Persephone Speaks

I knew

from my dreams of stone temples, death, and

a dark potent God,

that I would go. 

Slipping away from my mother,

I gathered my bridal bouquet from her fragrant fields

and sat alone

where Narcissus blooms,

watching,

waiting

for the earth to crack. 

Nothing….

Nothing moved but the wind on the grasses

and Apollo’s watchful eye.

So I reached for a blossom

and firmly pulled its roots from the soil.

Then,

something. 

Something...

came from beneath

and violently pulled me down...

down through a dark passage

of moist blackness,

and tangled roots,

until I lay beside the underground river, silent and deep. 

He waited for me there in the dim light...

Hades, dreadful Lord of the Underworld.

My mind, racing with fear, voicelessly cried out,

“Oh Gods!  will I die here?”

In the frozen silence

his powerful horses stamped and pulled at their reins,

their hot breath steaming the cold air,

but his eyes were steady and piercing,

formidable,

yet patiently asking,

“Are you willing?  Are you ready?” 

Something….

something made my blood run hot

and I reached up.

He pulled me close with one great arm,

and with the other

drove the chariot

hard into the river

beneath the murky waters. 

I cannot tell what happened in the depths,

you must go there yourself,

but I will say this:

I emerged completely changed.

Pregnant with new wisdom and new life. 

And so, I came into the Land of the Dead as their Queen.

The pitiful shadows there,

rejected and feared by the world above,

moved my heart.

Long I looked upon each one,

that I might understand

the pain of neglected children

wanting only to be seen and heard. 

I looked,

and I listened. 

It seemed only a moment had passed since my descent

when a messenger arrived from Zeus.

Thinking I had been abducted,

Demeter refused to tend the Earth.

Hermes had come to take me home...

a place I’d almost forgotten. 

Knowing I had to go, my dark God did not rage...

as some have reported..

but asked for my return, and in truth,

I had no wish to leave.

But, for the love of my Mother, and Life, I began my ascent.

For the love of my Husband, and Death,

I took the sacred pomegranate from his hand,

ate of it,

and promised him a part of every year. 

I came into the world through a sacred spring,

where the river rises to nourish the earth. 

All was desolate, barren, and cold.

Horrified, I ran to find my mother,

to show her I was safe,

to tell her what I saw.

With each step,

flowers burst forth,

and grass greened.

Demeter had felt my presence

and released the world from Winter.  

I am now a Goddess in my own right

and the world will no longer have eternal Summer,

I will not allow it.

There must be a dying off...

a descent into the shadowlands

to honor what has been lost

or killed...

and a rebirth from the seed of that

dark, moist realm. 

This is the Sacred Marriage of Life and Death.

This is the Secret of Creation.

This is the Eternal Mystery. 

*

by © Marilyn J. Meyer Owen

Painting: The Return of Persephone by Frederick Lord Layton

Words of Gold

In the early 19th-century, in Petelia in southern Italy, a small cylinder-shaped amulet was unearthed together with its gold chain. When the amulet was opened it was found to contain a tiny rolled-up plate of pure gold which, when flattened out, was no larger in size than a matchbox (above, shown approximately twice size). On the plate was inscribed a text, which turned out to be the oldest known text which we have, and one of the very few to survive, of the Orphic mysteries of Ancient Greece. 

We know so very little about these ancient mystery schools. The initiates guarded their secrets well, and we must guess what most of their teachings were about. The Petelia Tablet, as it has become known, lifts a small corner of the veil with which time has covered these teachings, but as with the few surviving fragments which we have of the poetry of Sappho, even this small leaf of gold is enough to hint at the intense beauty and poetry of those mysterious teachings.

‘Orphic’ we know comes from the name of the Ancient Greek poet and musician Orpheus, an immensely popular figure in stories of the time, the best-known today of which is the story of his journey to the Underworld in a bid to be reunited with his deceased love Eurydice. To defy Death itself to regain a lost loved one is a powerful theme to which any age can relate, which probably accounts for the enduring fascination of this story. Orpheus also appears in the story of Jason and the Argonauts in their quest for the Golden Fleece. In this story Orpheus takes on the role of Odysseus before him to outwit the Sirens, for when Jason and his crew approach the island of the Sirens, it is Orpheus who takes up his lyre and drowns the Sirens’ alluring song with his enchanting music, allowing the ship to sail safely onwards.

This is the central character of the Orphic mysteries: a character who is both poet, musician and daring adventurer, both in this world and in other unknown realms beyond. Orpheus, like many larger-than-life cultural heroes, exists somewhere between myth and folklore, and his presence apparently was powerful enough to have a mystery school founded in his name. So what does the Petelia Tablet actually tell us? What can we learn from these few brief lines of ancient text rescued from the earth? When translated from its original Ancient Greek, it begins by warning us (that is: the deceased thirsting soul) not to drink from a specific spring in Hades, but instead to seek another to quench our thirst from the Lake of Memory. But, we are warned, the guardians are nearby, and to them we must say:

“I am a child of Earth and the starry Heavens;

But my race is of Heaven alone; and this you know yourselves.

