Tracking Persephone

Exploring mythic maps of descent, initiation and renewal

The Fate of Persephone by Walter Crane

The nature of the unconscious and archetypes is multivalent.

Encounters with this realm can inspire and enliven us. Like the Hero called to adventure, we may be tasked to depart the boundaries of the known world and expand into new territory. Here, though challenges are felt as confronting, a rush of vitality accompanies our movements. Emboldened with each step, consciousness expanding and strengthening, we act with a focused sense of purpose. The energy of life flows forth with intensity, a momentum that builds and builds. Here, the Heroic experience helps us to harness latent potential, confront shadow, and dynamically scale the mountain of individuation.

Other times, the experience of the unconscious is intense and overwhelming. It disrupts the very structures of consciousness, threatening the ego’s fragile illusion of control. A heavy darkness begins to pervade life, inertia sets in, a complete and total standstill. Here, we are like Persephone, abducted from a place of safety and drawn into the depths of the underworld. Her mythology echos with a painful archetypal truth: meetings with the unconscious can be all consuming, death-like, stripping life of warmth and nurturance.

“We are dragged into Hades' chariot only if we are out in Demeter's green fields, seductively innocent with playmates among flowers. That world has to open up. When the bottom falls out, we feel only the black abyss of despair…”

— James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld

But this is not where Persephone’s story ends. In fact, it is just the beginning…

Having met the darkness fully, taking it into herself, becoming one with it, Persephone rises again, not as the innocent maiden she once was, but as Queen of the Underworld. Living between realms, a liminal being of the above and the below, her ascent brings forth the promise of spring, an end to the hold winter has upon the land. With her descent, the world once again experiences its natural withering.

Persephone’s story reveals how painful, overwhelming initiations connect us to the creative cycles of life. These experiences, while being destructive, destabilizing or distressing, hold a greater purpose: death in service to rebirth, individuation through an all encompassing surrender to transformation. Old identities, structures and beliefs dissolve, and in its place, a new self-authority reigns.

The Ebb and Flow of Psychic Energy

Proserpine by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Tracking Persephone, in this context, is tracking the loss (and eventual return) of psychological energy (what Jungians refer to as libido¹). This is the energetic lifeblood that animates the psyche, fueling our instincts, emotions, desires, and activities. When libido is progressing, it moves unimpeded, a well of resource that we can draw upon to nourish all areas of life. Here, we feel the sunlit power of optimism, enjoyment, vibrancy, excitement. It is a kind of youthful abandon, pure potential that shimmers with attraction and intrigue.

Imagine Persephone joyfully wandering through the fields, innocently picking flowers and playing with the nymphs.

The great ebb and flow of reality eventually demands change. The psychological energy, once moving freely forward, becomes obstructed, or feels as if it has simply dissappered. Whether it is from a sudden illness, an emotional wound that continues to fester, an expansive opportunity that strikes fear within, or the mysterious hands of fate that weave unforeseen circumstances, a dramatic shift is felt all through out the psyche, echoing through the body and into life. Heavy depression, uncertainty, listlessness, and inner conflict settles over us.

Persephone has been abducted from the sunny gardens, from the protective embrace of the Mother, and now wanders through Hades.

Jung reminds us of an important point regarding psychic energy. When our ego loses access to the powerful progressive libido, it does not simply vanish. Rather, it marks a regression (a backward movement) to the unconscious. Out of reach, it is felt as devastating, but below the surface, unseen activity brews, awaiting our attention.

“Regression . . . as an adaptation to the conditions of the inner world, springs from the vital need to satisfy the demands of individuation.”

— C.G. Jung, "On Psychic Energy" (CW 8)

The unconscious calls, beckoning us to enter the dark caves of the psyche. We either go willingly or we will be forcefully drawn in like Persephone. No matter how you enter the underworld, the task remains the same: What greater purpose underlies the experience? What is the vital thread of individuation that is present? What shadows have gone too long unattended? What are you becoming through the journey?

