Persephone in Hades
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EDITORS John Blair, Un ivers ity of Geneva Karin Blair, United Nations, Geneva • Harry M. Bu ck, Wilso n College Rebecca Nisley, Silver Spring, Md. EDITORIAL Joyce L. Morrison ASSOCIATE ASSOCIATE Beatrice Bruteau, Ph ilosophers' Exchange EDITORS Paul Cadrin, Un iversite Laval Carol Christ, San Diego State Un ivers ity Cornel ia Dimm itt, Georgetown University Linda Fish er, Harvard Un ivers ity Dan iel Goleman, Psychology Today • Rita Gross, Un ivers ity of Wisconsin-Eau Claire John Lindberg, Sh ippensburg State Co llege Linda Patricia, Kean College June Singer, Jungian Analyst, Ch icago CONSULTING Cynthia Allen, Florida State Un ivers ity EDITORS Martha Ashton, Udipi, India JoAnne Bauer, Hartford Seminary Foundation Su kumari Bhattacharji, Jadavpur Un iversity, Calcutta Barbara Blair, Fordham University Caro lyn Demaree, American Un iversity Richard and Florence Fa lk , Princeton University Naomi Goldenberg, Un iversity of Ot tawa • Josephine Harris, Wilson College Jean Houston, Foundation for Mind Research Thomas A Kapacinskas, Not re Da me Un iversity Susan Nichols, Dickinson Co llege Richard Rubenstein, Florida Stat e University PHOTOGRAPHY Veron ica Pera lta CONSULTANT CONSULTANT Raymond A. Ball inger DESIGNER • ANI MA, An Experiential Journal, is published by Conococheague Associates, Inc., adjacent to the Campus of Wilson College, 1053 Wilson Avenue, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 17201 . Entire contents copyright © by Conococheague Associates, Inc., 1977. All rights reserved. Published semi-annually in celebration of the Spring and Fall Equinoxes. Address all correspond ence, including changes of address, to Harry M. Buck, 1053 Wilson Avenue, Chambersburg PA 17201 . Subscription price $7.50 annually, single copies $4.00. Unsolicited materials welcomed, but publisher assumes no responsibility for them. Return postage must be enclosed with unsolicited items. All contents are subject to editorial changes. ANIMA reserves the right to make its own independent judgment as to the acceptability of all copy, including advertising copy and illustrations. Authors and/or advertisers assume liability for all content and for any clai ms arising therefrom against the publisher. Indexed in Index to Religious Periodical Literature. pCIICphonc • PERSEPHONE, daughter of • CHRISTINE DOWNING is Zeus and Demeter, abducted Chairperson of Religious and carried to the under Studies at San Diego State world by Hades, is the heroine University and a member of of a story replete with many the core faculty of the Cal archetypal symbols. In a ifornia School of Professional search for self-identity, many Psychology. Most of her modern persons have found teaching and writing is in new meanings in this myth depth psychology, mythol and have identified with var ogy, and modern European ious portions of it. ANIMA is literature. happy to present two unusual experiences with the figure of Persephone. • DR. HAROLD M. HAMMOND is in the private practice of psycho-therapy at 1109 Spring Street, Suite 604, Silver Spring, Maryland 2091 0. Persephone, by John Rood (1952-53), standing sculpture on the Campus of Wellesley College Photo by Paul Buck ANIMA FOU R/1 21 I want to use the story of my rela tion to the myth of Persephone to · Persephone In Hades communicate the sense of how one Christine Downing learns about myth from myth - from the discovery of what it means to live a myth rather than from scholarly played the central role nor always the seemed so important "once upon a study. This essay has, therefore, a classical myths of Greek antiquity. time." And sometimes it happens very personal aspect since it has American Indian legends and Grimm's that a god or goddess, a hero or a seemed important to include some fairy tales and some of the books I heroine, with whom one has never reference to my own dreams and fan read and reread as a child and early felt any particular connection sud tasies and to events in my life -nev- adolescent have impressed me just denly asserts his or her claims upon 0 ertheless it seeks to communicate as deeply. For a bright and tomboyish us. I had a very vivid experience of that the recognition of the archetypal young girl the acknowledgment of that in relation to Aphrodite two years and universal dimensions of one's ex of some synonymy with Athena was ago when I had just recently come to periences frees one from a purely per- inescapable. Even when very young I California to live. I was walking at the sonal relation to them. I also hope to recognized myself in the stepmother edge of the sea on the deserted beach show that