Welcome to the 34 Circe Salon.
Welcome to Make Matriarchy Great Again.
All right, welcome to the 34 Circe Salon.Make matriarchy great again.We're going to talk about Persephone today and we have a wonderful guest, Molly Reamer, who also happens to be the author of a book called Walking with Persephone.
So welcome to the show. All right, so you might have heard a little pause because we were doing some technical tweaking.So Molly Reamer, we have her.Now, Molly, you are an amazing woman who does many things such as priestessing and authoring.
So if you'd like to introduce yourself before we start talking about Persephone, we'd love to.
Okay.Well, thank you so much for having me as a guest.I'm delighted to be here. And yeah, so I describe myself as a priestess, mystic, and poet in Southern Missouri.I am the mother of four kids.
My husband, Mark, and I co-create original story goddess figurines and publish books from our home studio here in the middle of the woods.And let me think.We run an Etsy shop.I've written 12 books.I'm working on my 13th at the moment.
And I really enjoy calling people to celebrate, circle, and sing to inspire people in sacred living, in mindful living, rooting deeply into our connections with the landscapes we live on and what we can learn from them.
I am also the creatrix of the devotional process, 30 Days of Goddess, which is an ongoing, unfolding daily devotional practice that I started in January of 2021.
So it has now unfolded for approximately 1400 days, 1400 continuous days without stopping.We have not missed a day of practice.
That was something I began that I thought was going to be a 30 day, like a 30 day fun thing, and turned out to be 1400 days. no end in sight.So that's pretty amazing.
So that is one of what I consider to be like my signature offering is this 30 days of goddess process.
Well, thank you for sharing that.And I'm very excited that we get to talk to you about Persephone.I enjoyed your book.I think the nice thing about it is it's a very personal discussion of your relationship with her.
I thought it was really interesting.I don't know if this feels fresh for you anymore, but basically it sounded like Persephone, you didn't even think that she was a goddess to focus on.You kind of had a, this is a light goddess early.How did that?
Yeah.So my only exposure to Persephone before the writing of the book is I facilitated a quick Cakes for the Queen of Heaven series when I was in my twenties.And in that Cakes for the Queen of Heaven series,
we actually did a retelling of the Persephone story, like we acted it out.
That was one of the lessons for the week, was to act out the story of Persephone and Demeter using Charlene Spretnak's reinterpretation in which it represents primarily the individuation of the daughter from the mother, rather than focusing on this abduction kind of story.
But the idea with Charlene's reinterpretation is essentially, you know, Persephone kind of falls for tall, dark and dangerous Hades and needs to separate from her mother in order to go on her own journey.
And so we reenacted that myth together as a group.You know, one of us was Persephone and one was Demeter and one was Hades.And we kind of went through this exploration.So that was my first introduction really to the story in terms of
what might be underneath, what lies underneath the two-sentence soundbite version of the story.And then, but yeah, I thought of her as a maiden.
I was deeply immersed at the time in my mother phase, but I was a childbirth educator for a number of years, a breastfeeding counselor.And so I was very immersed in the motherhood.And so Persephone felt very maiden.She's very maiden.
She was very light.She was very, maybe just a little, maybe kind of a, you know, kind of a victim, so to speak, instead of an agency of her own destiny.
And as a matter of fact, the next time I was exposed to Persephone, I go to a festival called Gaia Goddess Gathering, and they were honoring Persephone one year, and I skipped the festival when they were honoring Persephone.
I went to the Demeter one, I went to the Morrigan one, and I skipped Persephone because I thought, oh, I don't really need that.And so it was quite a surprise to me to have her emerge in such clear focus and such force in this midlife stage for me.
Because at the time of the writing of the book, I was at the cusp of my 40th birthday.I'm 45 now, but I was pushing 40 when I wrote the book.And I thought, why Persephone?Why now?Why is she arising at this point?
And then I discovered, you know, once you, because Persephone's story is a story of descent and renewal, you know, an underworld journey of transformation and discovery and unearthing and finding things out.
And what better goddess for an underworld journey of midlife than Persephone, she who knows what it means to sink.
I ask you and I'm like wait, I forget some people don't really know who Persephone is so You know, I'm thinking that the story everybody knows is the patriarchal one, you know Persephone's hanging out in the field somewhere and and Hades decides he wants her and he kidnaps her and takes her to the underworld and
And because she eats too many pomegranate seeds, she has to stay.And then there's the other part of the story where the mother wants her back.
Demeter, sometimes there's two names for Demeter, but that she wants her back and she has to go negotiate with the gods to get her daughter back.And then this becomes the explanation for summer and winter for the earth flourishing and not.
