Persephone's Sacred Lake and the Ancient Female Mystery Religion in the Womb of Sicily

There is a lake, of waters clear and deep,
Not far from the walls of Enna, called Pergus.
Even Cayster never heard
Such singing of swans, so many have nested here;
With dark branches, a wood gives shade,
Encircling the lake as though to defend it;
Here flowers always bloom, winter never falls,
Here eternal spring smiles.

—Ovid, Metamorphoses

Much has been written about Demeter, the Greek goddess of the grain, and her daughter, variously known as Kore or Persephone, the maiden goddess who is also the queen of the underworld. ¹ Most of this scholarship discusses these divinities and their rites—principally the Thesmophoria and the Greater and Lesser Mysteries—as part of a religion that was primarily a Greek phenomenon whose main center was at Eleusis, just outside Athens. The majority of such scholarship is explicitly or implicitly androcentric, as it is based on written records dating to times when patriarchy was clearly established in Greece and the rites at Eleusis were subject to the control of the Athenian state. Little contemporary scholarship has discussed the role of two other important places in the Demeter-Persephone religion: the city of Enna and the lake of Pergusa, located five miles from each other in the precise center of Sicily. In this article I will focus on Lake Pergusa, offering the first in-depth study of the significance of this lake and the surrounding landscape in the religion dedicated to Demeter, Persephone, and their probable pre-Greek precursors in Sicily. My approach decenters written records, arguing that the lake itself is a "text" that can be "read." Careful attention to the lake and the surrounding landscape creates an opening for speculation on the lake's function as a symbol of the female body, both divine and human. Following these clues, I explore the possibility that the lake may once have been the location of a female-centered religion in which girls' and women's rites of passage and bodily, psychological, and spiritual experiences were the main focus, and in which women served as principal ministrants. Thus I suggest, contrary to much current scholarly opinion, that the rituals of Demeter and Persephone may originally have been significant sites of female power. Finally, I call attention to the lake's current environmental degradation and ecofeminist efforts to save it, noting the correspondences between violence against nature and violence against women and all that has been considered "feminine."

Natural History of Lake Pergusa

Situated in the province of Enna in a vast grain-growing region of Sicily, Lake Pergusa is one of very few natural lakes that remain on an island famed in antiquity for its wetlands. Pergusa's basin was formed eons ago because of the sudden sinking of the earth's rock layers and is fed only by rainwater and underground tricklings, which are slightly salinated and sulfurous. Italian scientist Sergio Angeletti has noted, "This lake represents a marvelous example in microcosm . . . of the formation of the ocean four to five million years ago." ²

The lake periodically undergoes a remarkable reddening phenomenon because of the presence of a red, sulfur-oxidizing bacterium (Thiocapsa roseopersicina) in its waters. During summer months of years in which the sulfur content reaches a critical level, the bacteria proliferate to such an extent that the lake's waters turn either partially or entirely a deep red color, and the environs smell of sulfur for miles around. Over a period of several weeks, the bacteria reduce the sulfur level; they, in turn, are eaten by a tiny, transparent crustacean; and the lake returns to its normal color. The phenomenon, which has been documented only since the twentieth century, was studied in 1932 by Italian scientist Achille Forti, who dubbed Pergusa "the lake of blood." ³

Lake Pergusa is a major wet zone...