one can celebrate the myth who peers anxiously into her looking near my new home with the waves ic patterning without losing an appre glass as well as in Snow White, knew lapping over my seaweed entangled ciation of the concrete and unique that I was more like the spoiled and feet. Standing still for a few moments, c. moments that constitute one's exist idle, the irredeemably selfish second I had a sudden flash of Botticelli's ence. This, I believe, is what Freud daughter in "Mother Holle" than like "Birth of Venus" and what it is to be meant by "transference" - to know her admirably selfless sister. As an reborn - not as a child but as a grown U that one is Sigmund Freud and Oedi- oldest child, I felt myself more Hansel woman - and understood more clear ....... pus, that I am Chris and Persephone, than Gretel. Later, but still long before ly and gratefully than I had without ~ and that either description alone is college, I knew I was the Joseph K that image some of the feelings of insufficient. This sense that an old whose early morning arrest propels "newness" and yet "maturity" that .. story is being newly lived is also what him into a strange world of undefined were so strangely combined in my lies at the heart of any mythopoesis, accusation and ineluctable guilt and consciousness at that time. any creative mythmaking. the Ivan Karamazov who is over Sometimes, too, it has been anoth Because I will be speaking here in whelmed by the nihilist conclusions er who has recognized that for him I U such detail of my relation to a particu- of his own relentless reasoning. I incarnate a mythic figure and thus lar mythologem, it seems important longed for the kind of education Hans first suggested an identification I lat to begin by saying that this one myth Castorp received on the magic moun er come to admit as integral to my has never been the only one for me. tain. own self-understanding. I can remem Q. As far back as I can remember there The power some of these figures ber, for example, being told that I was have been several mythic patterns hold tor me has deepened through another's Ariadne, that I had held the with which I have felt myself to be the years; others (like Jo of Little thread which gave him the courage to closely identified. Nor have these al Women) I have long ago left behind, dare the exploration of his own inner ways been myths in which a female though I can still recognize why she labyrinth. But because I knew that ANIMA FOU R/1 22 Ariadne later is left on Naxos, I resist dite and Abraham and there are many how all the elements in the story are ed seeing myself in this role. It was others. Nevertheless, Persephone a necessary part of it, belong togeth only gradually and reluctantly that I has a special place. For from her I er, so that now I see that the myth is came to appreciate that all of Ariad have learned a different relation to the mythos, the plot, the action, not ne's story is indeed connected to my myth than all these other identifica the figure abstracted from it. Perseph own. It took a long while for me to tions and all my familiarity with many one is the one about whom this story understand that if Ariadne helps The mythological traditions and with much with all its ramifications is told. And seus as she does, she must be left of the scholarly writing about myth in ways that I am still discovering her behind - for his sake and her own. ology had taught me. From my life story is my story - through knowing He must overcome his anima depend long involvement with this particular that has no immediate or practical ence and she must overcome her de myth I have discovered how the ap significance. I value very highly James pendence on playing the anima role. prehension of a mythic pattern teach Hillman's reminder, "Myths do not Only then will she become some one es one that there may be symbolical tell us how. They simply give the in able to relate to a man who has his ly meaningful connections between visible background which starts us own soul connection, like the Diony events which otherwise might seem imagining, questioning, going deep sos who comes to Ariadne after her isolated moments or stages, and er."2 desertion. shows one the inner bond between "Always," as far back as I can re It seems to me also that some of what one does and what apparently member, I have been Persephone. these mythical prototypes one feels happens to one. Perhaps because I am spring's child, one is; others serve as models. I am Often, in ways that continue to sur born on the first day of spring, and not Abraham and will not be; never prise, I have found that there are cor Persephone is the goddess of spring.