Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Happy Thanksgiving! Demeter and the Meaning of Harvest || SLP486

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Happy Thanksgiving! Demeter and the Meaning of Harvest || SLP486 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 486 of the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Thomas Thurrogood, Media Producer at Speak Life, and today well, happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we don't really celebrate Thanksgiving in the UK so much, but uh I've got to mention it for our American listeners.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are, uh in America.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh this is actually kind of a Thanksgiving episode because Nate Morganlock, who works at Speed Life, of course, and is often on this podcast alongside Glenn Scrivener, has been making videos about some of the classic Greek and Roman myths.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: So he did a series on the Reform Mythologist channel called Five Minute Myths, and today we're going to be talking about the myth of Demeter.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now, she was the Greek goddess of the grain, and so this is obviously very relevant for seed time and harvest and Thanksgiving.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: So I recommend you go and check out the five-minute myth video.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a fun little animation, it's only five minutes long, obviously.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you can find it on youtube.com forward slash at reform mythologist.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: So in this podcast episode, I chat to Nate about the myth of Demeter and what it shows us potentially about what the Greeks thought of Harvest, the ancient Greeks, how they viewed Harvest and the cosmos, and what harvest teaches and reveals about the heavenly realm.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then we compare that with the Christian view of Harvest and what Jesus said about seeds and what harvest is pointing us to.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it was an interesting conversation, and it was it was great to be able to get Nate's insights on this myth.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: And so, as you're eating your pumpkin pies, enjoy.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, I'm Reform Mythologist Nate Morganlock.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm media producer Thomas Thoroughgood.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Nate.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Good to be with you.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, Thomas.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: You've been doing a series called Five Minute Myths, where you've been whizzing through a variety of myths from different cultures.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so today we're going to look at the one about Demeter.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you can go and check out the five-minute video where Nate uh goes through the story, there's a little animation, and then you share some thoughts on that.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_01: But in this conversation, we're going to get a bit deeper into the themes of harvest and seed time and Thanksgiving that are raised in the myth.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Now I've lived in the UK my whole life, so Thanksgiving isn't really a thing here, but you've lived in the States, haven't you?
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So what I'm very familiar with harvests festivals within the UK.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's true, we do those, don't we?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: We do do those, but schools especially.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of uh celebrating Thanksgiving, um, yeah, it it's a peculiarly American thing.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's because it's it's commemorating um the pilgrim fathers who travelled across the uh Atlantic uh from Northern Europe uh to um uh Plymouth Rock, I believe they landed on uh 1620, I'm gonna say.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, they land there from on the Mayflower, and uh they're in the new world and they've got this kind of freedom, but of course, now they've got to work out how to survive what are they gonna eat and and how they're gonna kind of sustain themselves.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so uh Thanksgiving is the a commemoration of the first harvest after the pilgrim fathers had arrived.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: So it's going back to 1621 that is now commemorated with uh turkey and uh Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and um pumpkin lots of pumpkins, pumpkin pies, and things like that.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Pecan pecan.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: Pecan pecan uh pecan pie.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's notable, isn't it, that we have days, sort of single days in the calendar that are especially dedicated to being thankful for where our food comes from.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because would you say that that's not something we naturally do as a culture?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: We don't tend to think about our food.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean we're we're we're all quite removed from the uh the the seasonal processes, right?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: So many of us are not, you know, harvesting our own vegetables and planting our own vegetables to you know, and and so we just go into Tesco and we expect okay, there's gonna be strawberries there, even though it's December.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, because we can get these strawberries from Tunisia, we don't need to wait till they're in season here because the food economy is now global, and so you can sort of pull in food from everywhere anytime.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so our sense of appreciation for particular things being only available because they're only in season at a particular time is lost, and um I think that tends to breed a certain kind of um ingratitude or a kind of entitlement, okay.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like I ought to be able to get this all the time.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, which previous generations I think had less access to the wide variety of foods that we do.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's uh whiz through the myth, shall we, Nate, and get into some of those themes.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: So Demeter is the Greek goddess of the grain, and it begins in quite a dramatic way, this myth.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Demeter is the golden Greek goddess of the grain, an Olympian, daughter to Kronos and Rhea, sister to Zeus and Hades and all the others.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: And our story begins when Demeter's daughter, the delicate Persephone, is playing in a meadow with all her friends.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: They're making daisy chains, when out from the dust explodes her double uncle Hades on a chariot with his coal black horses.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: He snatches her up like a weed, and Persephone screams as he descends to dark Tartars.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on there?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Just Yeah, it's just it's kind of child abduction.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Nice way to start the myth.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, yeah, what exactly what is happening?
