Hecate (2018)

I have  made a number of paintings throughout my life that portrayed myself as Hecate  It wasn't until later that I began to realize that I was invoking the aid of the Dark Goddess Hecate,  asking for the inner guidance I needed as I moved through  through menopause into old age, calling on Her aid as I became a caretaker for members of my family as their lives ended, calling on Hecate who stands, with her two Torches, at the crossroads of life and death, at the crossroads of time.

So when I made this sculpture in my "Our Lady of the Shards" series, it was not possible to personify Hecate rising from the broken pieces of the past to confront us again........without making Her a Trilogy.  She encompasses all aspects of the cycle of life, the Maiden, the Mother, and at last the Old Woman at the liminal point of life.  
 
Hecate is the Underworld aspect of the Triple Goddess.  The "power of three", the sacred Triad, is very ancient indeed, with roots that go back and back and back into prehistory.   The Triad represents the eternal cycle of nature, the Earth  which the most ancient of human beings seem to have universally revered  as  "Mother Earth".  Early peoples observed that the Earth, like women, gave birth, nurtured, and finally "took back" life into some mysterious spiritual underground realm (Womb/Tomb)  to return again in the springtime.   The Triad or Trilogy was  co-opted by later patriarchal cultures and religions that sought to diminish or replace the Great Goddess, among them Christianity (Father, Son and Holy Ghost)  and Hinduism with Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva (Creator, Sustainer, and Destroyer).

The earliest known  paintings were of animals.  But the earliest known paintings (or sculptures)  of human beings (not animals)  are of  vulva symbols.  These female symbols  occur in cave paintings - the one on the right is over 30,000 years old, one of the oldest paintings in the cave.  The bull was apparently painted over it at a later time.   It might be said that very ancient people understood the vulva as the  crucible of entry into this world, and to honor the Earth Mother in caves, along with the animals  early people hunted and revered as spiritual beings as well.....was to enter the womb of the Great Mother, and thus prepare, sacrifice,  and  pray for a good rebirth.  The cycle of life/death/life was recognized as arising from the body of the Earth Mother, and returning to the body of the Earth Mother.

"Hecate's Wheel" 

Associated with Hecate is a peculiar icon called "Hecate's Wheel",  which shows three loops suggesting a labyrinth  turning around a wheel, symbolizing an  eternally transformative movement.   The Wheel of the Triad moves through conception and birth, sexuality and motherhood, and finally death, the return to the Underworld, incubation and return.   The Three Goddesses are really One Goddess, each a manifestation in a different phase.  

Hecate  lives at the crossroads between conscious and unconscious, dream and waking, life and death.  She stands at the apex of the  liminal zones.  It was  Hecate who   heard the cries of the naive maiden Kore as she was carried by Hades into the underworld, and it was Hecate who bore a torch for Kore as she evolved into the mature Persephone, Queen of the dead and also Queen of life's rebirth.  Hecate is the guide of souls through deep, unfathomable places of the psyche. When the time is ripe, Hecate stands quietly at the threshold with her two torches, unseen until She hears the soul-cry of those who ask Her to light the way. 

I  take the liberty of copying a wonderfully insightful and well researched  article by  Danielle Nickel - for further insight, visit her site 

Hekate:  Moving Through Darkness
by  Danielle Nickel 

Hekate is primarily a goddess of the Underworld, holding dominion over death and rebirth. This is meant both in the literal sense and in the metaphorical as well. For life is filled with many deaths and rebirths aside from that of the flesh. Because of this the Dark of the Moon especially is her time of the month, since it is a time of endings and beginnings, when what was is no more, and what will be has yet to become. 

Hekate guards the limenoskopos (the doorstep), for she is a goddess of liminality and transition. Of being on and crossing boundaries. This includes not only the boundary between life and death, but any boundaries, such as those between nature and civilization, waking and sleep, sanity and madness, the conscious and the subconscious minds. Indeed, any transition can be said to be her domain. As such she is also goddess of the crossroads, where the paths of one's life fork and a person must choose which future to embark upon. In ancient times these were believed to be special places where the veil between the worlds was thin and spirits gathered.

Hekate is also the goddess of psychological transformation. Her Underworld is the dark recesses of the human subconscious as well at that of the Cosmos. Many have accused her of sending demons to haunt the thoughts of individuals. What they fail to understand is that the demons are not hers, but their own. By the light of her twin torches Hekate only reveals what is already there. These are things which the person needs to see in order to heal and renew. However, if they are not prepared for the experience of confronting their Shadow then it can truly feel like they are being tormented. Hekate is not motivated by cruelty, nor is she seeking to harm. But her love can be tough love. She will prompt a person to face the things that they must, whether they like it or not..........Hekate goes with them. While she may not be the deity many people would like, she is the one whom they need. Because of this I believe that she comes to those who require her, whether or not they were looking for her.

