Awaken to Spring
And Spring arose on the garden fair,Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breastrose from the dreams of its wintry rest.
~Percy Bysshe Shelley
In the story of Persephone and Demeter, Persephone, the beautiful and beloved daughter of the protective Goddess Demeter, was picking flowers one day, and had just plucked a Narcissus flower from the ground, when Hades, the God of the Underworld rose up out of the earth and whisked her away with him back down into the Underworld. Her surprised scream was cut off as the earth closed up after them. When they got to the Underworld, Hades professed his love and admiration and asked her to be his Queen. As her shock of being absconded faded, she responded to his admiration, his bended knee, his open and vulnerable heart, and agreed to join him. She found there, a new role, her life’s work: assisting those who arrived in adapting to their new world, offering guidance and support in their new life.
Demeter, the earth goddess of growth and grain, heard her daughter scream in her heart and knew her daughter to be gone from the earth. In tremendous grief, Demeter searched everywhere for her daughter and could not find her. She grieved so much for the loss of her child that she forgot all about her responsibility to humankind and the blessings of growth and spring and fecundity that she normally bestowed upon the earth. In her grief the world itself began to become barren, cold, dry and dark and the people began to starve.
Finally the Gods intervened and convinced Hades & Persephone that she was also needed back up and out into the Upper World. Persephone agreed to return; before she left, Hades offered her seeds of the fruit of a pomegranate, of which she willingly ate 6. At her reunion with her mother, it became obvious how much being in the Underworld had changed Persephone, and Demeter was especially not happy to hear about the pomegranate seeds. Because Persephone had eaten of the fruit of the Underworld, she was now required to return to the Underworld, one month for each seed eaten.
And that is how it came to be that for the six months of the year, when Persephone is with her mother, the sun and the rains return to the barren earth, the snow melts and the rivers flow and the new Spring buds burst into the lush growth of Summer with her mother's happiness to have her beloved child back with her.
And while she is Queen of the Underworld with Hades, her mother grieves with the Fall; cold winds blow as the trees lose their leaves and go dormant while the animals tuck into their dens to wait out the cold storms of winter. To wait for the return of Persephone and the return of Spring and of Demeter’s Joy.
Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love! ~Sitting Bull
In the SunMoon Tarot, The Empress, her pregnant belly showing proudly, is sitting on the moon in a gateway created by two trees. This gateway is the open end of the tunnel, Persephone has just made passage back into the world from the underworld, and with her return is the return of Spring, as her mother, Demeter, rejoices to have her precious daughter back by her side.
Persephone holds flowers in her hand while butterflies flutter at her feet next to several bunnies; the grass is green, the scene fecund and fertile. Her time in the underworld has not been for naught. When she is there, where she is Queen, she is fulfilled in her own right, as woman, as Queen as equal partner with her husband and has a role and a life that is all her own, apart from her mother. When she returns she gladly shares her overflowing wellspring of love with her mother and the earth, and remembers herself as the precious and beloved child. As women, we are all of these things, and it is good to remember both worlds feed us. Eventually, Persephone, herself, will be a mother and her world will open again into another role, another aspect to integrate.
But for now, she is the cause for the return of spring. The long dark psychological winter is over, we have reached the light at the end of the tunnel, the ice is thawing, the rivers flowing, the world is beginning to wake up. And as mother nature enters her fertile fecund season, we too enter into a sense of renewal, we have entered Spring!
The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also.
~Harriet Ann Jacobs
Is there a place in your life where you were forced to surrender to a darkness or a reality that you had not expected and just did not think you wanted anything to do with? Did that darkness have a gift for you? Were you able to find the doorway to your gifts that your wounds and challenges offered?
When I lived in Zululand in South Africa, I was on the other side of the world. I experienced night as day and day as night, dark as light and light as dark, Summer in Winter and Spring in Fall. When I left the US it was the beginning of May 2013, almost summer, when I landed in SA it was almost winter. When I left SA in December 2013 it was just before Summer, I landed back in the US in Winter. I had actually missed an entire Summer and Fall cycle at home.