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Hades is taking uh his niece, his double niece, because he is uh brother to both her her mom and dad, because uh Persephone's mother is Demeter, um, and Persephone's father is Zeus, and Zeus, Demeter, and Hades are brothers and sisters.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, there it's quite a kind of brutal, very uncomfortable, not especially kind of family-friendly start to the story, which is the abduction of Persephone for the purpose of making her his bride by her uncle.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: So then Demeter consults the other gods, because you'd assume that if anyone knows where her daughter has been taken, it would be the other gods.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Demeter begins to search for her daughter, and after nine long, tearful days, can't locate her.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hecate, goddess of boundaries, appears on the tenth day to tell Demeter she heard Persephone's helpless cry as she crossed down into the underworld but didn't see who did the terrible deed.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Demeter asks the sun god Helios if he saw, but he's unable to shed any light on the matter.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Something I've always wondered when reading these stories is to what degree are the Greek gods all-knowing, because sometimes they seem to have a pretty good idea of what's going on in the different realms.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um but they they're not omniscient in the way that we would believe the the god to be.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So what's going on there?
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: And partly because they've all been they've all had their authority portioned off, right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: So they're responsible for certain aspects of life but not other aspects of life.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: So um yeah, they're all a bit kind of assistant to the regional manager type gods, rather than like God Almighty.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: They are like the God overall, which because of course our Christian view, whether people call themselves Christian or not, is that there is there is one God who must have these attributes, the you know, omniscient, omnipotent, kind of the omni omni-omni type vision of who God must be.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: Got on an omnibus the other day.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: Did you?
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: What is an omnibus?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it is the bus of the buses.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's referenced.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's all it's all the buses.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's referenced.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think Chesterton talked about it at one point.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's again a Chester Chestertonian phrase, the omnibus.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's on the omnibus.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so the omni omni omni omni god, uh that some people sort of you know say that that's what being God is.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, these gods, the Greek gods, the Roman gods, they definitely don't fit into that category because they're incredibly limited, not just in what they know and understand, but also what their areas of responsibility are.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Weirdly, Hecate, um, and I might not we might not be pronouncing that correctly because I just go for it.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually pronounced Rachel.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: So so Hecate is the goddess of boundaries.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if anyone should know if someone is passing between kind of Earth and the underworld, it ought to be Hecate.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: But she says um that she heard Persephone's scream but didn't know where she went.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then uh Helios, who's the the again, I think it's Helios, not Helios, but he's he is the um uh a Greek sun god uh who is um yeah unable to shed any light on the matter.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Nice.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: So then Demeter, after not getting any help from the gods, goes to the mortal human town of Eleusis and becomes an undercover nanny to a rich family.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Since she's getting nowhere on Mount Olympus, in grief, Demeter visits the mortals.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: She disguises herself as an old crone, sits down by a well near the town of Eleusis, and hires herself out as a nanny to a super rich family.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: As part of the baby's bedtime routine, Demeter tries to make him a mortal by holding him in a fire, which, because she's not really a nanny but an Olympian goddess, apparently works.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: But then the boy's mother rushes out to stop her because she thinks she is just a murderous nanny woman and so angry at the interruption, Demita reveals herself to be the Greek divinity with specific oversight of plant life.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: The baby boy didn't get enough of the fire to become immortal and lies on the floor crying.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: What is going on there?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's um I think it's also the plot of a Hulk Hogan film called Mr.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Nanny, where he's undercover.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And the pacifier starring Vin Diesel, where he has to pretend to be a navy seal or something.