Pilsbury: Circles, Syncronicities, Family

Here is a tale of Synchronicity, and Circles within in Circles  (as I also happened to be  incidentally hunting ley lines, Stone Circles, and Harvest Hills that represent the pregnant belly of the Great Earth Mother throughout Avebury and the  moors of the Peak District..........)

MOTHERS

Where to begin?  Way back,  I think, to when I was just 18, and  I became pregnant.  The only option I felt was to give up my daughter for adoption, realizing that I was neither mature nor able enough to become a mother.   22 years later I was contacted, and we met, amazingly, some 30 miles away from where I was living for the summer as I worked at the New York Renaissance Faire.  She was graduating from College near there,  and it was my privilege to meet her as  well as her adoptive parents that year. 

Her mother  and I became friends over the years, although we both moved around and contact was not very often.  My relationship with my  daughter has been a blessing, although a  disappointment as well.   Although she seems to want to keep a loose connection with me,  we never really developed intimacy.   Over the years, especially since I am only the biological mother,  I have  withdrawn from attempting to keep up more than a  superficial relationship,  and I have consoled my disappointment by knowing that she is successful in her career, has a good income, lots of friends,  and a bright. creative child she loves.  

Just before leaving  for this trip I received an email from her mother, who had seen that I was going to England on Facebook.   I learned that she had married an Englishman and moved to a small town in the middle of England, in what they call the Peak District.  She and her husband  invited me to visit her.   After  attending the Gatekeeper's  conference I found myself at the bus depot in Bath, where I had booked a hostel after seeing the Roman Bath there. 

In the bus depot I  watched a little tribe of pigeons peck away at my feet while I considered whether I shouldn't head north instead of staying in Bath as I had intended.  It would be good to see my friend, who I hadn't seen or much spoken to in almost 20 years.   I was also momentarily enchanted by the birds, because one of them  was pure white.  I thought "what is a white dove doing here?".........(well, I suppose it was a  pure white pigeon, but after all, pigeons are in the dove family! ) I wished I had something to offer it because it was so pretty, but alas, I had no crumbs on me.

The next morning I took a train toward Manchester, and met with them in their  village.  The Peak District, in central Great Britain, is  famous for it's beautiful landscapes and hiking trails, and in the summer  the English, who have a great passion for walking tours, head there.  We talked about many things, and I know that our re-connecting after all these years helped both of us to better understand our daughter, and to heal a great deal for both of us.  Circle.  Big Circle.  I parted with a friendship renewed, and gratitude. The timing could not have been more perfect.

Pilsbury Grange

ANCESTORS

So here come the synchronicities.................

While looking at a map of the area where my friend lived (which I had never visited) I noticed, quite close to their village, a "Pilsbury".  I thought that was interesting, since that is my family name (Pillsbury).  I knew absolutely nothing about my father's genealogy, but this piqued my interest, and before going to visit, I spent the evening on Google.  I learned that there were many Pillsburys besides the well-known bakers from Minnesota, and many of them had done great things - a famous inventor, a photographer, a philosopher and humanitarian, and many more.  The family was big and spanned the coasts - there was a Lake Pillsbury in New Hampshire, and a Lake Pillsbury in Northern California as well.  And they were all descendants (that includes me) of one man who emigrated quite early from England.

I stumbled on a document of births, deaths, and occasional obituaries collected by a Martha Pillsbury over 100 years ago, going back (as far as she could at the time) to one William Pillsbury, a young man who, under some kind of legal trouble or perhaps facing conscription during the reign of the tyrannical Charles the First,  left England for the New World in the 1600's, considerably before the American Revolution. He landed in Massachusetts, an indentured servant (as that was how one paid for passage then), and eventually settled in a very frontier like Newbury, Mass.  He and his children proliferated indeed, in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and continually west as well.  

That document, uploaded in it's entirety, was a lot to  plow through, but I couldn't stop reading it out of sheer interest.  William Pillsbury (people took names based upon their trade, where they lived, or the names of their fathers when it was decreed in an earlier period that residents have surnames.)  He was from the Peak District, and she mentions the River Dove.   It seems that the little hamlet of Pilsbury, not far from where my friend lives, is where every Pillsbury in the United States originated from.  The lovely valley that the Pilsbury hamlet is in is called Dovedale.

