Playful Cretan Tales "The tradition of Cretan tales — lies like the truth — is also common in the Odyssey, where Odysseus (as well as his patroness Athena) tells several of them. Demeter calls herself Doso ("Giver"), a name that plays on Demeter's own function of giving. The disguised Demeter, twice called Daughter of Rheia in this poem (L-60, L-75), says she was given this name by her mother, thus emphasizing the maternal (even matrilineal) links among the three generations of females that Zeus and Hades disrupt. The tale displaces some of Persephone's experiences on her mother, both mother and daughter were abducted by violence and against their will as valuable goods, although Doso escapes her captors (who are called not simply pirates, but pirate men (L-125)." from "The Homeric Hymn to Demeter," p. 42, commentary by Helene P. Foley (1994) Minoan amphora and lid, with geometric meanders, from Edith Hall Dohan's "Excavations in Eastern Crete: Vrokastro" (1914) ___ ___ ___ Demeter's Odyssean Persona — Is Doso's story what truly happened? "Demeter exhibits an Odyssean persona. Like Odysseus at the end of his wanderings, she dons a self-abasing disguise that makes her look old. Like Odysseus on Ithaca, she tells a Cretan tale, a mixture of lies and truths. She reinterprets her wandering as a movement in two phases: first she is kidnapped, then she flees from her 'masters' (L-131). If the tale of her abduction reproduces what truly happened to her daughter, the tale of her flight and wandering reproduces what truly happened to her as a consequence of that abduction. In her grief, Demeter identifies with her daughter to the point of not distinguishing the cause from the effect: the mother, not the daughter, has been abducted, and she wandered. The pirates, the 'masters,' are the gods of Olympus, who allowed Persephone to be seized and from whom Demeter wandered away." from "Wandering in Ancient Greek Culture," p.69, by Silvia Montiglio (2005) ___ ___ ___ More On the Name 'Doso' "Demeter says her name is Doso, which is the first-person future indicative of the ordinary greek verb for "to give." Demeter in disquise says her name is "I will give," giving away indeed the essence of her nature, for Demeter is "the giver of bright gifts," concealing thus her identity in plain view." [See Hekate's witness at L-54, ἀγλαόδωρε, aglaodôre.] from "Persephone Unveiled: Seeing the Goddess and Freeing Your Soul," p. 34 by Charles Stein (2006) ___ ___ ___ Truth that has the Face of a Lie "The truth of myth lies in its path, a path describing a transformation, but this path is hidden and veiled. The study of myth therefore reveals itself as the search for what appears as a vacancy or a rupture, a black space, an emptiness that can resemble the eye of a needle or of a shuttle with which the myth is woven. Of the truth that has the face of a lie, as Dante said, there remains only a mask, an apparently absurd message from the unconscious, similar to that of dreams." from "The Genesis and Geometry of the Labyrinth" p.259, by Patrick Conty,(2002) Decorative pattern from Pithoi (storage jars) ca. 700 BCE, found in Ialysos, (possibly an abstraction for water swirling around rocks) ___ ___ ___ Stories of Journeys within Journeys "The 'Homeric Hymn to Demeter' contains one of the most beautiful of all heroine journey cycles. It stands in relation to the Odyssey in much the same way as "The Descent of Inanana" stands in relation to the Epic of Gilgamesh, for it provides an image of the female journey in counterbalance to the male, covering all the basic stages of feminine growth and development. It particularly focuses on the problems of puberty, mid-life, and old age, all three of which passages involve journeys of a different sort." from "The Hero Journey in Literature: Parables of Poesis," p.46, by Evans Lansing Smith (1997) ___ ___ ___ Myth of Demeter, a relic of the earlier inhabitants of Greece "No chapter in the history of human imagination is more curious than the myth of Demeter, and Kore or Persephone. Alien in some respects from the genuine traditions of Greek mythology, a relic of the earlier inhabitants of Greece, and having but a subordinate place in the religion of Homer, it yet asserted its interest, little by little, and took a complex hold on the minds of the Greeks, becoming finally the central and most popular subject of their national worship. [...] Hesiod has been called the poet of helots, and is thought to have preserved some of the traditions of those earlier inhabitants of Greece who had become a kind of serfs ; and in a certain shadowiness in his conceptions of the gods, contrasting with the concrete and heroic forms of the gods of Homer, we may perhaps trace something of the quiet unspoken brooding of a subdued people — of that silently dreaming temper to which the story of Persephone properly belongs." from "The Myth of Demeter and Persephone," in "Greek Studies: a Series of Essays, pg. 82, 95, by Walter Pater (1875 / 1920) ___ ___ ___ Demeter's Disguise "The persona assumed [by Demeter] is manifestly ungodlike, for the gods, eternally in their prime, are exempt from the ravages of old age that beset mortals. In the case of Demeter, the mask chosen is particularly ironic: the great divinity of fertility and fecundity presents herself as a barren old woman. [...] Here, Demeter's disguise [however] is carefully chosen to elicit pity and respect, but, above all, to promote the acceptance of a nursemaid to a royal princeling." from "The Politics of Olympus: Form and Meaning in the Major Homeric Hymns," p.227, by Jenny Strauss Clay (1989/2006) ___ ___ ___ Selection of wrap-around meanders (similar to the Kamares jug left), illustrated in Edith Hall Dohan's "Decorative Art of Crete in the Bronze Age" (1907) ___ ___ ___ "And so I wandered..." "The Hellenistic metaphor for what was considered to be the asocial, diminished state of being from which one might be saved was 'wandering.' [...] According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, prospective initiates into the mysteries of Demeter would, upon their arrival at the sacred temenos, the Goddess' Eleusinian sanctuary, repeat the ancient words spoken by the Goddess herself upon her own arrival at the site: 'And so I wandered and have come here' [L-133]." from "The Anti-Individualistic Ideology of Hellenistic Culture," p. 127, in NUMEN, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 117-140, by Luther H. Martin (May, 1994) ___ ___ ___ Persephone's story, her mother's also "'Doso's' bond with her mother, who has given her name and identify; her tale of kidnapping by male agents; the implication that escape from captivity was dependent on the eating of, or abstinence from, food prepared by a male person or persons — these are themes of Perspephone's story also, as told by the Hymn. At the end of the poem (L-441-469) Rhea, Demeter's mother, travels to encourage her to restore fertility to the earth. Their reunion is marked by mutual affection that recalls the encounter between Demeter and Persephone only a few lines earlier. In short the Hymn presents Persephone's story as her mother's also." from "Women and Humor in Classical Greece," p. 43, by Laurie O'Higgins (2003) ___ ___ ___ "Persona and reality come together" at the Maiden's Well "This is a syntagmic 'lie,' paralleling Kore's experience of rape and abduction and Demeter's wanderings. Another way of viewing it is that Demeter, through her lie, is metonymically experiencing Kore's rape and separation and her own wandering, simultaneiously. [...] Demeter/Doso refuses food, an important aspect of Demeter's continuing refusal to be incorporated into the Olympian and human communities, foreshadowing the reason why Kore may not be completely restored to her mother. Through ingestion of the Pomegranate, she is partially incorporated into the realm of the dead. [...] Her persona and her reality come together when she describes herself as having wandered to the Maiden's Well." from "Re(de)fining Woman: Language and Power in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter," by Kristina Passman, p. 73, in "Woman's Power, Man's Game: essays on classical antiquity in honor of Joy K. King" (1993) ___ ___ ___

 Triangular Triangle(s),
a traditional women's quilt block
as a repeating "Sierpinski Fractal"
animation from Wikipedia see —
"Have a Cup of Tea" (comment right)