t. The image of god as outside of nature has given as a rationale for our own destruction of the natural order and justified our plunder of the earth's resources (Starhawk 1979, p.10). A Goddess, who is immanent with nature, fosters respect for the sacredness for all living things. Goddess does not rule the earth; she is the world (Starhawk 1979, p.9). Witchcraft is a religion of ecology. Its goal is harmony with nature, so that life may not just survive, but thrive (Starhawk 1979, p.10). "Witchcraft takes its teaching from nature, reads inspiration in the movement of the sun the moon, and the stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of the trees, and the cycles of the seasons" (Starhawk 1979, p.3). The Demeter and the Inanna myths help us to recognize the importance of ecological balance and the interdependence of all life. The myth of Demeter and Persephone was associated with the cycle of vegetal life, human fear of death, the hope for immortality, and the valuing of mother to daughter relations. Demeter is the grain mother, the giver of crops; her daughter Persephone is the grain maiden, who embodies the new crops. Demeter stooped doing her job as the goddess of cultivated grain. The barrenness of the earth threatens to extinguish all life and, the gods Zeus and Hades were forced to bow to her power and autonomy. They returned Kore to her but had to use trickery to call her back to the underworld for half the year, without her Hades might not have been able to rule and to assure the cycle of seasons. Demeter is not the supreme mistress over life and death because she can not save her daughter by her self. Demeter-Persephone myth is more complex then the yearly withering of vegetation. Fertility disappears after Demeter wanders among people and withdraws to her temple and not with the capture of Kore. The Demeter Persephone myth teaches us that matricide, genocide, and goddess murder produce a wasteland. The myth makes Demeter res...