I am parched with thirst and I perish; but give me quickly

refreshing water flowing forth from the Lake of Memory.”

The fragmentary text then closes by reassuring us that the guardians of the Underworld will then allow us to drink from this divine spring, after which we may celebrate with the souls of other heroes. More text would have followed, but this is as much as has survived for us to read. Even this much leaves more than enough room for wondering. Are we being told that our soul is originally from Heaven, that the text is describing a mere metaphor? Or more profoundly, is the Petelia Tablet telling us a great secret: that we originally come from the stars? We might be both of Earth and Heaven, but our race – humankind – is originally from Heaven alone. Looked at in this way the text could not be more specific, and all that we can do is ponder these words of gold, and gaze up at the stars and wonder.

Flight and Pursuit

Desperate situations call for desperate measures. A true free spirit, the wood nymph Daphne is never happier than when she is roaming the forests. The dappled sunlight of the forest glades are more than home to her: they are her preferred company, and she vows that she would sooner keep herself chaste than exchange the familiar company of the surrounding trees for a partner in life.

All might have continued to go well for Daphne, were it not for the fateful day when the glorious god Apollo happens to catch sight of her as she dances in a sunlit glade. At once smitten by her beauty and charm, the god approaches Daphne and attempts to seduce her. Now, Apollo is used to having his way, whether with mortal or with nymph. But for the first time ever he finds his advances rejected. In a moment’s distraction Daphne seizes her chance to flee the god’s amorous advances and runs away as fast as she can, hoping that her familiarity with the forest trails might offer her an advantage in her flight.

But Daphne’s knowledge of the secret paths through her beloved forest is proving no advantage when matched against a god’s bruised ego. Wounded pride mixed with ardour for the fleeing nymph only fuels the pace of Apollo’s pursuit. At the last moment of her flight, when the god is so close behind her that she can feel his hot breath on her back, Daphne calls out in panic to her father, the river god Peneios. 

The great river stirs angrily, and white-topped waves slap its banks in a frenzy of fury as Peneios sees the plight which his daughter is in. Unable to leave his watery domain, the river god makes a last-resort move to save his daughter. Just as Apollo reaches out to seize the nymph, his all-too-eager hands grasp, not soft and yielding female flesh, but bark and branches and dark green leaves. Peneios with his powers has changed his daughter into a laurel tree: one more tree among all of its fellows in the wood nymph’s beloved forest.

A handful of laurel leaves are Apollo’s only gain. How to save face? How to restore a god’s bruised ego? By declaring a defeat to be a victory and founding a tradition. Apollo decrees that from that moment on, a crown of laurel leaves will become the worthy symbol of a victor. And the god promptly begins the tradition by weaving for himself a crown from the leaves that just moments before had been the living flesh of the beautiful nymph.

How often has it happened that reality has been turned on its head, and those who have been bettered have, through one means or another, insisted that they have in fact triumphed? Saving face in such a way is familiar enough to us from our own current news events. But in the story of Daphne and Apollo we can perceive a deeper meaning. Sometimes circumstances force us to change, and to change dramatically, and we become something other than that which we were before. It might not always be a change which we have wished for ourselves, but it has been a change made necessary for our survival, in whatever form that might take.

But Daphne’s fate also gives us reason to hope. The nymph’s essential nature was that of her own beloved forest, and her essence did not change. Instead it became absorbed into what she truly loved the most. Even in dramatic change, even undergoing apparent complete metamorphosis, our true essence survives in some form, and endures beyond even the great change at life’s end.

Art: Daphne and Apollo by John William Waterhouse

Persephone

Really it takes so little.

No, not the act itself, but the decision

made in a sliver of time: in a single heartbeat.

No more time than it takes

for the rustling stroke of a bird’s wing.

No more time than it takes

for the slash of light that sears the sky

when my cloud-shrouded father draws near.

No more time than this is needed

to change my world, my everything:

my own life’s passing

in the cycle of a single year.

And I will change.

The decision was snatched from a moment 

a thousand years ago,

before I even knew the darkness

of my mother’s womb

I knew another darkness.

In that moment, in that eon,

through the sheer force of my will

my blood drained from my body,

disappeared as water from a pool.

Now look upon me: a shell thing,

strangely echoing, never growing old:

a hollow creature

white as the snows of Parnassus

and as cold.

Now I will know a new darkness.

Only a few seeds are needed

for a new life with my lord:

the ingestion of a new fruit

far from the sun,

swallowed in the bridal chamber

of a new dark accord,

far from my mother’s sustaining love,

far from the rustle of birds’ wings,

far from the rolling ghosts of clouds,

far from any hope of return

from this shrouded world of shrouds.

My new blood will be

the red sap of pomegranates.

My new subjects will be

these pale shades of the once-alive.