But if you dig a little deeper, in my mind, Persephone's really
Underworld goddess, you know, she understands death, you know this to me this was something she wanted not something that happened to her and Sometimes you see when people talk about alternative stories that that Hades probably was a side character before it was flipped around that yes that he he was her partner maybe but she she probably was the underworld goddess and
And then there's also the part that she has that other name, Kor, which is the seed maiden, the one who puts the seeds.And of course, the seeds go into the underworld to the life and death part of that.So just making sure I cover that.
Yes.And there's also a story that leaves out Hades at all, which is that she just hears the cries of the souls in the underworld, you know, crying out to her and goes to investigate.Like there's souls in the underworld that need help.
And there's no Hades even mentioned in that version of the story at all.She just goes because she hears the need.She hears the need and descends into the underworld.
And I did, I had a really powerful dream of Persephone in that underworld queen aspect where she was just like in, you know, robes of blood and fire essentially, and very like, and that was the image that came to me in this dream of
of her in this really fully embodied underworld queen aspect.
And I thought, you know, truly in this descent and renewal in this midlife transition thing, that's part of what we're doing is excavating our own selves, excavating our own selves, and becoming queens of our own, like of our own lives, essentially, at that point.
And Don, did you have a question?Well, not a question.I just wanted to offer that I always thought it was interesting that Corée, the maiden, she's painted as this sort of like so soft and innocent and only loves the flowers.
And then Hades corrupts her to this goth queen, essentially.But it is interesting that the way that Demeter goes about getting her back or forcing the gods to address
the situation, even in the patriarchal myth, is that she essentially causes the earth to die.
So she is also a goddess of death and life, the creator, the destroyer, which are aspects of every great goddess myth, is that she both creates and destroys.She is the full cycle. Yeah.
And I also think she's an initiator because to really die and become a new person is an initiation, which is I feel a little bit what your book was, is it felt to me like part of your, you're trying to allow part of your identity to die so that you could find out what part was really your identity and what part wasn't real for you anymore or, or, or vital.
I don't, would you say that would be true, Molly?
Yes, absolutely.Yeah. And that reminds me, one of the quotes that I can't come back to, the book was essentially finished.And I read the book, the book, Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd, which is about like kind of midlife unraveling.
And I didn't even know the book existed until I was almost finished with this manuscript.And one of the things she said, and I would just like to read her quote to you briefly, is that she said, Persephone is the green fuse
of the green fuse in the soul, the regenerative energy.She is the bright, invisible sap, which must rise after 50.
And I thought, oh yes, this is the Persephone that I came to know, that bright, invisible sap that rises from within, not the girlish springtime meadow one.Though as we talk about this, the Hades story,
one of the things that was fascinating to me in the writing of this book, and I think in general, in my life, really in walking with the goddess over the last 25 years or so, is how very often these stories and these myths and the symbolism and the power, like how those, these things emerge in our own everyday, ordinary day-to-day lives.
Like we can see these aspects of myth and story rise up in our own lives.
I call it like there's value in the mythopoetic storing of our lives in seeing ourselves as everyday Inanas or ordinary Persephone's or seeing that, you know, touch of Bridget in the poem that we write or the touch of Gaia in the land.
There's real value in having that, living in that storied reality and seeing those myths and symbols alive in our own lives.
And so, yes, she's in Greece and she was originated in Greece and I'm here in Missouri, you know, like what does an underworld goddess from Greece have to talk to a midlife Missouri mother?
But I had the experience when I was writing the book of when I first like met Persephone by the shores of this urban lake where I just, I heard her, I heard her voice.I heard this, this story like emerging.
I had been looking at a root, looked like a curled up woman to me.And I took, I put my little goddess figure in the root and was taking the picture.And I started to hear this poem unfurling, like in my mind.
And so I'm walking by this little kind of slightly polluted urban lake in the middle of a town.And I heard like these lines of poetry like emerging spontaneously.And later through, I continued to visit that lake in the process of writing the book.
And one day I was there. And I was literally kneeling in the violets, like there was violets growing and I was walking through the violets and I was taking some pictures.My kids are out of class.
And so I'm in the violets and I'm, I'm taking the pictures and I was singing.I was singing a little song to myself and I'm in my own little world.
And I looked over and there was a man, a stranger leaning on the cypress tree, like watching me in the violets.And I thought,
So yes, I am 40, I'm not girlishly skipping through the violets, but this is Persephone's story alive in the world right now.
Here I am, skipping through the violets, singing my song, and suddenly there's this underworld man leaning on the tree, like watching me in the violets. But instead, I spoke to him and said, like, oh, I'm surprised this is over here.
We had a nice little conversation.He was a college student.You know, it wasn't he wasn't really hating.But there's an essence that's there's an essence of seeing that story, seeing that story come alive in your own life.
It's really powerful and really amazing when you like, I guess.Expand into paying attention to those things, to just noticing that it's really there's a lot of power there.
Yeah. Did anything about Persephone surprise you in particular?Was there anything that you learned that you're like, oh, wow.Is there some things that really struck you?
