Persephone

Condemned to an existence torn between Hades and Olympus, Persephone has nonetheless prospered, for she has her mother Demeter’s strength of will. Each year she dies, and each year she is reborn, marking the calendar with her innumerable transitions across the veil of death. From her mother, she has inherited power over all things that grow from the earth — from her dread husband, power over that which dwells within and beneath it. For Hades, who so rarely has the chance to leave his kingdom, she is the very breath of life and light itself. To the dead, she is Hope that they too may live once more, but Persephone knows well that such a gift is doubleedged, and she does not often bestow it.

Worship of Persephone arrived in Rome with the popular Eleusinian Mysteries, and it took little time for the Romans to recognize the daughter of Ceres, Prosperpina — a Latinization of Persephone. The story of her abduction lived on through the Renaissance in art and sculpture that has survived to the modern day.

In the modern World, her fame has scarcely ebbed: Through the Eleusianian Mysteries, Persephone is yet revered by millions. Her name still blesses symphonies, dramas, novels, and other works of art interpreting the tale of her abduction, a story that is known to women across the world. As she blesses the world with life when she rises, so too she signals its ebbing when she dies — as she ever has, as she ever shall — but she is always Persephone, be she Persephone of the Spring or Persephone of the Dead.