: associated with the goddess of the same name. She's the
Speaker 1: goddess of forgetfulness and oblivion. She's not particularly well known
Speaker 1: go figure. The flejah Thon fleg The fleja Thon is
Speaker 1: a mouthful and the river of fire. It's the river
Speaker 1: that leads to the depths of Tartarus, the worst the
Speaker 1: underworld has to offer. It's supposed to be just as
Speaker 1: deep in the earth as the sky is above it,
Speaker 1: so like really deep. The Kostis is the river of whaling,
Speaker 1: and Oceanus is the river that surrounds the entire world.
Speaker 1: It marks the eastern edge of the underworld. The underworld
Speaker 1: Erebus is the western section of the world. In case
Speaker 1: you're doing the math, oceanics doesn't count in the five
Speaker 1: rivers because it's basically, you know, an ocean in front
Speaker 1: of the underworld live, grief, anxiety, diseases, an old age,
Speaker 1: these being the personified versions of those concepts. Again, it's
Speaker 1: a truly lovely place. The Greeks really positive about death.
Speaker 1: Personifications of hunger, death, agony, and sleep also lived outside
Speaker 1: the entrance, so it was incredibly welcoming. On the other
Speaker 1: side live the Runaways, who are also called the Furies
Speaker 1: and who I've mentioned before, and Heiress. Heiress is the
Speaker 1: goddess of strife and one of my favorites. Will be
Speaker 1: circling back to her in other episodes. For sure, she
Speaker 1: started a pretty famous war you might have heard of. Now.
Speaker 1: In addition to all these super fun personified concepts and
Speaker 1: the not scary at all Rivers, there is also a
Speaker 1: creature who guards the gates of the underworld themselves. This
Speaker 1: would be Fluffy. I mean Cerberus, the three headed dog,
Speaker 1: beautiful and brilliant. J. K. Rowling took the character of
Speaker 1: Fluffy from Philosopher's Stone from Cerberus, which is why Fluffy
Speaker 1: guards the entrance to where the teachers hid the Philosopher's
Speaker 1: Stone and why Hagrid says he got him from a
Speaker 1: Greek guy. And yes, I call it Philosopher's Stone because
Speaker 1: one I'm Canadian and that's what it's called. But also too,
Speaker 1: I have never understood how it got changed to Sorcerer's
Speaker 1: Stone in the first place. I mean, I know America
Speaker 1: had some issues with the magic aspect of HP, but
Speaker 1: this just seems more magical like, didn't they want their
Speaker 1: kids knowing what philosophers were. They're pretty harmless, I would think.
Speaker 1: Typically it's not Socrates you think of as corrupting modern youths.
Speaker 1: In any case, Cerberus, the vicious and snarling three headed dog,
Speaker 1: guards the entrance to the underworld. This is all to
Speaker 1: say that Hades lives in a pretty appealing locale. Hades
Speaker 1: was not, though, anything resembling what we know of as
Speaker 1: the devil. He was the god of the underworld and
Speaker 1: it was his home, but he wasn't out punishing dead
Speaker 1: people or doing anything bad to them at all. Really,
Speaker 1: Hades was their host, and he was actually a pretty
Speaker 1: nice host. He also, sadly did not have blue fiery hair,
Speaker 1: which I think is just a disappointment, Nor did he
Speaker 1: have the guy from Scrooge stumbling around like a lunatic.
Speaker 1: I want you to know I'm making a conscious decision
Speaker 1: not to make a joke about the state of Disney's
Speaker 1: Hades today. You're welcome. Persephone is a goddess of nature
Speaker 1: and the daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest and
Speaker 1: general agriculture and nature. She presided over grains in the
Speaker 1: fertility of the earth, She's a nice lady. Persephone and
Speaker 1: Demeter were some of the oldest deities in Greek mythology.
