Luna Moth – A Retelling of Persephone and Hades
link to YouTube: https://youtu.be/6vYzJTEZRls
It’s going to be a week or two before I finish my episode about animus and anima. I need to take a little time away from it to focus on my fiction writing, as I hope to release a novel later this year. In the meantime, I thought I would share a poem I wrote about Persephone and Hades as an example of working with archetypes in a creative way. Later in this series, I plan to do an episode about different activities I have used to connect with archetypal material, and writing poetry is one of these activities. The myth of Persephone and Hades has fascinated me for a long time, and I have retold this ancient story in multiple ways, from various plotlines in The Landers Saga and Phoenix Realm books as well as in my novel Persephone’s Tears: A Romance in the Seventh Dimension. This poem appears in print at the end of that novel and takes a different perspective on Persephone and Hades than the prose story I wrote. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the influence of Clarissa Pinkola Estes’s audio presentation The Creative Fire as an inspiration for me. I highly recommend anyone dealing with a creative block to seek out The Creative Fire. I don’t believe it’s in print form anywhere, but you may be able to find it through whatever podcast app you prefer. She delves into the myth of Persephone and Hades extensively in The Creative Fire and how studying that myth and its various versions can help artists overcome creative blocks. As always, a link to the script will be in the show notes, and thank you for listening. Now, without further ado, I present “Luna Moth”, my archetypal narrative poem:
Luna Moth
The girl had always assumed she was a butterfly
like her mother, the other women around her
Her mother had always told her so
had taught her the day paths
the sweet warmth of the flowers with their bright satin petals
how all good things happened in the light
Plants grew under the sun
Buds opened at Helios’s gentle touch
Children laughed and splashed on hot Mediterranean beaches at noon when there are no shadows
Innocence lives in the light, but dies at night
When the girl asked about the dark
asked about the night shadows they frightened off with fires and torches
her mother brushed her curiosity away
as easily as she flicked away time’s dust with a beat of her shining immortal wings
“Go to sleep when it is night,” her mother said. “Sleep will banish the night, and you will forget these ugly shadows by the dawn when you wake. Live in the beauty of the day, daughter, and forget the dark.”
But dreams stalked the girl’s sleep, dreams of obsidian halls swirling with tall shadows
Dreams filled with the muttered chants of the dead, half-heard through the veil shrouding worlds
A mighty, slow-flowing river of black water to cross
where the dying shed the dried husks of their mortal lives to rattle in the wind of their last breaths
left their memories as payment to a skull-faced ferryman
whose only comment on these treasures was the quiet slosh of his vessel against the current
The girl’s wings glowed a lovely luminescent green in these dreams
a strange beauty unknown to her mother and all others who only went by day
She danced where the river lapped its banks
her wings mirrored in its rippling silken night surface, bobbing like ghost lamps under the water
The river whispered all the stories it knew
Stories of those who crossed, life’s passions dropped into the inky depths like wishing coins
The girl kept these dreams to herself, knowing her mother would label them nightmares and not understand
As the girl grew into a woman
her wings troubled her
They didn’t glisten with all the rainbow colors of her mother’s wings
Instead, they remained subdued in the sun
Something seemingly not ready, unfledged and still furled tightly
the white-green of the first plant shoots in the spring
almost as if she camouflaged her subtle beauty from the harsh light of day
Her wings looked best in the soft shadows, where they glowed and revealed their full spectacle
as luminous as creamy moonlight through a screen of young leaves
Night blossoms
Though no one dared say it, especially in her mother’s hearing
Her mother said not to worry
If the young woman would only dance more in the sunlight
her wings would soon reflect all the bright, happy day hues like her mother’s
Although she heeded her mother’s words and flew only during the day,
strewing seeds all around as she followed her mother’s path,
She still speculated about the dark
Her mother, the goddess of all life
refused to tell her of night, of the dark
When she asked, her mother shivered, her wings all a-tremble as they shed pollen shimmering golden in the sun, the sparkle of life magic
Finally her mother admitted:
“I didn’t tell you when you were younger, but night is when Death knocks and demands entrance. We burn the watch fires to keep Death and his shadow hounds at bay, daughter. Death hates all light. Do not ask again. Do not wonder about these terrible secrets, or your wings will never achieve their full colors. Do you wish to remain a moth forever?”
