Persephone Rising

Carol S. Pearson

• Publisher: HarperOne
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780062318947
• Topic: Crescita personale
• Subtopic: Miglioramento personale

Nautilus Award Winner

In this empowering work, the bestselling author of The Hero Within and Awakening the Heroes Within speaks to the heroine in every woman, offering potent strategies to forge lives of greater happiness and fulfillment—through activating the archetypes inherent in the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone.

Our era of professional and familial pressures, constant connection, and a renewed debate on "having it all" presents unprecedented challenges to contemporary women. In Persephone Rising, celebrated scholar of depth psychology and archetypes Carol S. Pearson brings a fresh vision for meeting those challenges and rising above them, as only she can. Drawing on her profound understanding of myth's enduring power to catalyze transformations, Pearson guides readers on a journey of self-discovery, teaching us how to activate and apply the archetypes of Demeter and Persephone, as well as Zeus and Dionysus, in our own lives— empowering readers to see the unexpected choices and opportunities available to us all.

Illuminating ancient wisdom for a modern audience, Persephone Rising offers meaningful and effective strategies to answer the call to heroism in our own lives: to locate and harness the unique potential within each of ourselves, and ultimately to develop our own innate heroic gifts. Just as Demeter and Persephone discovered, in the midst of great difficulty, their own powers, gifts, and abilities for creating a better path not only for themselves, but the world, Persephone Rising teaches that each one of us has more options than choosing whether to lean in or out—we have the power to change ourselves, and thus our world.

Part One

DEMETER

Demeter and the Way of the Heart

FROM ANCIENT TIMES, men have, for the most part, possessed the physical advantage when it comes to strength and have excelled at hunting and war and other ways of solving problems with force. Women’s strengths traditionally have flourished in the arenas of bonding, communicating, and understanding children, men, and other women, so that they could bring out the best in them. Even today, research on communication styles tells us that, overall, women’s communication has a goal of connecting and relating in a more equal way, while men’s is more competitive and motivated by a desire to impress.

I’m not implying here that either sex is better than the other. It is clear that the world needs both because the survival of the species depends on it, and in truth, men and women, when living in loving partnership, make one another and others happy. Men and women complement each other’s strengths well. However, when a male perspective dominates female ones, the world ends up living narratives that may be successful in some situations but simply cannot get us the results we want in others. For example, if we want peace, why do we keep telling war stories? Why don’t we turn to the half of the human race that has fostered other means of resolving conflict? Force can stop violent behaviors temporarily, but authentic sharing through story, which often has been nurtured by women, can move antagonists toward understanding one another and building the trust that leads to lasting peace. Similarly, in our politics, warlike competition prevails when candidates run for office, but to govern successfully, they need to utilize more feminine modes, reaching across the aisle to solve problems together.

All of the major religions in the world instruct us to love one another as a road to a better collective and personal quality of life.

• Jesus repeated this decree over and over, in slightly different words: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34, NIV). “If you love me, feed my sheep” (adapted from John 21:17). And quoting the Torah, “Love thy neighbor as thyself” (Lev. 19:18; Matt. 22:39, ASV). It was his major message.
• Rabbi Sefer Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidic Judaism, spoke to the deep roots of love in the Hebrew faith: “‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ Why? Because every human being has a root in the Unity, and to reject the minutest particle of the Unity is to reject it all.”¹
• The sayings of Muhammad, selected and translated by the Sufi Kabir Helminski, include the very strong statement, “You will not enter paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another.”² Rumi, the thirteenth-century Sufi mystic and poet, proclaimed, “It is Love that holds everything together.”³
• The Buddha enjoined us to “radiate boundless love towards the entire world—above, below, and across—unhindered, without ill will, without enmity.”⁴ Loving-kindness remains a cardinal practice of modern Buddhism.
• In the Hindu tradition, love also is the religion’s central tenet. Swami Sivananda sums this up in these words: “Your duty is to treat everybody with love as a manifestation of the Lord.”⁵

Of the many aspects of love, these spiritual injunctions promote personal kindness and altruism, both of which are part of Demeter’s archetypal character. Yet learning to love one another remains an evolutionary challenge for us as a species and for each of us individually.

If so many religions tell us that learning to love is the fundamental task for humans, why is it so difficult to do, sometimes even for the very religious organizations that claim to embody that teaching—a number of which have been responsible for great atrocities, and in too many instances still are? As patriarchy became established in the Mediterranean, male values and traditional activities developed into societal norms; balancing virtues, like caring, came to seem much less important. By the time of the major Greek philosophers, rationality, logic, and objectivity were valued over emotions. In fact, the ability to repress one’s emotions in order to think clearly grew to be a social ideal.

