the good cup

Then Metaneira offered her a cup filled with honeyed wine but she refused it, for she said it was not lawful for her to drink red wine, but bade them to mix some barley and water and give her the mixture to drink with delicate pennyroyal. So she prepared and gave the goddess the kykeôn as she bade. And the great queen Deo received it for the sake of the rites. (Homeric Hymn to Demeter 206-211)

According to Wikipedia Mentha pulegium, the plant commonly known as pennyroyal, is used:

to make herbal teas, which are reputed as safe to ingest in restricted quantities. It has been traditionally employed and reportedly successful as an emmenagogue (menstrual flow stimulant) or as an abortifacient. Pennyroyal is also used to settle an upset stomach and to relieve flatulence. The fresh or dried leaves of pennyroyal have also been used when treating colds, influenza, abdominal cramps, and to induce sweating, as well as in the treatment of diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis, and in promoting latent menstruation. Pennyroyal leaves, both fresh and dried, are especially noted for repelling insects

A large portion of Kurt Cobain’s life was spent in intense physical pain due to an undiagnosed chronic stomach condition. When Nirvana hit it big the rigors of touring exacerbated the problem and he turned to heroin and other drugs to numb the pain, though with little effect. The stress of the rock star life coupled with his condition plunged Cobain into a deep depression. You can see some of that in an interview he did with MTV’s Kurt Loder. In the middle of it he suddenly excuses himself to use the restroom and as he’s leaving the set his band-mates start ragging on him. In 1990 he penned the song “Pennyroyal Tea.”

In an interview in the October 1993 issue of Impact, Cobain gave greater insight into the song, saying that it was about a person suffering from severe depression:

“When I ask Cobain if ‘Penny Royal Tea’ is about indigestion, he half-laughs. ‘Penny royal tea is a herbal abortive,’ he says. ‘I threw that in because I have so many friends who have tried to use that, and it never worked. The song is about a person who’s beyond depressed; they’re in their death bed, pretty much.’ Cobain’s own bout with serious stomach pain was well documented last year. ‘Yeah, it did rub off on the song,’ he admits.

After another failed attempt to kick his drug addictions Kurt Cobain took his life on April 5, 1994.

Because I’ve been dealing with some pretty bad stomach problems of my own the last couple weeks I’ve been listening to this song a lot.

On April 12th we’ll be observing Anthesphoria in the thiasos of the Starry Bull, a flower-gathering festival of Sicily and Southern Italy that commemorates the abduction of Demeter’s Girl by Aidoneus. None of the sources that have come down to us concerning this festival provide a date so I went with April 12th as that was the start of the ludi scaenici or theatrical performance portion of the Cerealia, which ran from the 12th to the 18th in Rome.

In the Fasti Ovid retells the myth with lovely words such as these:

Ceres was startled by their grief (she’d just now come from Enna),
and cried instantly ‘Ah me! Daughter, where are you?’
She rushed about, distracted, as we’ve heard
the Thracian Maenads run with flowing hair.
As a cow bellows, when her calf’s torn from her udder,
and goes searching for her child, through the woods,
so the goddess groaned freely, and ran quickly,
as she made her way, Enna, from your plains.

I am also partial to Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae.

Although both Sicily and Eleusis observed an anodos of Kore, at Lokroi the Mother’s frantic search was in vain. There would be no happy reunion. Persephone remains forever below, bride and queen of death.

My Lady, I pray that you give Kurt a good cup to drink from, the cup of nepenthes and that you remember your initiates when it’s time for us to join you below.