My new desire will be

desire for these shadows

where the only fulfilment will be

to know that I will remain

forever unfulfilled.

The dry white husk of my body will be

sustained by the lymph of pomegranates.

And I will be queen to a darkness

both wished-for and unwilled.

Photo: Anna Chipovskaya, photographer Nikolay Biryukov for Interview Magazine Russia, Febr. 2014

The Veiled Goddess

In the west of the Nile Delta in the times of the Pharaohs was a sacred centre called Sais. In the heart of the centre stood a temple, and in the courtyard of this temple stood a statue of the goddess. Engraved upon the statue’s plinth was this mysterious description: “I am all that has been, all that is and all that will be, and no mortal has raised my veil.”

The Greek writer Plutarch, who tells us of this inscription, further tells us that the statue was that of Isis, although the centre is now known to have been dedicated to a more ancient goddess known as Neith. The goddess Neith had associations with weaving and the loom, and this powerful creator goddess was said to have used her loom to weave the world into existence. The power of Neith was therefore not so much that she could create, but that she could create without the need of a god. Neith was complete unto herself.

It was Neith who gave birth to the life-giving sun, Ra the great, who went on to create all things in the world. Ra is so powerful, so glorious, that even now we know that we cannot look directly at his face for too long without risking damage to our eyesight. But what of Neith? The mysterious inscription tells us that no mere human has raised her veil. Is the inscription a warning? Would the sight of the face of this goddess be too overwhelming for us to bear?

This idea is echoed in the Greek myth of Semele, the mortal woman who begged mighty Zeus to reveal his face to her. The god obliged, and Semele was struck dead on the spot. But is this idea what is also intended for Neith? The fact that feminine Neith is a goddess, not a god, seems somehow to alter the picture. In the nineteenth century Neith became a favoured subject for artists who, surrounded by the growing advances of the time in science, interpreted the subject of lifting the veil of Neith as uncovering the secrets of the natural world. In this interpretation, each new discovery of science was lifting the veil of Neith just that little bit farther. It is science that is raising the veil of the goddess! But is it?

Gnosticism, which itself is steeped in such mystic ideas, suggests that there are two different kinds of mysteries: there is the kind of mystery that might not be known to us now, but will in time come to be known. But there is also a more powerful kind of mystery: the kind that by its very nature is mysterious, that always will remain an unknown. The inscription on the statue of Neith clearly tells us that the goddess is eternal, that she is beyond time. She is “all that has been, all that is and all that will be.” These are things that no mortal can know. We cannot know of things which are yet to come. We cannot raise the veil of the future. 

The veil of wise Neith remains lowered. Her features always will be hidden from us, and for that we should be grateful. In refusing to lift her veil the goddess has given us a precious gift. We cannot know what is to come, and so we must learn to live in trust.

Sculpture  Le Souvenir by Marius Jean Antonin Mercié, 1885, detail

Athena's Remorse

Pallas Athena: we know of her name from Ancient Greece as the great warrior goddess of peerless wisdom. She is often shown with an owl, the all-seeing bird of the night, and by association the owl has itself become linked with the goddess’s own qualities of wisdom. But it is unusual for a goddess to have two names, and we might wonder how this came to be. 

Once in the morning of innocence Pallas and Athena were two individuals. Pallas was the daughter of the sea god Triton, and she and Athena became inseparable friends. Being inclined to a warrior’s way of life, both of them loved to practice combat together, and these shared skills only seemed to bring them closer together. They would engage in mock battles, each vying for the upper hand and the friendly victory which followed. 

One day these fights became just a little too real, as mock fights perhaps inevitably tend to. As Pallas was about to strike the victory blow, Athena’s father Zeus intervened and tripped Pallas, causing her to stumble. Seizing her chance Athena instinctively struck her friend a telling counter-blow. In that terrible moment Pallas lay dead at her friend’s feet.

Overcome with the enormity of what she had done, and distraught with grief and remorse, Athena in that moment decided to take her dear friend’s name and place it even before her own. In such a way the goddess perhaps hoped that her lost friend would live on through her, and that by taking her name Pallas would always be a part of her. And so Athena the goddess became Pallas Athena, and the two became one.

The ancient story speaks powerfully still. Grief, regret and loss are part of the human experience. Like Athena the goddess we might strive in some way to recapture what has been lost to us. And that loss might be felt even more keenly if we feel that in some way we have been to blame, whether such a feeling is truly justified or not. How often we hear stories of someone who has survived some terrible accident or ordeal of survival feeling guilty towards the victims for no other reason than that they have survived while others have not. It is as if we owe a debt to the dead, even when we might not have known them personally.

And perhaps we do. Perhaps what we owe them is an increased awareness of the gift of life as it is lived in every moment. And that is something we owe even more to ourselves. Those who have passed out of our lives can be honoured by our memories of them. As with Athena, who chose to honour her dear friend by absorbing that fundamental part of her – her own name – into her own being, those memories become a part of us. To feel guilty or regretful about things which already have happened, particularly if those things involve loss, is natural. But we need not make ourselves prisoners of that grief. We are alive, and it surely is our duty, like the warrior goddess, to live our lives worthily and with a sense of wonder.

