In Arcadia Demeter was worshipped alongside her daughter Despoina, making Despoina likely another name for Persephone or another incarnation of the goddess, as Persephone is also referred to as Kore at times, which means “girl” or “maiden” in Greek. It has been suggested that Kore represents the goddess of spring prior to her abduction, while Persephone is used to describe her only as Hades’s bride. Ancient texts are not consistent in the use of these two names, however, and it seems more likely that the worship of Demeter and her daughter Kore merged at some point with the pre-Greek cultus of Persephone, perhaps because the two goddesses had similar stories and functions.
Persephone’s abduction by Hades has several versions and is mentioned by Hesiod in the Theogony and in detail in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Zeus, her father, is a conspirator in her abduction: in the Hymn the king of the gods permits Hades to carry the young goddess off to his realm, perhaps fearing the overprotective Demeter would never let the girl marry. Hermes and Apollo both had courted Persephone, and Demeter had deemed both unworthy of her daughter and took her far from the other gods, presumably to keep her daughter safe. Persephone is picking flowers with her companions when Hades bursts through a cleft in the earth and takes her in his chariot to the underworld.
The ancient stories refer to the encounter as a rape and abduction, but this is only one way of viewing the story. At first glance Persephone seems like a victim of her circumstances and the power games of her godly parents. Neither Zeus nor Demeter take into account what the young goddess wants for her life. It would appear that Persephone’s ability to choose is taken away, yet in my opinion her story has everything to do with choice. Like any myth, there are many ways to look at it, and any point of view has merit and meaning one can take from it. Sometimes we can’t control what life throws at us or the deceptions of others, but how we choose to react to these challenges is vitally important.
Demeter mourned the loss of her daughter and searched for her all over the earth with Hekate’s torches. Demeter demands Zeus have her daughter returned and relinquishes her blessing on the land, making it barren. Eventually, Zeus sends Hermes to Hades to demand the goddess be released to appease her mother, but before she leaves, Persephone eats a handful of pomegranate seeds. In the Hymn to Demeter Hades tells her she may return to her mother but that if she remains his wife, she will not only be a queen but become powerful among the gods: “I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to father Zeus. And while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished for evermore.” At these words, “wise Persephone was filled with joy and hastily sprang up for gladness.” As a kind of insurance policy, Hades also “secretly gave her sweet pomegranate seed to eat, taking care for himself that she might not remain continually with grave, dark-robed Demeter.” 50
Hades knows that anyone who eats the food of the underworld may not leave it, and the other gods cannot deny his claim that Persephone must dwell in Hades’s realm for part of the year having eaten its food. While Persephone dwells in the world above, there is spring and summer, and when she returns to Hades in mourning, Demeter again takes back her blessings on the land, causing winter.
When Persephone returns to her mother, Demeter questions her, expecting to hear about the other gods’ deceit. She tells her mother that Hades forced her to eat the seeds. But I wonder if that is true. Does Hades ensure his wife’s return by force? Or does she willingly eat the seeds, choosing to claim the power he speaks of? In many ways, she is choosing to make the best of a bad situation. She chooses in that moment to forge her own path, to take power over something that could have broken her. To not let her mother or Zeus choose for her. She enters the underworld a naive girl and leaves it as its queen.
At first glance this story gives us an explanation for summer and winter, but the cycle of the seasons is just one layer of the story. Persephone’s story is perhaps the more quintessential story of the journey through the underworld. Like the reluctant hero, she is abducted, forced to travel to the underworld without having a choice. And in one of prime examples of the descent, she is forced to give us something by visiting the underworld: her innocence. Her mother’s sorrow leads to a bargain, and she is able to return every half year.
Persephone’s myth is not only an explanation for the cycle of the year, but also the cycles of our own lives and how we move through change. While there are at times big traumatic events, like her abduction, that shape us, we are constantly moving through change and transformation. It’s an unending cycle. The person we were five, ten years ago is not the same person we are now. Persephone’s willingness to return to the underworld and then to the world of the living shows that she knows she must work through times of change and undergo the mysteries of the underworld at periods of time. If she does not, then she cannot grow. She cannot enjoy the world above to its fullest. She also enters the underworld as an initiate of their mysteries. She wears its crown on her head and is no longer the scared maiden. Once we have been dragged through the underworld kicking and screaming ourselves, it becomes easier to undergo the process in the future. We can accept change more readily; we know that we are strong because our mettle has already been tested. And we know the price. It is no longer the unknown to us. We know there are pain and difficulties, but we have walked the path before and we know we do not have to fear if we can weather the storm. We know there are rewards at the hard-fought end of our path.
Persephone embodies true ownership of self. She goes from someone who lets others make choices for her to the queen of her own domain and her own skin. She accepts change and sees that the months where the earth is fallow and bare are needed. Without those times, we cannot appreciate the spring or the fruitful seasons. There is also a burden attached to always being in full bloom. We get burnt out and need time to rest and to go within as Persephone does.