Shortly after I landed, I was given the Zulu name Thandeka, which in Zulu means Loveable. Having long struggled with feeling not good enough or really loveable, to land in a foreign country and on the spot be given the name Lovable meant a great deal to me.
During my 7 months living in Shiyani, in Kwa Zulu Natal, I had one of the most difficult and challenging, beautiful and powerfully transformational times of my life. In the darkest times, I experienced what felt like ignorance, sexism and neglect from someone important to my well being, who I had expected (and previously experienced, or perhaps imagined) much support, at the same time, in the village, I was shown great deference and respect, my perspective and opinion seemed to matter to, and by, those I worked with at the school and those I lived nearby. I discovered dear new friends and support beyond my expectations, from the village community as well as from family & friends at home.
This was my culture shock, to be treated so poorly on one level, something I had never experienced before, and at the same time to be treated so well by practically everyone else. I had landed in a culture, and under the protection of someone, that felt to me at least 30 years behind in how women were treated and I had no frame of reference. I felt myself to be missing something, some way of making it easier, some grease to ease the wheel in order get some important needs met. Perhaps if I had been willing to be more flattering, or demure or accommodating; but these are not traits I had ever cultivated in my work world before.
I am an intelligent, educated woman, who has worked since age 15. I make no excuses for feeling deeply and utilizing my emotions to help me navigate in the world. I am emotional, feminine, strong, receptive and able to get the job done, using my masculine energy when necessary.I have never used female cajolery or feminine wiles to get work done, or to manipulate a situation; it was foreign to me...For most of my professional life I have worked mostly with women or with very intelligent, conscious and progressive men who had a great deal of respect for women and saw us as equals. It was all I had ever known.
When I look back I see that what I brought to that time and place was a completely different definition of Woman, of Feminine, of Strength. And because I saw everyone as my equal, regardless of how they viewed me, I hadn't realized how vulnerable I was, or how much I had alienated the powers that be by not knowing how, or being willing, to take up certain personality traits that were, in the not so distant past (see Suffragette and 9 to 5 for some reminders), and currently in many places in the world, absolutely imperative for survival for women...Until I pinched a nerve and had to come home 5 months early.
I found myself, alone, dropped off with a pinched nerve and all my luggage in tow, outside the Johannesburg Airport 9 hours before my flight when I couldn’t actually enter to the inner airport until 3 hours before my flight. 6 hours of coming to the realization that even in Joburg, where I might very well have had reason to fear, there was nothing to fear. I only encountered love there. I am so very grateful to have been dropped to my knees in confusion and pain and opened to the miracle of love that was right in front of me.
As a result of living in South Africa, I found a new and renewed respect for my feminine self along with even greater respect for the women who asserted themselves to create a new world for me, and I have dedicated myself to keep “the well” flowing and filled in myself, in order to be able to give forward even more. To insist on proper care of myself and on the support of those who are in the authority to give it, to do their jobs so I can do mine. To honor this body, this woman, this capacity for love and life and creation and wear my Lovable-ness as a cloak that all can see and love and support as I offer to see and love and support them. It goes both ways. And so it appears I am finally making it to the light at the end of that tunnel.
It has taken over 2 years to integrate my time in SA and to land on a new foundation back here in the US. Its as if I needed to let go of everything I thought I was, all the habits that made me who I was until I had no other option to be except exactly what I AM becoming in each moment. To fully surrender any and all of what my personality had demanded from life before, in order to unfold willingly into what my spirit has in store. And I am so excited to find out what is next.
This is the gift of the Empress. She lets us know that we have made it through, that even though we might not have chosen the path or the vehicle or the timing that our life/the Universe chose for us, we (if we are willing &/or lucky enough to manage it) surrendered. And in surrendering we found that there was something for us there, something no one had foreseen for us, certainly not our mothers who want to keep us safe and protected.
And yet we went and found our place in a new world and found that new world needs us as much as our old world does. So now, whenever we go, new life, transformation, beauty and love come with us. All Hail Spring! Welcome to the light at the end of the tunnel.
The most important thing to remember is this:
To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.
~E. B. Du Bois
