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

By: Christine Downing

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877739374
• ISBN13: 9780877739371
• Release Date: June 1994
• Publisher: Shambhala Publications
• Length: 301 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

I place this one at the top of my Demeter and Persephone Collection!!!!!

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.