Demeter was the Greek goddess of harvest, at times considered the Mater Dolorosa (Mother Goddess) of the Greeks. Civilizations have come and gone, crumbled into the dust of antiquity; yet Demeter survived every desolation, because she represented faith of the renewal of the soil that meant the very existence of the Greeks.

Brought to the conscious mind in the tombs of early Mycenae, long before the Dorians invaded Greece in 1104 B.C., where the tribes of Semites were muttering mono-syllables in fuscous dens and their extent of consciousness was the simple tabloid of pain or no pain--the pre- Torah of future generations. Back before the great Agamemnon sieged Troy (1192-1183 B.C.) to gain Menelaus's Helen--the face that launched a thousand ships and toppled the topless towers of Ilium. Even before Oedipus (1209 B.C.), whose fate was, centuries later, misinterpreted by Freud to suit his own confusion.

Yes, we must go back even before that great salutarian, Theseus (1250 B.C.), who had so many "wives" that historians had to draw up a learned catalogue of them. We go on, passing that ancient superman Hercules ( Hercules, 1261 B.C.), whose strength even the Gods feared. We rush through the age of Achaean domination of Greece (1300 B.C.), through the stately palaces of Mycenae (1400 B.C.) and its apex (1500 B.C.) to the bronze age itself (1600 B.C.). There, by the tombs near the Cretan palaces, is where Homer begins his tale in his Hymn to Demeter.

He tells how Demeter's daughter Persephone, while gathering flowers, was kidnapped by Hades, the god of the underworld, and taken down to the depths of the inner earth. The sorrowing mother, Demeter, searched everywhere and finally found her in Hades' grasp. She tried to per­suade Hades to release her. To no avail. While Demeter, the goddess of harvest, sat by the way, grieving in her utmost heart for her wronged daughter the earth shriveled and all things that grew died. The people of Attica beseeched Hades to release Persephone. Hades relented and allowed Persephone to live on the earth nine months of every year--and thus the seasons began. For their kindness Demeter revealed to Attica the art of using the seasons (agriculture) and the fields became bountiful. And so from the scorched earth to the bounty of their fields the ancient Greeks learned to husband their fields in what today we would recognize as organic farming.

In a British Museum, among the noblest figures of antiquity, is the seated Demeter, silently mourning the rape of her daughter, Persephone (Earth). All the tenderness of motherhood and its silent resigna­tion, are in the face and eyes.

It is clear that Demeter represented the earth's fertility. Persephone the earth, and Hades the diseases that affected the crops. Hades was also known as Pluto, the giver of abundance, for he had the power to bless or blight the roots of all things that grew in the soil.