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."

Hecate (Revisited)

"In us is also a dark angel (Hekate was also called angelos), a consciousness (she was also called phosphoros) that shines in the dark and witnesses such events because it is already aware of them a priori.........Part of us is not dragged down but always lives there, as Hekate is partly an underworld Goddess."

The Dream and the Underworld,  James Hillman

It's that time of year again, that LIMINAL TIME  when the world prepares to go into the darkness of winter, the last Harvest Festival is almost here.  Hecate's Time, and I felt like it was appropriate to pull out this previous post about that Great Goddess of the Underworld. Because even under the veneer of the commercial Halloween frenzy going on, as the Veils thin, there she is still.......standing at the Crossroads of Time, illuminating the darkness  with Her two Torches.  


I have  made a number of paintings throughout my life that portrayed myself as Hecate (strangely, now that I reallly am a "crone" I haven't had that impulse).  It wasn't until later that I began to realize, as Hillman above comments, that I was invoking and calling forth this quality within myself by so doing, asking for the inner guidance I needed as I moved through a divorce, through menopause, and later being a caretaker for members of my family as their lives ended.  

Hecate is the Underworld  aspect of the Triple Goddess  Persephone/Demeter/Hecate.  This archetype of 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 from 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 underground realm (Womb/Tomb)  to return again in the springtime.  

"Mandorla of the Spinning Goddess"
 by Judith Anderson**

 

Hecate, from "I Am The Goddess, ALL are The Goddess",
 facilitated by Lena Grace, (2012)

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 copy below a short interview I did with Damira Norris, in 2002 a woman who performed Hecate in a 2001 performance produced by Diane Darling.  I found Damira's reflections on working with Hecate through the passage of menopause very moving.    I reflect, re-reading some of the ancient lore of the Triple Goddess, how far contemporary theologies have removed us from reverence for the Earth and all of  Her cycles, and especially, the renewal and mystery that comes from the darkness.    Which is now a  very critical concern.  

Hecate
by Damira Norris

Hecate was my guide as I traveled through the tunnel of menopause, my appointed time to do my "shadow work". At menopause I entered a profound depression. I was forced to plunge into recesses of my life history I hadn't begun to negotiate. What I felt, in essence, was deep emotional shame. All of my internalized stories of being a victim arose for examination. And I was also forced to examine the side that is a tyrant, that always insists on having it's own immature way.

I remember lighting a candle each day to symbolize my daily commitment to my journey through the despair I felt. I carried that candle with me, and when I felt lost, I relit it. That's Hecate to me. She will not help you to avoid a thing, but She will bear a light for you on the path, the path to mature empowerment. "It's time", She says, "to know the inside of yourself, to know all that is there". I believe that at certain passages in our lives, our souls cry "I want to get rid of this, I want to move on". And it's not easy.

"Go down into it" my counselor would tell me, "bring it up and let's look at it". That's Hecate country. I remember a visualization I did while in therapy. She had me look behind a curtain, and what I saw was an emaciated, unloved creature. I was given the opportunity to "meet" a part of myself that symbolized the inner voice that daily recited a litany that went something like this: "I can't do this right, I can't do that".......I had to meet this sad, frightened creature and open my heart to her. Now, I recognize that persona when I'm driven by unconscious fear. I can determine to bring her into the whole circle of who I am.

We see Hecate as scary. But that comes from a culture that denies aging, the so-called shadow side of life. 

We are preoccupied with youthfulness, which translates as a childish self-absorption that insists "I will do what I want to do, when I want to do it".....regardless of the consequences to ourselves, our communities, to our world. Shadow work is about soul retrieval. I had to become a mature, empowered woman at menopause, and so, whether I understood it or not, I had begun to bring home parts of myself that were lost. Unexamined childhood wounds, so many "underworld" storylines. That meant going inside to meet the ugly, the uncomfortable. Hecate was the force guiding me through the hard times. When I performed Hecate, I was doing it to thank Her.

The Dark Goddess is about learning genuine compassion, full circle compassion. It's so much easier now for me to recognize what is going on with others, because I can see into the once opaque depths of myself. We speak of women who've gone through menopause as being "more in their power". This is because the other side of disintegration is the retrieval of enormous reservoirs of energy. We're asked to clean out the book of our lives, so we can become guides for those who will follow us. To become our Hecate selves."

"Hecate" (1997)

I also take the liberty of copying a wonderfully insightful and well researched  article by  Danielle Nickel - for further insight, visit her site   (http://home.comcast.net/~subrosa_florens/witch/index.html) .

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.

"Dream Weaver" (2009)                               

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 curious 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.

**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".

New Old Work........

Persephone

Last spring I began a series of 4 masks, inspired by a friend who wished to use them for a ritual theatre process based upon the Eleusinian Mysteries of ancient Greece.  We don't know exactly what occured in the Mysteries, because participants were forbidden to tell what occured - "Mystery" derives from a work that means "that which cannot be spoken".  But the  Eleusinian Mysteries  combined spirit of place and mythic enactment to transform pilgrims as they  enacted the death/rebirth cycle of nature, based upon the Triple Goddess Demeter/Persephone/Hecate  for almost 2,500 years, and probably longer, as, like many places of pilgrimage today, the origins go back far into prehistory. 

I wanted to try to make the masks look old, and tried to imagine what they might have looked like as painted Greek masks..........these don't really look much like ancient Greek masks at all, but I like them anyway.  They were recently used by a ritualist in California, so they have some energy instilled in them and I hope they'll "travel" to others who might want to use them to explore these important myths.
 

Demeter

Hades

Hecate

I've written quite often about Hecate, the Underworld Goddess who bears two Torches to assist Persephone, and the immature unconscious parts of all of us, through the Underworld to mature empowerment - here's a recent post.

Hecate

Persephone

Here's another recent variation..............Demeter aren't done yet.  But I had fun making the masks look "bronze".  I like the idea of these masks, and the other sculptures that seem related, really looking sculptural, with a heavy, strong, dark,  metal presence. 

Black Madonna

Here's an other theme that keeps arising, and it's good to come back to these images, play with them again.  The Primal Black Madonna, Earth Mother, Gaia, the Source that sustains us all.

Transformer:  Yin and Yang

I love these paper casts of a dead snake that I found years ago and made a plaster cast of.  Snakes were very sacred in ancient times as a symbol of the renewal of life because the snake sheds its skin.  Snakes also represented the serpentine movements of nature, the spiral of the Goddess that moves through nature's cycles, through life/death/rebirth again and again.  The Snake is identified with Demeter and Persephone, and in ancient Egypt the word for snake or cobra was the same as the word for female deity.

I did this "Skin Shedder Mandala" back in 1986, when I was studying "The Spiral Dance" by Starhawk as a graduate student at the U.A.  A lot of people found it dark or grim............but I still love it.  

The Black Madonna (2013)

Black Madonna earlier version...............

  And I'm having fun making these variations on the Torso .................... I guess the next one is a "copper patina" effect.  Good to be in the studio again, having my discussions, in the symbol language of art I think, with the Dark Goddesses of  Winter....................

Cast of sculpture from IPark in 2005