The first thing that comes to mind is my experience of her as a goddess of choice versus force.I think that's one of the things. that emerges in the multiple retellings, which we've just explored.Is it a conscious individuation from the mother?
Is it running off with the lover?Is it answering the cries of the underworld?But there's this issue of choice versus force.
So the thing that arose for me that was a surprise is instead of that story of descent and renewal, or rising and sinking and rising and that kind of thing, is that I came to see
that I view her as kind of this goddess of choice or force, and if we apply it to our own lives. Where are we forcing it?Where are we forcing it?And where are we actively choosing?And I think I'm probably still unpacking that a little bit.
How often do I feel like I'm trying to wrestle my life into control?How often do I feel like I'm forcing something to happen?And how often am I leaning into the arising?How often am I participating in the unfolding?
So really, for me, that was a surprise, that choice versus force.And how does that play out on a day-to-day landscape of living?
Mm-hmm. And I think like our concept of deity, because we have so much patriarchy, is this kind of someone telling you the right way to live.
And the other thing that is really nice about your book is, is you really are walking, you really are looking, I don't know, to sort of call on this wisdom and say, inform my life, speak through my life and speak through nature, you know, just allowing something to come to you.
So did you feel that way about it as well? It puts you in dialogue, I think, as opposed to this is the right thing, this is the wrong thing.It felt to me like you were discovering what felt right.
Yes, absolutely.That's one of the things that I really emphasize a lot in my own work is that, to me, a goddess-centered path is a living practice.It's both ancient and embodied.It's newborn in this minute, and it has roots thousands of years old.
And a lot of it is about this living practice, a practice of, as I said, arising and unfolding.What am I learning today?That was a big lesson.It remains a lesson for me.I need to listen and learn from the story of my own life
as it is being written right now.Like, how is it being written right now?And every day, you know, I wake up and go to see like, what's the next part of the story?You know, what's the next chapter?What's here today?
What's here today in that ever evolving process of being and becoming?What's here right now?
Yeah, living in the moment.That's really lovely.
It also made me think of, you know, when you're saying that the goddess is alive right now, you know, that this is a living practice, it feels almost like every time a new woman is born into the world, the goddess is born again.
And our individual journeys are that sort of dance with learning ourselves.And in learning ourselves, we also learn the goddess.
Yeah, and I think it's a really interesting, there can be a really dynamic and powerful interplay of the ancient threads and the current experiencing and they both count, they both have value.
And I think it was Starhawk who said, like, the truth of our experience is valid, whether it's 30 minutes old, or 30,000 years old, you know, like, that's, they, they both have value.
So even if the experience arose 30 minutes ago, it still has, it still has value, it can still teach us.And so we have, we can have 30, 30 minutes of, of
I guess, discovery and we can have 30,000 years worth of history and it can all weave together into the tapestry.
Yeah.Well, we are essentially the same, you know, Homo sapien sapien really hasn't changed in the last hundred thousand years all that much.So, yeah.So we are as fresh today as we were then.
And I noticed that you had originally thought, okay, three months, this is going to be, you committed to three months.
Did you find that going through the different seasons made a difference to how you were relating or how, how your understanding of your relationship with Persephone or walking?How did that change?Did that change things for you?
Yes.It was very interesting to me that I started out this book thinking that I was going to have this linear experience.I've been around for a while and I know that I have taught my classes before and written before.
We need to think in circles and not in lines.I know that life is an unfolding spiral and not a line.It's funny that I thought that I could package it up and make it into a tiny little
for three months, I'm going to study this, and then I'm going to switch and I'm going to study this.And it's so much murkier and so much deeper and so much more twisted and tangled than that.
And, and I really do, you know, there's a lot to be found in the twisted and tangled.And that's different than what's out in the bright sunshine.And sometimes we trip over sharp stones and stagger around through the darkness.
And that's part of how life is.And so in the it's, So I did not intentionally structure the book in this seasonal kind of unfolding way.
I thought I was going to be writing it based on these different goddesses and I was going to kind of assign a goddess to each season.And instead, the shape of the book is such that Persephone started to emerge for me in early spring.
or early, sorry, late winter started to emerge for me in late winter.How appropriate, right?Here comes the crocuses, here comes the, but I didn't see it at the time.
It's only when the book is complete and when it's the, when it's fully formed, that you see that seasonal overlap of Persephone rising in the late winter and then receding in late fall.And
just, I mean, it's really, and I've had the question before, like, why don't I have, didn't I have like a section for winter specifically, but the book starts in winter.
So even though it doesn't have like a title, a chapter subheading of winter, the book starts in winter and it progresses essentially a full year until the beginning of a new winter and the seasonal shifts.