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, yeah, but people pretending to look after children.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's an interesting, it's a it's a rich vein for kind of comedy and uh and drama.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, Demeter leaves uh Mount Olympus and goes back down to as you say, Eleusis, uh is sitting by a a well, and then these two sisters come along and they say, Hey lady, would you like a job?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh she says, uh sure.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then she's like, You could look after our little brother, uh, so that our mum doesn't need to anymore.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so that's what Demeter goes off to do, to be a to be a nanny.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: And she does do that, and uh one of the first things she does is she takes the baby and holds him in a fire.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: Which is shocking, but uh apparently it's to make him a mortal because she's a goddess.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it it there are a few things like this where someone uh where a um uh a mortal human being is taken by the gods or a goddess and and they try to make them immortal.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so in this occasion it's I think the baby's called uh Demophon.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so Demeter is holding Demophon in this fire, um, is then interrupted, and we'll get on to that.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but it's similar to when Achilles is dipped in uh the river to make him immortal, and it's only his heel that is kind of kept out of the water, and so that's his point of vulnerability is gonna be his Achilles heel.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is that where we get the phrase Achilles heel from?
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: I hope so.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um because that's what I've been telling everyone.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, this idea of of uh there being this means by which mortals can become immortal, but that regularly within these stories there is a point of vulnerability, or that the process of making someone immortal doesn't quite work out.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and interestingly, that is the basis, I think, the opening of the uh Disney version of Hercules um from the 90s, uh which let's just say it takes some liberties with Greek mythology.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um I would never have guessed.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it it's a very kind of sanitized kind of version.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but James Woods, who plays Hades in that, is just absolutely incredible.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um to some degree there's always a kind of elasticity with uh mythology because very rarely do you have um a kind of here is the the approved authorized version of a myth.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um so that yeah, it's very difficult to kind of pin down lots of these myths.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the version that we used for this uh five-minute myth was uh I think the kind of earliest solid kind of scripted version, which is the Homeric hymn to Demeter.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's called the Homeric hymn because it's kind of associated with Homer, even though I don't think any scholars would be completely committed to the idea that the same Homer, if he even existed, who wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey, also wrote the Homeric hymns.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's certainly written in the same kind of style.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: So Demeter's holding this baby in the fire to try and make him immortal.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: Why is it a fire?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Is is there something about fire sort of refining things like smelting?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Smelting.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't actually know what that means, but fire is often seen as like through fire, yeah.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, things are transformed.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so biblically you've got the idea of a refining fire, so things pass through the fire, and then what comes out um are gonna be um kind of the the precious things that you know stubble is gonna be burned away, but then you know you're gonna have these kind of precious metals and stones which are you know have passed through fire and have been purified by the fire.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and presumably Demeter, even though she is pretending to be just a regular nanny lady, she is still uh an Olympian goddess, and so she's able to kind of do this work.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, until the the mum comes in and is horrified by seeing her baby dangling over this fire, intervenes, stops the process.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't blame her.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's not a good look, is it?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, but then but Demeter's very cross with her for that, um, and so she then institutes all sorts of things that she now basically establishes the Eleusinian um mystery religion of Demeter, and so says, You've got to build me a temple and you've got to perform these particular rites, and then if you do these things, I might let you have some food.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's so it's that's kind of her rage, is is kind of making it a bit harder for these humans.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: But now Demeter's really angry because she's still very much grieving the loss of Persephone.