Painting Mourning Athena by Sandro Botticelli

The Sister Stars

When the goddess Diana goes on a hunt she is always accompanied by her seven beautiful attendants. These maidens are the sisters known as the Pleiades: the daughters of the sea nymph Pleione and mighty Atlas, who bears the world upon his shoulders. But once these maidens catch the eye of the great hunter Orion, the pursuers of game become themselves the pursued. 

In their frantic headlong flight to evade the advances of the amorous Orion, the youngest of the sisters, Merope, becomes separated from her siblings. What to do? Poor Merope stumbles through the woods of Arcady, searching desperately for her sisters and calling out to her mistress the goddess for help. But by now she has run so deep into the thick woodlands that her companions are no longer within earshot, and Merope is left alone and desolate.

Does this myth have a happy ending? Myths are not fairy tales, even though they share with such tales many of the great archetypes which make such retellings endure down the centuries. Fairy tales, as we know, end ‘happily ever after’, but this is not always true of myths. Myths seem to occupy a less certain reality, which perhaps ironically make myths reflect the events of our own world more accurately. Gods and goddesses in these mythic stories are remarkably human, with all-too-human shortcomings, and their illustrious immortality serves as no guarantee that they will manage to avoid the very human emotions of heartache, jealousy and anger at injustice – all of which and more are experienced by them in these stories.

But is it that we project our own human emotions onto the world of the gods? Or is it perhaps more that all the upheavals of emotions that we as mortals experience are an earthly mirror of what happens in the lofty realm of the immortals? If the gods exist then perhaps they are showing us the way; showing us that even gods can suffer heartbreak, even gods can know joys and setbacks, tears and laughter. Even for the gods there is no master plan, and no guarantees that they will live ‘happily ever after’. Like us, they just live out their lives, and cope with things as they happen. But there is a measure of trust that things will somehow work out, and the gods, for all their capriciousness, show us the way in this as well.

And what of Merope? The myth does not grant us a tidy end in which she eventually is reunited with her sisters. We are left to wonder. But there is that measure of hope. Look up into the sky on a starry night and you will see Orion the hunter still in pursuit of the six Pleiades. The stars rise and set, but they always remain the same distance from each other. However fast he might run, Orion will never catch them. And somewhere in the heavens overhead is Merope, the lost little seventh star who is still searching for her sisters. And although the story in the night sky remains as inconclusive as the myth, it also in that very inconclusiveness holds out the hope for us that a reunion with her sisters might yet be possible.

Sculptere of Merope by Randolph Rogers

Dance of the Pleiades - Picture by Mynzah from a painting by Elihu Vedder

Golden Apples

Far to the west, so far that it almost balances on the rim at the edge of the world, lies an island. Being an enchanted place, this particular island is the home of beings not encountered in our own everyday world, but if we are fortunate we may perhaps visit it in our dreams. Were we to do so, we would encounter three beautiful nymphs known as the Hesperides, who are the daughters of the sunset. For when at day’s end the golden sun slips beneath the world to begin its journey through the starry realms of night, the nymphs are the last beings to bid it farewell until the following dawn.

On this enchanted isle grows the sacred tree of Hera, the consort of great Zeus. This remarkable tree, which was grown from the fruit that was a wedding gift from Gaia, the earth goddess, bears apples of pure gold whose possession will grant precious immortality to anyone who owns them. It is the task of the Hesperides to guard these apples well, and to keep a watchful eye on the three nymphs and to make sure that they are fulfilling their task, a huge and terrible serpent twines its glinting coils around the tree’s trunk.

In this idyllic scene we recognize all the elements of enchantment: a sunset island set apart from the world, three beautiful nymphs, a fearsome guardian serpent, and a tree which bears miraculous fruit. It echoes other such scenes familiar to us from other stories and other places: Idun, goddess of spring and rebirth, who, in the Islandic Edda, took care of the golden apples, the poisoned apple in the story of Snow White, and the tree and the serpent that dwells in the Garden of Eden. And like the Eden story in the Book of Genesis, we are aware that in order for things to happen, in order for the story to progress further, the walls of enchantment have to be breached.

On the island of the Hesperides that disruptive influence arrives in the form of the goddess Eris, whose very name means ‘Discord’. Exactly how this troublesome goddess managed what she did is unclear. Perhaps she tricked the guardian serpent, or perhaps she caused some quarrel to break out between the three peaceable nymphs. The result is the same: Eris leaves the enchanted island with one of the apples in her possession. Being the devious goddess that she is, Eris has little interest in keeping the apple for herself. She is, after all, already immortal. No, her plan for the precious apple is much more insidious. The goddess writes on the apple the three beguiling words: “To the fairest”, and tosses it into the midst of a feast of the gods on Olympus. 