Devotional Work and Offerings for Persephone
Call on Persephone when you feel others are suppressing your ability to make your own choices and at times when you know you need to rediscover your inner self. Persephone’s lessons are all about choice, both when our choices are taken from us and the moments when we take our power back from others and choose to change our stories. By all accounts, Persephone is loved by those she rules over. The choice of becoming Hades’s wife was not her own, but as his queen she is an equal in power and a gatekeeper of the underworld in her own right.
She gives her favor to Heracles when he journeys to the underworld to capture Cerberus to complete his twelve labors. It is Persephone, enthroned beside her husband, who allows Orpheus the chance to retrieve his love Eurydice from the underworld. We tend to think of Persephone in terms of the young girl that gets carried away, as the maiden, and all the potential of spring, but that is only Persephone at the beginning of her story, not who she becomes at its end. When I work with Persephone, I do not feel the scared girl. She is all iron. She has a gentleness to her, but she is no less a queen. She sits upon her throne and rules with Hades at her side, owning her own path. She is no less the goddess of spring, but there is strength there that is not the maiden’s. It is the feeling of someone who has earned their power and has come into their own. As queen of the underworld, Persephone holds dominion over choice, she becomes a gatekeeper to others, reminding us that while we can’t always control our situations, we can choose whether to let those situations break us or transform them into something powerful.
Appropriate offerings for Persephone include flowers and pomegranates. A bouquet in a small vase on her altar is a simple but beautiful offering. As she is also the queen of the underworld, I like to use the dried flowers from her altar and add them to incense created in her honor. Once the flowers you have left for her have wilted, they can be hun
g outside or in a dark closet to dry. Once they are completely dried, they can be crushed and added to incense or magickal workings involving her. Honey or mead (honey wine) is also a good offering. Seeds, as a representation of potential and springtime, can also be used as offerings. If you are planning on planting a garden in the springtime, leaving the packets of seeds you intend to use on her altar until you are ready to plant is a nice way to add her blessings to a garden and honor her through your cultivation of the land.
Invocation to Persephone
Persephone
Maiden of spring
Iron-crowned queen
You rule over your own heart
You walk into the darkness of Hades
Your light never wavers
Your beauty shines even more brightly among the shades
And when you return with spring
You return with wisdom from the dark
Be with me now, mighty queen!
Ritual to Persephone to Forge a New Path
You Will Need:
Pomegranate
Black candle
If you cannot find a whole pomegranate, the seeds that are often sold separately in the health food aisle will do. Pomegranate juice can be a substituted offering as well. Light the candle and invoke Persephone in whatever manner you choose. When you feel her presence, say,
Persephone
You who ate the pomegranate
Seeds that won you a crown
Won you independence
Persephone
I take the course of my life in my own hands
I willingly walk unknown paths
Guide me as Hekate guides you through the dark
That I may rule my own path
Persephone
Iron-crowned queen
Help me in this task
See the task before you. Maybe it’s claiming your independence, getting a new job, starting out on something new in life. Ask Persephone for her aid in helping you accomplish the task. When you are done, eat some of the pomegranate seeds and leave the rest as an offering to Persephone.
Persephone Spell of Fruition
You can use this to ask for Persephone’s blessing in a literal garden, to enrich the soil and ask for the plants to grow healthy, or in the less literal sense for the fruition of a project.
You Will Need:
Seeds
Red wine
Pomegranate
This spell can be used to bless seeds you are planning on planting or a garden with plants already growing in it. If you are blessing seeds, have them on your altar when you begin. If you are asking for a healthy garden, you can do this outside. Invoke Persephone and pour the wine on the ground near the center of the garden as an offering to her. Take the pomegranate and cut it in half, saying,
Lady of Spring
You who ruled the fertility of the soil
Whose touch brings forth flowers and grain
Persephone, bless the work I do
Let it bloom to fruition
Bury the pomegranate in the ground. Visualize the garden and plants growing healthy and full.
If the spell is for a project, do the same in front of your altar or in an outdoor place. Pour the wine in an offerings bowl instead, and bury the pomegranate in the ground near your home.
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47. Walter Burkert, Greek Religion, trans. John Raffan (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 42.
48. Pausanias, Description of Greece, vol. 4, trans. William Henry Samuel Jones and Henry Arderne Ormerod (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1918), p. 25.
49. Burkert, Greek Religion, p. 280.
50. Evelyn-White, Homeric Hymns and Homerica, lines 360–74.
Conclusion: Walking the Path
It is twilight and the sun is just beginning to set as you walk through a mist-covered wood. The path is old and worn and is familiar to you somewhat, as is this place. In some spots the mist clears and you can see farther ahead. There are some nooks and meadows that seem inviting and comfortable, while other areas are riddled with thorns that frighten you. As you walk the path, the mist clears and you see the entrance to a cave.