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_00: Demeter becomes so sad that all the leaves are brown, and if she had the choice, the sky would be grey.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: Having withheld her goddess power over the germination process, refusing to let any plants grow, Demeter tells the mortals to build her a temple in Eleusis and establish a mystery religion where they will make sacrifices to her to see if they can cheer her up.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: It seems rather unlikely to make any difference, though, since there is literally only one thing Demeter wants in this story, and it's not humans doing sacrificings and rituals and stuff.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: So when Demeter's sad, the leaves start falling off the trees and the plants start dying, it affects the germination process.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: So is that, as you were saying earlier, how a lot of the Greek gods interacted with creation in that if one of them isn't able to do their thing or is is taken out of action, then some aspect of reality starts to fall apart.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I think so.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's the idea because you've tied the emotional state of the Olympian gods to the processes that they have responsibility for, um, that then you're gonna see that played out in terms of the the governing of the world.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think as Christians we would recognise uh something akin to that, uh, but of course we we don't have in you know God uh Father, Son and Spirit, we don't have the same kind of uh capricious volatility and kind of the there's a there's a real emotional instability to the Greek gods, um the Roman gods as well, and and the Norse gods, you know.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: They all have this kind of they're quite kind of prickly and they're kind of warring against each other, and so then you see that played out in the way that they run the world.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Our accounting for why the world is the way that it is isn't because the gods are having a dust stop, it's because the world is now a fallen place.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um and cursed is the ground because of Adam and Eve's sin.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_01: So coming to the sort of conclusion of the story.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now that all the human race might die because they've got nothing to eat, Zeus, the absolute scumbag father-uncle to Persephone, finally starts to sort things out.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: He tells Hermes to go down to Tartarus and ask Hades if Demeter can have Persephone back.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: Hermes obliges and Hades agrees, but not before he forces Persephone to take a bite of a pomegranate.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: As the chariots arrive back in the lands of light, there's a beautiful reunion of Demeter and her daughter.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: But apparently, because of some underworld dietary regulations, if you eat down there, you'll have to stay down there.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on there?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's weird with it is that it there are so many things within uh these myths which have a kind of resemblance to things in the the Christian gospel, but they're slightly sort of distorted and slightly sort of twisted.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think about um the what is the sin, what is the action that is performed by Adam and Eve in the garden, which is demonstrates their lack of trust in God's goodness.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's to eat the fruit.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are these kind of catastrophic consequences as Eve eats the fruit and then gives some to her husband who was with her, and he took some and he ate it, right?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a kind of eating fruit had this massive impact from the s the Garden of Eden.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: So it's interesting that for Persephone, in terms of you know, the impact on Persephone is that she's gonna have to return to uh the underworld for six months a year, is that that happens because of eating uh fruit.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um now it's much more closely tied into how much of the fruit she's eaten.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think in some versions it's like she ate six seeds, uh, therefore six months she'll have to spend down in the underworld.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a real uh there's just that interesting parallel of fruit eating, which is the problem.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um why a pomegranate?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well so pomegranates are full of seeds, they're very they're very seedy.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're very seedy fruits.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you can find references to the pomegranates in in the Bible.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: So uh the I think the high priests in their outfits are kind of decorated with pictures of pomegranates.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there are pomegranates of different colours painted in in the temple.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so as a as a symbol of real kind of f fertility and you know Fruitfulness, a pomegranate's great because it's got so many kind of seeds in it.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I think arguably you could say, well, okay, what if what was the fruit that Adam and Eve ate in the garden?
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't specify it, but a pomegranate would be a pretty good guess, you know.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or what is the fruit of life of the tree of life that you could reach out and pick from?
