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The cult of the Mother Goddess, protectress of agriculture and fertility, is one of the most ancient in Sicily. When her daughter Persephone disappeared, Demeter roamed the Earth searching for her, ignoring crops, and thus allowing the earth to become wrought with famine.

The daughter of Demeter and Zeus (also known as Kore or, to the Romans, Proserpine) rules as both Queen of the Underworld and Goddess of Fertility.

While gathering lilies, violets and hyacinths with her girlfriends in fields below Enna, Persephone was abducted by Hades and taken to reign as Queen of the Underworld.

Hades agreed to release Persephone on condition that she ate a pomegranate seed (food of the dead) so ensuring her return to the Underworld for four months each year. When she reigns in the Underworld, it is winter on Earth; when she returns, she brings spring and renewal.

A deep natural lake south of Enna is the supposed site of the passage from Earth to the Underworld.

The seat of the cult of Demeter and Persephone was at Enna on the boulder behind the castle. Their temple contained a statue of the Mother Goddess.

Items recovered from the sanctuary and from sites near Lake Pergusa are preserved in Enna’s Museo Archeologico, including votive statuettes of Demeter.

The earth goddesses were venerated at a sanctuary now marked by the church of San Biagio. The church was built on top of a 5th-century BC temple; two round altars are extant (see Sanctuary of the Chthonic Deities).

Demeter and Persephone were worshipped as the protec-tresses of Morgantina. In the sanctuary see purification baths, altars for performing rituals and a well for sacred offerings.

Three 7th-century BC votive statuettes of Demeter or Persephone, now in Syracuse’s archaeological museum, were recovered from this sanctuary between Agrigento and Gela.