I'm powerfully influenced by what's happening in my own landscape.It's, it's the, it's the shaper of my days. It's a shaper of my spiritual understanding.I'm powerfully impacted by what's happening in my own landscape and my own life.
And like what's happening right now?What's blooming?What's growing?What's flying?What's the weather doing?And so it is natural for me to explore concepts in a seasonal cycle just because I
step outside every day and see like what's here when I wrote about, I listen and learn to the story of my life.But I also step outside and I look to see like, what story is this land telling me today?What's happening right now?
So organizing like my own experiences in the context of a seasonal cycle is really very much how I organize, like my whole life really is organized in relationship to that seasonal cycle.And I do live here in Missouri.
where we do have four distinct seasons and it really closely mirrors that wheel of the year type of modality that you find in like contemporary paganism.And I know that's not true, depending on your landscape, that might not be true for you.
For me, it's very much, you know, when summer's on the upswing, when it's summer on the pagan wheel of the year, you know, the sunflowers are in bloom here, the sun is at its peak, it's very closely mirrored in the landscape.
And I find it a tremendous, has a tremendous impact on me, I just how I move through the world, how I view my life, how I understand kind of everything is impacted by my own landscape and what it's doing at that moment.
Right. And I mean some people organize the wheel of the year if they associate it with goddesses.They'd say okay Bridget is for the sprint is the bride.It sounds like Persephone had more legs than that.
It sounds like She so how did it change your relationship to be in a different season?Is it the?Nature of it being hot in the summer.What what is it that?That makes a different type of meaning in your understanding of Persephone or does it?
Well, and that's the thing I think early on I sort of thought of her only as a as a springtime goddess and It through the process of walking with her.I saw oh, she's really a whole life goddess I only saw her as springtime and maiden right?
She's only springtime and maiden and in truth.She's really a totality She's that because just because she descends doesn't mean she's not having an impact on those darker times of year the fall and the winter
And so my narrower conception of this is a maiden and this is spring was expanded to realize like, no, wait a second.The summer is she's at the height of flourishing, you know, the height of blooming and riotous abundance.
And in fall, maybe she's receding, but that's not because she's going away.It's because she's sinking in to the other part of her work.And then in winter is when all this other stuff is happening below the surface.
So that was a big gift and a lesson and a learning to me was to see Persephone as a total goddess, you know, a complex and multifaceted goddess of wholeness.That was one of her most powerful gifts to me is that sense of my own wholeness.
And it's not particulated or chopped up into little discrete boxes and little pieces of this is, you know, we push this button, push this button for this goddess and, you know, abundance comes out and we push this button and prosperity comes out.
Instead, there's a totality of experiencing and a wholeness.So for me, that was the experiences.There's a wholeness and we can see that myth.We can see that story.We can see that presence. alive in each point of the cycle, in each turn of the wheel.
It doesn't have to be particulated.
For those of our listeners who may not be as familiar with Persephone, can you speak a little bit more about that work that she does when she goes within?
Yes.So that's what you mean in the underworld part?Yes.Yeah.Yes.OK.
So that is when she shepherds the lost souls or the souls that are making their way through their own underworld journey, where she helps them cross between the between like the holding the liminal and into their final their final destination.
And so she's a shepherd, you might say, of the souls as they make their underworld journey, their underworld transition.And I think that's why it spoke that story or the understanding.We all go through underworld descent and renewal.
That's why I love Inanna so much as well.I'm very partial to goddesses of descent and return.
And because we all go through these journeys of descent and return, these transitional stages, these rites of passage, the kind of life makes the rites of passage for us.
something that's necessarily discreetly organized according to a larger cultural system, but life formed its own rites of passage for us.And we all have these journeys of descent and return and reclamation and renewal.
And so, yeah, that shepherding, the shepherding the soul through the underworld is a very important piece of Persephone's work.
Not just, not just putting the, you know, helping the violets be in bloom, but shepherding those souls across the cross thresholds.
And someone you can reach out to if you feel like you're in a period of your life where you're- Where you're wandering in darkness.Yeah, where you're wandering in darkness, where you're descending and you need a guide.That's wonderful.
And I'm struck by the fact, I mean, they talk about her other version, Kor being a sea goddess.The pomegranate is so vital to her story, which is the seed speaking again.And really nothing new can come unless it goes into the earth.
You know, there's this death that happens.You have to leave the earth to really grow something new.So she's shepherding the whole process.She's shepherding the descent, then she's shepherding the seed coming back out. being born anew.
So, and I think that's an important thing because it does seem like we try to put goddesses into specific boxes.And why can't a goddess be mother, maiden, crown?Why can't the goddess be a whole, a bigger whole thing?
And also to respect the dark times, because especially, you know, our American culture is, we have this idea that it's always got to be getting better, that, you know, economically, we want endless growth, We want people to be happy.
We want you to feel energized.We want you to maximize every moment that you live.And it's just not realistic when you understand that the world is an unfolding spiral.
