On the Hillside / Persephone's Sovereignty

[qos]

A couple of days ago, anax_anarkhos said something to me about my emergence from my grieving making me seem like "Persephone kissing the springtime." That image took my breath away -- and it was all the more startling because I've never identified with Persephone. Inanna emerging from the underworld, yes -- but never Persephone.

Except that Inanna hasn't 'been there' for me recently. I think she's waiting for me to grow back into her. She's so passionate. I think she's waiting for me to rediscover my passions before we start to working closely again. It's part of my need to be new. Persephone is definitely 'new' to me. . . In ways I never expected.

A couple of years ago, all adrift, I went into meditation to get a sense of where I was. I found myself in a wild wood, at night. I found a clearing, then set out a ring of small stones and sat down within it. I had a cauldron and a blade. I knew that I had to sit there until I found my answers.

Now when I go within I am standing naked on the top of a grassy hill. A pleasant breeze is blowing and I'm facing the early morning light -- about as classically "East" as one can get. Eventually I need to walk down the hill, to rejoin the living world, but for the moment I'm still in the borderland. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, but my skin still feels the heat of the underworld. It would be so easy to step back into the welcoming shadows. . . into the welcoming arms. . .

This is what I wrote during my afternoon break at work:

I've been thinking of Persephone a lot from my hilltop. . . Behind me, my passionate husband, bound to his place in the underworld. My heart is with him, but I can not live there all the time.

Not even if Zeus had not decreed it.
[A new thought there, and a radical one. . . What if Zeus's decree had been not to appease his siblings but because it truly was in the best interests of the girl?]

Before me, somewhere beyond the hills, is my mother. . . I've blamed her for trying to keep me a child -- but did I project my own fear onto her? It's easy to grow into a new person when you're in a new place, but harder to carry that newness back into the familiar places.
[Adria knew that, with the very air of her high school trying to press her back into her previous shape, her familiar roles. . .]

Blame Hades, blame Zeus, blame my mother. . . It leaves me the perpetual victim, always at the mercy of the will of others.

Hekate chuckles from her place under the apple tree. I hadn't seen her until this moment, but of course she is here at this crossroads.

"The rest of them are bound to their places," she tells me. "Only you are free to move. Only you have the full freedom of the crossroads. You are my heir-in-spirit, my god daughter."
[A gray, cloaked figure on the side of the bed in a little girl's dream. I am your mother she told me, and I cried back No, you're a witch!. I had the dream twice before I was five years old, vivid and terrifying. Never to be forgotten.]

Hekate gives me a key. "You control your own going out and coming in."

Inanna was stripped of her carefully-selected finery when she descended to the underworld, and we have no account of her picking any of it back up. I am naked on my hilltop. I must choose, choose deliberately and with full ownership of the consequences, what I will "put on" before I re-engage with society. What garb, what regalia, what roles and honors and secrets and silences will I wrap around me and use to adorn myself, to announce myself to the world and to others?

The choice is mine.

I have (almost) always seen Persephone as a victim.

Today, I experienced Persephone claiming her personal sovereignty.

Today I was affirmed as an initiate of the mystery of the sacred crossroads.

Comments

[wyldlingspirit.livejournal.com]

I've never really saw Persephone as a victim. Maybe she didn't initially choose to go with Hades (or maybe she did), but I wonder often if she chose to stay. The whole thing of not eating the food of faerieland/the underworld (or not speaking while there, or not looking back) is so basic. At least I see it that way. I think Persephone knew what she was doing when she ate of the pomegranate. She made the decision.

Also, the Persephone that anax_anarkhos met was certainly no victim. She was a woman who knew her own mind and her own power and wielded them with confidence.

Edit: Also, I frequently get various versions of Tam Lin stuck in my head and I blame you profusely.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

I deleted an initial paragraph relating my issues with Persephone to those I have with the Queen of Cups -- including their mutual resonance with my sister. It's gotten in the way. Add to that my primary non-mythic perception of Persephone has been through Jean Shinoda Bolen's characterization of her as one of the "vulnerable" goddesses, an eternal daughter. It's had a powerful impact.

Now I prefer interpretations that make her eating of the seeds fully volitional -- and I like the stories that have her running off with Hades like a prep school girl eloping with her leather-jacketed, motorcycle-riding boyfriend.