Renewal via an Introverted Descent

Psyche and Persephone by Charles-Joseph Natoire

Attending to these individuation demands is a radical turning towards the inner world, to our deepest sense of self, our inner landscape. This is an introverted regression of libido, where attention, energy and focus is becoming self-contained, protected from outer demands that would siphon off resources.

It begs the questions:

• In what ways have I become too identified with a job, a relationship, the responsibilities others have placed upon me?

• In what ways might I be prioritizing the needs of others over myself?

• Am I too distracted, not noticing the subtle (or not so subtle) signals from within?

• Have I lost the ability to seamlessly move between the inner and outer world? Did I never develop these skills in the first place?

Following the archetypal map of the mythology, we notice little hints of this in Persephone’s story. As a youth, she is completely identified as a mother’s daughter. In fact, before her underworld journeying, she was simply known as Kore, the Greek word for maiden. She has yet to break away from Demeter’s protective cocoon. Enmeshed in familial structures, knowing little of her own psychic nature, does she spend each day doing as her mother bids, never straying too far out of sight, staying close at hand?

Persephone is stuck in adolescence, individuation suspended in time. Hovering on the threshold of change, something drastic constellates to tip the scales and move her forward.

“Whenever some great work is to be accomplished, before which a man recoils, doubtful of his strength, his libido streams back to the fountainhead—and that is the dangerous moment when the issue hangs between annihilation and new life. For if the libido gets stuck in the wonderland of this inner world, then for the upper world man is nothing but a shadow, he is already moribund or at least seriously ill. But if the libido manages to tear itself loose and force its way up again, something like a miracle happens: the journey to the underworld was a plunge into the fountain of youth, and the libido, apparently dead, wakes to renewed fruitfulness.”

— C.G. Jung “The Battle for Deliverance from the Mother” (CW 5)

When we stand on this threshold, whether we are conscious of it or not, we are likely to be doubtful or resistant. Unable to see the greater scope of our individuation path, we stay complacent or undermine the necessary changes. As Jung mentions in the quote above, there is an opus, a great work of transformation afoot. This process of evolution requires the dissolution and rebuilding of our inner and outer world. If we knew everything it required of us, we would quickly say, “No thank you, I’ve got enough on my plate. I don’t need to face these things within myself.”

So the unconscious chooses for us. The underworld opens up and steals us away, the excitement of outer life diminishes. The introversion, the inward focusing of energy, sends resources into the depths. The confrontation is forced, stirring up the shadow and our warring complexes. This is a critical time, for if we are unable to meet the demands fully, to sacrifice that which no longer serves, we will be stuck in the underworld. The cycle of descent and ascent will be broken, and we diminish into a mere shade of what we once were.

While in Hades, Persephone eats pomegranate seeds. Of her own hand, she takes the underworld into her. This is the moment she is irrevocably changed.

Psychologically, I see this as representing the integration of the unconscious, the accepting and binding of shadow material. This forever ties her to Hades' side. She becomes a part of the underworld, and it a part of her.

When she emerges, she is renewed. Old layers have been shed, new power and authority gained. She is no longer a simple maiden or a mother’s daughter, she is embodied within herself, wise to the secrets and ways of life and death. Initiated.

Persephone’s descent reminds us to contemplate our painful initiations, to consider what new areas of our psyche are striving to come into full bloom. It challenges us to profound introversion, the releasing of outer ties, and the withdrawal to self. Her story holds us in an archetypal constellation that echoes with the cycles of nature; life and death intertwined with the great forces of creation that underlie us all.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts and reflections on these ideas…

What is your relationship to the myth of Persephone? Have you experienced a similar confrontation with the unconscious? What practices or insights help you navigate periods of inner turmoil or initiation?

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1. A general term for psychological energy (or life force) that underlies and energizes all psychic processes. Jung expanded upon Freud’s original meaning, describing libido as an energy capable of expressing itself across the full range of human experience and instincts, rather than sexual drive alone.

“We would be better advised, therefore, when speaking of libido, to understand it as an energy-value which is able to communicate itself to any field of activity whatsoever, be it power, hunger, hatred, sexuality, or religion, without ever being itself a specific instinct.” — C.G. Jung, “The Concept of Libido” (CW 5)