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Persephone’s Return: the Green Fuse

Spring:  

When Demeter and Hecate Rescued Persephone 

... you know the story.

Persephone, a lovely maiden, was abducted by Hades and taken to his kingdom underground.  In response her mother, Demeter (the Greek Goddess ruling Harvests and Fertility) used her torch to waste the Earth, her anger causing all crops to die.  In despair Hecate hid herself as an old woman and sat by a well, where Zeus (the God of Gods) found her and tried to convince her to let the crops grow again.  She refused, so in desperation Zeus ordered Hades to let Persephone return to her mother.  

Hades had warned Persephone to not eat anything while in his realm, but after Zeus commanded her release Hades tempted her with pomegranate seeds. Persephone ate one.  Therefore she was only partially released: only allowed to return to the surface of the earth for a third of each year.  Demeter allowed the crops to grow again, but only during the times of the year when Persephone is free.  
Persephone, the Goddess of Innocence and Spring.

Hecate,  Goddess of Witchcraft and Magic Spells, witnessed the abduction and helped Demeter search, holding her two burning torches, and after Persephone was released, Hecate accompanied the girl wherever she went.  

The interaction of the three women is iconic.  
The maiden, mother and crone are represented by Persephone, Demeter and Hecate.   

It  may take three women of various stages in life to keep the world safe from a devilish tyrant like Hades.  But by banding together, they prevailed for the most part.  And the world continues ... 

Within each of us are many ages; we who have become elders also contain ourselves as infants, children, maidens, women in our prime, mothers, grandmothers, crones ...  

Sometimes we have to seek them out within ourselves.

My thoughts about the triple goddesses above were spurred by both a conversation at a weekend retreat I recently attended, and by the book I happened to pick up first from my shelf of to-read-someday books at home.

In Traveling with Pomegranates (written by Sue Monk Kidd and her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor), Kidd recounts a dream wherein she was in her kitchen "stirring a pot on the stove.  I turn around and find a large, mystifying crevice in the center of the floor..." and in horror she realizes that her daughter had been swallowed up into darkness in the dream.  "I drop onto my knees ... I scream her name ... finally I search for a flashlight so I can see down into the opening."  As the chapter continues, a point comes when Kidd has a revelation about the dream which does not leave her searching for her daughter, but "I now see myself in the daughter who has fallen through the hole in the kitchen floor.  The dream is about Ann and me, yes, but it's also a snapshot of me on the eve of my fiftieth birthday, bereft over the loss of my younger self ... in danger of being wrenched away."

Kidd continues:  "To borrow a phrase from Dylan Thomas, Persephone is the 'green fuse' of the soul, the regenerative energy.  She's the bright, invisible sap within that must rise after fifty.  But just how that happens I have no idea."

I have no idea, either,
but going forward I will envision
the green fuse
rising within me
and I will, therefore, no longer
waste precious time
grieving for lost youth.




Comments

  1. GraceFebruary 17, 2018 at 12:58 PM

    Here! Here! We are all that we have ever been and all we will ever be at any moment that the realization becomes real.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. JSCFebruary 17, 2018 at 5:17 PM

      Thank you for your comment, Grace. I agree, there is great personal power in realizations such as those you evoke here.

      Delete

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