#hadès

[miss-i-know-it-all]

Why Hades and Persephone's marriage is actually not a love story (and why Demeter is the real feminist symbole and a very good mother)

This subject has been studied again and again and again, but I want to do it to. So to be clear :

No, Hades and Persephone are not romantic, a couple goal or I don't know what.

In no antic version of the myth you will find a Persephone who was willing to leave her mother and the mortal realm to live with Hades in the Underworld to escape her toxic mother.

This myth was not supposed to be romanticized.

We can't tell with exactitude if the myth was supposed to criticize the way young girls were taken away from their mother to be married of, resulting in them not seing a lot their mother after that, even if it's plausible, making almost all the retellings nowadays even more weird and far from the original source. But come on, look at the myth and tell me it is a love story.

For those who don't know the myth was :

One day, Hades came to see Zeus and asked him the hand of Persephone. Zeus knew if he agreed, Demeter would be furious, but if he disagreed, Hades would be the one pissed of, so he said "It's not my attribution to give you Persephone" or something like that. So Hades though it would be a good idea to kidnap Persephone. Persephone, the young daughter of Demeter (sometimes she has no father, sometimes it's Zeus her father), was minding her own business with a group of nymphs in a field, when suddenly the earth opened and she was kidnapped and led to the underworld. The nymphs alerted Demeter, who was doing her agriculture goddess job. Demeter, absolutely destroyed by this information, decided to find the person who had kidnapped her daughter. Hecate, the goddess of magic, shadows and other dark things, said she had heard screams and came to the rescue of Persephone, but when she arrived in the field, it was to late. Demeter searched 9 days and 9 nights, and on the 10th day, she arrived in a city, when she was greeted by the king and the queen. Things happened, but that's not the most important now. When she left, two shepherd said the day of the kidnapping, earth opened before them, swallowing some of their animals, and then they say a chariot led by black horses going to the underworld by this breach. They didn't see who was leading the chariot, but they did saw a young girl screaming in the chariot. (Notice how she was not described as happy or relieved, but screaming and sometimes crying.) So Demeter decided to ask Helios, the Sun. He explained her what happened, because he had saw everything since he was shining in the sky. Demeter was so furious against Zeus and Hadès she decided to make all the soils infertile. It was an eternal winter for the Greeks. Zeus tried to send messengers to calm her, but she refused. So he sent Hermes, who is also part chthonian, in the Underworld to bring back Persephone. The only condition was that she must have not eaten anything in the Underworld, but just before she left, she was tricked into eating a few seeds of a pomegranate. Because of that pomegranate, Persephone was doomed to spend half the year into the Underworld. It explains the cycle of the seasons : summer is when Persephone is with Demeter, autumn when Demeter knows she's leaving, winter when Demeter is in the deepest loneliness, missing her daughter, and spring when she knows she's coming back.

This is the original myth. Maybe a few details change depending on the period and the location of the myth, but you will not find a version where Persephone purposely leaves the mortal realm before the 21st century. It is a modern retelling that goes against everything the original myth was saying, for the sake of a supposed romance that is just glorified abuse.

Yes I'm looking at you Lore Olympus.

This comic was the beginning of the end for the myth, let's be honest. It shaped so much people's vision of Greek mythology in a way so inaccurate it hurts me. It led to (mainly) a huge mischaracterization of the gods.

First of all, Persephone. It is true we don't learn a lot about her in the myth, I'll give you that. The only things we know for sure is that she's the goddess of spring and that she was not happy to leave with Hades. And this is what people forget too easily. It is even said that she stopped crying the moment Hermes told her she could go back to the Mortal Realm, but before she was in tear non-stop. And saying the opposite is not understanding the myth and it's message on a level that requires you to have an empty skull.

So I ask you : where do you see her happy to leave to the Underworld and in love with Hades ?

This leads us to Hades.

(Side note before, because it bothers me too even if it's not really related to the point : Hades is not the god of death, but of the dead, king of the Underworld but also a god of fertility, because the roots of all the plants are in his realm.)