The goddesses Hera, Aphrodite and Athena naturally all claim that the apple is intended for them, and the mortal, Prince Paris, is brought in to settle the dispute. Beautiful Aphrodite sways the outcome in her favour with a simple but irresistible bribe: she promises Paris the hand of the fairest of mortals, Helen, who would become known as Helen of Troy, if the prince will decide in her favour. With such a prize on offer, the outcome is never in doubt. Paris claims what the goddess of love has granted, kidnaps Helen – and the terrible and tragic seed which leads to the drawn-out and deadly Trojan War is sown.

One small act carried out with mischievous intent can set in motion a whole chain of events whose outcome cannot be foreseen – not even by the individual who set those events in motion. Neither gods nor mortals can control those events, which, like ripples which disturb the surface of a still pond, continue to spread beyond the cause that started them. The three Hesperides must mourn the loss of the precious fruit entrusted to them. But perhaps the apple of Discord did grant a certain measure of immortality. So many centuries later, we still know the names and can relate the stories of those who feature in these ancient tales. And we can trace the events in our own lives which might reflect them, and each in our own way work, like the Hesperides, to come to terms with what has been taken from us. 

Painting: The Garden of the Hesperides, by Frederic, Lord Leighton.

Flight and Pursuit

Desperate situations call for desperate measures. A true free spirit, the wood nymph Daphne is never happier than when she is roaming the forests. The dappled sunlight of the forest glades are more than home to her: they are her preferred company, and she vows that she would sooner keep herself chaste than exchange the familiar company of the surrounding trees for a partner in life.

All might have continued to go well for Daphne, were it not for the fateful day when the glorious god Apollo happens to catch sight of her as she dances in a sunlit glade. At once smitten by her beauty and charm, the god approaches Daphne and attempts to seduce her. Now, Apollo is used to having his way, whether with mortal or with nymph. But for the first time ever he finds his advances rejected. In a moment’s distraction Daphne seizes her chance to flee the god’s amorous advances and runs away as fast as she can, hoping that her familiarity with the forest trails might offer her an advantage in her flight.

But Daphne’s knowledge of the secret paths through her beloved forest is proving no advantage when matched against a god’s bruised ego. Wounded pride mixed with ardour for the fleeing nymph only fuels the pace of Apollo’s pursuit. At the last moment of her flight, when the god is so close behind her that she can feel his hot breath on her back, Daphne calls out in panic to her father, the river god Peneios. 

The great river stirs angrily, and white-topped waves slap its banks in a frenzy of fury as Peneios sees the plight which his daughter is in. Unable to leave his watery domain, the river god makes a last-resort move to save his daughter. Just as Apollo reaches out to seize the nymph, his all-too-eager hands grasp, not soft and yielding female flesh, but bark and branches and dark green leaves. Peneios with his powers has changed his daughter into a laurel tree: one more tree among all of its fellows in the wood nymph’s beloved forest.

A handful of laurel leaves are Apollo’s only gain. How to save face? How to restore a god’s bruised ego? By declaring a defeat to be a victory and founding a tradition. Apollo decrees that from that moment on, a crown of laurel leaves will become the worthy symbol of a victor. And the god promptly begins the tradition by weaving for himself a crown from the leaves that just moments before had been the living flesh of the beautiful nymph.

How often has it happened that reality has been turned on its head, and those who have been bettered have, through one means or another, insisted that they have in fact triumphed? Saving face in such a way is familiar enough to us from our own current news events. But in the story of Daphne and Apollo we can perceive a deeper meaning. Sometimes circumstances force us to change, and to change dramatically, and we become something other than that which we were before. It might not always be a change which we have wished for ourselves, but it has been a change made necessary for our survival, in whatever form that might take.

But Daphne’s fate also gives us reason to hope. The nymph’s essential nature was that of her own beloved forest, and her essence did not change. Instead it became absorbed into what she truly loved the most. Even in dramatic change, even undergoing apparent complete metamorphosis, our true essence survives in some form, and endures beyond even the great change at life’s end.

Apollo and Daphne by John Willam Waterhouse

The Daughter of the Air

Is it possible for a daughter to come before her mother? It is, but to find such an example we need to visit the world of myth. Today, 28th of February, Finland celebrates the day of its national epic, the Kalevala. As with Homer’s epic stories, the verses of the Kalevala originally would have been sung to an audience by a bard. Such performances not only kept these stories alive; they also helped to give their listeners a strong sense of their national identity, of being aware of who they were as a people. 

Sitting listening to their bards of long ago, the Finns would have heard the story of Ilmatar, the Daughter of the Air. No one knew who her parents were, or even if she had any. She was simply there, living alone in an airy palace of eight thousand rooms. Beyond the palace there was nothing to see except drifting mists and the shimmering curtain of the Northern Lights. But the Daughter of the Air felt that somewhere beyond her echoing palace there must be more. She was sure that if only she could just reach out of one of the windows far enough, she at last would be able to catch a glimpse of what might lie far below.

