It Begins with a Call - Part 2

I have heard it said that when a belief system falters or is rejected, another must necessarily replace it.  The realm of the imagination in general and the story of Persephone in particular (along with my night visions) took the seat religion would once have occupied.  A longing filled me, rising and falling over time, now urgent, now quiescent, but always there.  I wanted to hold onto the feeling of communion that I got with the brightness in the dark.

           

“Go down, go down, go down,” the story urged.  I either didn’t hear it or I disregarded it.  Going down was not high on my list.  A Spring baby, I reveled in Her resurrection.  She didn’t choose to go down, but was forced.  Why should I choose it?

           

But Her name was truly etched on my heart. Did I think I could get the young flower child and not the Queen of the Dead?  Along with adolescent angst, the dark poems came, the grief poems, the separation poems, and later my Plutonium Ode, which recognized Hades’/Pluto’s dark underworld, double-edged wealth.  As above, so below (or in this case, as below, so above).  Isn’t all wealth in this culture dark and double-edged?

           

After many, many years (and with the generous help of my son Max, a gifted graphic designer), I made a book of my Persephone poems.  And, much later, in my elder years, family raised, career concluded, years of poems and morning pages written and spiritual experiments conducted, hundreds of rituals done and altars built, the unending longing still tugged and the story still advised, “Go down, go down, go down.”

           

I wanted to place my trust, finally and unequivocally, in the unseen that had been with me all along and that I had never fully accepted as real.  I wondered where Persephone, my guide and muse, would take me. 

After many years without one, or even wanting one, I found my way to a teacher.  I had enough trust to go with an intuition that the time, the place and the teacher were what I needed.  I prepared to go to her.  I created a SoulCollage® card; SoulCollage® is a process that for years had informed me. I was drawn to an image from a calendar, and I used it to make one of my few single-image cards.  Nothing else could be added to it; it was complete.  The image, from an old calendar, was of a young woman with a calm demeanor, bedecked in jeweled headdress and garments, holding out an equally ornamented box.  After I completed the card, I went back to the calendar to see what the artist called the painting.  It was “Proserpina,” the Roman name for Persephone.  Of course!  The box in her hands is the one Aphrodite sent Psyche to collect.  Trust synchronicities!

           

The story begins, then, with the gift of the box of mystery that supposedly holds beauty, down in the underworld dark. It begins, as it always has for me, with Persephone.

The Box

They say

nothing was

in the box

that she could see.

They say

something invisible

sank her into a

deathless sleep,

a powerful something,

like a poison gas.

What was really in that box, 

and why was Persephone

its keeper?

The mysteries held

in the dark realms

beneath the surface

always twist our

minds.  They are

never knowable.

It makes no sense

our trying to sort

them out.

So, perhaps we don’t think

of consequences,

or we don’t care to think.

Psyche didn’t, and

look what happened to her.

What happened?

In the end,

love rescued her,

that’s what.

Not so bad.

Persephone must have

known, or at least

suspected that the girl

would lift the lid.

She left her to

her own fate.

I wonder,

did it disturb Her?

Intrigue Her?

What did She

make of this

so-called beauty

in the box?