Persephone's Secret: Living and Loving in the Underworld

Poor Persephone--If there's one mythic figure whose archetypal resonance is easy to constrict into a shallow stereotype, it would be this Greek goddess. Whether we've been steeped in mythology, or have had only a brief introduction, the tale of Persephone's abduction into the underworld is a classic. Perhaps too much so, in that we feel like we "get" the story on the first pass: A young virgin goddess is abducted by the old king of the underworld, her enraged and grief-stricken mother causes trouble for humans on earth as she transforms the eternal abundance of spring into the eternal lack of winter. Mom finally makes a deal with the head god, Zeus, and gets her daughter back for part of each year, thus creating/explaining the changing seasons on earth.

While those are the broad outlines, the story is so much juicier, especially when envisioned through the eyes of Persephone herself--not that Persephone (the silly goddess-ette romping through fields of flowers with her virgin girl squad) but the dark, powerful and mature queen of the underworld that she becomes.

Persephone's Secret. Collage on Board.

Like all great stories (and myths are the greatest of stories) there's often a plot twist that can't be easily explained away--a twist that allows for different, and deeper, understandings of the tale's protagonist. As the goddess Demeter (Persephone's mother) rages and sinks into depression after her daughter's abduction and presumed rape, Persephone trades innocence for maturity, maidenhood for womanhood. So the plot twist: As she is being granted her freedom, she eats a handful of pomegranate seeds (knowing, I believe) that eating any fruits of the underworld would ensure that she would have to return, that her "escape" to mother would be more like a yearly visit.

Her transformation in the underworld and her willing (or unwilling) partaking of the pomegranate seeds have been the subject of numerous works by psychologists, mythologists, religious studies scholars, and artists alike. A "re-visioning" of the figure of Persephone reveals her as a complex woman comprised of equal parts victim, survivor, strategist, lover, partner and queen. In The Moon and the Virgin, artist and therapist Nor Hall writes: 

"Seduction is a kind of education. When you are educated, or educed, you are led out. When you are seduced, you are led aside. . . . . The event of first enrapturement seduces one out of childhood."

Like Hall, Chris Downing (religious & mythological studies scholar) has reflected deeply on the figure of Persephone. Her essay, "Persephone in Hades" is a powerful means of understanding how Persephone's story could have guided so many in the ancient world through the Eleusinian Mysteries, and perhaps more importantly, why myths still matter in the contemporary world.

"When [one begins to see] that the whole story is about a figure who is first and foremost goddess of the underworld, one understands very differently what it means to say that she is also goddess of spring and renewal. To start with death, with the underworld, as a given is to see life in an entirely different way. . . . We are always still virginal before the really transformative (killing) experiences."

Persephone (as queen of the underworld) by the incredible 20th c. photographer Madame Yevonde.

Read More