Photograph of a seed, by Maneesh Agrawala and Apostolos Lerios
Next week promises to be the first full week of cool temperatures here in Northwest Ohio. I'm happy to see and feel the onset of winter.
When I lived in Eastern North Carolina I didn't experience winter the way I do here--weeks of relentless cold, forcing you to slow down and to be quiet. I find winter to be an excellent time for thinking up stories. I love the gray days and the long, dark nights. It's a time of storing and gathering energy. I don't always write a lot in the winter, because I'm teaching. But I do a lot of mental writing, mental sorting, planning for future projects. I do a lot of jotting in my notebooks. I do a lot of reading in preparation for when I will have time to write.
Living in Northern Ohio, close to the Great Lakes where the winters are long and cold, I have new appreciation for the myths that address the change of seasons, like the story of Demeter and Persephone. I've been revisiting that myth over the weekend.
Like Bridget, Demeter existed before the patriarchal religions were established. Demeter has her origins as an Earth Goddess. She represented the fruit of life (grain). Persephone came to represent the seed of life (corn).
On the surface, this is a story about the origin of winter. David Leeming and Jake Page write in Goddess that: "During the seasons when Persephone abided with Demeter, the earth would bloom and be fragrant; when she dwelled in the underworld, Demeter would ... become the crone and don her weeds of mourning, and the earth would grow cold and grieve with her."
However, I am most interested in how mythology and psychology intersect. So therefore the interpretation that I like best is that Persephone's journey to the underworld is a metaphor for our assimilation of the fruits of the dark unconscious. (According to Jung, the dark unconscious is where we relegate that which we do not want to face.)
David Leeming and Jake Page write in Goddess of how this myth can be interpreted as a person's movement beyond "paradise" and "innocence" into the adult world.
David Leeming is Professor Emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. Jake Page is a science writer, essayist, and novelist.
4 comments:
The Demeter/Persephone myths have always held tremendous appeal to me, in part of because of the death/rebirth them, in part because of the mother/daughter connection. The fall and winter months have always been a time of refueling for me. I like the quiet and the inward turn.
The turn of the seasons has always affected me physically. I draw into myself as the earth moves into a new phase, sometimes only for a few days as I adjust to new smells, new weather, new sensations in the air and soil. Sometimes it is longer. During some season changes I have become sick and needed to spend a few days in bed to adjust. Here in Southern California (as opposed to my homeland of Scotland), the season shift is very subtle, but it is there all the same, especially after the time change. In my mind I shall bear Brigid and Persephone and Demeter, as they fertilize my unconscious, and hope and pray and plan for a rebirth in the spring as I emerge from the dark evenings and the heavy demands of winter (in my work). You and your journal are a wonderful guide, Theresa. Thank you.
Very nice.
V
I hope you don't mind that I included you in today's entry. It's meant to be humorous.
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