Persephone

A Brief Biography + Guide to Shadow Integration

by Erin Faith Allen photo by Fabio Interra

Persephone

Persephone is the daughter of Demeter and Zeus. (Their Roman names are: Proserpina, Ceres, and Jupiter).

The following is the Wikipedia summary of Persephone. It is a bit bland, but covers the facts: Zeus permitted Hades, who was in love with the beautiful Persephone, to abduct her. He was granted permission because Persephone’s mother Demeter was not likely to allow her to go down to Hades.

Persephone was gathering flowers with the Oceanids along with Artemis and Athena—as the Homeric Hymn says—in a field when Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth.

Demeter, when she found her daughter had disappeared, searched for her all over the earth with Hecate's torches. In most versions Demeter, goddess of harvest, forbids the earth to produce or she neglects the earth. Her despair causes nothing to grow. Helios, the sun, who sees everything, eventually told Demeter what had happened.

Finally, Zeus, pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who also heard their anguish, forced Hades to return Persephone.

Hades indeed complied with the request, but first he tricked Persephone, giving her some pomegranate seeds to eat. Persephone was released by Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, but because she had tasted food in the Underworld, was obliged to spend a third of each year (the winter months) there, and the remaining part of the year with the gods above. Now, I will share MY current interpretation of our heroine (it changes frequently, like the moon herself), and invite you to cultivate your own.

Basically, Persephone was fierce AF. She took a traumatizing event that tore her away from her nurturing mother and her innocence, and turned it into triumph.

She did not remain a victim; instead she learned to utilize her powers and developed them for her own advocacy, and became the equal to the Lord of the Hell Realms.

She learned how to see in the dark, navigate hell, and evolve into a guide between the darkness and the light, the shadow and the illumination, the fear and the hope - AKA the dualities of life, represented by the Underworld / Upperworld.

Persephone had to rely on herself and her own intuitive and instinctive powers, and she had to make friends with the folks down in hell, AKA the dead. She essentially became her own mother, nurtured herself into an evolved woman, and developed the necessary traits to survive - and thrive - as Queen of Hell. Imagine what it takes to accomplish this? It takes determination, fearlessness, and a willingness to BE IN HELL.

Persephone had to fall in love with - or at the very least make peace with - the God of Hell in order to survive and thrive in his Underworld, in order to truly be his Queen and RULE the life after death existence that she had down there. She took ownership and worked it. When I translate this to myself, this tells me I must learn how to communicate with, and then fall into deep love with, my ‘inner abductor’.

You have one, too.

Who is our inner abductor? Our own internalized God of the Underworld? The one inside us who throws us under the damn bus every day? The side of us that kidnaps us away from the truth of who we are?

You know how it goes:

Oh, a hot bath sounds so lovely. Or, I’d love to go for a little walk in the forest. Or, ooooh I’d love to get dressed up today! Really let myself feel gorgeous! Or, what I’d love right now is to sit and write / paint / journal / read / relax. Or, I’ve always wanted to write a book. Or, I’d give anything to go on a lovely holiday …

OR

I mustn’t eat that food / drink that alcohol because it feels so dreadful when I do, and then I’m not my best in life. I wish I didn’t have to go out to coffee / dinner / drinks with so-and-so but I feel like I can’t say no. I really need to get off of my phone and social media, stop scrolling like a zombie and go do something that nourishes my soul …

OR I have this gorgeous idea for a business / project / way to spend time …

AND THEN THE VOICE JUMPS IN RIGHT AWAY and tells you the opposite, all the reasons you deserve to suffer or don’t deserve to live the life you want.

So … you listen to that voice and eat the food, zombie on your phone, or hijack your pleasure time.

RIGHT?

That’s your inner abduction in action.

That’s what keeps you in hell, my friend.

HELL.

So, let’s just start to notice that voice. Oh hello, inner God of Hell. No wonder I feel like hell half the time. I listen to you, instead of being / doing the thing *I desire*.

I listen to you, Hell-voice, instead of dripping with my desires on the fast track to HEAVEN, or pleasure.