One day, determined at last to satisfy her curiosity, she stretched herself as far as she dared from her window. Too far. Suddenly she was falling, falling. It seemed as if she would fall forever. She fell so far that when she turned to look above her, the airy palace which was all that she had known already had been lost to view beyond the Northern Lights. She fell even farther, until at last she felt a watery stirring beneath her. Suddenly a great wave seemed to rear itself up to meet her, and in the next moment she plunged into a vast ocean. 

Half-submerged in the ocean, buffeted by the huge waves, she drifted for long centuries, feeling at last the mysterious stirrings of life within her. No longer the Daughter of the Air, she had now become the Mother of the Waters, who eventually would form the land so that all creatures would have a place to flourish, both in the seas and on dry land. In time she would give birth, and her son would be the great Finnish hero Vainamöinen, whose father was the wild wind and the waves, and who himself would play his own part in further creating the world and singing new life into existence.

The daughter comes before the mother – because the daughter becomes the mother. It is the story of our generations. A young girl grows to womanhood and has children of her own. What makes this story from the Kalevala ‘mythic’ is that the daughter apparently had no mother to begin her life. She simply was. Perhaps there is a sense in which this, however mythic it might seem, could also be true.

We carry ourselves forward in time, through the passing years. In his poem ‘The Rainbow’, William Wordsworth famously declared that ‘the child is father of the man’, meaning that we as children, in our upbringing, and in the values which are instilled into us, bring these values into our own adult lives. The child is also the mother of the woman, and it is this awareness which needs to guide us in the care and upbringing of our own children. We as mothers might not always give birth to mighty heroes such as Vainamöinen, but we as parents - and as children – always have the chance to be heroes in some way if that is what is needed of us.

Painting Ilmatar by Joseph Alanen

Tiamat’s Tears

“In the beginning…” These opening words of the Old Testament have a ringing familiarity, perhaps even to those who might seldom visit a church. But the human imagination allows for many ‘beginnings’, and each culture and belief creates its own beginning appropriate to itself. So…

In the beginning there was only Tiamat. Tiamat, the mother of all which will be, out of whose celestial womb all life will flow, fills all of space. She is the primordial salt ocean, and the rising and falling of her fertile waves are but the outward signs of the momentous acts of creation which are even now taking place beneath her surface, in the dark depths of the cosmos. At first it is as if there is only a vast nothing, a void without form. Then gradually, gradually, small flashes appear. At first they are only scattered sparks, shining briefly at random. Then come more and more, until the darkness is pierced by countless stars.

But Tiamat knows that more is needed: something to complement her own salt body. From her void emerges her husband Apsu. Her husband is also of water, but his waters are sweet. His waters are freshwater. It is this mingling of saltwater and freshwater which produces the potential for all the other gods to emerge. But in the eons to come a great sacrifice will be needed if the world itself – our world – is to be created.

The gods, who are Tiamat’s own creation, rise up and rebel against Apsu. Apsu is slain, and Tiamat, in her attempts to win justice for her lost husband, is herself torn in two. Out of this rending, this great separation, dry land at last emerges. Tiamat’s defeat and sacrifice have made it possible for life on earth to begin – and so for us to exist.

This particular ‘beginning’ myth of Tiamat is from Mesopotamia. In it we recognize many key elements of such stories: the creating Great Mother, the ‘alchemical wedding’ of opposing but complementary forces, the resulting struggle, and the need for sacrifice to drive things forward if further creative goals are to be achieved. Sacrifice is of course also at the heart of the Christian story, and it is the idea of sacrifice in such stories which also contains within it the promise of redemption. And what is redemption but an act of sacrifice with a further purpose? Tiamat’s sacrifice was needed to create the separation of land and sea, and so allow life on land to flourish.

But is there perhaps a further meaning that we can draw from the myth of Tiamat? Why was Tiamat specifically the salt ocean? Men wage war, and women weep. Strife and struggle are mingled with the salt tears of those who are left to mourn, and those who are left are the wives and the mothers who remain to grieve. Our mother is the earth, whose freshwater rivers that are the remains of Apsu always flow to be reunited with his beloved ocean. And our mother is also that ocean, containing the salt tears of Tiamat who, as mothers do, knows both the pains of sacrifice and the sweetness of redemption.   

Painting by David Bergen

The Quest of Isis

My Beloved, how I have searched for you.

Yesterday, as my Lord Ra kneeled

to touch the horizon,

I stood among the great river’s reeds.

The waters were high,

swelled with the tears I have shed for you.

Now Ra has again returned 

from his voyage through the nether world

and his radiance once more floods the heavens,

filling the gracious body of Nut with light.

And still I continue my search.

Where are you, my Beloved?

Nowhere can I find you,

and all the land feels as empty as my heart.

Were that it never had happened.