Speaker 1: They predated the Olympian pantheon itself, and they may have
Speaker 1: even appeared in linear A and B, one of the
Speaker 1: two of the earliest languages in ancient Greece. Those I
Speaker 1: mentioned in the first Create episode. The two were central
Speaker 1: to the Illusian mysteries, which maybe I'll do an episode
Speaker 1: on in the future because I won't try to get
Speaker 1: into it now. It was a cult of worship and
Speaker 1: pretty massive and important in the world of Greece. Demeter
Speaker 1: was incredibly protective of Persephone, which I don't blame her,
Speaker 1: because we've seen how these things typically turned out for
Speaker 1: females in ancient Greek mythology. But unfortunately, Demeter's protective nature
Speaker 1: didn't really do much good in the end, because yes,
Speaker 1: you guessed it. Zeus Hades noticed Persephone one day and
Speaker 1: he fell immediately in love with her. It's moments like
Speaker 1: these that get so romanticized in many tellings of the mythology,
Speaker 1: perhaps less so in this particular myth but still like,
Speaker 1: how can you trust someone who falls that in love
Speaker 1: with a stranger that quickly. It sounds sketchy if you
Speaker 1: ask me. Anyways, Hades fell truly, madly, deeply in love
Speaker 1: with Persephone, and he told his brother Zeus about his
Speaker 1: love for her. Zeus, in all his benevolent glory, permitted
Speaker 1: Hades to kidnap Persephone because he knew that Demeanor would
Speaker 1: never go for it, because that's the best reason to
Speaker 1: allow a kidnapping when the mother won't go for it,
Speaker 1: if you wanted to see the woman without having to
Speaker 1: kidnap her, a good sign for a good and happy
Speaker 1: marriage in the future, I would think. The subduction almost
Speaker 1: always referred to as the rape of Persephone, which is
Speaker 1: just a problem in itself. The ancient Greeks, then specifically
Speaker 1: in the mythology, often conflated the term abduction and rape,
Speaker 1: which just lends itself to so many questions and problems.
Speaker 1: And yes, a lot of abductions did lead to rape,
Speaker 1: but anyway, it's just you know, it's awful. It's awful.
Speaker 1: It's also also often famously referred to as the rape
Speaker 1: of Proserpine because proser Pine is Persephone's Roman name. Proserpine
Speaker 1: and Persephone are two of the best names in this world,
Speaker 1: so well, done Greeks and Romans. Now, not only did
Speaker 1: Zeus permit this kidnapping, he even helps Hades trick Persephone.
Speaker 1: One day, Persephone is hanging out and playing with her friends,
Speaker 1: the Naiads and the Naiads narreads, who I've mentioned before
Speaker 1: our sea nymphs and Naiads are freshwater nymphs of rivers
Speaker 1: and streams and lakes. So their Persephone is just chilling
Speaker 1: with their friends, having a super nice time, but she
Speaker 1: gets distracted. She sees a beautiful flower off always away
Speaker 1: from where they're hanging out by the water, and she
Speaker 1: wants to examine it closer. She asked her friends to
Speaker 1: join her, just check out that bang and flower, I
Speaker 1: like to think, she said, But they couldn't join her. See,
Speaker 1: they couldn't leave the water they were in, because that's
Speaker 1: a thing about an Areads and Naiads in this particular myth,
Speaker 1: and I can't actually say that it's a rule that
Speaker 1: definitively exists in other myths, but here it is. So
Speaker 1: Persephone figures she's fine, she can leave them to check
Speaker 1: out this bang and flower, and she dances off towards it.
Speaker 1: But this flower has been planted by Gaya upon request
Speaker 1: by shitty zeus. Persephone gets to the flower and she
Speaker 1: tries to pick it, but it's sticking in the earth,
Speaker 1: like really hard, and it drains all her energy trying
Speaker 1: to grab it because magic. Finally she pulls it from
Speaker 1: the earth, but suddenly the tiny hole that she's pulled
Speaker 1: it from opens up into this massive chasm, and Hades
Speaker 1: grabs her and drags her into the underworld. She screams
Speaker 1: out for her mother, but it's too late and she's
Speaker 1: already been brought into the underworld with her new betrothed Hades.