We drove to Pilsbury, of course.  There is a Pilsbury Castle, a historical site with plans to refurbish, although there isn't really much to see.   It was a Norman fortification, not really a "castle" so much as a mostly wooden fort with very simple dwellings surrounding it along the river.  It would have mostly been occupied by Norman soldiers  garrisoned in this outpost when the Normans were fighting the Saxons.  To get to Pilsbury one has to drive along some small, winding roads, which involve opening and closing 4 or 5 gates, which are erected to keep cattle and sheep from wandering into areas they should not go.   I also learned that there are ruins in the area that indicate their might have been a monastery, or simple monastic community, in Pilsbury in medieval times as well, hence, the term "grange", which meant a rural area associated with  or overseen by a church.

Finally we found ourselves at the last gate, and came  upon what was collectively called "Pilsbury Grange".  We  were just in time to meet the land agent for a family that lives in London and rents out Pilsbury Lodge to visitors who come for walking tours in the "Peaks", as well as  some excellent trout fishing  in the river. It is a lovely site, with a deeply peaceful feel to it.   One of three houses or manors that may have first been constructed in medieval times, and were renovated continuously to the present time, are occupied.  The land agent  kindly showed us around the large three story house that was unoccupied unless rented for holidays, or occupied by the family living in London.  It is a three storied impressive manor which features massive  ancient beams and a number of small  bedrooms.  I couldn't help but fantasize a group meeting there for a retreat, enjoying the river, the garden, the fireplaces and the apple orchard.

Interior of one of houses in Pilsbury

The following day we visited again, this time. coincidentally,  with a  friend of my friend (they do bell ringing together!) and her husband who lived in the other house next to the Lodge.  This ancient dwelling has been extensively renovated by this couple, who have lived there for some 20 years and truly love this peaceful, isolated rural site along the Dove.  When he heard me speak,  he told me that, hearing my American accent, he figured another Pillsbury had turned up.  It seems that  he has had a number of such visitors over the years, and he even provided a collection of articles and photos which other Pillsbury visitors provided him with in gratitude for his hospitality since 1989.  

It seems that the Pillsburys have a homing instinct.

Grate over well in Pilsbury Grange

I don't know what to say about all of this.........it's quite Circular and synchronistic, and I somehow feel that a deeper honoring and connection has happened that I will understand better in the future.  I do note, by the way, that many of my photos have strange white spots in them.............I am of a romantic nature, and like to think it is a "thumbprint" of the ancestors, saying "hello" as yet another of their fortunate, and grateful, descendants turns up.



ps:  I received an email from my friend in Darbyshire;  she has a friend living in her village, an American named Deborah from Newbury, Massachusetts and also Boston.  She was apparently so interested in my adventure that she looked up her own geneology tree, and learned that one of her ancestors had married a Mathias Pillsbury (her own name is not Pillsbury).  Pretty amazing!

Pilsbury Grange

View from house and apple tree towards valley and river in November

View from walled garden area

Avebury: "How Do We Speak With the Earth"?

"Speak to the Earth and it shall teach thee"

.....Job 12:8

I didn't realize it before I set out, but I knew that I was going on a pilgrimage when I set foot in the airport for this trip, which  I booked without any real  planning, but a lot of intuitive and spontaneous desire, in summer.  The Metaphor here is the Circle, and the  Circle has no end.

I was googling around last summer when I learned of the Gatekeepers    Conference "Dreaming the Land" in Pewsey, U.K., in the cold month of November.  For  fun, I checked to see if there were any discount tickets to London during that off season time of the year, and indeed there were.  I'm not sure what possessed me, but the next thing I noticed was that I had my credit card out, and I was going to Great Britain again, after some 7 years. (The Isles of Bride, Bridget, Bree, the Roman Britannia...I wonder how many people know that Britan is linked to the name of the most ancient Celtic Goddess? ) 

I decided to  go to those special places I went to before,  and listen to the land, to any conversations that might occur, and any  synchronicities or insights as well as I entered into the  liminal zone of being a traveller .  I didn't realize until I found myself uncomfortably standing in a long customs line at Heathrow (you can do a lot of thinking, in a long customs line) that I was completing a few personal Circles as well as well as seeking them on ancient sites.  I was last here  for the Goddess Conference in 2011, and when I returned to the U.S.  I became caretaker and for my mother and my brother,  until they passed on in 2015.  Now I find that my life calls for a new direction, but I don't know what that really might be.  

