8. PERSEPHONE
AND
MOTHER
DEMETER
Goddesses caring for nature
D. rejects all love gifts to daughter
Persephone disappears
D. allows nothing to grow on Earth
Starving humans cry to Gods
9. HADES:
LORD OF THE
UNDERWORLD
Brother of Zeus
Abducts Persephone near river
Tricks Persephone with pomegranate
Persephone condemned for eternity
Forced by Zeus to return her to Earth
10. PERSEPHONE’S
RETURN
Zeus sends Hermes to confront Hades
Hades agrees and compromises
Persephone and Demeter reunited
The Earth is productive once again
A solution is reached; explains the seasons
4 months underworld = WINTER/FALL
8 months above = SPRING/SUMMER
12. THE BUSINESS
SEASONS
What SEASON is your company in? Internally? Externally?
How do you ADJUST to the different economic seasons? How to BRIDGE them?
Which companies RESPECT the seasons? Is Natura an EXAMPLE? Which balance?
WHO is your winter? What is your greatest FEAR for change?
How do true leaders ACT under change? How does a COMMUNITY of managers/workers ?
How do you LEARN to deal with change? Which companies have actually DIED? Kodak?
What COMPROMISES must one make for cultural conflict resolution in MERGES?
What is the BEAUTY of marketing change? Apple Inc.?
BUT MOST IMPORTANT: How have YOU changed?
13. CHANGE: “There is nothing wrong with
change, if it is in the right direction”. Winston Churchill
Notas del editor
Abduction myth See also: Rape of Persephone Sarcophagus with the abduction of Persephone . Walters Art Museum. Baltimore , Marylan d Perseph one used to live fa r away from the other deities, a goddess within Nature herself before the days of planting seeds and nurturing plants. In the Olympian telling, the gods Hermes and Apollo had wooed Perseph one; b ut Demeter reject ed all their gifts and hid her daughter away from the company of the Olympian deities. [67] The story of her abduction by Pluto agains t he r will, is traditionally referred t o as the Rape of Persephone . It is first mentioned in Hesiod 's Th eogony . [68] Zeus , it is said, advised Pluto ( Hades ) who was in love w ith the b eautiful Persepho ne, to ca rry her off, as her mother Dem eter , was no t lik ely to allow her daughter to go down to Hades. Persephone was gathering flowers with K yane an d other wood nymphs in a field when Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth. Demeter , when she found her daughter had disappe ared, searched for her all over the earth with torches. In most versio ns she forbids the earth to produce, or she neglects the earth and in the depth of her despair she causes nothing to grow. Helios , the sun, who sees everything, eventually told Demeter what had happened and at length she discovered the place of her abode . Finally, Zeus, pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who also heard their anguish, forced Hades to return Persephone. [69] Hades abducting Persephone , wall painting in the small royal tomb at Vergina . Macedonia , Greece H ades indeed complied with the re ques t, but first he tricked her giving her a kernel of a pomegranate to eat. She ate four se eds, whic h corresp ond to the dry sum mer m onths in Greece . It was a rule of the Fates that whoever consumed food or drink in the Und erworld was doomed to spend eternity there. Persephone was released by Hermes , who had been sent to re trieve her, but she was oblig ed to spend four months of a year in the underworld, and the remaining two thirds with the gods above. [69] The various local tra dition s place Persephone's abduction in a different location. The Sicilians , among whom her worship was probably introduced by the Corinthian and Megarian colonists, be liev ed that Hades found her in the meadows near Enna , and that a well arose on the spot where he descende d with her into the lower world. The Cretans thought that their own island had been the scene of the rape, and the Eleusinians mentioned the Nysian pl ain in Boeotia, and said that Persephone had descended with Hades into the lower world at the entr ance of the western Oceanus . Later accounts place the rape in Attica , near Athens , or near Eleus is . [69] The return of Persephone , by Frederic Leighton (1891) The Homeric hymn mentions the Nysion (or Mysion), probably a mythical place which didn ’ t exist i n the map. The locations of this mythical place may simply be conve ntions to show t hat a m agically dis tant chthonic land of myth was intended in the remote past. [19] B efore P ersephone was abducted by Hades, the shepherd Eumolpus and the swineherd Eubuleus , saw a girl being carried of into the earth which had violently opened up, in a black chariot, driven by an invisible driver. Eubuleus was feeding his pigs at the opening to the u nder world when Persephone was abducted by Plouton. His swine were swallowed by the earth a long wit h her, and the myth is an etiology for the relation of pigs with the ancient rites in Thesmophoria , [70] and in Eleusis . In the hymn, Persephone returns and she is reunited with her mother near Eleusis . Demeter as she has been promised established her mysteries (orgies) when the Eleusinians built for her a temple near the spring of Callichorus. These were awful mysteries , which were not allowed to b e uttered. T he unin itiated would spent a miserable existence in the gloomy space of Hades , after deat h. [71] In some versions, Ascalaphus informed the other deities that Persephone had eaten the pomegranate seeds. When Demeter and her daughter were reunited, the Earth flourished with vegetation and color, but for some months each year, when Persephone returned to the underworld, the earth once aga in be came a barren realm. Thi s is an origin story to explain t he seasons. Although the abduction myth is sometimes referred to as the Rape of Persephone, many virsions of the myth say that Hades raped her one to three years after their marriage, causing her to become pregnant with Melinoe . Many say that she fled to the island of Nysion after being abused by Hades , who l ater found h er and raped her on the island. She then hid from him in a nearby cave, where Demeter (who heard her screams from the underworld) sent Hermes to see wha t was wrong. Many times after Persephone discovered she was pregnant Hermes came to comfort her. A s much as she begged and pleaded him to tell the others, he still refused. Persephone gave birth to Melinoe (who ws half black and half white due to power-contrasting parents) on Olympus . Many Olympi ans disliked Melinoe for being not only half black and ha lf whi te, but a rape product. They consitered chopping her to pieces and banishing her to Ta rtarus . Persephone was furious with the Olympians for wanting to hurt her child. Although she conceived Melinoe by rape, she still loved her as her own child. Other versions of the myth tell that she simply became used to Hades, but this is very rare as well as unlikely. In an earlier version, Hecate rescued Persephone. On an Attic red-figured bell krater of ca 440 BC in the Metropolitan Museum of Art , Persephone is rising as if up stairs from a cleft in the earth, while Hermes stands aside; Hecate, holding two torches, looks back as she leads her to the enthroned Demeter. [72] The tenth-century Byzantine encyclopedia Suda introduces a goddess of a blessed afterlife assured to Orphic mystery initiates. This Macaria is asserted to be the daughter of Hades, but no mother is mentioned. [73