The Journeying of Persephone
Healing wisdom for navigating new paradigms and swift change
Persephone, artwork by Miriam Sanders
As we enter Scorpio season, we are opened up to an archetype closely associated with death and regeneration. Ruled by Pluto (the Roman version of Greek Hades, god of the underworld), Scorpio heralds the moment in the year where life force begins to retreat underground, where what was once flourishing in the open now pulls inward, downward, rots and disappears. This is a time for shedding skins, for surrendering completely to transformations, for gazing into our shadows, for facing fear and darkness and finding truth and freedom there. And yet, within the deep places into which Scorpio invites us, we are buoyed by the remembrance of life to come. We survive our transformations because of the knowledge that we will be born afresh, that there is always another life.
On the wheel of the zodiac, Scorpio's opposite is Taurus. Taurus reigns over the realm of the living, the experience of the physical senses, of solid earthly presence. She is the regal spring goddess. The relationship between Scorpio and Taurus reflects the interrelationship between an inseparable duality. Winter and Summer, Death and Life. Two sides of the same coin; neither can exist without the other, and both are made meaningful through the other’s existence.
The Rape of Europa (1910), Valentin Serov
Who is Perspehone? What does she embody?
The story of the eternal pulse of life and death is told through the myth of Persephone, her marriage to Hades, and her bi-annual travels between the land of the living and the land of the dead.
I think there are endless ways to interpret who Persephone is, how this archetype reveals itself. An evocative expression of Persephone’s archetype is that of the edge-walker: the priestess, the one who walks between worlds, who has the wisdom and the esteem of both the conscious and the unconscious, of both Life and Death.
When the Underworld first takes hold of you - innocent, autonomous, unburdened, unmarked as you are - what confusion! What horror! And yet … there can be no fighting the gods.
Is this the story of an awakening? Of the spontaneous rising up of the dark subconscious? Is this myth a metaphor for the reckoning of a youthful spirit with its inner shadow? Is it a story of the inescapability of grief - or the inevitability of transformation? Is it about the everlasting effects of death - how we are forever changed by it? Or is it a nature story, about the inter-relationship of Living and Dying?
Persephone’s journey into the Underworld begins with a violence. Hades notices Persephone picking flowers in her mother’s fields and instantly falls in love with her. He decides she would be his queen, and promptly abducts her and brings her - without invitation - to his realm: the Land of the Dead. Here she reigns as Queen Steward of the Land of the Dead; but only for half the year. The abduction of Persephone sends her mother, Demeter, goddess of the Harvest and the bounty of fertile fields, into an endless grief. All that once nourished the beings of the earth shrivels, hardens, becomes barren. Nothing grows, Death consumes the lands of the Living. In an attempt to re-instate balance, the gods gather and strike a bargain with Hades, to allow his new wife to visit her mother’s realm so that the living world may once again be relieved and nourished. Persephone is thus made The Traveler, spending half the year underground with Hades, and the other half aboveground with Demeter.
Persephone’s “abduction” is intentionally forceful. The gods are not humans. The gods are forces of nature, they are tangible and intangible PLACES, states of existence. Hades’ action is the interruption of Death. Ever-present, quiet until it comes for us, Death is fate. It is transformation from one state to another state. Death re-moulds us, it takes us from ourselves, from our familiar fields, from that which is stable and comfortable. It forces us into new forms.
When Death comes, we are given the option to fight and struggle in its inevitable grip, or we can surrender to the un-becoming, and accept a new set of laws and possibilities. The surrendering of Persephone to Hades is the performance of this sacred letting go.
To be transformed; to let a part of yourself die and become something else; to live the in-between, to recognise cycles and transitions as inevitable; to literally become this liminality; to embody it within oneself…
Persephone’s Ascent, artwork by Cate Simmons
Persephone’s annual travels to and from the Underworld and the Overworld sweep us into her wake so that we can know loss, fear, death, and then know what it is to re-discover growth, expansion, warmth, delight, and play.
Despite her marriage to Hades, Persephone never stops being the Kore, the Maiden. Her autonomy is contained in her ability to move between two realms, and in her acceptance of her own fate. When we go through momentous change, we often feel in the moment like we are the victims of something greater than us, victims to fate, victims to misfortune. But can we re-discover our autonomy amidst the forces of fate? Can we reinstate our personal power even when we are being sculpted by change? Can we find freedom after being bound forever to a deeper, more complex understanding?
When our innocence is taken from us, and replaced with wisdom, are we not more empowered?
When we are brought into union with something greater than we could have imagined, are we not emboldened?
Are we not strengthened?