But it came to me, as I waited at the gate for entry  to both the UK and my personal journey of  pilgrimage that I had arrived with a  Question I hoped would inform my future work:   "How do we speak with the Earth?  And how does the Earth speak to us?" What does such a question mean? How is it important for us as beings inhabiting Gaia?

"We are living IN the Earth.  Not ON the Earth, but IN the Earth.

  And what we do to the Earth we are doing to ourselves."

...... Rachel Rosenthal

From Customs at last I made my way  to Paddington Station in London, then to to Swindon by train, then to Avebury by bus, and wholly  exhausted I stepped from the bus to see,  perfectly aligned  across from the bus stop in the mist,  the great prehistoric structure of Silbury Hill.  Before  me rose the great  Belly of the Goddess, the Omphalos of an ancient world.  

And  ever since, I believe  answers began to come to my question, as well as loops within my many "Circles".


At my AIRBNB  my host, Liam, had a deep relationship with  Avebury, and he told me about the placement and  names of stones and sites,  as well as introducing me to his library, including a book called THE SILBURY TREASURE  by Michael  Dames.  Situated just south of Avebury, Silbury Hill is Europe's tallest prehistoric structure.  Dames argues that Silbury, like other "neolithic Harvest Hills" represents the pregnant belly of the Great Mother in one phase of Her universal life.  Dames' brilliant exploration of an ancient theology in which the land itself, all of it's rivers, waters, stones and invisible currents was the very  Deity Herself............gives a whole new meaning to the "Return of the Goddess" concept.  Gaia, the Great Mother, long before she became Demeter, or Mary, or..........more on this in another post.

When I walked out to the Avebury complex through the little village of Avebury  I found the high and sparkling energies I remembered so well, an intensification of a deep life force vitality I have come to recognize when i am in sacred places, places of numinosity and  telleric force.  There is no doubt in my mind (or body mind) that these prehistoric sites marked places of power, as well as serving to intensify or channel the  animating, life giving  Earth energies  present  through placement of the stones.  I believe that these prehistoric sacred landscapes also augmented the healing and consciousness changing properties through the  interaction  of the people themselves with the "spirit of the land".  John Steele called this "geomantic reciprocity" . 

I stood before a  megalith that is part of two stones called "the Cove", one wide, one tall and narrow.  I think these impressive stones mark  one of the "entrances" to the inner circle, marking one of the avenues or processional paths.  Originally there were three stones in alignment with each other at that point, but one of the three was pulled down and broken by villagers.  Many of the original stones of Avebury became building material for the village of Avebury.

"Many people believe that every sacred place has its spiritual as well as physical guardians, and a physical guardian can manifest in many ways, including people who don't even know that that is what they are."....Gary Biltcliffe

I met a man who was dowsing the area, and we struck up a conversation. So immediate and friendly was recognition between the two of us  that although we must have talked and walked around for over an hour, I never did get his name.  


He told me  he had many times dowsed at Avebury, and that there were  "male and female" polarities or lines connected to the site and even particular stones.  He spoke about the St. Micheal Line and the St. Mary line, ley lines that extend for many miles across the lands of Britain.  They intersect at certain points at  Avebury.  He also spoke about "dragon lines" that were different although often complimentary to the ley lines,  serpentine lines or currents  of (force?  energy?) that interact with different points within the empowered landscape.      I need to inquire more about this, but I think, again, about a life long (and cultural) fascination with the serpent, the dragon, and the continual weaving of this motif through mythology and art.  

And there I was, among the winding Dragons under my very feet, the great Stones before me.

A journey ahead, an adventure, and I was just at the beginning!

Slide Show for The Masks of the Goddess Project

Linda Johnson as "Bridgit".  Photo by Thomas Lux
Photo Copyright Thomas Lux (2001)

 In December it will be my pleasure and privilege  to be  giving a talk about the 20 year "Masks of the Goddess Project" at the Temple of the Goddess in Glastonbury, England. This is the slide show that will accompany my talk, I'm rather pleased with it!  I plan on  ending the Project this coming year, and donating and selling the Collection - it's time to let them go to new Storytellers and Priestesses, to do their work in the world.

My gratitude, as always, to the many friends and colleagues who have used the masks and supported their travels, as they filled with Story, Energy, Love, and Reverence, becoming part of the unfolding story of the Great Mother as told by many minds, hearts, voices, dancers, and dreamers. 

