My surgery is scheduled for December 10th and while I am super thrilled about maybe getting rid of the pain I am still at a point where I am mourning that part of my life. Though I am being physically ushered from the mother stage into the crone stage earlier than my body planned, I also find my spiritual life following along behind.
I'm doing a big paper for my Honors Art and Mythology class where I take a really in depth look at the social and historical factors involved in the Demeter and Persephone myth. It has pulled down, headlong, like Persephone herself into the Underworld. I see the symbols left by the myth everywhere. In Underworld, we find that Selene has been brought over as a young girl to vampirism by the "King" of the vampires. This directly correlates to Persephone being forcibly removed to the underworld.
In John William Waterhouse's Narcissus we find a young girl picking flowers, oblivious to the dangers in the world around her. Indeed, Narcissus were the favored flowers of Persephone and Zeus told Hades where he would find her.
In the Matrix sequels, we find a character named Persephone who is married to a gangland boss type character who owns a club called Club Hel. Her husband figures into the story as being in charge of lost souls.
A sometimes used character in the Persephone myth is Hecate, Goddess of the Crossroads. She is sometimes styled as a psychopomp who journeys with souls into the underground, her torches lighting the way. She is the goddess who presides over crossroads where three roads converge and I find this especially telling in the trinity of the Three aspects of Woman. If Persephone is Maiden, Demeter is Mother, the Hecate is Crone. Persephone is, more precisely on the cusp between maiden and mother, she was a maiden but her innocence, her childhood is "dead" and she has tasted of the pomegranate, a fruit that mimics eggs in the womb. Demeter is on the cusp between Mother and Crone. She is mother but her child has grown and left home. Her action of bringing winter to the world is a symbolism of her now barren womb. Hecate too, is a woman on the cusp of a great journey, for she is the wise woman of cronehood but can also travel into the world of the dead. This leads me to believe that all the main female characters in the Persephone myth are one woman and that woman is all women. We are all at the crossroads. In honor of that realization I jotted down this poem:
Crossroads Woman
At dawn, her shadow sat like fat limbed Cupid upon the wall.
She bathed in the sweet nectar of Narcissus blossoms,
Her journey was just begun.
At noontide, her shadow stretched like the silken locked Kore
She bathed in the sharp, tart juice of the pomegranate,
Her journey half done.
At Evening, her shadowed rounded like Hecate upon the wall.
She bathed in the heavy scented musk and clove,
Her journey undone.
She was a woman at the crossroads, and had always been so.
She bathed in the sweet nectar of Narcissus blossoms,
Her journey was just begun.
At noontide, her shadow stretched like the silken locked Kore
She bathed in the sharp, tart juice of the pomegranate,
Her journey half done.
At Evening, her shadowed rounded like Hecate upon the wall.
She bathed in the heavy scented musk and clove,
Her journey undone.
She was a woman at the crossroads, and had always been so.