Persephone Story

Persephone debuted in the show 'CULT OF MYTH' (April 25-26 2008, DNA Theater, NYC) and will be filmed for World Dance New York's upcoming performance DVD 'FANTASY BELLYDANCE'. Part of the music is being composed by Pete List. Stay tuned!

The following is an excerpt from the book MythAstrology.

"Demeter the goddess of grain has only one daughter, Persephone, whom she loves more than anything else on Earth. Laughing and joyful, Persephone lives her dreamy life with other maidens in her paradisiacal home. Her mother’s love has sheltered her so fiercely that she has never had a challenge to face.

One day she finds a beautiful white flower and plucks it. The ground opens up and out shoots a great dark chariot pulled by black horses. The driver seizes her and carries her off, screaming, and the earth closes up after them. It is Hades, lord of the underworld, and Persephone’s perfect life is shattered once and for all.

Persephone has been the innocent maiden for so long that she doesn't know how to be anything more at first. She sits paralyzed in a corner of Hades' realm, neither responding to his attempts to woo her nor trying to make an escape. She is waiting, in fact, for someone to rescue her so that she will not have to actually make an active decision.

Persephone starts out as a passive victim who bad things happen to. However, something down in the underworld happens to her, and it is catalyzed not by her abductor/suitor but by the ghosts of the dead. There is an implication in the myth that Persephone takes pity on the weeping spirits, that she listens to them, soothes them, and they love her in turn. She moves from being a helpless captive to having an actual purpose in that dark place, and her view of the world changes as well. For the first time, she has something to do that is important, that is unique to her, and that is not dependent on her mother. In other words, she is growing up and becoming independent.

At some point, Persephone's opinion of the underworld changes. Instead of being a terrible place where she is trapped against her will, it becomes a place where she can do some good—the source of a career if you will. Up until this moment she has eaten nothing, knowing that eating will trap her in Hades' realm forever. But when he offers her a pomegranate, the fruit of the underworld that is red like the womb of rebirth, she accepts it and eats six seeds.”

~ Raven Kaldera