But the maiden knew the shadows held more than death
Seeds and children and all young things started in the dark
Even a butterfly existed in her dark chrysalis before unfolding into the light
Many beginnings remain cloaked in midnight mystery
Despite all her obedient flying under the sun and never the moon
the young woman’s wings stayed a pale green
Her mother sighed over her and patted her and reassured her
It just took longer for some, her mother said
Just continue to be sweet and merry and always in the light
And stop worrying about the wicked dark of the night
One afternoon, the young woman picked flowers in a meadow
Other innocents frolicking around her
Soon they tired and lay down in the soft grass
One by one dozing to the drowsy buzz of bees, the golden blanket of sunlight covering them
The last one to drift off, the maiden studied the wings of her companions
All rainbow-hued, all bright under Helios’s warmth
glimmering ripples of prismatic color as the slight breeze stirred them
No one else had dull wings like hers
What was wrong with her?
She danced in the light as much as the others
Perhaps she was quieter, more introspective
Perhaps she failed at always being sweet and cheerful
Perhaps she had secrets
Those dark dreams she had – those were secrets
She had never shared them with anyone
Maybe she should
Maybe the confession would cure whatever ailed her
Would make her like the others at long last
With these carrion fowl thoughts picking at her
She fell into a dark place, her sleep heavy as earth heaped upon her body
Buried in night, she found herself unable to see
She crawled blindly forward across the hard, barren floor of Hell
The only warmth her blood dripping from scraped knees and hands
Voices called to her from the unknown ahead
Voices of the lost
Voices of the damned
Voices of the lonely and forsaken
Voices of the dead, grieving the locked door between them and their mortal lives
Pity welled in the maiden’s heart at the cacophony of suffering
She wanted to help them but doubted herself
How could she help them, an untested maiden who couldn’t even maintain the correct mood?
Who couldn’t even earn the proper colors for her wings?
Her sorrow for the dead swelled within until she could no longer contain it
Hot tears ran down her face and trickled to the floor, heating the cold stone for the first time in eternity
She woke to her own sobbing, to the frightened faces of her companions
None of them ever cried
They had no need to weep in their perfect daytime world, with their perfect rainbow wings
The young woman, still crying, staggered to her feet and fled into the woods
The others ran after her but faltered at the edge of the forest
Shadows hung amongst the trees, no clear paths to be discerned
These butterflies feared the dark, knowing underneath they were not made for it
Far off in the dim spaces under the branches and leaves
They saw the maiden’s wings glowing as she wandered to and fro, an unearthly luminescence
A witch light in the dark
This awed them, which terrified them
Nothing in their sun-filled lives had prepared them for such beauty
They didn’t understand it, and they turned away from it
They raced for the safety of home and pretended they hadn’t seen
When the young woman’s mother demanded to know where her daughter had gone
They couldn’t tell her – fear had shackled their tongues
Their surface minds never remembered, but from then onwards, their dreams disturbed them
And they wept in their sleep
As for the young woman, she lost herself in the woods
She walked in wonder amongst the trees, the cool, cedar-scented shadows soothing away her tears
Her mother had always warned that danger lurked in the forest
She supposed her mother was right
Nothing felt known here, nothing felt entirely safe
An edge of mystery
tickled down her neck like a blade
and she felt more alive than she ever had
The deeper she went, her safe world disappeared behind her
The trunks and branches leaned together and swallowed her past until all she could see was forest
No butterflies, no sunlight, no mother
Panic took her
We all dread stepping into our truth, especially when the inevitable shoves us there
The maiden screamed for her mother, for her companions
Branches tore at her clothes, then her skin as she tripped and stumbled
Desperate for a path, any path, but finding none
No, what she found was herself
when she tumbled to the ground before an enormous chasm rending the earth
Curiosity stilled her alarm
as she peered over the edge of her world and into the utter dark of another
