Persephone
I am your fears incarnate, of a time you will no longer be.
I am the darkness on the moonless night.
I am the traveller from the world of light to the darkness below.
I am the daughter lost in a moment.
I am the Goddess Queen of the long departed.
Wife of the Lord of Death.
I am the fateful ending, and the shining hope.
It is I from whom all come who come again.
From the darkness into the light, on the road to teeming life.
My dark robes I drop, and a robe of light I don.
To the arms of my waiting mother, grieving through this long long night.
Kore
There is to Persephone, a kind of mystery that is hard to come to grips with. Many see Kore (the girl) as one goddess and Persephone as another. Many see Kore as a name, when it is just a title for a dread goddess whose name may have been quite taboo, as it seems to have been at Eleusis. Persephone, however, is one of the most well known of the Greek Goddesses in modern Pagan circles. Like many, if not most, of the deities of the Greeks, Persephone contains a chthonic aspect which is, in her case, quite pronounced. Kore, however, is not that chthonic but the "olympian" or Light aspect of this powerful goddess. What we see in Kore, however, is that the power she has comes not from herself, but from her mother, the very powerful Demeter. In her absence, it is Demeter who withdraws her power from the earth to cause the plant life to become dormant. Upon her return from the underworld, it is Demeter who once more imbues the earth with her power and causes the blooming of Spring.
Daughter of Zeus and Demeter
Myth tells us that Demeter was the mother of Persephone, and indeed, it is this relationship that defines the mythology of this divine being, but according to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, it is Zeus who is the father of Persephone, and it is Zeus who gives Kore to Aidoneus. As daughter of Zeus, Persephone is therefore sister to Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, and Hermes even though this is not a relationship we ever see exploited in the myths. As daughter of Demeter, she is also their cousin. Whatever this may have meant to the ancients, it does not seem to have been of very much importance, since with the exception of Artemis and Apollo, the sibling relationship does not seem to have been of much theological importance to the ancients.
The Rape
It is common to call the taking of Kore by Aidoneus as a rape or at best, an abduction, but was it? I don't really think the ancients saw it that way. A father was, to the ancients, the supreme authority with regard to the fate of his daughters, and once Zeus gave his permission for Aidoneus to take Kore as bride, even without the mother's consent, it was not to be debated. What the myth tells us, however, is that the mortal ties of family that the ancients knew were not necessarily to be applied to the Gods, since as Zeus learned, taking on a Goddess as powerful as Demeter was not to be easy, and he eventually gave in and sent Hermes to fetch Persephone back for her mother.
The myth does not tell us that Aidoneus (Hades) in any way mistreated her, it tells us that Persephone held out and ate nothing while there, but at one point, after spending much time there, she ate from a pomegranate, and was from that moment on tied to the underworld. Did she do it because she was hungry, or was there a love there. Did she tie herself to the underworld because she wanted to return? Well, who knows? This is a myth, after all, and I doubt any God has the power to force another god to do anything he/she does not want to do, but the allegorical implications of this myth are many. Does a mother have a right to decide along with the father who her daughter weds? Does the child have a say? Could Zeus have prevented Demeter's anger by simply asking? What of Persephone's return? Does it imply a form of reincarnation? Did her travel to and from the underworld herald an age of hope for man that he too might be able to do the same thing? However one may answer these questions today, the ancients are likely to to have had very different answers.
Was the rape an actual rape? Well, by modern standards, yes. The kore was not allowed to make the decision, but I think that from ancient points of view, it was not. It was more a war between parents over the control of the child than about the rights of the child herself.
The Queen of the Dead
As wife to Aidoneus, Persephone was Queen of the Dead, and it is in this aspect that this goddess comes into her own power. That her name was taboo during the mysteries implies, to me, that the Greeks feared this goddess in much the same way that they may have feared Aidoneus himself. That it was an aspect of the goddess that made them uncomfortable even as they celebrated her descent into Hades. Unlike in Christian theology, however, the king and queen of the dead do not sit in judgment of the dead. They are somewhat distant from them, and indeed, are more like guardians over the realm of death than givers of reward and punishment. Persephone is the Queen of the Dead, but she is also a goddess of the spring time, opening up some interesting questions.
On Reincarnation
Is Persephone's role as a goddess of the blooming of spring in contrast to her role as Queen of the Dead, or is it part of the cycle of life? Is returning after death a part of the belief in this goddess? As a person who does not necessarily believe in an afterlife, I have to say that in general the answer is no, but I do leave room in my belief for the power of the Gods to work miracles. Thus, it is in her hands that the concept of reincarnation lies. It is she who may choose a mortal who has meant much to the world and allow that being to be reborn into the world.