Demeter - goddess of harvest and fertility.

Category: File - :Demeter in horse chariot w daughter kore 83d40m wikiC Tempio Y di Selinunte sec VIa.JPG|thumb|285px|Demeter drives her horse-drawn chariot containing her daughter Kore, at Selinunte, Sicily, 6th century BC

Demeter (; Greek: '''', lit. "Earth-Mother" from the Doric D? form of Greek De "Earth" and Meter "Mother"http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Demeter. Or possibly "distribution-mother" from the noun of the Indo-European mother-earth *dheghomThe d? element is not so simply equated with "earth" as John Chadwick showed in The Mycenaean World (Cambridge University Press) 1976, p 87: "Every Greek was aware of the maternal functions of Demeter; if her name bore the slightest resemblance to the Greek word for mother', it would inevitably have been deformed to emphasize that resemblance.... how did it escape transformation into *G?m?t?r, a name transparent to any Greek speaker?". *mater, also called simply ???), in Greek mythology, is the Goddess of grain and fertility, the pure nourisher of the youth and the green earth, the health-giving cycle of life and death, and preserver of marriage and the sacred law. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, dated to about the seventh century BC.Nilsson, Martin P. (1940). Greek Popular Religion. p.45: "We have a document concerning the Eleusinian cult which is older and more comprehensive than anything concerning any other Greek cult, namely, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter composed in Attica before Eleusis was incorporated into the Athenian state, not later than the end of the seventh century BC. We know that the basis of the Eleusinian Mysteries was an old agrarian cult celebrated in the middle of the month Boedromion (about October) and closely akin to the Thesmophoria, a festival of the autumn sowing celebrated by the women not quite a month later. I need not dwell upon this connection, which is established by internal evidence as well as by direct information." she is invoked as the "bringer of seasons", a subtle sign that she was worshipped long before she was made one of the Olympians. She and her daughter Persephone were the central figures of the Eleusinian Mysteries that also predated the Olympian pantheon.

Her Roman equivalent is Ceres.

Demeter is easily confused with Gaia or Rhea, and with Cybele. The goddesss epithets reveal the span of her functions in Greek life. Demeter and Kore ("the maiden") are usually invoked as to theo ('"The Two Goddesses"), and they appear in that form in Linear B inscriptions at Mycenaean Pylos in pre-classical times. A connection with the goddess-cults of Minoan Crete is quite possible.

According to the Athenian rhetorician Isocrates, the greatest gifts which Demeter gave were cereal (also known as Category: Wiktionary - :corn|corn in modern Britain), which made man different from wild animals; and the Mysteries which give man higher hopes in this life and the afterlife.Isocrates, Panegyricus4.28: "When Demeter came to our land, in her wandering after the rape of Kore, and, being moved to kindness towards our ancestors by services which may not be told save to her initiates, gave these two gifts, the greatest in the world ? the fruits of the earth, which have enabled us to rise above the life of the beasts, and the holy rite, which inspires in those who partake of it sweeter hopes regarding both the end of life and all eternity".

Demeter's emblem is the poppy, a bright red flower that grows among the barley.

The Eleusinian Mysteries () were initiation ceremonies held every year for the cult of Demeter and Persephone based at Eleusis in ancient Greece. Of all the mysteries celebrated in ancient times, these were held to be the ones of greatest importance. These myths and mysteries, begun in the Mycenean period (c. 1600 BC) Newton, Joseph Fort, The Builders, 1915. Cf. p.24. "The Grecian or Eleusinian Mysteries, established 1800 BC, represented Demeter and Persephone, and depicted the death of Dionysus with stately ritual which led the neophyte from death into life and immortality"Cf. Mylonas, 1961, p.24. "Again, from legends we learn of the arrival of the Cult of Demeter at Eleusis in the fifteenth century BC --- an event that must of course have had a profound influence on the life and activities of the site." and lasting two thousand years, were a major festival during the Hellenic era, later spreading to Rome.Ouvaroff, M. (alternatively given as Sergei Semenovich Uvarov, or Sergey Uvarov, 1786-1855) (Translated from the French by J. D. Price) Essay on the Mysteries of Eleusis, London : Rodwell and Martin, 1817 (Reprint: USA: Kessinger Publishing, 2004). Ouvaroff does write that fixing the earliest foundation date to the Eleusinian Mysteries is fraught with problems. The name of the town, Eleusís, is a variant of the noun ???????, éleusis, arrival.

The rites, ceremonies, and beliefs were kept secret, as initiation was believed to unite the worshipper with the gods and included promises of divine power and rewards in the afterlife.Tripolitis, Antonia. Religions of the Hellenistic-Roman Age. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, November 2001. pp. 16-21. There are many paintings and pieces of pottery that depict various aspects of the Mysteries. Since the Mysteries involved visions and conjuring of an afterlife, some scholars believe that the power and longevity of the Eleusinian Mysteries came from psychedelic agents.Wasson, R. Gordon, Ruck, Carl, Hofmann, A., The Road to Eleusis: Unveiling the Secret of the Mysteries. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1978.