Spring Equinox
The story of Persephone eating pomegranate seeds was related like a fairy tale in place of the original myth; Ovid speaks once of three, once of seven, pomegranate seeds and related that the tree grew in the garden of the king of the underworld.
Pg.134, A Hermetical Essay on the Mysteries, Eleusis ~ Carl Kerenyl
Last autumn I cleared a patch of earth until it was hard dirt. It stayed this way through the California drought of 2015-16. I was feeling like the dirt; barren, hopeless, and death lingered by grief as a dark hopeless shadow. The underworld loomed close. It was winter. I then focused on my studies of the Eleusinian mysteries, Persephone’s mythology and now Aeschylus’s play Prometheus Bound. Through years of study the time was just right for profound understanding to came quickly.
Now this patch of earth is a glorious shameless orgy of life. The simple saying “life, death and rebirth” shines in my soul. Nature shows us the holy grail within: as Persephone reaching for the dead symbolizing the bridge of rebirth, and as Prometheus bringer of fire gifting humanity the dreams of “dim hopes.”
Because I granted mortal
men prerogative;
I sought the source
of fire by
stealth and carried it
Within a hollow fennel reed.
My gift to man
Has taught him every skill and
been his great resource.
Such is the crime for which
I pay the penalty,
Spread-eagle, pinned in chains
beneath the open sky.
108-113 Prometheus Bound ~ Aeschylus
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