The name “Six Seeds” is a reference to the ancient Greek myth of Persephone. If you don’t know it, put another log on the fire, pour yourself a fresh cup of red raspberry leaf tea, and curl up in your favorite blanket while you read the story:
There once lived a very beautiful young maiden named Persephone. She was the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of the harvest and fertility who presided over all growing things. The people often called her “Corn Mother” or “Earth Mother.” One day Persephone was gathering flowers with some nymphs when suddenly a great chasm opened up in the earth. From out of this chasm rose Pluto, ruler of the underworld, who abducted Persephone and took her back to the underworld to be his queen.
When Demeter discovered that her daughter was gone, she began to search the earth night and day with a torch, trying to discover what had become of Persephone. But she could not find her anywhere. Eventually the sun god, Helios, took pity on her and told her what happened. Demeter was so heartbroken that, in her despair, she refused to make the crops grow any longer. So the earth became barren and fruitless.
Now the other gods and goddesses and the people of the earth, who were now without food, begged Zeus, the ruler of all the gods and goddesses, to do something. So Zeus ordered Hermes, the messenger, to go down to the underworld and retrieve Persephone so that Demeter would once again restore abundance to the earth. Hermes began his descent into the underworld. When he arrived there, he found that Persephone was no longer an innocent maiden; she was now the majestic, fearful, powerful queen of the underworld. Hermes explained to Pluto why Zeus had sent him and asked him to please return Persephone to the earth. But Pluto protested, saying that he could not do so because Persephone had eaten six pomegranate seeds—and once a mortal ate food from the underworld, she or he could never return to the earth.
While Persephone had grown to love her new husband, she also sorely missed her mother. So a deal was struck. It was decided that from then on Persephone would spend the abundant months of the year with her mother and the barren months of the year in the underworld with Pluto. Persephone then made her ascent back to the earth, where she was poignantly reunited with Demeter and the fertility of the earth was restored. And that is how the cycles of the seasons came to be.
For the ancient Greeks, the end of the harvest (around the time of modern-day Thanksgiving celebrations) was a time to recall Persephone’s descent into the underworld and her mother’s desolate search for her, as well as a time to celebrate their tender reunion. These festivals celebrated fertility; they occurred at the only time of year when the mature crop bore next year’s seeds. Here, old and new life meet.
In the earliest accounts of this story, Demeter was a triune goddess who contained all three aspects within herself: the virgin, the mother, and the crone, symbolizing birth, life, and death. It was only in later accounts that the characters of Kore (as the maiden) and Persephone (as the queen) developed as distinct and separate from Demeter.
The image of the six seeds represents this transformation from maiden to mother in the same way that pregnancy and birth initiates us as parents. During the childbearing year, we leave the comfort and familiarity of our lives as we have known them, and ourselves as we have been, and journey into the most intimate, inward places within—just as Persephone descended into the underworld—to find out who we are when we venture beyond the known. In this way, birth is not only a medical event but a sacred rite of passage, a transformation. In giving birth to our children, we ourselves are reborn anew.
