[aras-image:3Jc.004,,8,,,Figure 6 Demeter and Kore.]

In her discussion of the Demeter-Kore myths she finds that these have "particular importance to women, uniting the feminine generations. The psychological effect of participating in the Eleusian mysteries, suggests Carl Jung, is to 'extend feminine consciousness...An experience of this kind gives the individual a place and meaning in the life of the generations, so that all unnecessary obstacles are cleared out of the way of the life-stream that is to flow through her. At the same time the individual is rescued from her isolation and restored to wholeness. All ritual preoccupation with archetypes ultimately has this aim and result.'"¹⁵ Then Pratt says: "When we add to all this the fact that feminine archetypes of selfhood have been lost from culture and even consciousness for hundreds of years, we can understand why images and symbols appear as fragments in women's fiction, encoded indices of a forgotten language, barely decipherable hieroglyphs."¹⁶