Here is a story that carries the rhythm of the great earth cycles, that speaks with the hum of a snake-forked tongue:
Persephone is a giant, black, gleaming serpent. She slithers through the meadow of young flowers, absorbing the heat of Helios along her back, following the rhythm of the earth. Her body is always on the earth, is always the earth. Her body, earth. The Serpent Queen, Persephone.
Snake transforms. Snake moves through the worlds, setting and rising, setting and rising, chthonic and celestial. Snake sheds over and over again. The Serpent Queen holds this ancient pattern of death and renewal, descent and ascent in her body.
When it is time to descend, she follows the roots of the plants. She follows the roots of the plants to the underworld. She brings the lives of the plants with her, to the root. She moves from the root. This underworld root is her home. Here, where that which is dead rots, where that which is dead transforms and sparks again, this is the kingdom of the Serpent Queen. She tends to the seeds that are swallowed by the earth. She enacts the sacred rites for the dead. Her body is the black flame of the funerary torch, lit from within.
Hades is a realm, a place, a world, where Persephone finds herself at home. She who curls herself into the lower realm for the winter, into the deep rock of the earth to slumber and dream the world into being.
Hades is
an immense hall built from mushrooms and obsidian
a dark chamber of shadow
the pale roots of the plants
the mud
the scent of mineral earth, holy and black
dispersing and permeating
When she descends to the underworld, the life of the plants follow her down, and they build their energy here, in the realm of the dead. Imagine her, Subterranean Persephone, coiled here on her dark throne and seeing a ceiling of twinkling roots shining over, with all of the dreams of the plants blinking above her. She never closes her eyes. The trance of winter is long. The trance of winter is deep. The trance of winter is slow.
Spring comes first as a dream. Seems almost impossible, like a glowing purple crocus in the snow. The spring dream is a dream of rising, of heat, of the vibration of green. And the energy of the dream now runs through her, like a fresh stream, stirring the Serpent Queen awake. She begins the long ritual of untangling from her coil.
When Persephone the Serpent Queen pulls herself from the folds of rock and shadow to shed her skin of winter's trance, she rises and the world above roars with its own rising storms. Strong winds and heavy rains; riotous Spring awakens with great clamor. The sorrowful separation of Hades and Persephone feeds the land and all of the plants are summoned forth, waking with this rising cycle. The underworld nourishment spreads upwards and outwards, Spring comes from death.
When Spring opens, the snakes flow into the field and meadow, emerging from the stream-lined edge, finding their way to the sun. Helios is now the compass. And Helios calls her forward, to keep rising, and she moves up from the rock to the field and the field begins to flourish and grow.
Everywhere she moves, her snake body braids growth into the land. A ribbon of flowers follows her. She continues to move upwards, star-reaching, and winds her way up the trees. With each branch she climbs, leaves unfurl. When Persephone emerges, she is given the name Karpophoros, Bringer of Fruit. And that is where we find her, curled into a tree, laden with fruit and blossoms.
Shining, ascending, ripening.
