It's All Geek to Me:
tales of the Greek Gods by Leah Samul
Mabon 1989: Persephone
Persephone: The daughter of Demeter and Zeus. Also known as Kore, which is the name under which she was worshiped at Eleusis during the rites that came to be known as the Eleusinian Mysteries . Persephone is a fascinating figure in Greek mythology, and the cult of Kore/Persephone was much evident in ancient Greece. Homer calls her "honored", "revered", and "proud", and refers to the underworld as "the groves of Persephone." Inscriptions on Greek tombstones refer to the underworld as the "chamber of Persephone" or the "house of Persephone." Hesiod speaks of her as "august" Persephone, and later says that she was forcibly taken by Hades from Demeter, with the knowledge and permission of Zeus.
The Homeric Hymn to Demeter gives a detailed account of her abduction. The story goes that she was picking flowers with her friends in a meadow. As she reached for a particularly beautiful flower, the earth opened up and out came Hades in his chariot. He dragged her, screaming, into the underworld. Only two people saw this abduction: Hecate and Helios.
Demeter sought her daughter for nine days and finally found out from Hecate, on the tenth day, what had happened. After confirming the story with Helios, Demeter went into deep mourning for her lost daughter. It was only after Demeter removed her powers of fertility from the earth for a year that Zeus was forced to order Hermes to tell Hades that he had to let Persephone come back to her mother. Unfortunately, Hades tricked Persephone into eating a pomegranate seed before she left the underworld, and the pomegranate was symbolic of marriage. This meant that she was, effectively, married to Hades. She had to spend one third of the year in the underworld, but could spend the other two on the earth with her mother, Demeter. Thus was Persephone connected with the changing of the seasons and also with the idea of death and rebirth.
Persephone also figures in the myth of Adonis. According to Apollodorus, Adonis was entrusted as a young child to Persephone by Aphrodite. Aphrodite gave Persephone a chest with Adonis hidden in it. Because of his great beauty, Aphrodite did not want any of the Gods to see him. When Persephone looked in the trunk and saw the exquisitely lovely child, she refused to give him back to Aphrodite. Zeus solved this problem by having Adonis spend one third of the year with each Goddess, and then have one third of the year left for himself.
Although she was abducted and taken to the underworld against her wishes, it does not seem that she was seen as a powerless individual while she was down there. Ovid says that it was Persephone who changed the woman Mentha into the mint plant in the underworld. And Apollodorus says that in one of the versions of the story of Alcestis, it was Persephone who sent the loving Alcestis back up to the land of the living to rejoin her husband. In the Hymn to Demeter, when Hades tries to convince Persephone that the underworld isn't such a bad place, he tells her (among other things) that while she is in the underworld she will have the greatest homage among all the gods. And in the Odyssey she is said to have granted the seer Teiresias intelligence after even after death.
[Editor's Note: It would be wrong to assume that Persephone was seen by the ancient Greeks as a weak and helpless victim because of her abduction by Hades. Mikalson's quotations from the inscriptions on tombstones seem to indicate that the Greeks felt her power to be more accessible than that of the dreaded Hades; the fact that they addressed her at all shows that they definitely believed in her power in the underworld. In this sense, she calls to mind the medieval phenomenon of calling on the power of Mary instead of God the Father or even Jesus, who were powerful but feared.
According to classics scholar Sara Aleshire there was a widespread cult of Kore/Persephone in the ancient Greek world; there was certainly no cult of Hades. I am emphasizing Persephone's power because I have seen her represented by Jungian psychologists as a weak-willed and docile young girl. While Jungians, Freudians and anyone else certainly have the right to interpret the myths as they see fit, it is important to realize that there might be quite a difference between the way a modern-day psychologist interprets the myths and the way the ancients actually saw these mythological figures. In the case of Persephone, the difference is quite vast indeed! So, to paraphrase the Iliad, "Beware of Shrinks bearing myths."]
References: Hesiod, lines 768 and 912-14; Homer, Hymn to Demeter #1, Odyssey Book 10, lines 494-5, 509; Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 10; Apollodorus, 1.9.15 & 3.14.4; Mikalson, 1983, pages 74-82)