Mystic Plants and Nature Goddesses j 163163 163
planting depth. Although Minoan farmers may have planted their crocus corms at the appro-
priate soil depth, it would not have escaped their notice that corms planted on the surface in
the spring were slowly dragged down into the ground over the summer. The gradual disap-
pearance of crocus corms below the soil surface could thus have inspired a myth based on a
young “cormlet maiden” who is dragged underground by the Lord of the Underworld. It is
also possible that since the corm actually pulls itself underground, coercion may not have
been involved, as suggested by Eleanor Gadon.^48 In any event, after spending several years in
the Underworld, the cormlet maiden, now transformed into a “mother corm,” returns to the
surface with her cormlet daughters, allowing the cycle to continue. The return of the corm
mother in the spring would have provided an obvious raison d’etre for a Minoan agricultural
festival celebrating the fecundity of the corm mother and the fertility of the soil.
Although purely speculative, it would be surprising if the Minoans, who pioneered
the domestication of the saffron crocus and to whom the plant was sacred, had no myths
inspired by its particular means of propagation. Assuming such a myth existed, perhaps
it represents the elusive “pre- Greek” template for Demeter and Persephone postulated by
Burkert and others.Multiple Parallels Between Persephone and Crocuses
The Greek myth of the mother and daughter grain goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, has
no obvious antecedant in the Mediterranean world. Although comparable myths involv-
ing agricultural deities are known from the Near East (e.g., the Sumerian Inanna’s descent
to the Underworld and the Hittite Telepinu’s angry retreat to the steppe),^49 none of these
myths involves a mother and daughter.
Several parallels between the Greek myth of Demeter/ Persephone and the asexual life
cycle of cultivated saffron crocuses are noteworthy:- It is a story about a mother and daughter. The “mother crocus corm” with her asexu-
ally generated “daughter cormlets” correspond to Demeter and Persephone, who
are not really separate individuals but constitute a mother– daughter continuum. In
the earliest versions of the myth, Kore is the parthenogenic daughter of Demeter. In
the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, composed around 650– 550 bce, Demeter refers to
Persephone as an “offshoot”:
The daughter I bore, a sweet offshoot noble in form— 50
The use of the term “offshoot” for progeny suggests a noncereal agricultural origin for the
myth. If so, the practice of dividing the crocus cormlets and placing them in the ground in
the spring may have provided a metaphor for Demeter’s separation from Persephone.
During her search for Persephone, Demeter disguises herself as a barren old woman:
... a very old woman cut off from childbearing
and the gifts of garland- loving Aphrodite.^51This, too, has its parallel in the crocus planting cycle, which terminates with the deple-
tion and death of the mother corm.