Then, we have the CHOICE to allow the abduction or not. If we don’t allow it, we aren’t abducted. If we do allow it, we aren’t abducted - we mitigate our own victimization through our allowance - and we are no longer a martyr. We’ve taken responsibility for our own lives.

BOOM.

The irony here is that when we fall in love with our inner kidnapper, we eventually won’t be kidnapping ourselves because we are living in full awareness of and alignment with the kidnappings.

I know, it’s a lot to wrap your brain around. It’s a practice, it’s a ritual, it’s a one-step-at-a-time thing.

But it’s a gamechanger. PROMISE.

A bonus: when we are totally engaged with our inner kidnapper, we become more resilient against being abducted in our relationships with lovers, family, colleagues, and society.

We are more vigilant about being TRUE to who we are, and less likely to allow ourselves to shrink, disappear, or be bossed around. (These things are essentially the same thing as an abduction of course, because they take us away from the truth of who we are).

Persephone is a perpetual reminder to refrain from playing the victim. Patron saint of triumphant survival, steadfast devotee of her own resilience and nothing-can-keep-me-down, she shows the way to self-responsibility in the worst of circumstances. So, if you are having some kind of reaction to these words, you might want to ask yourself:

Am I invested in being the Victim?

The Martyr?

The Queen of Woe Is Me?

Queen of Hell

Persephone is the Queen of The Hell Realms.

The hell realms are one of the biggest taboos of all, because it’s the junk pile that holds alllllllllll the repressed memories, discarded dreams, wounded pieces, self-abductions, and fears that keep us from being powerful, autonomous, and happy.

WE ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO GO THERE. Right? Forbidden. Off limits.

We aren’t supposed to feel the things that are going to eventually empower us.

Persephone teaches us that we must love the hell realms inside us. Those shadowy and pushed down aspects are exactly where we need to go in order to thrive in life.

It’s hiding from our ‘taboos’ that keeps us locked into our individual miseries.

The list of our taboos is SO LONG for each of us.

This list of ‘thou shalt not’ is shaped by our cultures, our religions, our families, our school systems, our friends, and our media.

Take some time to contemplate all the things that you are ‘not supposed to’ talk about, think about, or do.

When you give this time and attention, you’ll be shocked by how many you drag around. And, you’ll call forward some very buried taboos that you didn’t even know you carried.

You’ll begin to notice just how much self-expectation and judgement you carry that has been handed down to you as a ‘belief’ system, and that you must behave AND hide who you are.

You’ll realize you don’t even ACTUALLY believe these things. Symbolism

Pomegranates have become the ultimate symbology of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.

What else do you see in the pomegranate? Does it remind you, as it has women for millenia, of your own body?

What if I tell you …. our bodies are also symbols of the Underworld / Upperworld. What comes to you as you reflect on this?

What’s buried under your skin, in your Underworld? (All the dead stuff? All the stuff you hide, that gets projected onto the world around you?)

What do you show the world, as your Upperworld? (Your smiles? Your love? Your laughter? Your tough warrior?)

What else can you view around you, or within you, as a symbolic representation of above / below?

What are some other symbols of Persephone, or any part of her mythology, that you perceive? Jungian-ish Analysis

In the tradition of Carl Jung, dream analysis often takes the view of: what if YOU are symbolized by EVERYTHING in your dream? Let’s take that approach here with the myth of Persephone:

You are Persephone. You are Hades, god of Hell. You are Hell itself. You are all the dead peeps in Hell. You are Demeter. You are Zeus. You are the pomegranate. You are the Upperworld.

Sit inside this invitation, and see how the mythology begins to shapeshift, like Persephone herself … and let it shapeshift you.

Optional:

Write a narrative / take a photograph / make art about your inner abductor, your hell realms, or anything else that inspires you about this topic. Your world will open more to Persephone’s treasures if you are able to take time to write in your journal about your revelations.

Be mindful of dreams at this time. She will speak to you there.

Ready to deepen your understanding of other mythologies + archetypes?

Visit Erin’s website:

www.thealchemicaloracle.com

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