Long Journey Home: Revisioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone for Our Time (Paperback)

~ Christine Downing (Editor)
Key Phrases: new meaning system, New York, Beacon Press, Great Mother (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Heavily footnoted and broad in scope, this collection begins by examining the inconsistencies of the earliest versions of the Demeter and Persephone myth by Homer and Ovid. By cross-referencing classic and modern thought with literary, cultic and agrarian views, Downing ( The Goddess ) allows the "various interpretations to contradict, complement, complicate, and ultimately enrich one another." Among the issues debated are Demeter's true character and motivations (nurturing, selfless mother vs. obsessed neurotic); the "necessity" of Persephone's rape (a commonplace cruelty vs. her own desires of womanhood); maidenhood vs. menopause; homosexual vs. heterosexual love; the secrets of the Eleusinian mysteries and the Thesmophoria; and life vs. death/renewal. Despite centuries of gender bias in the myth's retelling and translations, Downing and her contributors reclaim the myth as their own: "We hoped that the discovery of a prepatriarchal world," the editor posits, "might help us imagine forward to a postpatriarchal one." Standout contributions include "Learning From My Mother Dying" by Carol P. Christ, poetry by Alma Luz Villanueva and Herta Rosenblatt and John Daughters's wickedly funny "Hades Speaks."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

The story of the mother-and-daughter goddesses Demeter and Persephone has seized the imagination of people in every age, from ancient times to the present. Considered today by many to be the archetypal myth for women, it touches on timeless themes in every life, such as the male-female relationship, love between women, initiations into puberty and old age, the mother-daughter bond, death, and ecological renewal Christine Downing has combined essays, prose, poetry, and even performance art with her own insightful commentary to shed new light on the myth's ancient meanings and to offer new insights in its implications for contemporary men and women.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Shambhala (May 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570626855
• ISBN-13: 978-1570626852
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #338,355 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I place this one at the top of my Demeter and Persephone Collection!!!!! , October 7, 2008

By	Jube I. Lation "houseofmyths" - See all my reviews

I am so suprised to notice that no one had given this wonderful book a review if for no other reason than to help prospective buyers know what a gem it is. Being a Persephone woman born of a Persephone-turned-Demeter mother, I have been studying this story for many years and definitely consider it one of my root myths (along with the Myth of Io and the Descent of Inanna). Still I was very pleased by the various versions of the myth given from the context of different psychological perspectives. There is an entire range of Demeter-Mothering which the myth itself doesn't develop but rather gives a basic generic framework in which each woman must fit her own personal experience. It was nice to have suggestions as to how this fitting might work. Moving from the generic to the specific can make an enormous difference as to whether or not one is even able to recognize that a myth is personally relevant. For example, not all of us had mothers who were recognizable (from reading the myth) as being Demeter-mothers due to their own deep wounding and consequent inability to mother. Some Persphone-daughters, for instance, might find it hard to imagine their mothers noticing, much less mourning their sudden disappearance. See particulary the essay entitled "Cycles of Becoming" by Vera Bushe,introduced on page 164 and starting on page 173 (paperback edition). This is just one example of the range of varia-tion that can be found in this grand mother-daughter myth. Even within the context of the same myth, it's a longer journey home for some of us than for others.