scooping stars © erin faith allen
Today as the rain falls in Northern California, I am bundled up under lots of layers and conjuring up the myth of Persephone, ancient queen of the Underworld. Persephone was the overly sheltered offspring of Demeter and Zeus. One day, while frolicking in flowery fields with the nymphs, she was quite suddenly kidnapped by Hades, fierce god of the Underworld, and kept in his lair. After much hullabaloo on the part of her mother, who rallied all the other gods and goddesses against Hades, Persephone was freed. However, prior to her release, crafty Hades tricked her into eating magic pomegranate seeds which forced her return to the Underworld for a season each year, where she ruled with him as half-prisoner, half-Queen. And so the seasons were born. Winter marks Persephone’s descent into the Underworld, with the shortening of days and the death of vegetation. She then rises to the Upperworld in the spring, and the earth celebrates. Blooms abound and the sun extends it’s daily romp in the sky. (For a thorough description of the myth go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persephone).
brightness to black © erin faith allen
My love affair with Persephone is not just about the surface story of her seduction into the darkness by the clever Hades. She comes to life when I dive beneath that, in typical Persephonic fashion, to the energy and symbolism, to the guidance and illumination of this Underworld Queen. Persephone teaches me about duality, transition, surrender, and holding space for myself even when blinded by my own darkness, or stumbling about in a subconscious maze of self-sabotauge. She models authenticity, courage, and reminds me of my sensual and creative energies.
symbiosis © erin faith allen
I understand the universality of her fragility, and that it is precisely her delicacy which is her power. If there is a world between the Underworld and the Upperworld, this is it: the landscape of vulnerability that sits in the transition. Skillfully navigating this transition is the jewel in her crown. It is what the archetype of Persephone herself embodies as she glistens and glides from world to world. Opera with the angels or bellows with the beasts of hell, she does not identify solely with either end of the spectrum because she has integrated the opposites within her. She does not know blindness in darkness. She does not know deafness in thunder.
In my minds eye, she is a shimmering slither of a shadow, a lithe and nimble shape-shifter of grace, dignity, and authority. I see a woman-child with soft budding breasts made of blossom, and tendrils of hissing shadow crowning her head. I hear a cackle and a giggle, I feel her vulnerability and her strength, and in my veins I carry the pulse of Persephone who chose to rise above victim status in order to gain her crown as Queen.
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