In the more popular version, it is said that the God of the Underworld Hades, who is Demeter's brother, once saw Persephone and fell deeply in love with her. In order to win her over, Hades asked for help from his brother Zeus. Together they concocted a plan to trap Persephone. One day, "in the vale of Enna [where] there is a lake embowered in woods which screen it from the fervid rays of the sun, while the moist ground is covered with flowers, and Spring reigns perpetual," (see Works Cited) Persephone played with her companions. At a certain point, Persephone came across a 'cosmic flower' which, once she plucked it, the Earth opened beneath her and stole her into the Underworld. There, she became the wife of Hades and Queen of the Underworld. It is said that, "after much protest, Persephone came to love the cold blooded king of the underworld but her mother, Demeter, was consumed with rage and sorrow.
http://www.arthistory.sbc.edu/imageswomen/papers/paolicchidemeter/demeter.html
What Persephone comes to accept, and even to love, is that darkness is somehow necessary to the light, and that the light is somehow incomplete without the darkness; that there is ...no other heaven, if one cannot find heaven on earth, in the play between both light and shadow. Demeter is a goddess of Springtime, but does not understand or appreciate that the Winter is the very womb of Spring. Persephone, influenced by her mother, goes looking for an eternal Springitime, but in the meadow of eternal Spring, she is inevitably drawn into the contemplation of Winter; the death, decay, compost, and fertilizatio which precedes rebirth. Having allied herself to this wisdom (or having been allied to it, against her will), she now rules over the underworld.
She is a Chironic figure, actually; a wounded one, afflicted by her exposure to both light and dark, and whose ambivalence, or constant attempt to harmonize the two, allows her to become a bridge between the two worlds. While Pluto knows very little about the light, Demeter knows almost nothing about the dark, and Persephone is the simultaneously the strife which separates them, and the common factor, which unites them. They are thesis and antithesis; but she is higher synthesis.
I wonder... does light burn in darkness, only in darkness; is darkness the fuel? There is no fire without some branch, or other matter, on which it may feed. What is the light of a fire, if not a side-effect of the transmutation of dense matter into finer, lighter, more airy forms?... "smoke gets in your eyes"... But if the flames are the workings of desire... then is light only a shadow-show of desire... Then what is left when the world is consumed in flames, and the flames die for lack of fuel... after the light has been extinguished, and the smoke has cleared... what shall we discover in the emptiness... is it God?
And does the flame require fanning.. or is it always burning, since the world's been turning (like Billy Joel says)?... perhaps one must learn how to burn... and how to lose oneself on a plume of smoke... what is below is diminished, or, ra...ther, not diminished, yet it does not remain below, and so our thoughts must not remain below, but learn to rise, out of desire, but beyond desire, and we must learn to become entirely thought, -- spirit not body.
My day-dreams, as I spin them, become so fine, that the fibers must be taken up by astral fingers, and so I fall asleep beneath this tree, where my waking visions may pass into actual dreams, and I may, with subconscious deliberations, comprehend matters which, to my conscious mind, must forever remain obscure.
It is an interesting thought... God is light and dark...but He is FOR the light, and all darkness is for light. All obstacles are fuel. Therefore he is for the darkness, as well as the light -- inasmuch as darkness is for the light "for we can do nothing against the truth but for the truth" ((or are these the ramblings of a madman?)) We think of darkness as something which counters light... but perhaps darkness is that which calls for more light... it is beyond time, beyond words or ideas, beyond duality.. and, yet,.. i do not want to grasp it in the static stillness of nothing; of total collapse... i want to see it dance, to make it dance, to enchant it with song or be enchanted by it.. i want to be the piper.. the mad piper,.. who plays the dance into being, and joins the dance. Of course, mine is not the kind of pipe one blows into... but the kind one inhales from.. still, the music can be sweet :/
Someone asked me, "So do you think Persephone really grew to love Hades? Or was it more of a Stockholm Syndrome type thing?"
Isn't this the ultimate question, again, under another form? Why do we embrace evil? Why do we love our enemies? Is it because we have to? Because they are here, and love is the only worthy response? Or is there something about evil? Oh, I don't mean that it is merely seductive. We are not talking about how a soul might be tempted and lured into becoming a slave to Pluto. We are talking about something else entirely. The Queen of the Underworld, who has sovereignty even in the dark places; she has made peace with evil, become intimate with it, and somehow managed to retain her autonomy, and share rulership over the realm of the dead. So, what has she discovered? Is there something good about evil? Does love perhaps reach its fullest expression only when it is showered upon the lowliest object in the world?
I think the lesson concerns subtlety, and how easy it can be to mistake good for evil, and evil for good. Much that is evil is misunderstood, rejected, hurt. There is power in making use of what others dismiss as evil. Also, it is about flexibility. If virtue is too rigid, it will snap. One cannot be virginal in the world. One has somehow to be immune, and to let the world pass through oneself. To resist nothing, and to retain nothing. To go beyond good and evil, to where there is only God. http://scottfoglesong.printandwebdesign.com/04-deer.pdf
Medusa
Someone asked me, "What was up with all the Greek gods kidnapping and forcing women and goddesses to marry or have sex with them? They're gods, so cant they just seduce them? Why the kidnapping and rape?" I told her about the theory of hybrid mythologies. Basically, the invading culture co-opted the gods of the cultures they were invading. Many of the cultures which perished, or were assimilated. Many of the goddesses were adapted from these cultures, some of them purely goddess-worshipping cultures. As a show of dominance, and to symbolize their overthrow of these cultures, the goddesses and holy women in the legends were raped and made subservient to the gods. See: http://uranianheart.blogspot.com/2011/02/hybrid-mythologies.html
However, it is still possible to reinterpret the myths, in order to put them to higher use. Even if our interpretations were not intended by the authors, they may still be intended by the Creator. For instance, the story of Medusa sounds particularly dreary, but we may interpret it as something altogether more enlightening. The story was told to me: "Medusa was a priestess of Athenas temple. Preistesses of Athena had to be virgins. She was also very beautiful and caught the eye of Poseidon. He tried to seduce her and she refused, so he raped her. No longer being a virgin, and having had sex in Athenas temple, Athena cursed her to be the medusa, turning her beautiful hair to snakes and forcing her to live alone. And then she gets beheaded and her head is brought to Athena." It could mean many things, or the meaning could be lost in a massive tangle of meanings. But, regardless of what has been, let's try to see what we can make out in the here and now. Let's say that the Virgin is Virgo and Poseidon is Pisces. Surely, the watery nature of Pisces always seeps though, and "impregnates" the Virgin, whether it is forcefully or by immaculate consent. Things are not always as they appear. Snakes may represent many things. Perhaps what she found was integration with her animal nature; not a negative thing, but something which nevertheless made her an outcast, or a loner. Losing one's head can be a symbol of the death of the ego, or the thinking self; an enlightenment experience; an experience which brings one back to god; or, in this case, Athena.
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