Persephone: 6 Powerful Ways to Connect With the Goddess of the Underworld
There’s something intangibly alluring about Persephone, from her fairytale-like origins as spring maiden, to her iconic rise as dread Queen of the Underworld.
Who is the Goddess Persephone?
She is the daughter of the storm god Zeus and the verdant grain goddess Demeter.
Persephone’s other name is Kore ‘Maiden’ which relates to her spring maiden aspect.
You’re probably most familiar with her from the story of her abduction into the underworld and her marriage to the mysterious Hades.
The myth of Persephone’s descent happens to be one of the most well-known stories in western literature.
The origins of the name ‘Persephone’ are lost to time, the ancient Greeks often referred to her using titles rather than her name.
This is in line with their general fear and aversion to all things underworldy (that’s not a word, but now it is).
There’s also a suggestion from classicists that her name may have pre-Greek roots, meaning she may pre-date some of the more familiar Greek gods.
Fast forward to 2023, and Persephone is a goddess that’s frequently being reinvented.
Countless cheesy, and often, terrible romance novels have been written about her as well as the viral webcomic Lore Olympus (NOT a valid source of deity information I’m afraid).
How Do I Know if Persephone is Calling Me?
You don’t have to be ‘called’ by a deity to worship them.
If you are interested in Persephone or feel drawn to her, know that it’s completely valid.
People in ancient Greece weren’t ‘called’ by deities, they just worshipped the ones that they liked or needed due to their sphere of influence.
How to Connect With Persephone
After several years of research and one History degree later, I’ve found that the best way to grow fulfilling relationships with the gods is to do your best to venerate them within their own cultural context.
Honouring the gods of ancient cultures means acknowledging that they knew best about how to honour and petition the gods.
Honouring Persephone in the way that she was worshipped for thousands of years is not only respectful.
But increases your chances of success in building a long-term relationship with her.
Religious Baggage
The best way to grow fulfilling relationships with the gods is to venerate them within their own cultural context.
Honouring the gods of ancient cultures means acknowledging that they knew best about how to honour and petition the gods.
It also increases your chances of success in building a long-term relationship with her.
A big part of embracing the Greek cultural context when connecting with Persephone is to not impose your past religious beliefs onto her worship.
Here are some things to be aware of when connecting to Aphrodite and other Greek gods:
The myths aren’t literal.
The gods welcome everyone regardless of gender, sexuality or ethnicity.
The gods don’t get angry.
The gods don’t have ‘beef’ with one another.
How to Connect With Persephone
This post is going to give you the tools to begin and maintain a relationship with the goddess Persephone in her underworld aspect, rooted in the ancient Greek culture she was worshipped in.
persephone summary
Festival: Thesmophoria
Home: Underworld
Parents: Zeus and Demeter
Colours: Black, red, white
Plants: Asphodel, pomegranate, wheat
Symbols: Pomegranate, torch
Traditional Offerings: Barley, frankincense, honey, milk, olive oil, votive offerings, water, wine
Non-Traditional Offerings: Cakes, candles, fruit juice, flowers, honeyed milk, pomegranates
Epithets: Kore ‘Maiden’ Khthonia ‘Of the Earth’ Karpophoros ‘Bringer of Fruit’ Sôteira ‘Saviour’ Megala Thea Great Goddess Hagnê ‘Holy One’ Daeira ‘Knowing One’ Praxidikê ‘Exacter of Justice’
1. Learn About Persephone’s Myths
The first step to connecting to Persephone is to read her myths. Just remember, don’t take the myths literally. Say it with me, ‘the myths aren’t literal!’
It’s unlikely that the ancient Greeks engaged in mythic literalism and we shouldn’t either. The myths are stories that reveal insights into the nature of the gods in a more subtle, allegorical way.
Persephone’s most famous myth is her abduction into marriage by king of the underworld, Hades. But there are other more obscure myths, for example the one where Persephone creates humanity out of clay. Yes, really.
Persephone mythology Resources
Theoi.com is your best friend for primary sources regarding the myths.
2. Learn About Persephone’s Epithets
Epithets are titles or descriptive functions of deities that were used in antiquity. Some of these epithets are cult titles and some are titles from the poetic tradition.