No artist could ask for more.

https://www.slideshare.net/laurenraine/the-masks-of-the-goddess-collection-2018

The Masks of the Goddess Collection (2018) from Lauren Raine

The Feast of Samhain..........Celebrated again!

Thanks again to all who came to our Feast of Samhain this weekend - the food and drink was wonderful, the Altar we made was lovely, and the stories and poems everyone brought inspiring and full of sweet remembrance.

Orb Photos of Ginny Moss Rothwell for Samhain

Orbs, Halloween night, Downtown Tucson 2011 (photo by Ginny Moss Rothwell)

Blue orb

In a past post  I've shared the beautiful mosaic Shrines by Tucson artist  Ginny Moss Rothwell.  She is actually almost a neighbor, living in the same neighborhood.   Here's another past post about Ginny  that is worthy of being shared again, especially at the time of Samhain, Dia de Los Muertos, and Halloween.

Ginny is what I would call "an Orb Whisperer" as well as an extraordinary spiritual artist.  She has a great interest in orbs, and has taken many photographs of orbs over the years in many places, both at home and in very domestic situations, as well as at gatherings, festivals, and sacred ceremonies.  She is a researcher and an artist, and I find her photographs of orbs that occur in her studio, home, and other places she has visited not only quite amazing, but very  beautiful as well.  I actually was present once when she "requested" any spirits that might be present to manifest in her photographs in specific colors, and I was truly amazed when the photographs actually did come out in the requested colors!  What, perhaps, does Ginny have about her that makes her an Orb Whisperer?  I tend to think it is the fact that she is an artist, a lover of mystery and beauty, and perhaps most of all, friendly, co-creative play.  In other words, I think the "orb beings" like her!

Violet orb

No one knows what "orbs" really are.  I've embedded a video about a movie made in 2008 about the phenomenon at the very bottom of this post.  Wikipedia has an article by a cynic who is quite certain they are just  dust specks, and I'm a bit disappointed with Wikipedia over that, because especially after seeing Ginny's work, it's absurd to make such a claim.  Among other things, the photographs she takes definately show a kind of spacial sense, as if the orbs are receeding into the distance as well as growing larger in the foreground. 

Green orb

Ginny has not only photographed many "fields" of orbs in different places, which refute the "dust on the lens" idea since they clearly appear to receed into space, but, just as she has a friendly, interactive relationship with the birds and lizards that share her back yard, it would also appear she has a friendship with the invisible visitors as well.  I've seen her ask out loud if "anyone is there", and then taken photographs around her person. As I said, on occasion she has asked if "they" would present themselves in colors.  Which they often do!

Nature spirits?  Fairies?  Devas? Angels?  Spirits of the dead?  All part of a conversational world, and although we may not know exactly what or who these beings are,  I do think that they love to gather where ever there is creativity, beauty, and loving kindness.  Thank you Ginny for sharing your work!

Orb field in night sky, backyard.  Circled orbs on close up have the appearance of a "heart" shape within them, according to Ginny, who has examined the photo closely.

Christmas lights and orbs at Winter Haven - Ginny says they seem to manifest often at festivals and gatherings.

Orbs and a strange shape in the back yard by daylight

Orb photographed over head of JZ Knight at conference devoted to Orbs.  Photo by Ginny Moss Rothwell .  JZ Knight requested that attendees photo her while she lectured.

Friendly visitors on a warm Tucson night.

Orb in motion

Red orb

Persephone: Goddess of the Liminal Realms

"Persephone" 2016

Persephone's Feast Day

When all the names are gone,

fallen like fraying leaves before the coming of frost;

when there is nothing left for memory to feed upon

November incubates an unborn rhythm,

a silent heartbeat.

Perhaps all the wastes of love and time

ferment their healing, underground, here

in these Nigrado depths,

becoming at last Albedo,

the medicine.

Now, there is no valor 

in this rooting among decomposing fragments

of so many lives.

I offer now bread, red fruit, red wine:  to life.

To the voiceless, the lost, the  hungry, and the fallen,

to every transparent lover wandering

these grey Bardos in their solitude.

Come to the table all.

Here is a rich conversation

harvested from the last living garden

a dappled pear, an apple, a pomegranate.

a butterfly in its chrysalis, winged, moist,

the slow rebirth of color

deep in the depths of this dream.