In modern Neo-Pagan practice Hekate is typically identified as an aspect of the Crone, and as such is most often portrayed as an old woman. This is in contrast to ancient vase murals which depict her as being an adult woman in her prime. As with many things about this goddess, this is a perception that has changed over time. However, the Crone aspect of the modern Triple Goddess is not truly defined by her age, but rather by the powers her age represents (that of wisdom, magical potency, annihilation, and the transformative journey through the Underworld), and those indeed fall under Hekate's domain. So while perhaps not historically accurate, this is not a demotion or devaluing of her, but rather the way in which modern Neo-Paganism fits her into its philosophy (this difficulty with integrating her into their cosmology is something that we will see Neo-Pagans share with the Ancient Greeks as well).

Hekate is more often than not portrayed as carrying two torches and is known as "The Torch-Bearer". She carries these because of her role as a guide through the transition of the Underworld. One torch shows a person where it is they currently stand, the other where they might go. In this manner she reveals the mysteries of transformation to those who enter her realm of darkness. 

.......Hekate is also associated with a wheel shaped design, known as Hekate's Wheel, or the "Strophalos of Hekate". It is a circle which encloses a serpentine maze with three main flanges, that in turn are situated around a central, fiery spiral. The symbolism refers to the serpent's power of rebirth, to the labyrinth of knowledge through which Hekate could lead humankind, and to the flame of life itself: "The life-producing bosom of Hekate, that Living Flame which clothes itself in Matter to manifest Existence" (according to Isaac Preston Cory's 1836 translation of the Chaldean Oracles). The three main arms of the maze correspond with her being a triple goddess, as well as goddess of the three ways, and that she has dominion over the earth, sea, and sky.

---

A Goddess of Crossroads and Transitions 

As earlier stated, Hekate is a guide for people who are in transition. While she is most famous in her role as a psychopomp, guiding the spirits of the dead in their journey through the Underworld, she also aids those who cross boundaries or otherwise travel from one condition to another, particularly when that crossing involves danger.........For more than anything else she is a deity of liminality.

She is a goddess of the crossroads for this reason. In the ancient world a crossroad was a point where three roads met to form a "Y"-shaped intersection. It was believed to be a place where spirits gathered, including those of the Underworld and those of Fate. It is also a metaphor for the divergence of possibilities in an individual's future. Their life will bring them to the crossroad along one of the roads, and they will be met with a branching, where they must choose one path or the other to continue onward. As goddess of transitions, Hekate rules this place where the roads separate and differing futures are possible. 

However, it is important to remember that Hekate is a guide. She points out where a person is currently heading and where else they might go if they change their path instead. She does not choose a person's fate herself. That is always left to the person to decide. She is a torch-bearer because of this illumination she sheds upon one's life. That is also one reason she is a lunar-deity, for while a torch brings light to the darkness of night, so too does the moon on the grandest possible scale. This reflects both her link to the night-realms and to her role as an illuminator of ways.. 

Hekate is often portrayed as  three torch-bearing female figures standing in a circle looking outward, with their backs joined so that they are in fact one being. This exhibits her dominion over the triple-crossroads and her ability to see in all directions simultaneously. The road a person had come from, and the directions they might take in the future. These hektarion (or hekataion) were placed at crossroads. Their earliest forms consisted of a pole upon which three masks were hung, with one facing each road. In more recent times these became statuary, sometimes of three figures standing with their backs to a central pillar, other times a similar portrayal without the column in the center.   The Romans knew Hekate as Triva, which means "where the three roads meet".

---

Hekate Triformis - The Triple Goddess

Hekate is a triple-goddess, serving as the Crone aspect in more than one triumvirate of deities. Perhaps most commonly we see her partnered with Kore-Persephone and Demeter. Where Kore takes the role of the Maiden (indeed, the word kore means "maiden" in Ancient Greek), Demeter the Mother, and Hekate the Crone. This triumvirate plays a central role in the myth of Kore's descent into the Underworld and her re-emergence as Persephone. 

This myth appears to have been the basis for the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which initiates relived the experience of Kore and like her returned forever changed, reborn with a new understanding of the cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

 In the earliest tales, Kore willingly descends into the Underworld, while in the later and more well-known versions she is kidnapped by Hades. The latter being indicative of the rising patriarchy of Ancient Greece. In either version, her mother Demeter - who is the goddess of agriculture -  withholds her blessings from the Earth and causes the first winter to come about. It is Hekate who spies Kore within the Underworld and guides her back to the surface to be reunited with her mother. She emerges not as the maiden Kore, but as Persephone, a powerful woman in her own right, and with her comes the warmth and promise of spring. Persephone however, has become inextricably tied to the Underworld and returns there for four months every year, one for each pomegranate seed she ate while there. Her leaving is accompanied by the onset of winter, and while she holds her court in the Underworld she is joined by Hekate. In this myth we not only see a metaphor for rebirth, but also of coming of age and into one's own power and place in the world.

