This is a retelling of an ancient Greek myth. The mother and daughter in the kitchen are imagined; the myth of Persephone, and the pomegranate that gave garnet its name, are very old.
It was the first cold evening of autumn, and Elena was cutting open a pomegranate at the kitchen table. Her daughter Sofia, who was ten, watched the deep red seeds tumble out, glistening like tiny jewels.
"They look like your ring," Sofia said, pointing at the garnet on her mother's hand.
"That's no accident," said Elena. "The word garnet comes from an old Latin word for pomegranate. Because the stones look just like these seeds." She handed Sofia a few. "And there's a story about a pomegranate that explains why we have winter. Want to hear it?"
The Girl in the Meadow
"Long ago, in Greece," Elena began, "the goddess of the harvest, Demeter, had a daughter named Persephone. She was full of life, and wherever she walked, flowers bloomed.
"One spring day, Persephone was picking flowers in a meadow when the ground split open beneath her. Out of the darkness came Hades, the king of the underworld, in a chariot pulled by black horses. He had fallen in love with her, and he carried her down, down into his kingdom under the earth."
Sofia stopped eating her seeds.
A Mother's Grief
"Demeter searched the whole world for her daughter. And as she wept, she forgot to care for the earth. The crops withered. The trees dropped their leaves. Snow fell. Nothing would grow. People began to starve.
"Finally, Zeus, the king of the gods, ordered Hades to let Persephone go home. But there was a rule in the underworld: anyone who ate the food of the dead had to stay."
Six Little Seeds
"Before Persephone left, Hades offered her a pomegranate. She was so hungry. And she ate a few seeds, just six, red as garnets.
"Because of those six seeds, she could never fully leave. So the gods made a bargain. For part of every year, Persephone would live with her mother on the earth, and the world would bloom with spring and summer. But for the months that matched the seeds she had eaten, she would return to the underworld, and Demeter would grieve, and the world would turn cold."
Sofia looked out the window at the darkening autumn sky.
"So winter is when she's gone," she said softly.
"And spring is when she comes home," said her mother.
The Promise of Return
Elena took off her garnet ring and put it in Sofia's palm.
"That's why, for a long time, people gave garnets to someone they loved before a long journey. Like the pomegranate seeds, a garnet is a promise: you'll come back to me. When you go away to college someday, this ring is going with you."
Sofia closed her hand around it. "And I'll come back," she said.
"Every spring," said her mother, smiling.
The Legend and the Truth
In Greek mythology, Persephone, daughter of Demeter, was taken to the underworld by Hades. Because she ate pomegranate seeds there, she had to return to him for part of each year, which the ancient Greeks used to explain the change of seasons. The word garnet comes from the Latin granatum, meaning pomegranate, because deep red garnet crystals resemble its seeds.
Garnets have long been given as tokens of love and safe return, and today garnet is January's birthstone and the traditional gift for a second anniversary.
đź’ˇ Read more legends and true stories of garnet in The Legends of Garnet.
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