The great Wheel will turn again.

The wheat has new life in it yet.

The blessing will still be given.

          (2005)

Halloween, Samhain, is a liminal time  of year, when the "veils between the worlds" are thin.  Persephone is a "liminal Goddess", a myth that comes to mind at that threshold time just before winter.  

Before she was Persephone, she was Kore,  the young daughter of  Demeter, and in the Greek myth, while gathering flowers she was seized by Hades, god of the Underworld, and taken into the realm of death, the below world of Hades.  Demeter, in her rage and grief, causes the world to die - no plants bear fruit, no bees pollinate, no flowers bloom.  At last an agreement is made in which Persephone can be returned to her mother........but because the youthful Goddess has eaten 6 pomogranate seeds, she must return to the underworld for part of the year to be the wife of Hades.  Kore thus  becomes Persephone, the dual and integral Goddess of both life and of death.

This myth partakes of a very ancient and fundamental  mythos  based upon the cycles of nature, in  which there is a generative  underground realm where the souls of people and animals and vegetation  go after death, returning in the spring to new life. Our most early and ancient ancestors observed that the natural world dies down, seemingly into the Earth,  in the fall ("falls") and then arises from the body of the Earth  ("springs") in the spring.  Hence, all things must return to the great womb/tomb of the Earth Mother, incubated in some mysterious "below realm" to be reborn at the next turning of the year.  It has been suggested that this concept goes as far back as the time of cave paintings, the caves themselves representing the womb of the Great Mother. 

The tale of Persephone is probably derived from the earlier Sumerian myth of the Descent of Inanna, wherein the Great  Goddess  Inanna descends into the underworld realm to encounter her Dark Sister, Ereshigal, who like Hades, or the Noric Hella, presides as Queen of Death.  In this myth, which preceeded the patriarchal Greeks, and it is the husband of Inanna, Dumuzi, rather than the goddess herself, who must travel for part of the year into the Underworld realm to become the husband of Ereshigal as well as the husband of  Inanna.

  "Persephone did what Inanna did. Persephone's myth is about moving into a new state of being.  All the soul riches, the knowledge, the art, everything was running down the drain into Hades and it stayed there.  It stopped circulating.  This was the myth of the descent of Inanna as well; everything went down to Ereshkigal, the keeper of the Underworld, and got stuck there in the universal unconscious.  Ereshkigal, the mind of the underworld, was on strike - she refused to process.   We can look at both of these stories, the stories of Persephone and Inanna, and see that these two Goddesses are pathfinders.  Pathfinders to the unconscious, to the other worlds.  Persephone, Kore who becomes Persephone, creates something new that was not thought of before her journey.  And that's a very important myth for our time.  And it's also why the Eleusinian Mystery, which was about Persephone and Demeter, was the defining experience of mature spirituality in the Mediterranean basin for 2,500 years."

    ......Elizabeth Fuller, The Independent Eye

 I felt like sharing again an excerpt from a book that has been  important to me in my own discovery of the  Goddess, the 1989 THE GODDESS WITHIN, by Jennifer Barker (formerly Woolger) and Roger Woolger.  And there is a personal story about that book I would like to share because it demonstrates the way, when we "follow our bliss", we can find a synchronistic pathway of "touchstones" that lead the way.  

In 2003 I spent a month at Byrdcliffe artists colony in Woodstock, New York.  I was working on some masks  about Persephone, and moved by the book, wanted to contact Jennifer Barker to thank her, and ask if she might possibly give me an interview.  Although I found references in the internet  to her living in Vermont and occasionally offering workshops specifically on women and the Persephone archetype, I could not find any way to contact her.

At Byrdcliffe during my residency they had a masked ball, and I happened to strike up a conversation with an artist who lived in the area.  We agreed to meet for lunch to continue the conversation the following week.  Over coffee I told her about my fascination with the Woolgers book,  how it looked like the Woolgers were originally from the area, but I was unsuccessful in locating the woman who wrote so profoundly about Persephone.  My lunch companion said "Oh, you mean Jennifer?  She and Roger got divorced and she moved to Vermont.  I can give you her number if you like."

It seems they were friends, and just like that I had a contact, and a personal introduction!   When something like this happens, it is not only encouragement to continue the Vision Quest, but it is also about being given a key to your own inner life work.   I did end up calling Jennifer Barker and making arrangements to go to Vermont for an interview, but as it turned out I had to return before I could make the trip.  I still very much regret that lost opportunity.