---

The Invincible Queen Of The Dead

While Hekate is a versatile deity, she is best known as a goddess of death and the Underworld. However, it is important to remember that her Underworld is not the place of terrible suffering popularized by patriarchal Greece and later Christianity.*** Rather it was a place of divine transformation, like the cocoon where the caterpillar becomes the butterfly. This was the primordial Underworld, the place from which all life ultimately derives. Death and Birth stand back to back in the great spiral of existence, while Hekate and her Underworld lie between the two. 

Our ancient ancestors saw that many things sprang from the earth, not just plants, but animals such as snakes, bears, rodents, and others as well. Even the sun and moon appeared to rise from the earth and later sink back down within it every day and night. To their eyes, it seemed that something magical was taking place in the darkness below the ground. This idea was further reinforced when they learned that plant life originates from seeds buried within the earth. They saw that if a person kept a seed in - for example - their pocket, it would never grow into a plant. It had to be buried in the soil. Our ancestors reasoned that something magical must take place down there. Some transformation hidden away from the eyes of people and the rays of the sun. 

This was their Underworld. A place of renewal and rebirth where buried seeds sprouted into life. Because they saw the generative power of the Underworld, they buried their dead deep within the earth so that they too could transform into new life, just as a seed does into a plant. Being thorough people, they also dyed the bodies with red henna to symbolize menstrual blood (and in some cases did use menstrual blood), in order to capitalize upon the regenerative power believed to exist in that as well.  

This is why how so many Pagan deities such as Kali, Hekate, Freja, et al. are associated with both death and life. Our ancestors saw that death and birth were interconnected, standing back to back in an ever-turning spiral. In this manner Hekate is both child-nurse of all life as well as harbinger of death, and thusly it was to her that the ancients prayed to ensure both long life and eventual rebirth. Interestingly enough it is also in this manner that Hekate might be considered the goddess of compost. For it is the decomposition of plant and animals that insures the fertility of the earth, which in turn ensures the creation and nurturing of new life.

These views of the Underworld would change as religion became politicized, a tool for power. The Underworld became a place of terror in order to frighten people into obedience. So too were its denizens altered in public perception to become the monsters such a place needs to be populated with. This is one of the dynamics by which Hekate was increasingly negatively portrayed............ 

Keeper of the Unconscious

As Goddess of the Underworld, Hekate is not only the guide to the spirits of the dead, but also the keeper of each individual's own personal Underworld, the benighted territory of their unconscious mind. She lives within each of our inner worlds, and is there to guide us as we transition from inner to outer realms of consciousness. When accepted, her blessings enrich our lives with vision, healing, inspiration, and magic. She brings light to the darkness and empowers us with creativity, confidence, and strength. However, when we deny her it manifests in our Shadow-Self. She holds the key to both the treasures and terrors of the unconscious mind.......

Hekate is the light that reveals the Shadow, like the light of the moon at midnight. Her goal is not to destroy, but rather to illuminate. However, it is no accident that we have buried these things so deeply within our psyches. We are often not ready to face them when revealed. In such cases it may indeed appear that Hekate is bringing demons to terrorize us. We must remember that the demons are ours and reclaim them as our own. For with that revelation we also take back our power over them. That is the only way in which the Shadow can be truly defeated. By accepting it as our own. Learning that is the key which turns the lock of the person's emotional healing and rebirth. Hekate is there as a guide to help us, her twin torches shining our way through the darkened recesses of our unconscious.........

.............We must come to understand that Hekate and the darkness she exemplifys are not terrible, but rather natural forces within us and the world around us which are necessary components in the process of healing and regeneration. We must trust to her as our guide and give ourselves over to our journey through the Underworld, rather than resist the sacrifices we must make in order to grow. For one can only heal by moving through darkness. This requires courage and insight on our parts, but thankfully she is there to show us where to find both these qualities within ourselves as well.

"Hecate" (1997)

**Judith Anderson has passed away, and her powerful work is not well known.  She was an extraordinary artist whose prints emerged from the depths of the sacred Earth and the realms of the Soul.  For an excellent article about Judith Anderson:  http://www.crosscurrents.org/Madsen2.htm

***This is true as well of the Nordic Goddess Hella (also part of a triad), Underworld Goddess whose name became the source of the Christian "Hell".

The Song of Medusa

"Older Yet, and Lovelier Far, this Mystery.  And I will not forget."

Robin Williamson, "Five Denials on Merlin's Grave"

Looking back through my files, I discovered that THE SONG OF MEDUSA, a short novel I wrote in collaboration with the artist and writer Duncan Eagleson, who I was privileged to know back in 1993, had disappeared, even though I completed it and had it self-published in 2000.  It wasn't on my computer, it wasn't on my website, I couldn't even find a copy of the book in my bookshelf.  Then I realized it was to be found here, on this Blog.  I decided to archive it on my website, and in the process had a lot of fun making illustrations for it, and doing a bit of editing. 

