The Goddess Persephone

Goddess Innocence and Receptivity

and the Queen of the Underworld

Persephone, a Greek goddess known in her childhood by the name Kore (or Cora, meaning young maiden), was the only child of the union of Demeter (goddess of the bountiful harvest) and Zeus, the mighty king of the Olympians.  The Greek goddess Persephone was born when Demeter was Zeus' consort, long before his marriage to the goddess Hera.  By all accounts  Persephone had an idyllic childhood, raised by her nurturing mother and played with her father's other daughters, the Greek goddesses Athena and Aphrodite.  Always a cheerful and compliant child, the little goddess Persephone was a parent's dream.

Persona:

• Known as Kore
• Very connected to psychic life
• Represents the access to joy through the inner child, and through the inner child can give birth to imagination
• Known as her mother's daughter
• Represents the receptive woman
• Represents mother's little helper, a homebody
• Holds the power of silence
• Holds that power of transformation that allows one to be in her pain
• Connects us with mystical experience
• Can guide us to the unconscious
• Represents sensitivity and perception
• Represents the ability to appreciate dreams and imagination
• Embodies the potential for psychic abilities
• Represents the abandoned child in dreams
• Represents one who lacks self-confidence and needs friends with strong personality
• Has difficulty accepting her womanly passion as part of herself
• Represents the need to come to terms with the inner child
• Abducted in marriage, avoids marriage
• Represents the child who refuses to grow up
• Connected with physical problems, depression
• Manipulative and can withdraw into unreality
• Can lie, be manipulative and devious to get own way
• Represents one who wants freedoms with no discipline.