Persephone « Reflections | Holster Fine Art

PERSEPHONE

Persephone, fruit of the dark earth, also named Kore is the daughter of Demeter. The fruit contains the essence of life, but the act of harvesting it involves a form of death when it is severed from the plant where it grew. The abduction of the maiden Kore who ascends to the throne in the underworld to become the queen Persephone is a dark and harrowing tale, but it is also one of the most interesting of the Greek myths about power and transformation.

The sombre and dark Hades of the land of the dead is the antithesis to the youthful and vibrant Kore of fruits and flowery meadows. Her abduction can be understood as a violation but also as the union of opposites. The myth is not always clear about her thoughts and feelings in the matter. Kore/Persephone is certainly more than a helpless victim of circumstance, however. When Hades eventually offers Persephone her freedom, his other hand holds a simple gift of pomegranate seeds that would bind her to the underworld if eaten. Persephone accepts the gift and in so doing forever changes the cosmic order. Where there once was a lone and austere monarch ruling with uncompromising severity, the land of shadow comes also to be under the influence of a queen of light and life that welcomes the spirits of the dead. In her act of transformation she also wrests a degree of independence from her all powerful mother Demeter as well as her husband Hades, as she is free to stay in the realms of both the living and the dead, in the passing of the seasons.

Persephone emerges as someone who has found a way to integrate their own light and darkness into a power of profound change.