Welcome back to White Rose of Avalon my Darlings.   Today’s blog post is about Sirens and how they are connected to the Greek Goddess Persephone!   It is well known to anyone familiar with the myth of Hades and Persephone that Persephone was in a field picking flowers with her Nymph Handmaidens when she was taken by Hades to be his Bride.   

However, when we dig deeper into the tale, we learn that those Nymph Handmaidens were the Sirens!   They were transfigured into half-woman half-bird beings by Demeter to help her in the quest to find her stolen daughter.    Then either they grew tired or bored of the search, or deemed it impossible to find Persephone, so they retired to the Island where they became the famed Sea Monsters who attempted to lure sailors to their death.    Of course, this gives Sirens a dual connection to Death, both as Handmaidens to the Queen of the Underworld and also as Faery Women who seek to kill unwitting sailors themselves!   This is why in the Ancient World, Sirens were often seen to be Graveyard Tomb Guardians that could protect a dead person or family in their tombs. 

The story of the Sirens is also intimately linked to Homer’s The Odyssey.   In the epic poem when Odysseus is on his way home from the Trojan War, he spends many years traveling through a perilous journey in the Ocean.    He is often taken off course by Poseidon, God of the Sea.   At one point, when he and his men are approaching the island where the Sirens are known to live, he insists that all of his men block their ears with wax, to prevent being killed by the Sirens as they would have been lured in by the Siren song.   However, Odysseus himself refused to have his ears plugged with wax for safety, instead having his men tie him to the mast of the ship so that he could not steer the boat into their certain doom!   This allowed Odysseus to hear the song of the Sirens without losing his life.   That is something that the Sirens had vowed would never happen, so they all killed themselves in torment over the fact that they had failed to kill Odysseus and his men!

This is how the Sirens were first known to the ancient Greeks, as half-bird Nymph handmaidens of Persephone, who failed to protect her from abduction by Hades.    Demeter turned them into their half-avian form to help in the search, and possibly as punishment, but one way or another, they ended up on that island, seemingly taking delight in luring sailors to their deaths.   Over time, Sirens became known as half-fish women, in a more traditional Mermaid look, but no matter their appearance, they are Nymphs deeply tied to the Waters!   Sirens have come to be inextricably linked to the idea of luring in men with sexual allure, even if your intentions are much more pure than the ancient Greek vision of these Enchantingly Deadly Faery Women.

I hope you have enjoyed this short exploration of the origins of Sirens, in honor of the height of Midsummer, as I definitely associate this season with the Mermaids and the Sirens.   What is your favorite aspect of Sirens from Greek myth?   Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!      

Note on Image: The image at the top of the post is a painting of Greek Sirens as half-bird women by Waterhouse.   I found the image on https://www.audubon.org/news/sirens-greek-myth-were-bird-women-not-mermaids.  

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Further Reading/Watching

• Mythology by Edith Hamilton
• Bulfinch’s Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch
• The Odyssey by Homer
• https://www.theoi.com/Pontios/Seirenes.html
• https://youtu.be/y9k-0cgM3CE?si=s59cRYd4G7ZBsXKA (This is a Podcast on Hellenism and the Chthonic that does a great job explaining the Tomb Guardian aspect of Sirens!)