It needs a lot more work, true, and it seems sometimes  preachy or naive......but reading the manuscript after all these years was good for me.  To  be honest, this story, although I understand the sources of  its inspiration, remains a bit of a mystery to me.  I've never had the desire to write a novel before or since.  This character seemed to have a life of her own, a story that insisted upon being written down.  For example, I had no idea that the Oracle of Delphi breathed fumes from underground caves in order to reach an altered state of consciousness when this story flowed onto the page for me.    Maybe writers experience that all the time, the sense of being a bit of a "channel" for a persona that wants to be heard....but it was a fascinating experience for me.

                                 

"I, the Song, I Walk Here"

.....Lakota  poem

Reading  brought back  what I believe in still, the impulse from which this story arose.  And it was  inspired, obviously, by the work of archeologist Marija Gimbutas and Riane Eisler, a long fascination with mythology, and my own experiences in dowsing and visioning.  EARTHMIND,  the "Song of Gaia".  So here's the story resurrected.   Mr. Eagleson graciously and elegantly contributed to its telling, and I feel it shouldn't just disappear.   Thank you, Duncan. 

http://www.laurenraine.com/the-song-of-medusa.html

I doubt anyone reading this is going to take the time to read the whole story, so I copy below 

an excerpt .......I  especially like the "Afterward", because it brings back memories of when I lived in Vermont, the very real magic I always sensed in the land there, and some of the people I knew there and then.   An  a dream some of us had of a possible future where the Earth was sacred, alive, a Song we could  learn to harmonize with.  That's still a hope worth finding stories for.  

AFTERWARD
​
September 21, 2037 
 
As the trail winding up Spirit Mountain grew steeper, Susan was a little out of breath.  She could see the granite shelf summit ahead,  the  quartz and granite  bones of this place  common to this part  of New England.  Great rounded boulders loomed on either side of her,  painted whimsically with colorful abstractions of lichen and moss.
 
Susan remembered when she lived in Colorado,  the rock climbing she did when she was  younger, and was amused at herself;  the mountains of  southern New Hampshire  were among the oldest ranges in the U.S.,  great-grandmother mountains  rounded and soft,  folded and smoothed by  a long, long life.  These were not  the Rockies, and she knew she was out of shape.  
 
It was late September,  a brilliant fall blessed by the right amount of rain and sun.  The sugar maples were almost psychedelic in their glory of reds, yellows and  oranges.  The sun was  bright, tender and poignant with a frailty felt only during Indian Summer; the last and perhaps sweetest days of summer.  Such days were the grand finale to that great burst of  fertile creation that began in the Spring.  To her, it seemed as if all the land, and all the devas of the plant kingdom,  were giving their final concert, their master chorale for the season.  Soon the first frost would come, and Susan would walk with her morning coffee into a garden fallen overnight, a precious  world melting away like a  dream,  ready to sleep beneath the immanent blanket of snow.
 
Below her came  a long procession of  people,  making their way up the trail between rock outcroppings.  Some carried baskets of food, homemade bread, and torches, candles;  all carried flashlights and blankets.  Just behind her came Martin,  lugging the ceramic  dombek drum they had purchased on their trip to Morocco.  After him came his little tribe of drummers.  They met without fail every Thursday night  in their living room.    “You are amazing“, she thought, a momentary flash of sweet, familiar lust  surging through her as she watched  his long , denim clad legs stride up the mountain.  The cup of those brown legs around her hips....she inwardly smiled.  Another good sign, that after all these years, and on this day especially, she could feel that so strongly.    
 
It was the evening of  the Fall Equinox,  a very special Fall Equinox, because it was also to be a full moon.  She felt the pulse of the land beneath her feet, heat,   a coursing of energies she envisioned as a beating heart, humming through her and around her.  The  drummers would sing that heartbeat into their circle after the sun went down; she knew they were already attuning themselves to it even as they walked.  Susan took a deep breath, and let sensation come into her.  Her body vibrated, she knew she was moving into an increasingly ecstatic state of heightened perception. She folded her hands before her chest Indian style, and  greeted the presence she felt here.  And  Spirit Mountain greeted her.  She took her shoes off.
 
“Breathe, just breathe”.  With each inhale,  Susan  let the sense of  Gaia come into her.  She never knew what else to call it; “earth energies”,  “Creator”,  “Source”;  to her it was Gaia, and she visualized roots that grew from her feet,  roots that went down deep into the Earth, connecting her with the web of all life.  It wasn’t even that abstract;  that was simply what it felt like.  As if she became bigger.
 