Cruel Set, our dark brother, flattered you,

and like all those who flatter, wished to be you.

And so you lowered yourself

into that treacherous box:

the perfectly-fitting box made even more perfect

by your beautiful body that still lies within,

sealed by dark arts and honeyed words.

Where must I search for you,

my beloved husband?

Where do you lie, sweet Osiris?

If you were abandoned to these waters

then it is these swollen waters that I must follow

and my guide will be my own footsteps

for they surely will grow lighter 

When they sense that I grow nearer to you.

I will follow these waters swollen with my tears

and note my lighter tread

northward to the lands of the great delta,

northward to the lands half-glimpsed in visions

northward along the coast to Byblos

and the miraculous tamarisk of my dreams.

*

The episode in the story of Isis which my prose poem relates concerns the events leading to the entrapment of Osiris by Set, the jealous brother of Isis and Osiris, and the subsequent search of Isis for her missing husband. Set desired to take over Osiris’ position as the principal god, and invited him to a feast. At the feast, Set revealed a box which he knew would fit Osiris perfectly, and invited Osiris to lie in it. As soon as Osiris had done so, Set sealed the box shut and threw it into the Nile. The box eventually drifted from the Nile delta into the Mediterranean Sea, finally coming to shore at Byblos on the northeast coast, where it became embedded in a tamarisk tree that formed one of the columns of a palace. Isis, desolate at the loss of Osiris, shed so many tears that it caused the Nile to flood. Her search eventually brought her to Byblos, and the remarkable tree which concealed the box in which her husband had become trapped.

This is the first part of the myth of Isis and her search for Osiris. On one level it of course makes a wonderful story, but the myth speaks powerfully on a deeper level. In the entrapment of Osiris is mirrored the story of the soul, and its entrapment in an incarnated material body. The Spirit (Isis in the myth) longs to be reunited with this body, for as with Isis and her beloved Osiris, Spirit and Soul are never complete without each other.

Painting Nile Reeds by Susan Elizabeth Wolding

The Angel of the Labyrinth

Resourceful Ariadne saw me not at all, although I am sure that she felt my presence as I glided silently at her shoulder. How ingeniously she wound the skein of thread that would be unwound by Theseus, there in the tortuous corridors of the Labyrinth. Ah, bold Theseus, claimed by myth as a hero for slaying the Minotaur that waited for his arrival at the heart of the winding ways. Hero indeed! The wretched monster already knew its own destiny, and needed only to await the arrival of the son of King Aegeus for it to be fulfilled.

I tell you that Ariadne’s deed was more heroic, providing as she did the means for Theseus’ return. And what was her reward? To be deserted by him on the island of Naxos, left behind like any castaway, to be rescued by a god who showed clever Ariadne more honour than he ever did.

All these things I have seen, for I am the witness of history, although history sees me not. Secretly I stand at the gate of every labyrinth, and as you enter the gate of your own labyrinth you will be sure to pass me. But you as well will not notice as I slip my skein into your hands. Unknowingly, you will begin to unwind it as you enter the turning ways. And at every turn it will be laid down, and every measure of it records the event which you experience. Here at this turn you made the decision to go either to the right or to the left, never being sure which path might be the right one to follow. Here farther along, you fell in love, and the path ahead changed for you because of this. And here, you suffered a loss, and the path changed direction once again.

All this is known, because all of these things, these life events, are recorded on the unwinding skein as they happen. Look closely: you can see them written on the skein. All which you experience is faithfully set down, a true document of your passage inwards. 

But what you cannot know is what will be written on the part of the skein which has yet to be unwound, because you can only discover that by unwinding it. And you can only unwind it by travelling farther on your journey. And since you cannot see what is ahead of you, you must have trust. You can read readily enough what has been written as it unwinds behind you. But what is yet to be written is negotiable, and up to you, and dependent upon the paths of choice which lie ahead of you in the labyrinth. And I, who have wound the skein which you now unwind, will help you to make those choices if, like Ariadne, you allow me to help you to reach the labyrinth’s heart.

Painting: Labyrinth, by Jake Baddeley.

Inanna and the Old Woman at the Gate

This is dangerous work, this thing we women do, feeling everything, passing through the gate that way. This is our play with the spirits: we gain what we risk. So it is with Inanna; what she would gain and therefore what she must risk is life itself. Inanna hears Ereshkigal crying, so she has to go. She has to go: after all, isn't Inanna a woman?

We stand on the crack between the worlds in our women's bodies. We look both ways on the horns of life, forward, to see our children through, backward, to remember. That's why our love takes so much courage. Inanna comes through here, asking me the way. I know her symptoms - haven't I seen them a hundred times before? I would have cried for her if she hadn't so many tears for herself already. I am Daughter of the Sun, Inanna says, but I am so wet, I am so wet, I am rain without a river to collect me, I am a flood with no banks to embrace me, and still I cannot stop crying. Old Woman, what can I do with all my water?