There are times where you must go, where things must wither and die, where you have to go down into the dark.And if you don't do that, you everything, the entire cycle will be destroyed.
You can't have the sunshine without the dark of midnight, that kind of thing.And so these goddesses, these goddesses of the underworld, I think, get short shrift in our perception of
what is important in our lives and what are the lessons that we need to learn, because we are so programmed to think, you know, we got to go, go, go, we got to go, we got to optimize every second.And the power.
Oh my god, yes, the world needs winter.We can't have eternal growth.Things must die in order for them to renew.And, and we need that in our lives too.We need to go through our own personal winters, or else we cannot continue to spring.
Yes.Yeah, I really do.The productivity thing, you know, produce, produce, produce is the mechanistic thing.That was also, I think, a theme in the book.But what were you going to say, Molly?
I was going to say, I write for a blog called Feminism Religion.I've written there for, I guess, since about 2011 or so.And one of the first articles I wrote there was about endarkenment and the wisdom of endarkenment.
because I think we have this association and we sometimes do even in goddess circles and in people who really honor a lot of different things about the goddess can still associate like the darkness with bad or evil or somehow like, or even like crisis or suffering.
And I really feel like, you know, times in the dark, I write often and find a lot of solace in what I call cave time.You know, like we all need times in the dark and the darkness is a place
for me of, you know, if there's a fertile darkness of renewal and of incubation and of steeping and of ripening and of, and of, you know, growing, growing down there in the dark, and we need those times in the dark, and it does not have to equate to negative or bad or hardship, or anything.
It's there's a healing restoration and a renewal present in the dark places in the shadowy descents, and in the caves and in the wintering of our lives.So it doesn't have to be like a bad experience to go dark sometimes.
It's funny you said that because the very first podcast interview I ever did, I was interviewed years ago now, it was Darkness Gets a Bad Rap is what I called it because it's like, you know, we've got these negative associations and I did a shamanic journey once and I got this message from darkness, which is
A lot of people think, I'm grieving, this darkness comes, I have to get through it.But the message I got was that darkness comes to soften everything.Because if you're grieving deeply, it's very painful.Light is painful.
People's happy joy is painful.So this darkness is almost like a loving presence that's enfolding you and holding you.And you emerge from the darkness when you're ready, when you can deal with the outside world.
Not yeah, I'm in this darkness because something went wrong.It's it's it's holding me in love.
Yeah Yeah, like a play a place of renewal.
I didn't I spent a lot of time so I referenced Inanna a couple of times She's a early goddess that had a presence in my life And I spent years of drawing upon Inanna's story without ever thinking of Arishkigal, her sister in the underworld in the dark
the dark sister in the underworld.And I gave a keynote at a conference last year where the goddess we were honoring was Ereshkigal.And I had to see her.
I suddenly had my eyes cracked open, so to speak, to see that the one who is down there, the one who's down there in this place of understanding, kind of deep within, the one who is crying out to be heard, the one who is longing to express herself,
Like that's, she's there.And so we think Inanna is kind of, you know, the bright queen who does the descent and the heroine of the story.But what about she who's down below?
What about she who waits beneath, who already holds the answers like deep within and who longs to be heard?Like, wow.And so that was really an interesting experience for me to have just totally overlooked.
Like the other piece of that tale is the one who's there, the one who's down beneath waiting.
waiting to embrace us again when we return.Yeah, that's, that's such a I'm getting a little teary.That's such a beautiful image.
And we too tend to paint, if we think of darkness as negative, it's almost like that's how a rishkigal gets such a negative connotation, where I sometimes like to think of Inanna as going to meet her more wise self. Mm-hmm.
It sounds when people tell the story like the goal is for her to get out back to the light as soon as possible, but She's just dropping everything.
You don't need you know dropping all these so she can get to the naked truth of things Yeah, you can get to the essence of things and
and in in stop stepping back and saying oh this might be an inflection of cultural values that paints the the underworld goddess so negatively um hecate you know the crossroads goddess yes you know she's the other one who could get you back if you were lost she she'd help get you found again you know she's a guide so these different goddesses are showing us this guidance for this this deepening process this
going into what we can't see and trying to find something new there.
And of course we are, you know, all too familiar with the way that these dark goddesses were over the development of European civilization were
relegated to the shadows and then demonized as, you know, if you worship a sun god, S-U-N, then, you know, the things that live in the dark must be evil and must be there to lead you astray. rather than to lead you to yourself.
And so this process of the demonization of this aspect of the goddess and this aspect of our own lives, you know, proceeded over many centuries and here we are.
Like my sister, she was studying, she was with a lot of doctors, and they basically feel like failures if someone dies.It's almost like you can't really make death, I mean, everybody's gonna die, right?Death in Texas, right?