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: Again, not specified, but a pomegranate would be a good symbol to kind of um refer to.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, the the pomegranates yeah, do appear in multiple different places in the biblical picture.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And what's what would you say is like the main difference between the the this the view in the Demeter myth of harvest and the Christian view?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think there's there are multiple differences.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh one of them is uh the the seed of the woman, so in in the myth of Demeter and Persephone, it is Persephone who is the seed of Demeter, and she is the one who goes down into the the underworld and rises up again, whereas in in the Christian message, Jesus is the seed of the woman Eve, and he's also the seed of Abraham, and so he is the promised seed who will come and he will go down into the underworld, and only once, and then to rise up again.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not that he's gonna have to keep on going back down into the earth again and again and again.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think another major difference is the fact that in the Demeter myth the gods are fighting against each other in a way, Hades is kind of battling against his sister, and so there's a kind of sibling rivalry and argument that is the cause of this kind of process of seed time and harvest.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas in the gospel account, it is the the unified action of the one God, Father, Son, and Spirit, in that the Father sends the Son as the seed of the woman by the Spirit that he might be crucified, uh buried, or died, then buried, then raised up again, and that all of that is God's God's unified action rather than it's the kind of accidental, clumsy happenstance result of a kind of argument and people battling against each other, which which produced this now apparently accidental process by which Persephone has to say goodbye to a mum every year and go back down to a husband and then leave a husband and go back to a mum again.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's good news.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's good news, and it now it takes place because it it incorporates the tragic because it is for sinners that Christ comes.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: So his incarnation, his death, and resurrection, his ascension is done for the benefit of those who have fallen.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: So it Adam has fallen, therefore, Christ as the second Adam has come down into the darkness, into the depths to rescue us out from the grave to be raised up again.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's a comic story because the result is um is a is a positive one rather than which interestingly with the Demeter myth is that this is like a cyclical thing that's going to keep on coming back around.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: We've got some YouTube comments uh if you'd like to have a look at those.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you've sort of addressed this one already, but Robert and Alison said, Do you think the Greeks genuinely thought autumn and winter were caused by Persephone's descent into Tartarus?
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: Or is that not really how the Greek myths work?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, what did they write this simply as well, here's why we have seasons?
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: Or is that kind of a byproduct of they're telling a story, they're reflecting on harvest as a thing, and built into that is the possible explanation for why we have seasons.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: I suppose one aspect of it uh I don't think the Greeks were were believing that um it was necessarily real events that were happening, but that they did believe in Demeter, right?
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: They they were actively worshiping uh at the temple of Demeter, and so they were offering sacrifices, and and you can't discount that by saying, you know, they were just sort of playing it out.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um but I think the the power of the myth in terms of their understanding is recognizing with kind of the the tragic element of seed time, the death of of the seed as it goes down into the earth, and recognizing the kind of the joyfulness of Thanksgiving or harvest um when the seed rises up again.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um in terms of yes, were they they were probably acting out Persephone's descent uh or believed that the world was acting out Persephone's descent into Tartarus each winter.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yes, I don't believe that they were totally convinced that this was a historical kind of fact.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: We've got this other comment here from Matthew Fernley, he said, makes me wonder whether the god of algorithms is really going to be pleased by this offering of a comment sacrifice.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I think the the the spiritual dimensions of the YouTube algorithm have not been sufficiently studied, and maybe we do need to do an episode on the digital myths of what's going on, the pleasing the gods of the algorithm.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's gotta be there's something going on, it's not totally zeros and ones.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, speaking of the YouTube algorithm and harvest, you made a short film called Mr.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thankful, which was uh Speak Life's first harvest short film.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that has recently sort of been picked up strangely by the YouTube algorithm.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: What were you trying to do with that film, Mr.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Thankful?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I suppose we're trying to recognise that uh gratitude and thankfulness is an a part ought to be part of human experience, and so being uh thankful and have realizing that we are in relationship with God to be able to say thanks to him uh is actually really helpful because if you believe that there isn't a God, if you're convinced that the world is just an accidental thing, when you find great joy at something, you haven't got anyone to say thank you to.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: And so people end up saying these weird things, I'll just say thank you to the universe sort of thing.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: And you think, well, it it's weak because it's impersonal, and when you receive a gift, you want to you want to say thank you, and so um that was an opportunity for us to spend 24 hours with uh the world's most grateful, thankful man, and just to see what a kind of refreshing experience that would be.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, it's just quite a fun way of kind of exploring um the joyfulness of harvest, the joyfulness of uh the provision that we get every day.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so do go and check that out.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: We'll put a link in the description if you want to watch Mr.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thankful, and also a link to the five-minute myth version of Demeter.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: But uh on that note, thank you, and thank you for watching.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, please remember that media consumption is optional.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you are under no obligation to watch either of the two videos that Thomas had just mentioned, uh, but we're very glad that you were here.