Friday, October 28, 2011

dates and times

contemporaneous to the writing of the old testament there is evidence of the writing down of the demeter/persephone/hades myth. so the stories were alive enough to be written down during the same few hundred years time, in the vicinity of @ 1500 BCE

i have always easily grasped hades' perspective as glad to have a spark of youthful grace and beauty to spend time with while otherwise engaged in the pursuits necessary to keep hell running smoothly. and demeter's shock and grief at the sudden disappearance of her daughter is staple stuff on every tv prime time night; so, clearly we almost all of us understand her plight and the emotions that she expresses.

but persephone. it never occurred to me to wonder what she was feeling. how she was thinking.
we have a hint: that persephone kept herself calm while she was being abducted and flown through the air (before plunging into the earth) by singing to the world. and the world, in sympathy, carried the vibration of her song to her mother.

persephone is a singer and a brave soul.

and, initially surprisingly, you never hear of her complaining while she's in hell. even when she comes up to the surface again, when the deal is cut so that persephone is able to return for half the year to help her mother make the world beautiful with new growth, persephone never complains, objects or even gossips about what it's like in hell.

i think she likes it there.

i think hades, like most introverts and geeks, is a sensitive guy and, like the elemental gods, is well practiced in sexual intimacies. i think she doesn't actually mind it in hell and maybe even thinks of her time with her mother above ground, traveling all around making sure the plants are growing and the people are eating, as work, duty, something owed. but playtime is in hell.

another possibility is that persephone is merely a cypher, used by both her mother and her lover and none of her life is expressing anything that she wants to do or believes in.

but i don't think the daughter of zeus and demeter could possibly have turned out w/o a personality or purpose of her own. her story, though, has not yet been of interest to the story tellers.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

faith

demeter, da mater, the mother, the sea; also known as ceres cuz some people think that the de or da was barley and this is the barley mother, the grain mother, the goddess who knows how to grow things to feed people; and, through the combined disciplines of an agricultural life (astronomy, meteorology, planning, saving (seeds) and storing in an easily restorable manner i..e. creating systems of abstract organization, cooperative work, mechanisms to ameliorate greed and theft); she is also credited with presiding over the concept of a law-abiding community (as opposed to the kind of community run by a "strong man" also known as a bully, a dictator, a prince, a king, a tyrant)

persephone was stolen from the earth by zeus to give as a present to his brother hades, who apparently was not satisfied with the females in hell. little is known about the relationship between persephone and hades. but much is known about how demeter dealt with the disappearance of her beloved daughter.

demeter goes nuts. she doesn't let anything grow. after this traumatic incident, she will teach others her knowledge and it won't be up to her alone any more to keep the necessary crops growing for the benefit of the community. and also, a new cyclical approach is introduced. an approach that incorporates the darkness, the silence, the lack of growth.

and when the community becomes responsible for feeding itself, it must face the challenges of the disciplines necessary to successfully carry out self-care.

what did demeter expect? persephone was the result of a rape. zeus, yup, the same zeus who kidnaps persephone and gives her to his brother hades, that dude, demeter's brother, rapes his sister, demeter, and then steals their daughter, persephone, to give to his brother, hades - and these guys were worshipped? yes, for centuries. and by new names, they are worshipped still. in fact, this myth sounds suspicously similar to the mechanics of the typical post-modern corporate maneuvering.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

pluto

when their parents, time (kronos) and space (rea), moved further into the past, their 3 sons divided up the rulership of the invisible world, zeus took the sky (air), poseidon the under(water realm, and pluto took the under(earth realm. all, earth, air and sky, then mysterious invisibles. not today of course: we see far into the sky, deep into the ocean; we have sophisticated maps of her terrain. and the earth, we have explored much of those heights and depths, to climb, to mine, to paint, to live, to hide.

so then one day, apparently, according to the story which is sort of like trusting the star to tell the truth today, zeus abducted persephone for pluto.

well, what's with that? pluto couldn't do his own abducting?

is pluto the shy one? the geek maybe? the guy who likes being in the dark with the germinating life and the endless creatures and mechanisms of decay breaking down what was once alive so its matter can compost for the living germinating?

Thursday, October 20, 2011

72 virgins

i bet that many men, in many cultures, and of various ages, if offered even a day with 72 female virgins, much less eternity, would be exceedingly happy in the thought. i can even imagine that gay men, in many cultures, if offered even a day, much less eternity, in the company of 72 male virgins, would be exceedingly joyful in its contemplation. however, i cannot imagine or bet that any woman in any culture, or any age, would find the prospect of being alone with 72 male virgins even remotely a happy prospect, even for a day, much less for eternity.