Speaker 1: That's just the most romantic story in the world, don't
Speaker 1: you think, Not like awfully troubling and weird and totally
Speaker 1: disgusting or anything. Demeter realizes her daughter is missing and
Speaker 1: searches the earth endlessly, but Persephone is no longer in
Speaker 1: the earthly realm, so Demeter is unable to find her.
Speaker 1: During this time and her grief, she stops the earth
Speaker 1: and producing any plants. Everything stops growing because Demeter is
Speaker 1: distracted and she's not in any place to nurture anything. Now. Helios,
Speaker 1: who you'll remember from last week's mini myth where he
Speaker 1: quite stupidly let his son drive his fire chariot to
Speaker 1: the entirely not surprising destruction of both the earth and
Speaker 1: his son. Anyway, Helios has been watching Demeter search high
Speaker 1: and low because he can see all from his somehow
Speaker 1: now rebuilt chariot, and he tells Demeter what happened. Normally,
Speaker 1: there would have been countless others to tell Demeter what happened.
Speaker 1: I mean, Hades didn't exactly hide it, but shittield Zeus
Speaker 1: had sanctioned the kidnapping, so he was all. He had
Speaker 1: also done his best to keep Demeter from finding out
Speaker 1: who had taken her daughter and let alone. Where Demeter
Speaker 1: wanders the world completely inconsolable. She disguises herself as an
Speaker 1: old mortal so that she can avoid the Olympians, who
Speaker 1: she's currently feeling pretty bitter about. I mean, no one
Speaker 1: can to find her daughter, really actual gods. So finally
Speaker 1: she comes to Alusius, where King kelly As rules. She
Speaker 1: sits down by the maiden wall in the town, resting
Speaker 1: under the shade of an olive tree multi purpose those
Speaker 1: magnificent things. Side note, olives are the world's best thing.
Speaker 1: And yes, I do have them tattooed on me because
Speaker 1: I love them. Okay, while grieving at the Maiden Wall
Speaker 1: and still disguised as an elderly mortal. The daughters of
Speaker 1: King Kellyas come by Demeter for water. They find her
Speaker 1: and they ask her if she's all right. Demeter tells
Speaker 1: them a story about being a refugee, and they want
Speaker 1: to help. They want to help refugees. Demeter asked them
Speaker 1: if they know of any work she might do, and
Speaker 1: they tell her of a woman who has just had
Speaker 1: a son and who would probably really love some help
Speaker 1: with him at this young age. Demeter follows them and
Speaker 1: they bring her to this woman. She's named Mattinera. Matin
Speaker 1: Eia greets Demeter and is immediately trusting of her. You know,
Speaker 1: there's just thing about this mysterious old woman. Her godliness
Speaker 1: is just showing through. Demeter helps Mattinara with her son,
Speaker 1: Demifuan for months and months, and during this time, the
Speaker 1: earth is still not letting anything grow. Demeter, while she's
Speaker 1: found something to take up the time, is still grieving.
Speaker 1: She comes to love this boy, though, even if she
Speaker 1: can't stop her grief over her daughter. She feeds him ambrosia,
Speaker 1: the drink of the gods, and buries him in the
Speaker 1: coals of the fire late at night. Now that sounds
Speaker 1: super sketchy and weird, but the combination of the two
Speaker 1: is a ritual to make the kid immortal, so actually
Speaker 1: it's really nice of her. The thing is, though it's
Speaker 1: not just nowadays that this seems super weird and dangerous.
Speaker 1: It also seemed super weird and dangerous back then. Mattinara
Speaker 1: comes upon Demeter doing this one night and flips her
Speaker 1: ship rightly, so Demeter kind of loses it, and she
Speaker 1: starts yelling. She calls everyone fools, saying she was just
Speaker 1: trying to make him immortal and now he'll be totally normal,
Speaker 1: except that he was nursed by her a goddess, and
Speaker 1: don't you know I'm a fucking goddess and you should
Speaker 1: be fucking worshiping me. She takes it a bit far.