Her breathing became rhythmic, releasing  the small concerns of her personal life, the tensions and conflicts of the day,   breathing in that light, that pulse that  rose effortlessly through her now bare feet, an erotic heat in  her vagina and womb, up her spine, into her heart. “Hello,  hello” she said out loud.  “Here we are.”  In answer,  currents flowed up her legs, into her hands.  Susan paused, close to  the summit, and leaned against a huge granite boulder, slightly dizzy.....“not so fast,   I have to open gradually to this ...”  Closing her eyes for a moment, she felt Martin’s hand on her back.  He was  feeling it as well.  She almost heard  his “Are you all right?”,  but he hadn’t spoken.  Speech was becoming difficult for him.  
 
The warmth of his hand on her back and his strong male presence steadied her.  A little further up the trailhead was an arbor woven of branches and grapevines.  Tanya and James stood on either side of it, silently ready with the sage smudge sticks they used as each person entered the place where the ceremony would be held.  A raucous crow flew suddenly across the path, to land in a nearby tree.  It squawked at them as if to say “well,  hurry up!” and flew off.  
 
Martin broke his trance to laugh;  they had, as far as he was concerned,  been welcomed.
 
The top of Spirit Mountain was flat granite shelf.  It was a splendid view;  to the east the spire of an old church rose from an ocean of trees, and the Connecticut River was visible, winding like a snake through the landscape.  Before her, ten boulders formed an imperfect circle.  Perhaps they had once been more  regular, but erosion or earthquake had, over time, worked them out of  alignment.   At the circle’s center stood a huge boulder,  shot with veins of quartz;  crystalline intrusions flashed here and there on it’s surface as it reflected the setting sun.  Susan wondered, as always, how the long ago people who once came here had managed to move rocks weighing several tons into these placements.  
 
The ancient people who made this stone circle millennia ago were a mystery.  There was evidence that Phoenician or Celtic colonists  had once settled along the Connecticut river,  fishing, sailing, and marking places that were sacred to them with standing stones and cairns very similar to prehistoric sites in Ireland and Europe.  Perhaps this was Tiranog, the “blessed land to the West” of  ancient Irish legend.  The controversy surrounding these structures and “calendar sites” had never been settled.  The vanished people who so laboriously moved enormous and carefully selected  stones to mark this place could just as easily have been native Americans long lost to history.  It really didn’t matter to Susan.    
 
What all of these mysterious places,  including Spirit mountain, did share in common was geomantic intensity.  They were places of power, ley crossings.  A divining rod held over the quartz boulder at this circle’s center frenetically turned like the blades of a helicopter.  To a geologist, they were places of geomagnetic force.  But it took no theory or scientific knowledge to experience the presence of  this place.  At last, just like the ancients who once came here,  people were beginning to realize that these were places of communion.  One did not build condos on them.
 
In the deepening twilight, people passed through the woven entranceway, seating themselves around the circle.  Some brought blankets to wrap themselves in,  and some of the older folks had folding chairs.   Beneath the white quartz  stone were offerings of food, wine and written prayers to the ancestors of this place,  as well as a  basket of seed as offerings to the animals and nature spirits who lived here.  And quite a few small personal shrines had been set up in an inner circle.  Susan saw her friend Margo’s little Goddess statue resting on a red silk cloth.  Nearby was a brass statue of the Buddha,  a photo of the late Dalai Lama placed at his feet.  From a crevice in the stone hung a laughing leather Greenman mask .  Candles in colored votive holders flickered like a shimmering rainbow around the base of the stone.
 
Four drummers sat at each of the four directions,  already synchronized into a deep heartbeat rhythm.  They were in trance,  attuned to each other and the qualities of the element each drummer was inviting to be present, air, fire, water and earth.  Their rhythms flowed into the azure twilight as Martin sat down to join them, his dumbek between his knees.  Susan walked around the circle,  bowed to the center, and then picked up a pack of matches on the ground to light citronella torches mounted around the periphery.  
 
At last she sank down to join the chanting, to enter into deep receptivity.  She saw that she was a little nervous, and tried to shake it out of her body for a minute.  She was one of the focalizers tonight, and although she had served in that way before,  she never knew exactly what she would do until the moment arose.  Years as a public speaker and environmental activist still made it difficult for her to completely relax into a wholly intuitive way of working within a group, trusting that indescribable merging that always happened.  She took another deep breath and visualized her roots going down into the earth.  It didn’t matter, she remembered.  “It doesn’t matter in the least whether I’m nervous or not.  It’s not about me, and it never is.”
 
She could see it now, if she unfocussed her eyes;  a glow that seemed to come from the granite floor she sat cross-legged on, a pulse that attuned her to the drums,  light that seemed to pour from cracks in the ancient boulders.  Her unease was gone, unimportant.
 