"You have the water of life itself in you", I tell her, "It is your responsibility to cry it home." How Inanna cries! She cries as if she has already become the wind: It's not enough, she says, the way I've made myself up, it's not enough; my crown and my kingdom, it's not enough, all my light - not enough, my stores of wealth - not enough, the soldiers who would trade away everything for one night with me - not enough. My sweet companion Ninshubah, who has stepped her path from childhood to womanhood alongside my own - not enough. Even Dumuzi, my king, flesh of my flesh, not enough. My own beloved sons - who are to me as life itself, not enough. There are some kinds of tears that cannot be wiped away. Like prayers, they announce us.

My body! Inanna cries, this hopeless beauty of mine is like the skull of a melon. I don't know who has eaten my insides. This candle of flesh I carry only illuminates everything yellow as bones of sand. I know what Inanna is saying when she asks me how to get through that gate, when she asks me how to dream. Old Woman, Inanna says, teach me how to dream.

"Don't ask me that!" I tell her, "We all know how to dream. Just some of us listen to our dreams. So you just listen to whatever it is stampeding inside you, pulling you over. You just ride it where it takes you. Aren't you yourself the morning and the evening star? There's no woman can't walk through walls, navigating her dreams. There's no woman can't walk through time - don't you have two sons to prove it?"

Can't I give her something more? Inanna wants to know. Something to make it safe? But all I can give her are the words I keep as the witness at the gate: "Ereshkigal is your own sister, and all the scribes in Sumer haven't any more power than what's written in the mother's milk you shared: that's the ink that draws us into this world. And what draws us in draws us out again, both directions."

I didn’t tell her the rest. What good would it do? What must be, must be. But even the underworld rewards the courage of love.

Text: The Descent of Inanna ©Madronna Holden

Photo: model Anna Chipovskaya by Nicolay Biryukov

Psyche and Zephyr

Wind from the west,

with your invitation to fly away with you:

but to what?

Where will you carry me?

High above the world, yes:

but my dreams have already carried me there.

I have seen already

the wonders of the clouds,

I have felt already

the touch of the moon’s dusty face 

as she sails these seas of early summer.

I know well enough

how the world looks from your realm,

the drowsy shepherds of Arcadia,

lovers, lost to all but themselves,

the way the sails of ships

seem like wind-borne feathers

on the sea’s swell and fall far below:

I have seen them all in dreams

and know how small they are

from these celestial heights.

What more can you show me?

You have promised me all and everything

and you continue to make your promises

even as we both rise.

But do you not realise

how thin the air now grows?

And how fierce the heat of the approaching sun?

Still you continue to make your promises

even as we both rise.

But do you not understand

that in the thin air of these heights

I now can hardly hear you?

And if you carry me higher

into this sky-borne silence

I will not hear your promises at all?

Detail of Night and Sleep by Evelyn de Morgan

The Wind among the Reeds

The fruits which we cannot possess are often those which grow in our minds to become sweeter still. Syrinx is a nymph of the woodlands whose passion is the hunt: a passion which claims her heart more than the romance of love. But those same Arcadian woods are also the haunt of the great god Pan, and it is inevitable that, sooner or later, the god will catch sight of the nymph. And this is the day for that sighting. One look is enough. Pan is smitten. Fiercely independent, and with her heart already claimed by her woodland passion, Syrinx rejects the god’s advances. Understandable, perhaps, for even a god can be ugly, and this god is only too aware that his shaggy, horned appearance does not play to his advantage in matters of the heart.

Syrinx takes flight. Pan gives chase. But in her panic (a word we derive from the god who even now pursues her) the nymph runs into a natural barrier – the banks of the deep-flowing river Ladon. With the goat-legged god hard at her heels, the nymph cries desperately to the river god to save her. The lord of the reedy river obliges – but it is a mixed blessing. Be careful what you wish for, we might urge the desperate nymph. For as the shaggy arms of Pan reach forward to embrace her, in that same moment Syrinx is transformed into a reed, indistinguishable from the many which line the river’s banks.

A reed that is indistinguishable to our mortal eyes, perhaps – but not indistinguishable to the ardent god, who now clutches the reed in his arms. In his lovelorn desperation the god breathes out an inexpressible sigh – a sigh so deep, so full of longing for what now cannot be, that it releases a melody in the reed, a melody so tender that it fills the Arcadian air around him, so sweet that it is carried across the river on the wind. Oh, poor lonesome god! What must you do now to fill your aching heart?

But Pan is inventive. From the reed that was the nymph he fashions a flute: a flute which we call the pan pipes after its creator, but which the god understandably names a syrinx. There Pan sits in the sunlit glades of Arcadia, playing heartfelt melodies on the form which his love has taken. And if you venture into those groves of braided light, you might, if you listen very carefully, catch a hint of this music of the heart, and know that it is possible for a love which is lost to be regained in another form. 

Acrylic Painting by David Bergen © all rights reserved