Persephone
Bulfinch and a lot of like-minded academics believe that the story of Persephone being kidnapped by Hades, and then bargained back for part of the year is an etiological tale that erupted out of the fertile imaginings of an ancient people, untouched by Reason, who sought to explain why seeds must be buried in the earth before the plant can sprout. The tale also offers yet another explanation for the cyclic personality of the seasons, which other stories qualify with angry gods or goddesses and impious mortals.
My recent interest in such a tale is manifold. To start with, I simply do not grasp the mechanism by which whole religions were spawned, which must be a hugely significant mechanism, and my current study of the ancient mythologies offer no statement on it. I figure that I am probably reading the wrong books, but to publish any book about the old stories of the old religions without remarking on their significance as religious truth seems, to me (an amateur, by all means), to represent the stories as only fairy tales. Fairy tales differ from myths in that myths were believed as truth, at some point; whether they were believed as allegory or as fact, I would never claim to know. But it's just wrong to tell such stories like you would a fairy tale.
I know I am misdirecting my frustration at Bulfinch, et alia. Bulfinch even admits that he just wants people to know the stories so that they can participate in polite discussions and to appreciate fine literature and art. Still, I want to be transported back to the days when such stories were prophesied, or imagined, or at least lived... I want to watch the temples built and the pious pray. The ancient Greek and Roman pantheons may be defunct; they are reduced to fairy tales; but their importance to building some of the most magnificent and brilliant of ancient cultures seems to be ignored.
I feel like I am meeting Persephone for the first time, right now. The gods and goddesses of that time period have captured my imagination, and I want to understand them as well as I can without a believer to explain it to me. What powerful gods they must have been, even if only to exist in the common consciousness!
For those of you who actually read this blog, I am compelled to dig out the roots of this bizarre mental jihad which I am undertaking. In deference to the inspiring people whose societies we model ours upon, and in awe of their creative cast of gods and goddesses, I have begun to write a book. O! Minerva, guide me; O! Clio, inspire me with faithful references and characterizations of the pantheon of old. I am taking these deities into our time, into our world, and also taking more than my fair share of poetic license, which I hope will not offend. I am rewriting religion, and recasting their sacred deities, places, and instruments to suit my own mythology. Pray for me, will you?