My experience of perceiving her transitioning from daughter to sovereign is exactly the transition I've been making in my own life over the past year or so.

The vision that A_A had continues to fill me with intense feelings of yearning.

As for Tam Lin. . . yes. :-)

[wyldlingspirit.livejournal.com]

I don't know if you like paranormal romance (my genre) but in Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dream Hunter readers get a modern spin on Hades and Persephone that I found highly amusing.

One of these days I'm going to write up my interpretation of Tam Lin in light of it being an early example of strong womanhood.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

I keep trying to read books like that, and occasionally I enjoy one, but most of the time I just get impatient. Alexis Morgan's "Dark Protector" was a notable exception, because the hero was *soooo* close to LM.

My favorite adaptation of Tam Lin is The Queen of Spells, by Dahlov Ipcar. (I can't stand Pamela Dean's.)

You might want to look up the "Balladry" website of tamnonlinear, a friend on QiA. It's a marvelous treasure house of Tam Lin lore of all kinds.

[wyldlingspirit.livejournal.com]

The Tam Lin Balladry site is where I get my fix. I'm trying to set Tam Lin to tin whistle and Celtic harp so that Allen and I can play a duet. (I'm sure someone already did. I just can't for the lives of me find it.)

[alfrecht.livejournal.com]

Gosh--are you ever fit for the role you'll be playing on Friday! ;)

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Yeah. . . It's always interesting when the pieces fall together like this.

Guess I pretty much have to show up now, don't I?

;-)

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Yeah. . . See my latest post (minutes ago) about how I've started taking the Kore-Ereshkigal thing a lot more to heart than I was a few months ago. . .

She is light

[purplevenus.livejournal.com]

She brings that light to Hades-if she were there forever, that light wouldn't shine.
This was lovely, thanks for sharing it.

Re: She is light

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

I knew you would be one of those to most appreciate this.
*smile

[makhsihed.livejournal.com]

Your post made me think of a song from Vixy & Tony's "Thirteen" album. It's called Persephone, and you can listen to a sample or buy just the song via the link. (I recommend their other stuff too!)

A good portion (though not all) of the lyrics:

You came to summer's daughter in the twilight of the day
You swept her off her feet and made to carry her away
And a wordless bargain sealed us, long before our tale was told
That whenever I should come to you be time of grief and cold
And it was capture of a kind, but it was never what they think
They all forget I had a choice, you know
I could have chosen not to eat or drink

And when you send me back to springtime, there is no one who will know
That a part of me remains with you beneath your frozen snow
For an ageless age ago, when there was no such thing as sin
When I pledged to love the darkness, I could see the light within
And they were grieved and shocked, those ancients, for they could not understand
How there could be such truth and joy
How lay such tenderness in such a heavy hand

And once you thought to turn me truly to your queen in more than name
When you saw you were succeeding, did you feel a pang of shame?
For the way you rule your kingdom makes me turn aside and weep
But you rouse in me desires that make me cry out in my sleep
Now even standing in the sunlight, there are shadows in my hair
I feel your cool hand on my throat, oh yes
No matter where I am, I feel you there . . .

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

This is *gorgeous*! Thank you so much!

I'm downloading the album from iTunes right now. . .

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

NEED!

[stiobhanrune.livejournal.com]

Ia, Ia, Evohe.

You and I should chat, sooner than later. You were in two of my dreams this week, both in an advisory/priestess/psychopomp capacity. And now, your journal ties into elements of what I dreamt.

It's very interesting, to say the least. *smiles*

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

I'd very much like to talk. :-)

I know I have your email address somewhere, but it's not in any of the programs I have open. I'll send you a PM through LJ.

[oakmouse]

Congratulations! *hugs* Personal email sooner or later (today is already shaping up to be a scrambled day).

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

I wear a necklace of garnets as regalia of this sort.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

Can I ask why garnets in particular?

Of course.

[shades-of-nyx.livejournal.com]

Garnets are etymolologically pomegranate seeds or vice versa.
So, they are the stone that goes with the myth of the eating of the food of the Underworld/Otherworld.
I always see the fruit on the Tree of Knowledge as pomegranate while the Tree of Life is usually drawn as a fig tree in older iconography. (Know one draws the Tree of Knowledge, but we Underworld Devotees know CHOSE to eat from it.)

Re: Of course.

[shadowandstar.livejournal.com]

That's wonderful information to have. Thank you!