Speaker 1: She commands the people of a Loss to build her
Speaker 1: a temple. This is where those mysteries that I'll maybe
Speaker 1: cover in a future episode come in. At this point, though,
Speaker 1: Demeter is even more angry, both at Mattinera and the
Speaker 1: women and a Lousius, and she still hasn't found hersephone,
Speaker 1: so the lack of production of the earth. He just
Speaker 1: keeps getting worse. It's making nothing, and this is where
Speaker 1: it gets serious, because now that like the Earth is
Speaker 1: not producing anything at all and everyone's fucked, and because
Speaker 1: no one can grow any food, that means they also
Speaker 1: don't have anything extra to sacrifice to the gods. So
Speaker 1: of course now Zeus is concerned after months of this
Speaker 1: with people on Earth pleading with Zeus to do something
Speaker 1: so they can you know, eat, and they're totally unable
Speaker 1: to give him their usual offerings, and so now he
Speaker 1: finally gives in because if it's not clear, Zeus finds
Speaker 1: his brother's rapist tendency is more important than the people
Speaker 1: he's supposed to be ruling over being able to eat.
Speaker 1: It's only the lack of gifts for himself that finally
Speaker 1: puts it over the edge. He's got awesome priorities that
Speaker 1: Zeus first, though, he tries to get Demeter to come
Speaker 1: around without him having to tell Hades he has to
Speaker 1: give up Persephone because again he's chill. He tries to
Speaker 1: flatter Demeter into coming back to Mount Olympus and allowing
Speaker 1: the Earth to grow again, but Demeter is strong and badass,
Speaker 1: and she says, fuck that, I won't do anything until
Speaker 1: I have my daughter back, Dick. Finally, Zeus forces Hades
Speaker 1: to give up Persephone. Shitty Hades obliges his shitty brother,
Speaker 1: but first he offers Perceps need something deep. He's got
Speaker 1: a pomegranate and he offers her it's some of its tasty,
Speaker 1: tasty seeds. Now, Persephone is hungry, because who the funk
Speaker 1: wouldn't be at this point, And to clarify, this would
Speaker 1: be the first piece of food she's eaten since Hades
Speaker 1: took her down there, so I'd say she's pretty famished.
Speaker 1: And of course he only offers her a few pomegranate
Speaker 1: seeds because that's super filling good grief. So Hades phrase
Speaker 1: Persephone and Herme's cute old messenger God brings her back
Speaker 1: to the land of the Living. Hermes is one of
Speaker 1: the few characters that can easily travel between the underworld
Speaker 1: and the standard world because he uses his cute little
Speaker 1: winged sandals. It's adorable anyway, my appreciation of Herme's cuteness aside.
Speaker 1: He's brought Persephone back to the real world and man
Speaker 1: or she and Demeter thrilled. Yeah, what a wonderful thing
Speaker 1: to happen. It's almost as if you wouldn't expect something
Speaker 1: so good and lucky to happen to two women, Almost
Speaker 1: as if it were totally impossible for women to get
Speaker 1: what they want without when it's at the expense of men. Almost. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you guessed it. There's a trick. See, as it turns out,
Speaker 1: if you're a standard non Hades human or god who
Speaker 1: can't eat anything in the underworld. There's some inexplicable magic
Speaker 1: reason why this is the case, and I won't try
Speaker 1: hard enough to figure it out, but the point is
Speaker 1: it's a thing. Because Persephone tasted food in the underworld,
Speaker 1: she's obliged to spend a third of every year living
Speaker 1: with Hades in the underworld as his queen, because men
Speaker 1: are awesome, and why wouldn't you want a wife that
Speaker 1: you have to magically force to be your wife. Persephone
Speaker 1: must now spend the winter months in the underworld as
Speaker 1: Hades as queen, but when spring comes she can return
Speaker 1: to her mother in the upper world, living happily as
Speaker 1: if she's not in a really fucking awful situation like
Speaker 1: thirty three point three three percent of the year. The
Speaker 1: time Persephone spends with her mother versus the time she
Speaker 1: spends with her ikey husband represent the harvest seasons, not
Speaker 1: necessarily the seasons themselves, though the myth is often interpreted
Speaker 1: broadly as a stab blushing seasons as a whole, but
Speaker 1: it really just refers to the harvest and when things
Speaker 1: would or would not grow, because when Persephone is down
Speaker 1: in the underworld with Hades demeters too distraught and she
Speaker 1: won't let anything grow. And so that's winter. And that,
Speaker 1: my friends, is the origin of Hades and Persephone, and
Speaker 1: why we have winter blacking harvest and why there's lots
Speaker 1: of good harvest and other times. I'm not a farmer.