Mara Lynn Keller, a professor at the California Institute of Integral Studies, notes that the Eleusinian Mysteries were critical to fostering love, mutuality, and community in ancient Greece, especially at a time when it had developed a strong class and patriarchal structure. “The rites at Eleusis were considered essential to the survival of humans,” she observes. She quotes the Greek historian Douris of Samos, who, writing about the Eleusinian Mysteries, maintained, “‘The life of the Greeks would be unlivable, if they were prevented from properly observing the most sacred Mysteries, which hold the human race together.’”⁶ Cicero, who spoke of his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries as giving him reason to live in joy and die with hope, concluded that they were the most divine institution from Athens that contributed to human life.⁷

I believe that the Eleusinian Mysteries were so powerful because ancient Greece, like our world today, was out of balance, valuing attitudes and behaviors associated with men more than those associated with women. The Mysteries compensated for this by offering experiences that evoked empathy in the initiates for Demeter’s fierce love and protectiveness of her daughter and for her daughter’s potential misery at being married off to someone she did not even know. This tradition reinforced the wisdom of the heart to include empathizing with someone before simply using laws or logic to determine his or her fate. Demeter’s story, which you already know, provides a narrative that can be seen as a stand-in for many analogous situations, encouraging people to stand up for whom and what they love and care about, even if it means taking on the power structure and challenging laws that treat people like objects or resources, as if they and their feelings do not matter. In recent centuries, with the triumph of rationalism, the power of the heart has been devalued compared with the power of the mind. This leads many people to disregard the wishes of their hearts almost entirely, making it difficult for them to find happiness.

Contemporary science is demonstrating that the emphasis in most religions (and in much of literature) on making choices with the heart is not just a fanciful metaphor. The heart is not just a muscle, as formerly thought. Modern neurocardiologists now view the heart as containing within it a little brain of about 40,000 neurons that conducts a flow of information throughout the body, which furthers emotional intelligence and empathy. The HeartMath Institute⁸ has demonstrated that people who show loving and other positive emotions promote “positive coordination” between head and heart: just thinking of what you love and makes you happy influences your heart, which in turn influences your body. The result is greater happiness and health, with much less stress and fatigue.⁹

Many emotions are felt in the body, which is why we have expressions like warmhearted, softhearted, or hardhearted. Whether or not our hearts literally get warm or soft or hard, these metaphors correspond to actual feelings in the chest. Let’s say you are watching a child that you love who is sleeping and looking very sweet. If you pay attention, you actually might sense warmth in your chest in the area of your heart. You also might feel your muscles and tendons softening. If you remain there for a while, perhaps you will notice that your whole body begins to relax. Not only that, you might find that just remembering your child sleeping can have the same effect. Conversely, you may experience a moment when someone does something that angers you and you feel a tensing up in your chest as you withdraw empathy from this person whom you now perceive as a threat. Very soon, your entire body might tighten up. Similarly, while our physical hearts might not get literally broken, a person is likely to feel physical pain in the area of the heart in times when they are deeply wounded by what someone has said or done or when experiencing grief. However, many of us repress the sensate feelings we experience in and around the heart because we have been told a story—that such expressions are just metaphors—and we believe the narrative rather than our felt experience.

Researchers generally used to try to filter out such visceral feelings that carry information about emotions, but today those in the social sciences also are recognizing that the pretense of being objective can simply blind them to their subjectivity. Increasingly, it is considered wise to get in touch with the values and feelings that you have about the subject, and especially what you want the outcome to be. The more conscious you are of your feelings, including those in your body, the more likely you will be to avoid unconsciously biasing your results. Many now are explicit about such matters in their research reports. Similarly, organizational development experts such as Daniel Goleman (author of Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ) are urging business leaders to develop their emotional and social intelligence, which includes connecting the heart, mind, and body, so that they actually know what they are feeling and can read and appropriately react to the feelings of others.

Women’s traditional roles have required us to develop emotional and social intelligence. For example, caring for young children before they can articulate their needs builds our capacity for empathic attunement to body cues, as does trying to figure out what men, socialized to be more stoic, need and want. And even when we move into less traditional roles, these abilities still are expected of us and useful to us, even if they often are undervalued.

Dimensions of the Demeter Archetype

Demeter is a goddess who embodies openheartedness, meaning someone with a welcoming, generous attitude toward other people. Demeter’s story illustrates her journey to become equally caring and generous to herself, as well as others, and to balance an open heart with an open and thoughtful mind. The impulse to care for one another may explain why our species survived when Neanderthals and other hominids did not. Anthropologists have found fossil-bone remains that reveal that very early in human development, our ancestors took care of one another, even of those ill enough to need extended care. Such kindness is thought to have improved our survival odds (as fewer of us died and care cemented loyalty), just as learning to solve conflict peaceably and to nurture one another and the earth can do. In our own time, people are less likely to become homeless or sink into depression if they belong to a caring community. Equally important, loving and being loved make people happy.