So Hades clearly didn't give a single fuck about Persephone's consent. He doesn't even care about her mother, Demeter was not aware of his "affection" for her daughter (and if she knew, she would have found a way to kill Hades). He just saw a young girl (his niece, which is weirdly normal in Greek mythology but completely messed up in any modern retelling), thought he wanted her and went to ask for the king of the gods to marry her because he's the king so his words are the truth. And even Zeus said he couldn't decide (i.e : the situation is so complicated the best solution is to not choose a side, even for the king of the gods). But this creep of Hades decided to take the girl (without her consente) despite the circumstances !

This guy is disgusting. And even the argument of "but he didn't cheat on her 🥺" isn't valid because he freaking kidnapped her ! Not cheating on her is the bare minimum, if you even dare to consider it !

And then we have Demeter.

People who don't like Demeter clearly need to be studied. Imagine your daughter has been kidnapped by your brother, who lives in a world with only dead people and almost no sun, when you know your daughter is the goddess of spring (the season when the sun comes back) and loves flower, and then you learn your other brother was aware of this shit before you, but he didn't tell you and didn't oppose himself even though he had the power to stop it all ? And then multiple gods come to tell you you're not reasonable because you decide to do everything possible to get back your daughter (ok, maybe punishing the humanity was extreme, but honestly, I can understand), and when you finally have you daughter back, you discover she can be with you only half a year, and she spends the other part with the creep ? And then people have the audacity to say you're a toxic mother ?

In which world Demeter was the bad guy of the story ? She did everything in her power to save her daughter, and even then, it wasn't enough. We should not hate her but applause her and cry for her, because she's the real heroes of this story and she's more of an icon you should admire than your pseudo-Persephone. But most important, she's an good mother. We cannot take that from her. She did what every good mother would have done, she went against all the gods of the greek pantheon, all by herself, and in the end, she would have won if it wasn't for the pomegranate. If it happened to me, I could only which my mother would do half the things she did.

(Here's the link to my introduction post)

[lccxrereda]

[philoursmars]

Louvre-Lens : il y a une expo : "Mondes souterrains : 20.000 Lieux sous la terre".

Horst Von Harbou : photo extraite de "Metropolis" - 1927

Nathanaël Schaeffer + Julien Aubert : visualisations extraites de simulations numériques du processus de convection et champs magnétiques dans le Noyau terrestre (simple, quoi !)

François Girardon : "Pluton enlevant Proserpine" - XVIIe s.

Gautier de Metz - "Image du Monde, le Christ en Majesté" - XIIIe s.

Eugenio Lucas Velasquez : "Scène de l'Inquisition" - 1851

Pierre Brébiette - ''L'Enlèvement de Proserpine'' - 1625

[ltalaynareor]

L'hiver et le printemps (Hadès et Perséphone Aesthetic)

[lacodbarresderire]

Hadès, Rory, Tobias et James quand on leur dit de tout donner pour les festivals

[philippequeau]

Drones, robots, IA - et vie éternelle

“Drone aux bambous”. ©Philippe Quéau 2023 Au début de notre ère, il valait mieux ne pas trop mélanger religion et politique, surtout pour les peuples soumis à l’Empire romain. Celui-ci était à son apogée et dominait une bonne partie du monde antique. Sur le plan religieux, l’époque était généralement favorable au syncrétisme, et les Dieux des uns faisaient assez bon ménage avec les Dieux des…

[tua-cantante]

[amymor-theend]

Favorite male 2d Disney characters✨

As they say: you can avoid drawing for weeks, and then catch a wave of nostalgia and make a bunch of sketches

[selfmaderibcageman]

dont know why we're still putting things in germany when poland exists.

[lccxrereda]

[lesparaversdemillina]

Witch and God T2 L'enlèvement de Circé de Liv Stone

Une romance interdite se tisse entre Circé, sorcière, et Hermès, le messager des dieux. Attachement progressif, tensions grandissantes.

[lesansnom]

Artémis et Arès de Hadès II

Je m’améliore bien sur procreate :)

[reno-matagot]

Olivier Ledroit • Hadès & Persephone

[jareckiworld]

Ursula Schultze-Bluhm (1921-1999) — »Hadès-Idylle« [oil on canvas, 1961]

[lacodbarresderire]

Hadès et Lukas quand ils sont seuls plus de 3min