Hymn to Persephone

What if no soul on earth is allowed to remain innocent forever?
What if all souls on earth will be broken ? Open…
What if we all walk dead,
but the time of Return is coming?
What if incubation can only occur in darkness?
What if hope and new life that truly endure
are not born from airy happiness,
but from black dirt grief?
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
from the foreward to
Art and Upheaval

42



IV: RETURN
Hermes was not inattentive: he left
the seat of Olympus and plunged right down
into the depths of the earth.

And there he met the king
inside his house
sitting on a couch
next to his venerable wife.

44



“Hades,
in your dark hair,
king over the dead,

father Zeus
ordered me
to bring back
the beautiful Persephone
away from Erebos
and up with the gods
so that her mother,
seeing her with her own eyes
would stop her anger.”
King Aidoneus
of the underworld
smiled grimly
and did not disobey
the commands
of King Zeus.
Immediately
he told
the thoughtful Persephone:

46

Go on, Persephone,
back to your mother
in her black veil,
go with a kind heart.
Do not despair
too much.
It is useless.

As a husband
I will not be unworthy of you

among the gods….
When you’re here,
You will reign
over everyone who lives and moves,
and you will have
the greatest honors
among the gods.
So he spoke.
And the prudent Persephone
rejoiced and jumped up
quickly with joy.
Homeric Hymns

Then he (Hades) paused, holding his palm out to his wife. “You
must eat these pomegranate seeds before you go.”
Persephone furrowed her brow and looked directly into Hades’ red
eyes. “If I eat these seeds,” she said, “I will be bound to return to
this place.”
Hades smiled. “You are right, my wise wife,” he replied. “If you eat
these six seeds, you must return to me for six months every year.
The rest of the year, you will be free to bless the crops with your
mother.”
Persephone considered Hades’ offer. Glee spread through her body
as she thought about seeing her mother again. If she ate the seeds,
she could also continue to rule over the dead, who needed a queen.
Persephone nodded and swallowed the seeds.
Anonymous

48



The pomegranate is the fruit of Persephone, or at least half of
it is. The other half belongs to Hades — the pomegranate is a
fruit neither of death nor life, but the inseparability of the two.
Anonymous

50



The duality of Persephone: In the cult of the queen of the dead, to
whom the dying repair at all seasons, the underworld can scarcely
have remained without a queen for (part) of the year. Could travel-
ers to the underworld have found the queen’s throne empty…such
an idea was unthinkable. But the return of the goddess from the
subterranean realm had assuredly been required…. Thus her per-
son seems always to have admitted of a duplication.
Anonymous

52



On the quantum level, reality is strange and non-local: the whole
universe is a network of time-and-space-transcending interconnec-
tion….
…each single quantum is both “here” and “there”— and in a sense
it is everywhere in space-time.
Ervin Lazlo
Science and the
Akashic Field: An Integral
Theory of Everything

The true shape of life extends through both spheres ...there is nei-
ther a here nor a hereafter, but a vast oneness....
Ranier Maria Rilke
from a letter to Withhold
von Hulewicz

54



Hades harnessed his huge black horses to his golden chariot and
handed the whip to Hermes. The horses charged through the hall
and up the long tunnel to Earth’s surface, flying over mountains and
rivers to Demeter’s temple.
Anonymous

56



Everywhere her energy was stirring, pushing, bursting forth into
tender greenery and pale young petals. Animals shed old fur and
rolled in the fresh, clean grass while birds sang out, “Persephone
returns! Persephone returns!”
Charlene Spretnak
Lost Goddesses
of Early Greece

58



Demeter sparked roots of maize and wheat and brought fruit trees
into pink and white glories, blessed the fruits in wombs of women,
and the flowering of ideas in minds and deeds of humanity.
Clarissa Pinkola Estés
from the foreword
to Art and Upheaval

60



Persephone began to run.... Each time her naked feet hit the
earth…the land broke into flower and green right and left as far as
one could see…until at last, she was in her mother’s warm embrace.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés
from the foreword
to Art and Upheaval

62



I’ve tried to understand what the embrace between Demeter and
Persephone means. I have come to believe it’s really about that ap-
erture opening. It’s the channel where the souls of a mother and a
daughter open and flow as two separate adults, woman to woman.
It is, I know now, a place created through necessary loss and neces-
sary search, and a reinvention of the whole relationship.
Sue Monk Kidd
Traveling with Pomegranates

64



Every mother contains her daughter in herself, and every daughter
her mother... every woman extends backwards into her mother and
forwards into her daughter.
Carl Jung
The Archetypes and the
Collective Unconscious
…a line prolonged infinitely toward the right hand would return
again from the left to its starting-point. The infinitely distant point
on the right is the same as the point infinitely distant on the left…
the straight line returning on itself like a circle…the receding past
meets once again transformed into the approaching future. There-
by past and future, like space, are raised out of fixity to appear as an
evolving life reality.
Rudolf Steiner
Wonders of the World

66

67

“I will reside with you for half the year, Mother. Together we will
sing the ritual songs to bless the seeds, and together we shall cele-
brate the bountiful harvests. In the autumn, when the vines wither
and die. I will rejoin my husband and be a guide for the dead. Then
when the frosts give way to the warm sunlight of Spring, I will re-
turn to you again.”


Anonymous

68



The myth ends with Demeter teaching the rulers of Eleusis her rites
and her mysteries that for a thousand years were celebrated in deep
secrecy as the ultimate revelation of the spiritual life of antiquity. The
fertility goddess and earth mother of the myth’s beginnings has been
transformed by the end into the goddess of the highest mysteries of
man’s divine nature. Grain, and especially corn, is Demeter’s earthly
gift, but the grain that sinks to the earth [i.e., Persephone] and re-
turns points beyond itself to a universal symbol actualized through
the sacred gift of the Eleusian Mysteries: man’s death to his mundane
self and his rebirth in his divine essence.

Arianna Stassinopoulos
Gods of Greece

70



verily I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
King James Bible
John 12:24

72



74

There are holy things that are not communicated all at once: Eleusis
always keeps something back to show those who come again.
Seneca
Quaestiones naturales VII 30 6

Bibliography

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Davidson, Catherine Temma. The Priest Fainted. New York: Henry Holt and Company,
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Storace, Patricia. Dinner with Persephone: Travels in Greece. New York: Random House,
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A Note on “Anonymous”: About ten years ago I found an essay on the Internet about
Persephone that made such an impression on me that I copied it down by hand. At the
time, I did not note the author’s name. Many years later, after initiating this book project, I
went in search of this writer. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the original essay that had
so inspired me. I am hopeful that someone who recognizes the lines by Anonymous in
this book can help me in my search. Any clues will be appreciated.