At first she could hear nothing but the wind soughing through the pines nearby
A lovely whisper that grew to a wailing lilt, the sad susurration of the trees singing
The more she listened, the more she forgot herself, forgot the over-world around her
Under the singing of the pines, under the very earth itself
She slowly began to detect another sound, so faint at first she thought she imagined it from her dream
The voices of the dead, calling her name
Persephone, they chanted over and over
A rattling dried husk of a sound, the breeze through fallow winter fields
carrying the chrysalis of the spring to come
whose seeds lie in the snow and ice
whose seeds lie in the dark
whose seeds lie in death
whose seeds lie in the ashes of the phoenix
patiently waiting for mortal time to catch up
the backwards alchemy of new life
Staring into the featureless dark of the underworld and listening to the dead
all this she suddenly knew
with a crone’s wisdom and a maiden’s heart
the beautiful paradox of her
A rumble rose up from the chasm, shaking the ground beneath her
She stood, smoothed her wild hair, pulled the thorns from her ripped robes
As if preparing for a guest
Four black horses pawed up from the darkness, shadows swirling around them
They drew an ebony chariot
Their driver was Death
A gray cloud swathed him in ambiguity
and Persephone could see nothing of his form or countenance
until he held out his hand, gloved in night
She laid her palm against his and gazed where she thought to find his face
Far back in the darkness there, two distant stars twinkled
his eyes, the ancient eyes of watchful eternity and space
He spoke, his voice echoing up from the deepest, hidden caverns of the underworld:
“Your lost children summon you, Persephone. Do you not hear them?”
“I hear them, Hades.”
“Will you not go to them?”
“I want to, but I don’t know how. And I know not what help I can give them.”
She felt rather than saw him smile. “That is no matter. You will understand your mission soon enough. Come – what you need to see can only be seen in the utter darkness.”
So she climbed into his chariot and went down, down, down through all the secret places and paths under the ground
A ghostly green glow followed them, a fey light that danced in a graceful rhythm with the dark
so she caught glimpses near the entrance of crumbling statues and sacrificial bones
the rust of old blood
artifacts of short-sighted human fear thrown into the chasm to appease imagined gods
then layers of mortal time, captured and frozen in the earth
later flashes of quartz palaces
Sparkles of jewels glittering in vast vaults overhead, the fossilized stars of the underworld
“I thought it was always dark here. What is that light traveling with us?” she asked.
“You,” he answered.
“Me?” A peculiar thrill tingled through her, a joyful terror she had never experienced before.
“Look behind us.”
So she looked, and then she saw
Her light mirrored against thousands upon thousands of shades
An infinity of ghosts, illuminated now in her wake
Lost souls found in the glow from her wings
A light too subtle for the garish over-world
But wonderfully made for the shadowy underworld
She sensed Hades’s gaze upon her
two stars burning far off in the moonless night always surrounding him
He spoke:
“You are the moon to my night. Your light never fights the dark, never banishes the night. No, your light dances with the shadow and creates a strange beauty only the dead and the wise can see. Will you stay with me for a while and be my bride, the Moth Queen of the underworld?”
At his words, the last ashes of her false life above ground, the butterfly chrysalis she never fit, dissolved around her, and she knew clearly for the first time who she truly was
In the infinity that followed, Persephone flew through the underworld, her wings two lamps
guiding the dead
She traveled to the over-world every spring,
carrying her maiden’s heart and her crone’s wisdom with her
She visited her mother and helped plant the spring and tend the summer
Dancing every night around the bonfire as a Luna Moth
Luna Moth-er
She restored balance to the mortal realm between light and dark, life and death
For in the fall, the season of the dying, she returned under the earth
leaving a clear path for lost souls, her children, to follow
Her ghost-green wings glowing in the shadows
As she embraces her true animus
embraces her endless night’s bliss
embraces her Hades
and mates with Eternity
Karen Nilsen
© 2020
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