Epithets help us to understand the full spectrum of a deity and their function in ancient times.
Here are a few of Persephone’s epithets:
Kore ‘Maiden’
Khthonia ‘Of the Earth’
Karpophoros ‘Bringer of Fruit’
Sôteira ‘Saviour’
The key is to remember that the gods are varied beings and the ancient Greeks understood them to be multifaceted.
3. How to Create An Altar to Persephone
Before we talk about altars, I just need to tell you that Persephone in her underworld aspect is considered a kthonic deity. I mean, technically she’s a liminal deity but that’s getting complicated.
The ancient Greeks worshipped the kthonic gods differently to the ouranic gods and kept their rites strictly separate.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!
Just keep any altar to Persephone away from any ouranic deity altars, as mixing them together could incur miasma (spiritual pollution, which isn’t going to kill you or anything but it’s offensive to the gods).
Ouranic deities are supposed to be kept pure and not come into contact with death.
In ancient Greece, kthonic gods were honoured at night, outside with offerings made directly into a pit in the ground.
But feel free to create a separate Persephone altar because not everyone has a garden and digging random pits into a park might make you look a bit weird.
‘Sorry, I’m just digging this pit because I need somewhere to bury my offerings to the DREAD QUEEN OF THE UNDERWORLD…’
If you’re worshipping Persephone in the spring, or you’re specifically drawn to her Kore aspect then you can honour her using traditional ouranic praxis.
But in this post we’re focusing exclusively on her Queen of the Underworld role and thusly, only kthonic rites.
My Persephone altar isn’t permanent and is only put up in the autumn because that’s the time of year that I feel most connected to her.
The best way to feel the long-term presence of Persephone is by setting up a dedicated altar and creating kharis through regular offerings.
Persephone Altar Ideas
Image of Persephone
Offering bowl
Incense burner
Black, red or white candle
Roses
Bees
Pomegranate
There’s no special ritual to ‘cleanse’ your altar, just make sure everything you’re using is clean and keep it that way!
4. How To Pray To Persephone
The ancient Greeks would have prayed to Persephone with their hands palm down towards a pit in the earth, with eyes averted. Sometimes they would bang upon the earth to get an underworld deity’s attention.
To pray to Persephone, simply stand or sit before your altar or offering pit with palms lowered towards the floor. Then say your prayer. For example:
Hear me, Persephone! Saviour, Holy One, Queen of the Underworld. Or whatever name it most pleases you to be called. Come from your place in the Underworld. I have created an altar for you and I would like to feel your presence in my life, may this offering of incense please you.
Unfortunately, Persephone doesn’t have a Homeric Hymn... But she does have a surviving Orphic Hymn!
What’s nice is we can incorporate these into our veneration of the Greek gods.
I like to give a physical offering and then recite a hymn, but you definitely don’t have to recite one every time you make an offering.
Orphic Hymn to persephone
Daughter of Zeus, almighty and divine,
Come, blessed queen, and to these rites incline:
Only-begotten, Pluto’s honoured wife,
O venerable Goddess, source of life:
'Tis thine in earth’s profundities to dwell,
Fast by the wide and dismal gates of hell:
Jove's holy offspring, of a beauteous mien,
Fatal, with lovely locks, infernal queen:
Source of the furies, whose blest frame proceeds
From Zeus’s ineffable and secret seeds:
Mother of Bacchus, Sonorous, divine,
And many-formed, the parent of the vine:
The dancing Hours attend thee, essence bright,
All-ruling virgin, bearing heavenly light:
Illustrious, horned, of a bounteous mind,
Alone desired by those of mortal kind.
O, vernal queen, whom grassy plains delight,
Sweet to the smell, and pleasing to the sight:
Whose holy form in budding fruits we view,
Earth's vigorous offspring of a various hue:
Espoused in Autumn: life and death alone
To wretched mortals from thy power is known:
For thine the task according to thy will,
Life to produce, and all that lives to kill.
Hear, blessed Goddess, send a rich increase
Of various fruits from earth, with lovely Peace;
Send Health with gentle hand, and crown my life
With blest abundance, free from noisy strife;
Last in extreme old age the prey of Death,
Dismiss we willing to the realms beneath,
To thy fair palace, and the blissful plains
Where happy spirits dwell, and Pluto reigns.