Demeter personifies the life energy that makes things grow and that heals our bodies when they are hurt, as well as mother love and, by extension, any pure, unconditional love. She helps us remember our interdependence with the earth and one another. As the grain goddess, she often is depicted in ancient Greek art majestically holding up a sheaf of barley. At the pivotal moment at the close of the Eleusinian Mysteries initiation rite, a priestess, embodying Demeter’s presence, would raise this evocative symbol. By the time she did so, the sheaf of barley had attained such significance—symbolizing as it did the essence of Demeter’s teachings—that seeing it had a powerful impact on those assembled. Demeter’s teachings emphasized loving and caring ways and a connection to the natural world and other people. As the goddess of agriculture, she was credited with teaching humans to grow their food, rather than just hunting and gathering, in order to create greater prosperity.

During a long period in history when men and women were perceived to be living in different spheres, she presided over the private world of family and close social ties and the care of children, the elderly, and others requiring assistance, all of which fell within the domain of women. Because of their willingness to sacrifice for the good of their offspring, mothers typically have served as models of selfless love. As earlier referenced, Demeter’s name is derived from the Greek root word mater, which means “mother.”

The fact that babies are born out of women’s bodies and are dependent and generally adorable fosters an attachment bond that makes many mothers love their children as much as they love themselves (and often more). For some, the vulnerability of loving someone else so intensely builds empathy that then can result in their loving others as much as themselves. Demeter embodies the power of this love, not only in her feelings for Persephone, but also in the ultimate way she expands her love and care to humankind through the creation of the Mysteries.

In real life today, parents partner in raising children, sex roles are not always divided so clearly between men and women, and psychologists frequently emphasize how important a father’s love can be to a child in fostering self-esteem and in building the confidence that both boys and girls need to be able to succeed in life. A caring father is important for boys as a model for being manly without being macho and stoic, and for girls so that they are less likely to fall for an abuser and more likely to seek out positive male mentors who can help them succeed in their careers.¹⁰ The nurturing father that comes to mind when anyone uses the term daddy embodies Demeter strengths reflected in manly forms.¹¹

All archetypes have their not-so-pleasant shadows. In the deep recesses of archetypal images of mothers is a mother goddess that is more primal than Demeter and that is associated, like the goddesses Kali or Isis, as much with the grim reaper as with the stork. Depth psychologists talk about the “devouring” mother, whose womb also is a tomb, because her nurturance can enable crippling dependency and enfeeble its recipient. A descendent of this archetype is the evil stepmother who would very much like to get rid of her stepchildren, perhaps by sending them off into the woods and hoping they get lost.

In modern life, the negative mother shows up in martyrs who use guilt as a form of control; or who live through their children, overwhelming them with care and attention, thus smothering the children’s authentic spirits; or who worry about their children so much that they continually critique everything they do to try to fix them, and in so doing erode their self-esteem. Demeter’s shadow also is there when men or women are so all-giving that they neglect to take care of themselves and turn into martyrs, gradually becoming so empty that they dry up and are consumed with bitterness.¹²

The Demeter Story: Then and Now

The opening story of this book is Demeter’s story, so I will not repeat it here. Stories in wisdom traditions have multiple layers of meaning. Demeter’s explained the origin of the seasons (likely to children) and of the Eleusinian Mysteries, similar to the way we tell stories today about how this nation or a company got started.

Reading the narrative, what immediately jumps out is that it is a love story, but instead of it being about the love between a man and woman, it is about the deep affection between mothers and daughters. My personal link with Demeter, which I already shared, came from the primal human reality that a life filled with love and caring opens us up to the loss of whom and what we care about. At a metaphysical level, the story can be interpreted as a mother’s confrontation with her daughter’s death, with the daughter’s return signaling resurrection, reincarnation, or mother and daughter being reunited in an afterlife. On a psychological level, the myth can be viewed in the context of the great challenge that parents experience, having invested so much in raising a child who then grows up and leaves them. In this meaning, Persephone’s sharing her time between Hades and Demeter could parallel a girl growing up and getting married or otherwise becoming involved in her adult life but staying very connected to her mother.

This level of the story relates to a primal human reality, while Demeter’s and Zeus’s standoff and its political significance for gender roles in ancient Athens and today reflects continuing difficulties in relative male/female power that nevertheless are culture specific and fixable. The plotline of Demeter’s primary narrative follows the basic pattern of a mystery story, with a twist. It begins with a mother whose adolescent daughter is missing, and Demeter is the sleuth seeking to s...