Tonight they would offer thanks for the food grown and harvested throughout the summer; not just for them, but for all those who eat.  They would chant and pray and dance their gratitude for being fed by the Earth and all the beings upon Her, and, in a ritual of reciprocity, they would offer their prayers, music, gratitude and love back,  sending it down into the Earth to sustain and nurture the One who sustained and nurtured them.  Susan was one of the women tonight who would  become a kind of filament for the energies held by the ritual.  In the course of the ceremony, she would  open herself to communion with the spirit of place, with Gaia in all of Her manifestations; and what visions she received she would share with the group.  
 
Sometimes what came to her was empathic, a feeling of sadness or disharmony that needed to be witnessed by the group, or simply a tremendous love that radiated between all present, renewing them.  Sometimes she received images that were far from grandiose and very specific - once she saw a piece of baked  liver on a plate before one of the women present.  It seemed that she was both pregnant and anemic.
 
Later in the evening there would be feasting, baskets of pumpkin bread, cheese, and fruit  brought out, and bottles of wine and honey mead opened.  The drummers would continue to  drum until the sun rose, letting rhythms flow through them in constantly changing waves, moving beyond exhaustion into ecstasy.  Several couples would also spend the night on the mountain;  Susan could see three tents discreetly set up at the far periphery of the circle.  These were mated pairs who wanted to conceive,  and had chosen this auspicious place and time, the energies evoked by this gathering, to invite a child to join them.  It was doubtful, Susan thought, that anyone who stayed the night would sleep.  
 
Before closing her eyes to chant, Susan looked around the circle.  It was a big gathering;  it looked like nearly half the population of Putney had come, although she was sure other circles and gatherings were going on in different places.  South of her,  at the Temanos center,  her friend Jewell would be facilitating a gathering.  She visualized Jewell’s strong, lined face, her famous rattle in her hand, and a momentary flash of love, support flooded her;  she knew Jewell was aware her, and very busy.
 
“Gaia.  Gaia,  thank you.  I am here.”
 

 
The End
 
Copyright
Lauren Raine, Duncan Eagleson 1993 ​

Persephone: Goddess of the Equinox

Persephone (2016)

Persephone, it seems to me,  is truly the Goddess of the Equinoxes, because She is both symbol  of spring and life's renewal when she returns to her mother Demeter at the turning of the seasonal Wheel, and she is also Goddess of death, wife of Hades, and Queen of the Underworld in the ending and dormant times of  turning of the wheel.  

Having said this,  I allow myself here to move out of the great universal language of archetype, and will get a bit personal.  The truth of life in nature is that everything is changing, everything dies to become something else, or at least, make way for something else.  As beings embedded in nature, this is true of us as well, whether we like it or not.  The summer ends, and as we feast on the delightful fruits and breads of the harvest, we barely notice, indeed, deny, the slow creep of winter.  And yet that beautiful, or horrific, or both, Leveler is already advancing over the horizon, implacable and indifferent.   Both Demeter and Hades have jobs to do.  

This is true of nature, this is true of biological life, and by golly, it's true of our psyches as well.  When Persephone calls, I believe in listening to what She has to say, whether it occurs in the bright lit flowering fields, or is a painful cry echoing from caverns deep in the Underworld.  And that is the point at which Hecate appears with her torch (but that is another story).  

We all love the Song of Persephone in the spring, the song that tells us "this is the time to BE", to feel the honey sun on your shoulders, to love, to move away from the lonely tunnels of the mind and into the great Conversation of the fields, of the planet.

When Persephone calls from the caverns, not so easy.  Recently I had a meltdown from out of seemingly "know where".  All of a sudden, I couldn't sleep, found my face full of tears that would not emerge from my eyes, was angry, very angry, and having just completed a massive project building a studio, wanted nothing more than to jump into my car and drive east and just keep going, free.  I didn't, but I really, really wanted to.   I decided doing such a thing was very ill advised, although I'm not opposed to such trips when the necessity arises, but I did allow myself to go a bit crazy.  I allowed myself to have those feelings, to walk in the desert, to drink too much, to be educated by the process of their arising.   That's one of those "calls from the deep" that must be heard, no matter how uncomfortable.  You try to discover the language and content of that dark song too, what you need to know to become more fully human, what the soul is trying to tell you.  You don't "transcend" the voice of Persephone, you mature and change, you keep on moving.

This is Persephone's time of Balance, of Equinox, Her Integral being.  Which moving away from psychological jargon simply means realizing that we must, somehow, say "yes" to all of it, and keep moving, keep dancing the light and shadow dance.  Persephone will dance with us, will educate, if one can only accept this Moving Point of Balance.   

We are all, in the final analysis, Wanderers.

"Pesephone II" 2016

"Persephone the Wanderer" 
by Louise Glück,

In the first version, Persephone
is taken from her mother
and the goddess of the earth
punishes the earth—this is
consistent with what we know of human behavior,

that human beings take profound satisfaction
in doing harm, particularly
unconscious harm:

we may call this
negative creation.

