Alchemy in the Underworld: Lessons from Persephone in Transformation and Growth

Persephone by Laura Hughes – partly based on an Aphonse Mucha painting

She walks in two worlds. The Goddess of Spring, and the Queen of the Underworld.

Greek mythology has stayed with us, embedded in our psyches and culture for centuries. The Gods in these stories can be cruel, and selfish, often using mortals as their personal playthings. On the face of it, these stories feel can patriarchal and disempowering. But there has been a movement in recent years to reframe these stories, to tell them from a new perspective in which women, in particular, are given a voice, and their strengths and agency are recognised. Rather than being portrayed as passive, or objectified, we feel their pain, we recognise their humanity, and their stories become something we can take courage from.

One Goddess who speaks to me deeply in this way, is Persephone.

In the most commonly told version of her story, Persephone was happily picking flowers one day (as is a Maiden’s right) when she was pounced upon by Hades (God of the Underworld), who kidnapped her and dragged her back to the Underworld with him to make her his wife and queen. Persephone’s Mother, Demeter, was consumed with grief which caused an eternal Winter on Earth. It would only relent by her being reunited with her daughter; so, Persephone was allowed to visit her Mother for half of the year, to bring back Spring, before returning to Hades in the Underworld, which hailed the coming of Winter.

I think we can all relate to being dragged into something without wanting to be, at some point in our lives. Most of us can relate to the depths and darkness brought on by grief, trauma, of life being turned on its head. Like Persephone, we have known the Underworld. Separation from all that is familiar, from light and from the ease and flow of our own natural rhythms. It can feel a desolate place. We may wander like formless ghosts, not able to engage in life as we once did, seeing only gloom, and shadow, buckled under the weight of density and darkness.

I have experienced this too: times when I questioned who I was, why I was here, where I fit, why things were happening as they were. People have different names for it: trauma, dark night of the soul, depression. It tests us to our very limits, it smothers us in fatigue, it challenges our view of our own existence.

But Persephone’s story does take an unexpected twist. No-one could have blamed her if she had given up hope, and faded into shadow like the many other lost and displaced souls of the Underworld. Instead, she transformed: she was no victim, she was a survivor. And more still! She fully embraced her power and became a self-sovereign Queen of the Underworld: an equal to Hades.

If we can look at Hades as a catalyst, I wonder if we could draw some parallels between Persephone’s descent and our own experiences. In spiritual traditions, they call this ‘The Dark Night of the Soul.’ It describes something that turns life upside down, and causes you to re-evaluate your life, and who you are: it is disorienting and often filled with pain, confusion, anxiety, and existential questioning. And of course, we do not want it. We try to reject it, we beg with God, the Universe, or whatever bleakness that surrounds us to please restore what was lost. And it does not. We’re stuck with it: this dismantling of all that we knew. And so, we grieve.

There are many different theories of grief, but the one I tend to refer to most in my work is the Dual Process Model by Stroebe and Schut. Their model describes two main processes in grief: the emotion-focused side (we express sadness and loss), and the rebuilding side (we start to ‘move forward’ and go about our lives). In order to process grief healthily, we need to move between these two processes. If we get stuck in one or the other, we cannot move through our grief – we either get stuck in the depths (the underworld), or emotionally (or spiritually) bypass, by running away from our feelings with a new job, a holiday, another qualification or self-help project, into a false ‘Spring.’ Integrating loss into your identity, life and world view is one of the big ‘tasks’ of grieving. How do we learn to both live with the pain, and be able to cope with living in a world where that person/thing/experience is no longer here? How do we find peace?

Persephone embraced her fate: she embodied her role and became a a Queen of the Underworld. She was still separated from her beloved Mother for half of the year, still married to Hades, but she did not remain a displaced, abused maiden. She claimed the Underworld as her own domain. Many people describe how the pain never entirely goes away, but life does begin to build around their loss, weaved into their life through their choices, their values, their relationships, and more. Nature teaches us that death is a part of life: in the words of Gandalf, ‘death is just another path, one that we all must take.’ We die many deaths in life, and are reborn changed: think of how you emerged not just from the loss of loved ones, but from a breakup, a job loss, or a disappointment.

Another name for Hades is ‘Plouton’ meaning ‘the rich/wealthy one,’ which refers to the abundance of the world beneath the surface: the precious rocks, minerals, and fertile soil. The Underworld contains much richness for us, if we allow ourselves to see it. And there is a certain kind of alchemy that needs to occur for us to turn dirt into gold. We could relate this to a psychological phenomena called ‘post-traumatic growth’ that describes how some people are able to experience a very positive personal evolution from the troubles they have experienced. It goes beyond resilience, which is generally described as ‘bouncing back’ or a return to the status quo. For some, it may be accompanied by a spiritual awakening, a change in career (perhaps a feeling of being ‘called’ to a new vocation), a new sense of compassion or emotional sensitivity leading to a deepening of relationships, or a sense of growth and new strength from having overcome difficulty. Persephone’s identity grew phenomenally from her distressing experiences: she grew from Maiden to Queen, and from a Guardian of Spring to the Creator of Spring from her palace in the fertile depths of the Underworld.

Persephone and Hades are not one dimensional, they carry both shadow and light. The ‘Underworld’ is natural, and inevitable, and an integral part of the process of ‘becoming.’ It is an important part of life, and like Persephone, we cycle through it again and again, just as the seasons move from Winter to Spring and back.

And it’s not just about having a foot in each world: it is about embodying both energies. And more than that, it is the transformation through one to the other: we never stay in a place of happiness and growth. We reach a point where, in order to learn more, we make a mistake, or we question something, or something bad happens that we don’t know how to deal with. We descend to the Underworld where we experience the depths, the grief, the anguish, the pain. Just by experiencing it, feeling it, it morphs into something else: a lesson, an insight, a drive to change something, to become more true to ourselves. And as this happens, we rise. Our shoots push up through the soil and we open to the light of Spring where we experience creativity, growth, joy, and richer connections in our relationships (including with ourselves!). But Spring does not last forever: our petals fall, our shoots recede, and the nutrients return to the soil, to feed new growth. It is a cyclical process of continual evolution: of becoming, descending, returning.

Thank you so much for your visit today, and for reading my article. If you’d like to explore your own journey through Underworld, Threshold, and Spring in a safe space, please feel free to get in touch, or explore the resources on my website.