The cave’s mouth is large and cavernous, with jagged rocks. You can see that the path continues straight into that gaping black maw. Take a moment to really look at the cave. Reach out a hand and feel the stone. Is it rough or smooth? Cold or warm? You look into the darkness within and can just make out steps carved into the rock before they get swallowed up into utter darkness. That darkness scares you. You don’t know where the path through this cave will lead or what else may be within it. Do you continue on into the dark? There is no way to go around the cave. You could go back, you tell yourself, in the other direction. That path is familiar, comfortable if not unpleasant at times. But part of you knows there is no going back.
Then something moves in the darkness of the cave, and you take a terrified step backward, your heart racing. It is almost like all the darkness within the cave’s maw is moving and condensing into a silhouette before the entrance. And soon the swirling darkness forms the figure of a woman. She is tall and regal, her skin, hair, and clothes all the color of the cave’s blackness, as if she is nothing more than wisps of shadow woven together. The only thing that is not the color of shadows is a mask that she wears. It is pale white and almost looks like it is carved out of bone. The mask’s face is blank and expressionless, and you wonder what the woman looks like underneath. The goddess moves like dark water, fluid like sooty smoke. And she reaches a hand toward you, but you are still too afraid to take it. You know this is the dark goddess, the goddess of the underworld, the one who rules nightmares and battles, who reigns queen over the spirits of the dead. She is beautiful, but all she represents terrifies you.
She extends her hand farther, and you wonder if she will grasp your hands and pull you down into the depths of the cave, willing or not, if you do not do what she wants.
“I am very patient,” she says. “It is you who have come to my doorstep, whether you realize it or not. It is time, child. There can be no more waiting. No more stalling. Your path has led you here, to me, to the challenges you must face to become whole.”
You look into the cave again and at the goddess, who is more than willing to guide you down, down into those depths, and the fear begins to well up inside you. You have been avoiding this place for a long time. You could have come here before, started this journey sooner, but you chose not to. Your heart races and the fear builds almost to the point that you think about turning and running. But the dark goddess shakes her head slowly, and she reaches out and grasps your hand. But it is not in anger as you had imagined. Instead it is a firm but gentle touch, and the touch of her warm skin eases the fear and calms you. She may be made of shadows, but her presence is towering and feels as solid and unmovable as granite.
“You do not fear me. What you fear is yourself. The monster that hides in the dark is nothing more than your own shadow. What does not conform or bend, what is in you that does not question—that is what lurks in the shadows. Your fearless, daring self. What rages and wails, what shines brightest, what hopes. This is what is locked away in the depths of that cave. Not the demons you imagine. Your sharp edges have been blunted, you have become complacent, handing your power to others, forgetting who you truly are.”
Unsure where you find the bravery to do so, you reach up and touch the mask. The goddess stands close now, her face only inches from your own. And you pull the mask off and see your own face looking back at you.
The goddess smiles at you with your own face. “I will not promise you that the journey will be easy,” she tells you, “But I will promise that I will be with you, I will be at your side through every step in the dark, and we will learn together who you will become.” And with that the goddess dissolves back into the darkne
ss of the cave.
You take one last look at the sun as it slips below the horizon, and with a deep breath you take the first step into the darkness. Each step brings you deeper and deeper into the earth. Deeper and deeper within your own darkness. And they seem like one and the same. You know as you descend into the darkness and feel the cold stone walls that surround you with outstretched hands that this is the same underworld that others have braved. And yet there is something personal about it as well. Your own demons live here too. Your own shadow roams these caverns. Part of you has always dwelt here and always will.
After some time, you take a moment to look back toward the entrance and realize the light that you thought might still be a distant, reassuring pinprick is gone. There is nothing but blackness behind you and nothing but hungry blackness before you. For the first time your steps falter just a little bit. A sudden fear surrounds you and begins to work its way up to your heart. You are truly alone. There is no way out but forward. Any illusions that you could go back have vanished with that light.
The fear within you rises even more when you hear something in the dark. You have stopped moving for the moment, and without your own footfalls echoing through the cave, you now hear someone else’s. They are slow, heavy footfalls, but they are definitely coming toward you. Whatever it is, it’s coming closer with every heartbeat, and still you cannot see what it is. The fear inside you builds to a panic, and, slightly ashamed of yourself, you turn to run back to the cave’s entrance. Only, when you turn, the tunnel you just came from is gone. Desperately, you feel with your hands in the dark and realize there is a solid wall behind you now, although you were sure it was not there a moment ago.
Then there is a shift in the darkness. It is not the light of an entrance but instead the flowing, moving darkness of the goddess you met at the cave’s mouth. She looks at you, her features a woman’s, but the skin is dark and seems to move, like it is made of the night sky filled with stars, somehow bent and formed into the shape of a woman.
Dark Goddess Craft Page 19
