The Hymn itself is a very straightforward story, but there are two levels of meaning attached to this story; one being what it symbolized and paralleled in everyday life, the other being how it relates to the Eleusinian rites themselves. Marriage, birth, winter and death are the primary elements of life that are reflected in this myth.

First in the story, Persephone is stolen, with her father’s permission, in a chariot and taken to Hades to be his bride in the underworld. This is very similar to the Greek custom of marriage where the father gave away the bride, and the groom came to take her away in a wagon to his house where she was fed "sesame-and-honey cake, a quince or date (more fertility symbols)" (ZP, 69). Weddings generally took place in the winter (what is now January or February), also related to the story. There is a point in the wedding where grain cakes are passed around and a boy child says "I have banished evil and found good" in reference to the transition from uncivilized non-agricultural life, to the agricultural life of grain harvest, given to mankind by Demeter (ZP, 69).

When Persephone leaves, both she and her mother are extremely upset; Persephone goes unwillingly "resisting and screaming" "as if she was being raped" and her mother is tearing her clothes in distress (Hymn, 69-70). It is likely that this is a direct representation of the traumatic experience mothers and daughters went through when the daughter was married and taken away from her mother, as and end of innocence and childhood. Her abduction is a foreshadowing of things to come: her eating of the pomegranate seed/marriage to Hades which results in the coming of winter for the rest of eternity and death followed by resurrection.

In the Eleusinian mysteries, there was a stage of muesis called the Lesser Mysteries that took place at the banks of the Ilissos River, which were in preparation for the Greater Mysteries at Eleusis, and thought to be in honor of Persephone (Foley, 66). This could also be related to Persephone’s first time spent in Hades before she returns and becomes Hades’ true wife. (The Ilissos River was also where the bride and groom took a ritual purification bath before the wedding, which is surely not a coincidence.) At one point in the Eleusinian ritual, wheat was buried in the ground, probably representing Persephone’s descent into the underworld, and/or her eating of the pomegranate seed, as demonstrated by the quote from Euripides "One buries children, one gains new children, one dies oneself; and this men take heavily carrying earth to earth. But it is necessary to harvest life like a fruit-bearing ear of grain, and that one be, the other not" (Foley, 69 [Fr. 757N]).

Another of the rites for Demeter, aside from the Greater Mysteries, was the Thesmophoria, lasting five days in the harvest season. Many of the events in this rite very direct parallels to events in the Hymn to Demeter. Only women participated in this rite, and even unmarried women and concubines were allowed to participate, and much of their behavior was directly taken from the Hymn: they did not wear crowns or eat pomegranate seeds that had touched the ground because Persephone had been stolen while gathering flowers, and because she’d eaten the pomegranate in the underworld (Foley, 72). They imitated the way life was thought to be before Demeter civilized mankind, and mourned for the loss of Persephone. Because a swineherd and his pigs fell into the hole that opened in the ground when Persephone was taken, one of the rites was to throw piglets, symbols of fertility, along with cakes in the shape of phalluses. Later the remains of the piglets were removed and used as fertilizer for the grain that was planted to ensure a good harvest (Foley 73). This, as well as other all-women rites to Demeter, allowed women a chance to celebrate their role in society, to be able to experience transitions from childhood, to marriage to motherhood together and to give them a freedom not present in their every day world. Foley also suggests these rites were a compensation for marriage, where they could ignore the boundaries and separations created by marriages that tied them to separate houses where they could not see each other, much like what happens in the Hymn to Demeter.

Naturally related to human fertility is birth, for which there were very specific rituals, that are briefly reflected in the Hymn to Demeter. Five to seven days after the birth of a child, it was carried around the hearth and then placed on the ground. Immediately after childbirth, an event associated with Demeter, the mother was purified by water or by "drenching her with blood of a piglet" (ZP, 65). This is related to the Hymn when Demeter, in rage and mourning, leaves Olympus and takes up residence in the city of Eleusis, where she becomes nursemaid to the king’s son Demephon. She sets out to make the baby immortal by feeding him nectar and ambrosia and by holding him "like a firebrand within the might of the flame." One night while she is doing this, the baby’s mother comes in and screams for Demeter to stop. This enrages Demeter and she throws the baby on the ground. The image of fire and the act of throwing the child on the ground are symbolically related, but it is unknown whether or not this was intentional. The only place the Eleusinian rites mention anything about birth is when the Heirophant, or high priest, announces the birth of a divine child during the Great Mystery in the Telesterion.

