Hi, how will you explain the Myth of Hades and Persephone to the people living in Southern Hemisphere ? Because when we have Spring, they have Autumn and when we have Autumn, they have Spring!

Well….

This is a story of some significant allegory, not necessarily hard and fast science explanation.

For the same reasons I’m not using the earth’s 22 degree axial tilt to explain why Persephone journeys to the Underworld, I don’t know if I can offer a satisfactory explanation that includes the Southern Hemisphere.

As far as seasonal religious holidays are concerned, I know that many neopagans in Australia and New Zealand celebrate the wheel of the year offset six months from the Northern Hemisphere so that their practices more accurately reflect nature.

To be perfectly honest, I actually “flipped” my telling in Receiver of Many so that it more accurately reflects weather in the temperate zones of the Northern Hemisphere rather than what actually happened in Greece.  The reason I did this is because the temperate climate is what I’m familiar with.  I’m not as familiar with the Mediterranean climate of Greece.

Here is why the Greeks came up with the idea of Persephone spending 4-6 months in the underworld:

The above graphs are the temperature and rainfall for Eleusis in Greece.

In the summer months, the rain virtually stops for three to five months depending on the severity of summer and the temperature rises at the same time.  Wheat can only grow in temperatures less than 24 degrees Celsius, which means that it starts dying off in May and the winter wheat crop can be planted in October.

So when the Greeks were talking about Persephone being taken away and the crops not growing, they were thinking heat, and little to no rain.  In fact, the Skiraphora, a threshing festival, took place in late June.  The people of Attica would pray for a cool summer and some intervening rains during the festival in a bid to ask Demeter not to grieve the loss of her daughter quite so hard.

In a culture where this was the difference between life and death, they took the story of Demeter, Hades and Persephone very seriously.