I am not certain I will
keep this word: is earth
“home” to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably,
in the bed of the god? Is she
at home nowhere? Is she
a born wanderer, in other words
an existential
replica of her own mother, less
hamstrung by ideas of causality?

You are allowed to like
no one, you know. The characters
are not people.
They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.

Three parts: just as the soul is divided,
ego, superego, id. Likewise

the three levels of the known world,
a kind of diagram that separates
heaven from earth from hell.

You must ask yourself:
where is it snowing?

White of forgetfulness,
of desecration—

It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says

Persephone is having sex in hell.
Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t know
what winter is, only that
she is what causes it.

She is lying in the bed of Hades.
What is in her mind?
Is she afraid? Has something
blotted out the idea
of mind?

She does know the earth
is run by mothers, this much
is certain. She also knows
she is not what is called
a girl any longer. Regarding
incarceration, she believes

she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.

The terrible reunions in store for her
will take up the rest of her life.
When the passion for expiation
is chronic, fierce, you do not choose
the way you live. You do not live;
you are not allowed to die.

You drift between earth and death
which seem, finally,
strangely alike. Scholars tell us

that there is no point in knowing what you want
when the forces contending over you
could kill you.

White of forgetfulness,
white of safety—

They say
there is a rift in the human soul
which was not constructed to belong
entirely to life. Earth

asks us to deny this rift, a threat
disguised as suggestion—
as we have seen
in the tale of Persephone
which should be read

as an argument between the mother and the lover—
the daughter is just meat.

When death confronts her, she has never seen
the meadow without the daisies.
Suddenly she is no longer
singing her maidenly songs
about her mother’s
beauty and fecundity. Where
the rift is, the break is.

Song of the earth,
song of the mythic vision of eternal life—

My soul
shattered with the strain
of trying to belong to earth—

What will you do,
when it is your turn in the field with the god?

“Persephone the Wanderer” from Averno by Louise Glück.
Copyright © 2006 by Louise Glück.

Foot-note on Megara...........the "Dance of Persephone"

I couldn't help but laugh when a few days ago I read  the article below in the Feminism and Religion Blog, which I subscribe to.  In the previous post I explored the idea of "marga" and synchronicity which began when I was writing a little article to submit to the very same Blog (the article, of course, was about Spider Woman, the great connector of all things)  In the course of writing my last post I included in the post something about Megara.  

Following those footprints........and I take the liberty of copying here the fascinating article by Laura Shannon.  Laura Shannon has been researching and teaching traditional women’s ritual dances since 1987. She is considered one of the ‘grandmothers’ of the worldwide Sacred / Circle Dance movement and gives workshops regularly in over twenty countries worldwide. Laura holds an honours degree in Intercultural Studies (1986) and a diploma in Dance Movement Therapy (1990).  She has also dedicated much time to primary research in Balkan and Greek villages, learning songs, dances, rituals and textile patterns which have been passed down for many generations, and which embody an age-old worldview of sustainability, community, and reverence for the earth. Laura’s essay ‘Women’s Ritual Dances: An Ancient Source of Healing in Our Times’,  was published in Dancing on the Earth. Laura lives partly in Greece and partly in the Findhorn ecological community in Scotland.

Dance of Persephone: The Trata of Megara by Laura Shannon 

BY LAURA SHANNON on MAY 7, 2016

Eleusis

In a previous post on FAR I explored Greek Easter customs which interweave Christian and pre-Christian beliefs.  Today I would like to take a closer look at one of these customs, the women’s ritual dance known as Tráta, ceremonially performed on ‘Bright Tuesday,’ the Tuesday after Easter. Versions of Tráta survive in the towns of Mégara and Elefsina just west of Athens, on the island of Salamína directly across from them, and in the surrounding area as far as Thebes.

Elefsina, of course, is Eleusis, where for over 2,000 years the Eleusinian Mysteries enacted the story of Demeter and her daughter Persephone’s descent to the Underworld. Choral dance was a central part of the ceremonies at Eleusis – as at other sacred sites including Delphi, Knossos, Athens, and Vravrona – and the ‘Well of the Beautiful Dances’ can still be seen at the archaeological site. It is a a visible reminder of the circle dancing which was a part of the initiatory experience, bringing cosmic order – symbolised by the circle – into the human world. This is still one of the functions of the Tráta as performed today.

Eleusis – ‘Well of the Beautiful Dances’

Temple relief of Demeter with grain, poppies, snakes, from Eleusis.

Initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries involved the understanding that an ear of grain first must die in order to give new life (whether planted as seed, baked into bread, or made into beer). The phenomenon of death leading to life through the medium of a sacred marriage was celebrated in other archaic springtime festivals, such as those of Aphrodite / Adonis, Cybele / Attys, and Isis / Osiris), from which the Resurrection story of Christian Easter is directly descended. I believe something of these ancient customs survive in the women’s Tráta dance, whose every detail hints at the story of Persephone’s descent and return.