5. How To Give Offerings To Persephone
The most important way to build a relationship with Persephone is to give regular offerings in the manner she was offered to in antiquity.
The ancient Greeks created kharis or reciprocity between humanity and the gods through offerings.
Offerings to Persephone should be given whole (no sharing with humans), and would be made into a pit in the ground and buried.
Offerings made to kthonic deities should not be consumed. Nothing terrible is going to happen if you do take a nibble, but it’s ritually taboo.
So no nibbling!
Traditional Offerings
Grains
Honey
Milk
Olive oil
Wine
Giving kthonic offerings is a very simple process:
After darkness has fallen, wash your hands.
Go outside and direct palms towards the ground. Avert your eyes and speak your prayer aloud. If you want to be mega traditional, give the ground a good thump to get Persephone’s attention.
Pour out a libation of honey mixed with oat milk (it’s my own UPG that Persephone enjoys oat milk sweetened with honey).
Keep your eyes averted and spend a few minutes in quiet contemplation. You may feel her presence, in the form of pleasant feelings or you may not feel anything at all. Both are valid!
How Do You Dispose of Offerings?
Offerings to Persephone should be buried whole or poured straight onto the ground.
If you’re using an altar to make offerings, leave the offering out for an hour or so before disposing of it outside or into a potted plant.
If there’s really no way for you to get outside to dispose of offerings, stick to small food offerings and put them in your compost bin.
How Often Should You Give Offerings?
The answer is as often as you want to. You don’t have to do it every day. You can choose a specific day of the week to honour every week, or you can just choose to make offerings during specific times of the year.
My relationship with Persephone is mostly confined to the autumn season in her Queen of the Underworld aspect. I don’t really feel close to her during the spring.
6. How to Communicate With Persephone
We can communicate with the gods in several ways. Historically, these would have been through:
Prayer
Offerings
Divination
Omens (signs)
Theurgy
As I’ve been whittering on about for most of this post, we can utilise what the ancients did for (hopefully) similarly successful results.
Divination
Divination was super popular in ancient Greece. It included anything from bird omens, to divination by entrails... ouch, that one hurt my shrivelled vegan heart.
Thankfully, we have shiny things like tarot and oracle decks now.
To connect with Persephone through divination wash you hands, make an offering, and ask your question out loud in the form of a prayer.
Then interpret the cards and spend some time journalling about their meaning.
I’ve had a lot more success with this kind of practice by using decks that resonate with the energy of the deity I’m attempting to commune with.
That’s just a fancy way of saying that the deck’s art reminds me of the deity.
Personally, I feel like Tarot of Vampyres screams Persephone.
It’s all gothic romance and pretty people.
Signs or Omens
My personal experience with signs is that they’re reasonably uncommon and they tend to really leap out at you as significant within the moment.
It’s like an instant inner knowing or epiphany.
A video about Persephone popping up in your YouTube recommended feed isn’t the mysterious powers of Mount Olympos, it’s just Google doing its thing.
If you’d like to ask Persephone for a sign you certainly can.
Wash your hands, make an offering, say your prayer and ask for a sign. If you don’t receive one, don’t sweat it!
My advice?
Don’t get hung up on signs and don’t ask for them very often.
That way lies madness and sweaty palms…
Theourgia
Communicating with Persephone through meditation overlaps with ancient theurgy practices.
Theourgia or ‘theurgy’ is a form of divine magic that involves the ritual invocation of the gods with the aim of achieving henosis or union with the divine.
Unfortunately, we don’t know too much about theurgy so modern books on the subject are modern reconstructions.
I recommend The Practical Art of Divine Magic: Contemporary & Ancient Techniques of Theurgy: Contemporary and Ancient Techniques of Theurgy (2015) by Patrick Dunn.
You can call out to Persephone during meditation and see if you receive any intuitive insights.
But I’ll be honest with you, it kind of takes a lot of time and training for this to actually work.
Achieving altered states can be difficult and takes practise.
If you’re confused about anything or have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you!