But we do carry this feeling like the death is the failure, that the pause is a failure. And that's, I think, one of the messages for Stephanie as well.It's not a failure to go into that place of meditation and insight.
Yeah, and that is one of the things I think I've learned.
I've spoken of this a couple times in that I sometimes worry, you know, after the book is finished and sent forth into the world, and now five more years have passed since it was since it was written, not since it was published, but that I'm thinking, did I actually like, you know, learn anything?
Did I did I, quote, unquote, fix myself after this experience?
And one of the most powerful gifts of the book, of walking with Persephone in general, of following a goddess-centered path in general, is that the reminder that these journeys of descent and renewal take place on an ongoing basis.
The purpose of life is not to fix it. you know, life is not a problem to be solved.We're not trying to fix ourselves.
We can, but we can look at the larger story or the larger context, and we can recognize, like, kind of here I go again, you know, on another one of these journeys of descent and renewal, of ascending and, or, you know, deepening and rising.
Like, we can look at those things, not with shame and blame or a sense of, I was supposed to solve this, but instead a sense of awareness of the of the unfolding or of the continued cycle and recognize it as a process of dissent and renewal, not as a
chore or a test or an accomplishment to check off your list and then you just keep on going and never look back.It's ongoing.It's ongoing.
Right.It's not a failure that winter comes every year.Exactly.It's not a failure that this issue has come up again and I need to work on it again.
Summer hasn't failed because fall happens.
Right.That's so perfect.That's so perfect.Yes, summer has not failed because fall happened.Love that.And so there's a lot of There's a lot of grace that we can grant ourselves in seeing our lives in that kind of context.
And it gives us a wonderful perspective, because if it is an ongoing journey, if it is a cycle of descent and return, of hibernation and awakening, then when it happens, it's not the end of the world.
It is part of the process, and hopefully we can be patient with ourselves.
Yes. And I think it's interesting because on one hand, we're looking at, we're just talking about this goddess being more of a whole thing where we were isolating to specific characteristics.But then on the other hand, the characteristics do matter.
They do bring a different flavor to the experience.So walking with Persephone for a year, I imagine it would be different than walking with Inanna for a year.Absolutely.I feel that that's true.
Or walking with Aphrodite for a year.Absolutely.Yeah. Yeah, I do feel like it's different.And I know I differ maybe from some other people about the whole, you know, are all goddesses aspects of one goddess or are they distinct?
Because I kind of come from a, they're distinct.Like I don't actually think that Inanna wants to be thought of as Persephone.And I don't think Hecate wants to necessarily be thought of as Isis.
Like they have their distinct and they have different things that they offer and they have different stories that they teach.
And, you know, so maybe we can look at if there's a great cosmic pool of divinity, maybe they're all scooped out of the same cosmic pool.But I don't actually think that each goddess is an aspect of or a reflection of all other goddesses.
I think they're pretty, they've got their own their own stories to tell and their own lessons to teach.And sometimes trying to blur them all into one cosmic pool isn't necessarily that helpful.
I mean, you can still learn a lot from the cosmic pool, but we can also learn a lot from the individual expressions.And it's very different.
I have never done the intensive walk with a goddess so intensely as I did with Persephone, but I have smaller and simpler walks with Inanna and with Elena of the Ways and with,
Pandora and other goddesses that kind of arise for a time and they have something to share They have something to speak.
They have something to teach and and we can we can walk with them and see what we learn Mm-hmm And I know you said you're working with a Nana a lot lately What if you were to say how does Pandora how does Pandora feel in terms of feeling different than Nana?
Is there do you have a felt sense of the difference or is that too hard to describe?
Oh, so Pandora to me is all about that.
I meant to say Persephone.
Maybe I spoke Pandora for a good reason because I like Pandora too.Okay.
No, so Persephone, and I actually wrote a little bit about Inanna in the Walking with Persephone book because I had a moment of thinking like, maybe I should have been focused on Inanna instead of Persephone, because
maybe she would have been a more appropriate goddess for this journey.But Persephone's voice was more distinct, I guess you could say.So I think there's companion lessons from the stories, like there's companion lessons from those experiences.
But for me, the Inanna journey is about laying those things aside, you know, laying things down at those gates of the underworld, the things that
the things that are doing you harm, so to speak, laying them down and casting them off and, you know, descending into this like naked, naked and exposed in this vulnerability, which to me is a different, that's a different type of exploration than the underworld journey of Persephone, who has the more, who's descending, she's
living, she's living a life in the underworld as queen of the underworld.She's eating her pomegranate seeds.She's getting ready to rise back up again and flower all over the meadow.
And Inanna is more of a, like a casting off or a laying down or laying aside and really kind of a sovereign, a sovereignty journey is what I would say.Like the, there's a sovereignty journey and a transform.