Women dancing the Tráta at Vilia on Mount Kithairon, Attiki, Greece.

In Megara, the annual ritual of the Tráta is one of the most significant events in the village. Women of all ages gather at the upper square, near the tiny church of ‘Saint John the Dancer’ with its miraculous spring believed to grant fertility. The women’s costumes used to feature strong black, white and red elements, the colours of the Triple Goddess and the three central figures of the Eleusinian drama (Hecate, Demeter and Persephone).

The old style of costume from Megara with strong black, white and red colours

Now they are rich in silk, satins, and gold embroidery, with deep red aprons embroidered with flowing floral and vegetation motifs. The long, pale silk veils – symbol of initiation and the threshold between the worlds –  are embroidered with fertility symbols including wheat, sign of Demeter, and pomegranates, traditional food of the dead and symbol of prosperity and abundance chiefly associated with Persephone.

Silk and gold veil (bólia) from Salamína with design of enclosed pomegranates

Velvet jacket (zipoúni) of Mégara with downwards-facing Goddess embroideries

The zipoúni or velvet jacket is richly embroidered in gold, and the sleeves feature the pre-Christian motif of the sun-headed Goddess; unusually, she is depicted head-down instead of right-side-up, as if indicating the direction of descent to the underworld.  The overall effect closely resembles the women on the frescoes in the 4th C. BCE Tomb of the Dancing Women in Apuglia, Italy.

Fresco from the ‘Tomb of the Dancing Women’, 4th C BCE, Apuglia, Italy

The kinetic motif of ascent and descent central to the myth of Persephone is dramatically emphasised by the pronounced zigzag of the dance pattern, visually mirrored in the basketweave handhold, and expressed again in the way the dance spirals completely in and out as you can see in the video.  The Tráta is one of the few traditional Greek dances which do this, in a labyrinthine movement of deepening and emerging which magnifies the inwards-outwards, ascending-descending theme.

In a reversal of normal procedure, young unmarried girls lead the older married women in the dance line: the daughter is the agent in this danced symbolic journey.  Among the mature women at the back of the line are the strongest singers, those able to sing loudly enough for the dancers at the front to hear, even when the circle is large and the dance line snakes and spirals around.

This spiralling movement is stunning to watch. In Mégara in the late 1940s, Kevin Andrews described it thus: ‘A long line of a hundred and fifty to two hundred women with gorgeous clothing holding hands across each other’s waist, simply moving slowly round and round the square… wearing head cloths of white silk falling in long folds over their backs and shoulders, plum-coloured velvet jackets tight and stiff with a profusion of gold embroidery, with lace at the cuffs, strings upon strings of coins hung across the breast, and silk aprons heavily embroidered over their long skirts that swirled over their gold-slippered ankles… There was no music anywhere.’

Rennell Rodd, in 1968, wrote that ‘the step appears to be extremely simple, not to say monotonous, and yet the precision with which it is accomplished, the simultaneousness of every movement, cannot be easy to acquire; while the general effect of these serpentining chains of linked figures, in their bright dresses and floating veils, advancing, retiring, and winding round, is particularly graceful and pretty.’

The women’s Tráta today still resembles the pictures painted by these witnesses of 50 and 75 years ago, but as with most Greek folk customs, major changes are underway.  John Tomkinson reports that the dancers used to ornament their songs with strange low twittering sounds like that of swallows (also a symbol of Persephone, and like her, associated with the returning spring) but the women no longer do this. By custom the Tráta was accompanied by the women’s own a cappella singing, yet now the mayor of Mégara hires an orchestra of male musicians to accompany the women. And whereas historically the women’s Tráta was the only dance permitted on this day, now boys’ dance groups come on at intervals to perform other Greek dances – Syrtos, Kalamatianos, Tsamikos – turning the ritual into a kind of performance complete with speeches by dignitaries, sellers of peanuts and balloons, and similar distractions.

However, even with all of these changes, the dance still expresses something valuable on behalf of those who watch, and for many the Tráta of Mégara remains a unique and important touchstone of the Easter festival. Each time I have gone, I have been touched by the powerful sense of rightness and peace which comes over the crowd as the women’s ritual dance unfolds before them, bringing a sense of wholeness and relief, just as in ancient times.

https://feminismandreligion.com/2016/05/07/dance-of-persephone-the-trata-of-megara-by-laura-shannon/

Recommended reading:

Shannon, Laura. “Ritual Dance in Greece, Then & Now,” 2011. http://laurashannon.net/articles/49-ritual-dance-in-greece-then-a-nowShannon, Laura. “Women’s Ritual Dances: An Ancient Source of Healing in our Time”. In Dancing On The Earth: Women’s Stories Of Healing Through Dance. J. Leseho and S. McMaster. 1st ed. Findhorn Press, 2011. 138-157.