Spring is well and truly here. We’ve had a beautiful week here in the UK, where the sun has been shining, the blossoms beginning to bloom and you can feel the sap rising and life returning to the earth. I’ve been outside in the garden so much, pulling it back from Winter’s hold and preparing it for the year ahead. Projects I’d discussed with my husband are already underway, and I’m relishing embodying the ‘doing’ energy and starting to tick off some projects and actions on my to-do list!
I love reading mythology stories. I’m reading a lot of them at the moment, being inspired by the stories- but this time of year always speaks to me in the mythology of Persephone. The Greek Goddess of Spring. I’ve read and reread her story- and I’m devouring modern retellings of her story too. I love seeing the blossom on the trees, but my eyes are always drawn to a particular yellow flower that arrives just ahead of the Spring Equinox. I’ve journeyed with Persephone as Queen of the Underworld for many years. It’s no secret that the darkness draws me- a fascination with vampires, witches, and other things that go bump in the night. So I was unsurprised when the Queen of the Underworld claimed me as hers. For many years, she’d whisper to me from the darkness around the Autumn Equinox and I’d leave her when Spring returned in a cycle that was never ending.
In the past few months, I’ve found myself thinking of her story- what happens to the Queen when she returns to the earth? When Spring comes for us, awash at first in pastel but then bolder in colours- when the maiden returns, going home to her mother- what happens to the Queen? Daffodils- the flower that originally started Kore’s journey into the underworld- brings joy as we know Spring is coming. The warmer months, the longer days, a surge in energy that is both without and within. This beautiful flower is the harbinger of Spring. Strange term, huh? Omens are something we associate with the negative- and I feel that the harbinger is definitely an omen. It holds a thread of the unknown, a promise that we may not like. Yet, for Persephone, the daffodil is a harbinger. We relish in the maiden energy- and rightfully so! While I do, I take a moment to spare a thought for Persephone, Queen and wife to Hades- and the fact that this yellow flower brings to her the promise of leaving her husband for sixth months.
Have you ever gone back to your parents house after you’ve left home? It’s nostalgic at first. It’s easy to soak in the energies of your inner child, being in your childhood home. There are no chores, no mess to clean up and enough comfort that you embrace it. You bask in it, and catch yourself smiling.
After a while though, I find I long to return to my home. The life I’ve built for myself through my actions and my choosing’s. My own Queen remerges- longing for home and the independence I’d fought so hard for when I was a teenager. For my own identity and the sometimes chaos of my own life.
So, as I look at the daffodils that are emerging- now in seas of yellow and pale white- I wonder is this how Persephone feels? When she returns home, to be nourished and reminded of the maiden that she is- is six months her limit before she longs to return home, to her people and her husband? On the day when the weather turns (I saw a sneaky forecast for snow in April!) can she no longer stay away, and return home, if only for a night? Does she follow the path back to the Underworld, walking amongst those little yellow flowers?
Yes- I love Spring, and the little harbinger in the daffodil, but I can’t help but feel a touch of sorrow for Persephone when I see them. I’m reminded of what she gives up to be a Maiden again, and the fact that she holds both aspects within her- She is a Goddess who holds both the light and the dark, the Maiden and the Queen and embodies the cycles of life, death and rebirth. She called me- and reminds me that I hold both, too.
