Thursday, December 11, 2008
Persephone Again
Everyone wants to talk
about Persephone.
Especially the poets.
How she was grabbed
and carried off,
how she was kept in darkness
so many months,
while her mother searched everywhere,
waited for her darling
to come home.
Some say
the daughter
liked what had happened
(you know the story,
how women really want it
even when they say no),
others claim it is in fact
the mother who is at fault,
that it is she
who drove her daughter
away, forced her to
leave home and
flee into that hidden world,
because of her own impossible
demands.
And then of course
there are those
who read it as a simple
nature myth--nine months
of fertility and sun,
three of winter and death
over the land.
What do I think?
I think she is the soul
of each of us,
going down to obscurity,
resurrecting like a flower
over and over
as the seasons return.
Dorothy Walters
December 10, 2008
Persephone's story appears in Greek myth in various versions. Essentially, it is told as the experience of a young girl (daughter of Demeter) who was abducted by Hades, King of the Underworld, as she was out picking flowers. Ultimately she was allowed to return to the world above, but, since she had eaten a pomegranate seed while she was captive, she was forced to return to Hades for three months each year (winter) and then allowed to ascend back to earth and her mother for nine months (spring and summer). Thus she represents fertility and renewal. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, her story became the central myth of the death and rebirth of the spirit. These Mystery celebrations can be seen as a forerunner of the Christian and other celebrations of the death and renewal of the psyche.
In a strange way, these themes can also be connected to what happens with kundalini and other profound spiritual transformations. The "old self" disappears and a "new self" is born. Thus one is in fact "born again" in a particularly meaningful way.