After throwing Demephon on the ground, Demeter reveals her true form, cursing humans and demanding sacrifice from them. She calls humans "short-sighted, stupid, ignorant of the share of good or evil which is coming to them" (Hymn, 342). It is easy to see the parallel being made here to the distinction between the initiated and uninitiated; Demephon is punished with mortality because he was not fully initiated. Those undergoing muesis at Eleusis were first called mystai which means "one who closes his eyes and/or keeps his mouth shut" or one who is unaware of the things to be revealed by the mysteries (Foley, 66). The second stage was called epopteia or "those who see" meaning those who have been initiated and is aware of the mysteries (Foley 66). Because Demeter is in the process of making Demephon immortal when she calls humans short-sighted then gives the rites, it is assumed that by becoming an initiate into the Mysteries at Eleusis, people thought they were getting closer to immortality or at least some knowledge or reassurance about the afterlife. Foley says the rites "brought happiness and solace to initiates" but it is not known exactly how this was done because the mysteries were such well kept secrets (p. 65). Sophocles hints that it was thought that muesis into the rites ensured a place in Hades, offering a kind of immortality: "Thrice blessed are those mortals who have seen these rites and enter into Hades: for them alone there is life, for all others is misery" (Foley, 70; [frag. 837]).

The existence of a relationship between the Eleusinian mysteries and the afterlife means that the Hymn and the Eleusinian mysteries were also closely related to death, the flipside of life and fertility. The conclusion of the Hymn is entirely about the relationship between life and death, spring and winter, the earth and the underworld.

Demeter retreats to a ridge outside the town where a temple is built, and in her rage caused "the most terrible oppressive year for men" where nothing grew, humans and animals starved and no sacrifices could be offered to the gods (Hymn, 343). It is here the correlation between winter and death is first drawn, though the life and death dichotomy is not new. Persephone herself has become the queen of the underworld, the land of the dead, and it is because of her that death comes upon the land of the living, brought on by her mother, the goddess of life and fertility. Again there are parallels between the Hymn and common funerary ritual. The body was taken from his or her house and carried away, outside of the town in a wagon, not unlike the wedding ceremony for women, and the procession is led by a woman (ZP, 73). In at least one city a type of gravestone was a statue of a clothed female called a kore, "Kore" being another name for Persephone. Throughout Greece the Anthesteria was held in late winter (what we call February or March) that lasted three days. The first day there was a ceremonial opening of the new vats of wine, the next day was for drinking and ritual marriage between Dionysos and his "Queen" (represented by the king Arkhonand his wife) and the third day pots of vegetables were offered to Hermes Psykhopompos who conducted the souls of the deceased to the underworld (ZP, 77). (It is Hermes who later brings Persephone out of the underworld.) In addition to being a celebration of the dead, it was also a celebration of fertility and plant-life, and Hades as well as Persephone were invoked during the celebrations (ZP, 77).

In order to prevent the deaths of the gods and men Zeus intervenes and Hades allows Persephone to spend some time with her mother, but first he gives her a pomegranate seed, thus binding her to him and ensuring her return. This also serves as their marriage ritual, the double entendre of Persephone taking his seed intentional. In the rites honoring Demeter and Persephone, although the women were allowed to be with their mothers and daughters for a short time, they eventually had to return to their husbands, as does Persephone in the Hymn. Because she has eaten Hades’ seed, Zeus says Persephone must spend one third of the year with her husband, and the rest of the year with Demeter in the spring and summer months. Demeter accepts this arrangement and lets the crops grow again.

This power over life and death existed to some degree in the real world. It was thought in ancient Greek culture that women were closer to death as well as fertility, the natural and the supernatural than were men because women produced children from inside themselves, like crops from the earth. Therefore, it was thought that women had some sort of connection with the life force, and by association, death, that men could never have. This is perfectly reflected in the Hymn to Demeter, for even though the supreme ruler of the underworld is male, Demeter still has control over both life and death by controlling grain and fertility.

How all this fit into the nomos of the poleis is of course as complex as the issues being dealt with. The Eleusinian mystery cult was open to all walks of life: men, women, slaves and non-Greeks, as long as they spoke Greek and had not committed murder. This is appropriate since the aspects of life the cult dealt with-birth, death, marriage and the seasons- affected everyone, not just men or women, as with other rituals. The Hymn to Demeter was undoubtedly known to everyone as a sort of origin story told in order to create a human aspect of the distant never-seen gods. It would have given the mysteries an emotional human aspect, meaning and would have made the reasons for the rituals more easily understood by everyone. The mysteries could have acted as a comfort, a reassurance to everyone that there is more than just death to look forward to, and a time to relax and reunite for women participating in other rites to Demeter and Persephone. According to the Athenian Decree of First Fruits to Eleusis, it seems very clear that the Eleusinian mysteries were a definite part of nomos in Athens, at least. Several times the Decree states that things are to be done "in accordance with ancestral custom and the oracle from Delphi" (Meiggs-Lewis 73). There could easily have been friction, however, in the women’s rites to Demeter that excluded men, because they could have been seen as threatening to the male leadership of the community, giving too much power and freedom to the women. However, at the same time, these rites as well as the Eleusinian mysteries gave women the credit due them for their role in the life cycle, if only a few times per year. Perhaps without these pauses in the routine Greek culture would not have existed as long or prosperously as it did, because the women’s rites and mysteries created a balance in the society that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.