In Greek mythology, the Persephone goddess is also called ‘Kore’ which means ‘maiden’ in Greek. Demeter’s daughter, mother of the harvest, and Zeus, father of heaven, is the Spring Goddessthe one that is fascinated, from the innocence and spontaneity of the maiden, with the new outbreaks and the colorful flowers that leave the dark earth.
According to the best known version of the myth, based on the homeric hymns of the seventh century, it is abducted and raped by Hades and becomes the queen of the underworld spending the winter of each year there. But if we investigate in the vestiges of the ancient sacred history of Demeter and Persephone, prior to the Olympic and Roman version of the myth, there is no mention of rapture or violation: this was added after the transit of the matrifocal societies to the patriarchals.
If we rebuild the pre-patriarchal myth, we find an intensely curious girl, who collects flowers with her maiden friends in the field under the protective gaze of her mother Demeter and wonders: What will be under the earth? Where do these flowers come from? Instead of being abducted by Hades in his gold car, we discovered that the impulse to go down to the underworld is born: one day, he dares to enter a deep cavity on earth to know the world of the dead and be initiated in the female mysteries.
With his attitude and way of being, Kore – Persephone, among other things, invites us to open ourselves to the game, fun, simplicity, at the present time, and to awaken the qualities of the curiosity and the spontaneity of the maiden in us, which sometimes remain forgotten or repressed with the responsibilities or burdens of adult life.
The power of the beginnings
The Persephone goddess, who returns to Earth from the underworld after every winter with all the vigor of spring, accompanies us internally every time we start something and reminds us that we are able to renew ourselves again and again.
Thus, within the wisdom of the cyclic, the archetype of the maiden (and all the goddesses of spring such as Persephone, Brigit, Flora and Oestre), connects us with the strength of the renewal and the power of the new, of the nascent. As the sun that dawns every day, as the pre-ovulatory phase after menstruation, the maiden brings us the energy of the initiation.
We invoke the freshness of the archetype of the maiden to start something new, to let ourselves carry and touch for the impulse of something that sprouts in us.
«Starting is an attitude. It is a spiritual place. Every year, every month, every season, every week, every day we receive the opportunity to start over. Every breath we take is a new start. Starting is a gift.» (Leonie Dawson, entrepreneur
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