Speaker 1: I don't know the details, but that's why. And here
Speaker 1: is also where I give you another major art recommendation.
Speaker 1: So the same artist Bernini that sculpted one of the
Speaker 1: most beautiful pieces of artwork on this whole planet, Apollo
Speaker 1: and Daphne. It's that's the one I talked about in
Speaker 1: that mini myth and also posted on Instagram. If you
Speaker 1: haven't looked at it, what have you been doing? So?
Speaker 1: Bernini also sculpted a piece called the Rape of proscer Pine.
Speaker 1: Proser Pine because he was Italian and it is unreal
Speaker 1: arguably more so than apollowing Daphne. It's fucking It's totally insane.
Speaker 1: This is a piece of marble that's crafted in such
Speaker 1: detail that you can see Pluto that's the Roman name
Speaker 1: for Hades. I'm a purist. You can see Pluto's fingers
Speaker 1: pressing into proscer pine soft flesh like her thigh is
Speaker 1: pressed in, and the flesh is pressing out like between
Speaker 1: his fingers where his hands are stretched out grabbing her,
Speaker 1: and I nothing looks more real, Like I can't fully
Speaker 1: express to you how unbelievable that piece is. I just
Speaker 1: remember staring at it like jaw at my knees. Just
Speaker 1: google it, okay. Also, I'll post it obviously because much
Speaker 1: like Apollo and Daphne obviously snuck a sneaky pick of
Speaker 1: that too when I was at the Borghese gallery where
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to take photos, which is crazy. I'm
Speaker 1: nothing if not a very geeky rebel. I also just
Speaker 1: want to point out that, just to me and to
Speaker 1: me alone, today's episode feels particularly poignant spending it in
Speaker 1: the underworld with you because my apartment is actually a
Speaker 1: zillion degrees a zillion. I have no words. It's like
Speaker 1: ninety degrees fahrenheit, so says the thermometer in my apartment.
Speaker 1: And that makes me feel really good about my life.
Speaker 1: And I'm definitely not just sweating all over the place.
Speaker 1: And why did I move to Vancouver again? It's supposed
Speaker 1: to be cooler out here, you guys climb and change
Speaker 1: his messing with my life. I swear to God, it
Speaker 1: should not be as hot in Vancouver as Toronto. That's
Speaker 1: why I moved. And that was a little personal tidbit
Speaker 1: for you. Enjoy. This is me talking to myself. Thank
Speaker 1: you everyone for listening. I love it. It's so fun
Speaker 1: for me to hear from you and to just see
Speaker 1: that it's being listened to. Um. You can find the
Speaker 1: podcast on iTunes and Stitcher and Google Play and everywhere.
Speaker 1: You can find me on all social Media's on myths Baby,
Speaker 1: basically everywhere Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, website. Website doesn't have much
Speaker 1: on it yet, but I'm thinking I'm going to do
Speaker 1: a bit of configuring to the myths I've told, the
Speaker 1: transcripts of them, and then post those as written myths
Speaker 1: on the website so they can be revisited or read
Speaker 1: by people who don't listen to the podcast, though I
Speaker 1: don't know why they would find the website at all.
Speaker 1: Thank you again. Please rate and review and subscribed makes
Speaker 1: a huge difference. And reach out if you want to chat,
Speaker 1: if you want to suggest a myth. I have a
Speaker 1: big list of upcoming ones, but you know I can
Speaker 1: always take suggestions. Thank you again. My name is Live
Speaker 1: and I absolutely love this ship.