"Persephone" 2003

 REFLECTIONS ON PERSEPHONE

Excerpts from THE GODDESS WITHIN, by Jennifer Barker and Roger Woolger

(1989,Fawcett/Columbine)

“In the true life of the spirit there is both light and dark, joy and woe, and the unconscious has both a higher and a lower aspect.  To fulfill her greater destiny, Persephone cannot have one without embracing the other.  Her deepest challenge is to unite the dark and the light sides of the Goddess in herself." 

At the heart of the great myth lies Hades, who is none other than Death personified.  When Persephone the maiden marries Hades, it is tantamount to saying that the maiden in her dies.  It is a figurative death, required by the greater wisdom of the psyche, a sacrifice that is also, as we have seen, an initiation.  Willingly or unwillingly, the Persephone woman has been called to renounce her innocent maidenly self and spend a large portion of her life going in and out of the underworld.  Most often she will do this in the role of a helper or guide to others.  Because she has been there herself, looked at the most terrible sides of human suffering, and survived, she is now a beacon.
 

It is no coincidence that all the accounts we have of the abduction of Persephone pass over in silence what happens to her immediately after Hades drags her into the darkness.  It is indeed a "mystery", a word that means "something that cannot be spoken"", from the Greek myein, which means "to keep silent".  Yet we know that death and loss were central to the mystical transformation that every initiate into the way of Persephone had to undergo. 

The return to the Mother, to Demeter is no longer the return of a maiden, but of a mature goddess, who now knows sexuality, death, and separation.  The return is a reminder that the two goddesses are in fact one, that together they represent the wholeness of being of the Great Mother, who can endlessly be separated from herself, endlessly die, and endlessly be reborn, as woman, as earth, as cosmos.

This is an awe-inspiring aspect of the primordial figure of the Great Mother that we have mostly lost today:  namely,  that she contains within her all opposites.  She is both youth and age, both maiden and mother, both warrior and tender of the hearth, and most significantly, both life and death.

Greek culture has been justly celebrated for its quality of brilliance and light, its establishment of the supremacy of reason, logic, and philosophy, it's lucid vision of the outer, physical world.  If there is a god who epitomizes this consciousness, it is Apollo, sublime god of light, reason and harmony.  Yet so much emphasis upon the light could not exist without a dark shadow being cast.  So, among the gods, as with the goddesses, there are splits and polarities.  The darker brother of Apollo is thus Dionysus, lord of ecstasy, madness, divine drunkenness, and sacrificial death, the very antithesis of Apollonian clarity.  Likewise, Zeus, imperiously sitting high upon his heavenly Olympian throne, must have a dark brother to oversee the lower depths - the mysterious and barely mentioned Hades. 

Once we realize this, we can begin to see that Persephone and her mother, Demeter, represent the two major opposite aspects of the primordial Great Mother that the Greek psyche was struggling to maintain.  Their myth represents, among other things, an attempt to see the whole momentous relationship of the higher and the lower, the light and the dark worlds, as part of a dynamic relationship, a cycle of life and death in which all beings participate.

If it were left to the male gods alone, there would be no such cycle, for masculine consciousness, lacking the inner mysteries of the body, of the menstrual cycle, of pregnancy and birth, has no cyclical awareness built into it.  Which is another way of saying that masculine consciousness knows nothing of the mystery of the life force. 

Masculine, Apollonian consciousness always tends toward mutually exclusive polarities:  something is either this or that, it is either day or night, but not both.  This is the whole basis of Aristotle's logic, one of the supreme achievements of Greek culture - at least according to the official patriarchal view of Western history.

Feminine or matriarchal consciousness, symbolized by the moon, lacks the extremes of mutually exclusive polarities - dark versus light, good versus evil - those dualities Western culture, especially Christianity, has grown so fond of.  Instead there is the model of the far subtler light of the moon in her infinite variations of light, shade, and darkness, forever changing, forever renewing herself…………The awesome side of Persephone as queen of death eventually became more frightening the more it was suppressed.  And it is, of course, in its suppressed form that it returns to torment the imagination of medieval Christianity in its paranoid fear of witches.

