Persephone ponderings...

Looks like I'm seeking again... or my addiction for taking classes has resurfaced since I finished my "healing training".  Anyway, I did SouLodge... and now I'm on to a Goddess e-class (by the fantastic Stephanie Anderson Ladd) on Persephone - Demeter - Hecate.

 The real pull for me was Hecate... as I swear she's been pulling at me for over a year.  I just haven't sat down to get the "facts straight" so-to-speak.

I made some prayer beads for Persephone since I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around her.  The beads tell her story.. at the bottom middle there is the goddess herself... in the garden of innocence... becoming darker... with bone beads interspersed... to the dark flower on the right... her coming of age in the Underworld.  I have never been sure how her story wove into an archetype... first she's abducted... then chooses (by eating the pomegranite) to remain with her husband in the Underworld... it seems to me she holds two archetypes.  In one, she is the innocent maiden... naive... full of fascination with the flowers that she is picking... when life changes.  She undergoes an initiation (in a way) into the Underworld... into a darkness... which she embraces and becomes queen.  She then has vast knowledge of the dark, and uses it to help those in need.

So, in some ways her story, then is about the fall of innocence, and embracing the Self that comes from gaining some inner knowledge.  But she represents both sides of the fall from innocence... as far as I can tell.  Her light aspect, being the maiden picking flowers, full of innocence (and lack of knowledge about how the world works).  She picks flowers as the first major arcana card, the Fool, in a way... and after her abduction by Hades she becomes the Priestess, knowledgeable in the ways of the world, and particularly the underworld.  Yes?

I guess the hard time I have is that she's not a static picture.  She is about transformation.  She balances innocence with wisdom, the maidenhood she spends with her mother and the independence she has as Queen of the Underworld... she is contrast.

I've seen this play out... I've pretty much lived Persephone's story in my own way.  I don't love looking over these old events... but they do keep coming up... and spring has its own correlation to my own story.  Not sure what to make of it... but I think I may have a longer walk with Persephone than just this week in the Goddess e-class.