I guess both, both are goddesses of transformation.I feel like they're distinct.I feel a distinct sensation of them as totally separate and distinct.
They feel different to you.
One of the things that I feel more and more as I get older, that we look to religion for, or spirituality, or communion with the divine, however you classify it, is our fear of death.Because we are all mortal creatures, as you say, death and taxes.
So I wonder if Persephone helps with that fear.Is there anything in your journey with Persephone that may have touched on that sort of quintessential human experience?
I'm not sure so much other than the letting, you know, the letting go, the recognizing that you can't, that not everything can be kept alive.
And so as a, as a letting go for sure, like a letting go and laying some things to rest and letting, it's not only the, the, like the final death that we will experience, but it's also those kind of little deaths along the way, the image of the,
the person that you thought you were going to be or the family that you thought you were going to have or the things that you thought you were going to do.Those things also die and have to be released and let go of and laid to rest.
And I think there can be some, um, yeah, there can be a real gift there in recognizing that it's not, again, not a shame and not a failure to have to lay something aside and to say, this part is finished.This is done.This is, this is over.
I, um, the death, I don't come from a contemporary, uh, or a, um, I guess I don't come from a religious background.
So for me, I feel like I have always had a, I guess kind of like an acceptance of death as part of life and I've not ever thought about or not needed to have a story that helps me transcend from that reality, if that makes sense.
Like I don't feel like that's something that I've Aiba needed per se.And something that I wrote long ago in that Endarkenment essay was that, you know, like we come, we emerge from the darkness.
And that's, you know, that, that cosmic pool, that cosmic pool of infinity is, you know, where we'll when we close our eyes for the last time, that's, that's what we'll sink back into what will be unfolded by again, is that that great, that great black cosmic soul of the sea or sea of the soul.
And so yeah, so I don't know that I really had a I didn't view it as a grappling with death type of thing, but yes, definitely in the letting go and the little deaths of our lives, in the setting down things and recognizing this is no more.
This is no more.This will not be again.And there can be some grief there.
And then there can also be some triumph there of like, almost a certain, you know, intentionally setting forth on the journey and saying this will be no more is different than resignation of kind of giving up and saying, Oh, I guess I have to let go, you know, like, Oh, I have to let go.
There can be both.And that kind of brings me a little bit back to that choice versus force that we were talking about as an unexpected lesson of What are some things that we actively are choosing and saying no more about I'm setting this down?
And what are the things that feel foisted upon us that we have to wrestle with and come to make peace with?There's both things are true in every life.
The things that we actively are choosing to change and the things that we're making peace with that we don't have control over.
And it feels to me like if she's a shepherdess, if she that maybe she has the potential to give you a feeling of safety when you're going through the process.
You know, I wouldn't necessarily call her gentle because I think that dream you had where she looked pretty fierce queen of the underworld, I think very powerful.
But if you're really helping someone, if that's the part of your story that you're helping someone transition There's got to be some care and some Making someone feel safe.
So It feels to me that could be part of Persephone's Like to be able to relate to this change process Or whatever's going and whatever's coming in and to find some love and grace and feeling supported and cared for Yeah, and since you brought it up Lauren, would you like to share with our listeners that dream I
The one you talked about, the queen, if you could describe that a little.You mentioned it briefly earlier, but you dreamt of Persephone as a queen.And I think you said she had vibrant colors.
Yeah, yeah, she was black and red.It was very black and red imagery.And she came and descended into a place that I actually know in my own life.It's down in the woods, like behind my house.So in the dream, she was descending across these hills
and spoke to me and I made her a promise.And so that happened in the dream.And so at the end of the book, I actually went to the same place that I saw in my dream.
and had a ritual of like kind of completion in which I said, you know, like we, you know, we did it.Like we started with this dream, we've come through to this point.
And so I actually, I brought the dream image of this location into my physical reality.Cause I went to the actual place and I sat there on the rock that I'd seen in the vision and had my ritual of completion.
And at that time, I really in, you know, I know it sounds kind of, you know, to speak of like, you know, having kind of like a vision of something can raise people's, you know, flags of like, oh, sure you did.
But I, in that moment when I had that closing ritual, I felt like I had a sensation of her then withdrawing away across the hills.And this was at the same thing, it was the cusp, the threshold of fall.
And I saw that same dream image that I'd seen of the robes, the robes of like, black and crimson and red or crimson and black.And I saw her kind of trailing away across the hills, leaving like fingers of light.
And so it's an interesting juxtaposition of like a mental image, a vision, while also physically having the reality of looking at the way the light was playing through the trees and seeing how the fingers of light were extending through the trees and away across the hills.
And so there's an interesting potency of like the you know, the visual or the mental or the mythic, you know, embodied in physicality at the same time is an interesting experience to have.
But so I enacted, I took the dream and enacted it into my real experience.And then you're like, which, you know, it's all real.
