Persephone's Psychology: Mother of Dionysus, Maternal Instinct versus Will to Power, persephone’s zodiac part 8

For half the year, Persephone is with her Mother, Demeter. This may literally be true, but more importantly, it is a metaphor, for it is Persephone who is Fecund and Fertile in this time. She is the Great Mother, she embodies the Maternal Instinct.

For half the year, Persephone is with Hades, During this time, She is Queen of the Underworld. This is also is a metaphor. Persephone is motivated not by Maternal Instinct, rather she becomes like Hades: Persephone becomes the Queen of the Underworld, motivated by the Will to Power.

Persephone is highly reminiscent of Hel, the Queen of the Underworld in the Norse and Germanic mythological tradition. Hel is said to physically be half beautiful maiden, and half rotting corpse. Slightly different metaphor, but it’s trying to tell us the same thing.

Once again, the Maternal Instinct is not necessarily good, and the Will to Power is not necessarily evil. Each of these impulses is necessary and has its season. Each can also be abused.

In one Persephone myth, the mortal Persephone has a child with Zeus. The child is the baby Dionysus, or Zagreus, who is to become the King of the Gods. This angers Zeus’ wife, Hera, to the point where she has the Titans cut the child to pieces and eat him. They eat everything except his heart (similar to what Set does to Osiris, another dying and rising god, but it’s Osiris’ penis that is left). Zeus destroys the Titans with lightning and has the baby’s heart sewn into his thigh, where it gestates and the baby Dionysus is ultimately born again.

This myth seems to put Persephone in a secondary role to Zeus, who (as a God) has the magical ability to gestate a child in his body, despite being a male. This myth features the gender-bending attribution of the Goddess’ power to a male sky god.

This is something like an abduction of Motherhood itself.

Being born of the Queen of Underworld and gestated in the thigh of the King of the Gods makes Dionysus’ origin story particularly compelling, considering that Dionysus/ Bacchus was the template for Christ. The thread of gynomorphism is clearly in place.

The thigh of Zeus may also be a riddle or kenning. Astrologically speaking, the thigh belongs to the sign of Sagittarius, which is ruled by Jupiter/ Zeus. The sign is symbolized by the Centaur. If one looks up in a ancient Greek lexicon the meaning of Centaur, one finds in the list the term “pederast”.

We mostly hear of Dionysus as the primary agricultural god of the Greek-speaking ancient world and beyond, but he is also the central character in the Bacchic mysteries. He is the Life Force that rises in the Spring and dies in the Fall.

The Mysteries were a female-dominated, drug-based set of rituals that were intended to bring the initiate into a death-like state that brought them past any fear of death and dying. There were also many sexual aspects of the mysteries that varied somewhat throughout the ages, many appearing to be lude and debauched hazing intended to humiliate- but there was almost always a deeper meaning in these rituals that could not be denied. The Templars (in their day), groups like the Hospitalers and the Knights of Malta, as well as the Masonic orders hold onto some of the broad outlines of mystery traditions.

In modern terms, these mysteries were like the nuclear option of initiation.

There was no dancing around any lightweight psychological fluff, these ritual went straight to the heart of the matter.

It is also quite clear that putting a person through such a traumatic event was a powerful tool for mind control. Modern MK Ultra and other psychological operations took up the mantle of this tradition.

Ritualism itself can be incredibly powerful and useful, but it is by nature an abstraction.

We know that there were ritualistic drug applications in the course of pregnancy that would introduce herbs and venoms, as well as other toxins to the baby in utero, intended to make the child super powerful and immune to all sorts of poisons and deadly substances. Achilleus was an example of a child who went through this in utero.

Achilleus was also raised as a girl, among girls, to be a priestess.

The juxtaposition of power with pregnancy and maternity seems to be Persephone’s riddle to share with humanity.

This seems to foreshadow a more modern conflict for women, between career and motherhood. When we look into deep ancient history, we generally assume that the position of women in society was similar to, or even worse than that of modern women. We have been told that women held no positions of power. This is simply not true.

Needless to say, the Great Goddess is not simple, nor is female psychology.

The juxtaposition of these two concepts can be deceiving, for the Goddess is both beautiful and powerful as she manifests both of these archetypes. The contrast is not “powerful” versus “powerless”, the contrast is between types of power.

The Mother Goddess can be likened to the Lunar Goddess, and it needs to also be made quite clear that the Lunar Goddess was also the Goddess of archery and hunting. The Lunar Goddess was the matron of the Amazon tribe, which demanded by tradition that each warrior kill 3 males before she could mate.

She was quite the murderer herself.