ce was the "matriarchal view" of religion, built around a cult of Demeter, the goddess of the fecund earth. Anchored by naturally occurring agricultural cycles and flourishing before and through the Golden Age of Greece, the cult had been completely overtaken by Christianity by the fifth century A.D. As Ochs points out, however, the agricultural anchor was only a part of the Mysteries, which she says equally and in fact more concerned the psychology of life and death, the experience of order and chaos in life by virtue of the expectation or fear of death. A search for immortality after one's death, either through one's children or in the sense of spiritual immortality through one's ideas or example, thus becomes an aspect of one's life. This, says Ochs, is the real meaning of the cycle of rebirth of Persephone by means of Demeter's best efforts.
On this view, the agricultural motif is incidental, and the notion of the worship of a goddess achieves moral stature that is roughly equivalent to the worship of a god. In this regard, Christ as
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