I'm just making sure that you didn't have any other questions, Dawn, because I know I can be speedy.So is there anything else you'd like to add?Any other insights you have about Persephone?
Or we can talk about what you've been up to lately, because it sounds like you're doing some great work.
Well, I would love to actually read that poem from the original, that lakeside poem where I heard the voice, so to speak, because I don't think I mentioned
earlier too, that the little root, I spoke of the curled up root that looked like a sleeping woman to me.And so I encountered this curled up root that looked like the sleeping woman.I knelt down by the root.
I was thinking about, it was on the, I didn't also mention that was a spring equinox.Ah, Persephone's leg day.So it was a spring equinox, but I was kneeling by this root with the, thinking it looked like a curled up sleeping woman.
And it was much, much, much, much later, like six months later, that I realized that the root was belonged to a cypress tree.There's cypress trees along that.
pond, that lake, and cypress trees are the actual guardian trees before you go into the underworld.It's cypress trees that are there.
So again, this embodiment in the landscape, you know, I'm kneeling by this root because it looked like Persephone to me, it was curled up there.
And then six months later, I'm like, oh, those were cypress trees that I was kneeling by without even knowing.So the embodiment of the story, without necessarily conscious awareness, and not something that I was
you know, manufacturing, it was something that was here.And then I paid attention and it was really, that was really powerful.So I'd love to read that poem, if that's okay, from, from that original experience with her.
And it was so, so she's like, I'm, I'm looking, I'm kneeling by the root, basically.The root I later find is a cypress root.And it, cause it looked like a curled up sleeping woman on the, on the spring equinox.And so this is what I wrote.
But as I was writing this, these were lines that were coming to me as I was walking. by the shores of this lake, and they would kind of pop, they would kind of emerge, and I would see what was actually happening.I mean, it was actually happening.
So here it is.I have slumbered in shadowed places, not knowing the surface from the shore.I have learned what it means to rise, soft-bellied from the deep, shards of darkness clinging to my thighs, my lips stained berry red with truth and desire.
My heart still capable of shedding flowers and drops of hope on hungry plains and stark forests while morning doves rise from secret thickets and the yearning in my bones pulls me to both rise and sink.
There is sunrise passion in my eyes, a pulse of longing in my center, a blush of firelight streaked across my skin where sunshine meets shadow again and again. Beautiful, beautiful.
It's so like I really did see those morning doves, like I wasn't just imagining them, they were like flying up in front of me.
That's wonderful, wonderful.
So yes, tell us what are you working on now?
Okay, well right now I'm finishing up a little devotional to Inanna called The Great Between, an Inanna devotional companion, which is essentially like a series of poems to Inanna, modern-day hymns to Inanna, if you will.
So I'm currently working on that.I am also continuing my 30 Days of Goddess offering, which unfolds in a new shape every month.It's available via 30daysofgoddess.com.Core practice is always free, and I have new
prompts and practices and a practice video and a theme and all those kinds of things for each month of the year.And so anyone is welcome to join us in devotional practice in whatever size.
The whole point of 30 Days of Goddess is creating sacred practices that fit your actual life as it actually is, not doing anything that's bigger and more grander or trying to copy somebody that you see on the internet.
It's about creating sacred practices that fit the life that you're actually living, however big and fancy or small and sacred that they are.So one of our mottos is to keep it simple and sacred.And so anyway, 30 Days of Goddess unfolding all the time.
And yeah, my book in progress is called The Great Between.My most recent book before that is called Replenish. which is a little devotional companion, Spots of Time for your soul and for the sacred.So little prayers.What was that name again?
I didn't catch it.Oh, it's called Replenish.Oh, OK.Yes, Replenish, Spots of Time for Reconnecting with the Sacred and Your Soul.OK, that's wonderful.
All right, and did you have a website?Should we mention the website, or does Google work?
30daysofgoddess.com is the 30 Days of Goddess practice, so that's the best way, but also bridgesgrove.com is kind of the hub where you can find other things that I do.
I do also have a Patreon community for goddess magic and sacred living, and so we do a live community practice once a week.I have posts there pretty much every day.I have published monthly guidebooks for the members of that community.
All kinds of good stuff taking place there as well.
Thank you.All right.Thank you both for coming.I think this is a wonderful conversation.I can try the cheer again.I got to stop it.I don't know what it was doing last time.You figured it out.Fabulous, fabulous.
I think you needed a lot of cheering last time, Molly. I do like cheering.
The crowd goes wild.The crowd goes wild.
So thank you for coming.Thank you both.This was a wonderful conversation.Thank you, Persephone, for popping in and guiding our conversation today.
So once again, this was the 31st Fourth Circe Salon Make Matriarchy Great Again, and we'll see you next time.Thank you so much.
34 Circe Salon -- Make Matriarchy Great Again -- Disrupting History