The mature Persephone who has returned from her journey lives somehow beyond the ordinary world, but she remains nevertheless intimately familiar with it.......In her completed form she unites the beginning and the end of the life cycle, birth and death in herself;  so, as an old woman she still retains her youthfulness, and as a young initiate she cheerfully carries the wisdom of years.”

PERSEPHONE'S WOUND:  THE ETERNAL SACRIFICIAL VICTIM

“When a woman is over identified with Persephone she will invariably be attracted to situations in which she or others get hurt.  She may have accidents or strange illnesses that render her dependant upon welfare.  She may find herself unavoidably taking care of ailing or dying parents.  She may attract to her charming but ultimately brutal and intimidating men she cannot escape from.  None of these events are her doing.  They appear out of the blue; relentless, crushing, unexplained.  When we look at these stories more closely, we find one common pattern:  she is powerless and usually passive.  These things happen to her.  Yet she seems, on examination, strangely drawn to them, as if they were indeed her fate.  We are led to suspect that the Persephone woman has a secret attachment to a deeply human and intractable theme:  the wretchedness of the innocent victim!

Only Hades can claim the victim.  Only a genuine encounter that brings the death of all ego, all attachment to innocence, can put to rest the misplaced pride of the victim once and for all.  This is Persephone's challenge, her moment of truth.” 

PERSEPHONE UN DESCENDED

“In her darkness and dividedness, the young Persephone woman yearns for the spirit to rescue her and deliver her from her inner confusion.  So when she learns of metaphysics and occult practices, she will frequently seek solace in the higher authorities of spirit guides, ascended masters, astrology, karma, and so forth.  This is part of the motivation that lead her to become a healer or channeler herself.  However, there is often a huge element of compensation in the way of the spirit, of channeled guides and masters, since it is all upward, into the light.  Unless she fully honors her dual nature, one that mediates between both the light and the darkness, between the living and the dead, she can become unaccountably arrested in her development.

Her true savior is not Zeus, but paradoxically, his dark brother Hades.  The wisdom of this extraordinary myth is that the source of Persephone's transformation comes from beneath, from the lower depths of soul, not from the higher reaches of spirit.  The spirit in its Olympian form cannot initiate Persephone.”

To be fully effective as a healer, Persephone must first, like all healers, heal herself.  But for Persephone this is not so easy.  Ironically her very capacity for empathy and psychic understanding is her greatest obstacle to the process.  Unless she finds outside help......all she will do is attract to her mirrors of her own unresolved victimization.

Why?  Because she does not know how to remain detached and separate from those whose suffering she feels so acutely; she lacks ego boundaries.  In her openness to the unconscious in herself and others, she is constantly fusing with the personalities and sufferings of those who are drawn to her.  Without the objectivity of a strong ego, she gets hopelessly bogged down in he morass of her patients' sufferings.

THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS?

Understanding the meaning of Persephone's descent and her connection to the spirit realm is especially urgent today.  Thousands of women (and men) are currently discovering mediumistic talent or so-called channeling.  In addition to this, no one could fail to notice the minor epidemic of enthusiasm for metaphysics. Cold it be, as the late Joseph Campbell, the unparalleled authority on myth and religion observed, that the emergence of Persephone consciousness that we are currently seeing is actually part of a "twilight of the gods"?  In one of his last essays, written shortly before his death, Campbell raised the possibility that the old gods are dying and new ones are breaking forth from the collective unconscious to take their place as humanity approaches a whole new era.

If this is so, from a Jungian standpoint this would mean that the very structures and energies of the deep unconscious, which symbolically we perceive as "gods" and "goddesses" are undergoing a profound shift.  So, the type of persona who is most sensitive to such shifts, the seer or mediumistic type we are calling the “Persephone woman“, is going to be right at the center of this momentous eruption of new psychic and spiritual powers…..But to live for much of one's waking life "among the dead" can put enormous psychic strain upon any woman (or man) with a mediumistic temperament, especially when her experiences are misunderstood or feared, as is frequently the case.  More than any of the other goddess types, the Persephone woman can experience deep alienation, sometimes bordering on breakdown, if her true nature and vocation are not recognized. 

For the fact is that the underworld is essentially a place of spirits.  Which means that it is, alas, singularly lacking in warmth, substance, or what most of us would call reality.  How the Persephone or mediumistic woman relates to this realm, with its threats of dissociation, madness, and despair, therefore poses a unique challenge to our psychological understanding."