And they told us that love was supposed to be a joyful experience
For the sake of “fairness,” the sun that illuminates the opposing ways of dealing with painful emotions now casts its other ray as well. Understandably, this ray is the exact opposite of unleashing the storm outward, as suggested in the previous article. Instead, it sheds light on the necessity of holding these emotions within ourselves and using them in the processes of spiritual transformation.
This is because the other part of the truth is that the development striving to manifest in our lives must take place within us, not outside of us. It is not enough to provoke our loved ones to grow and step out of their comfort zones; we must do the same with ourselves. Destruction enters our lives in order to change the way we relate to other people and to teach us more mature forms of love.
The myth of Persephone is a beautiful illustration of how the archetype of the Destroyer manifests itself in relationships. In his book The Gods of Change, Howard Sasportas, one of the founders of psychological astrology, presents this archetype through the action of the planet Pluto (the symbol of deeply buried darkness in the depths of our unconscious).
“In mythology, Pluto wears a helmet that renders him invisible when he leaves the underworld. In this way, he represents a force operating beneath the surface level of consciousness—those aspects of our psyche that unconsciously attract situations through which we will break down in order to consolidate ourselves in a new way…
Pluto transits can bring new relationships or create tension in existing ones; through this process, what has been buried within us rises and is reawakened once more.
We will again turn to myth to expand upon and explore Pluto’s influence in this area of life. In springtime, we find the maiden Kore playing in the fields with other virgin goddesses, happy and content, under the protective embrace of her mother, the earth goddess Demeter. Kore is young and inexperienced, living in peace on the upper world, at a surface level of life. But Aphrodite—the goddess of sensual love—spots her from Olympus and finds her artificially naïve and innocent. Acting as a restorer of balance, Aphrodite decides to teach Kore a lesson and instructs Eros to shoot Pluto (who happens to be nearby) with an arrow of love.
Unaware that it is a flower associated with the underworld, Kore plucks a narcissus. The earth splits open and Pluto appears in his black chariot drawn by four fire-breathing horses. He abducts Kore and carries her off to the underworld. In a single moment, she is taken from the spring meadow of the upper world to a place that is dark and unfamiliar—a place of passion, sex, and intense emotion.
Kore’s name is then changed to Persephone, meaning ‘she who loves the darkness.’ Initiated by Pluto into womanhood, she is no longer a maiden. At least symbolically, she has freed herself from her mother’s domination and is now an autonomous woman.
Demeter, driven mad by the loss of her only daughter, sinks into a deep depression and forbids the crops to grow and the trees to bear fruit. For seven years, the entire world is cold and barren, and people die of hunger. Finally, the gods—concerned that there will be no worshippers left to honor them—intervene and persuade Pluto to agree that Persephone may reunite with her mother. But because Persephone has tasted the fruit of the pomegranate in the underworld (a symbolic way of saying that blood has been shed and she has lost her virginity), she is permitted to return to the upper world for only six months of each year. The remaining six months she must spend with her husband Pluto as queen of the underworld…
Regardless of our age, the myth depicts what happens when we engage in a close, passionate relationship. Like Kore, we are plunged through love into the underworld, where we encounter our hidden emotional complexes. Intimacy and closeness expose the secret inner world of the child still alive and resisting within our unconscious minds—a world of passion, rage, envy, jealousy, lust, and greed.
Our partner may not be able to provide exactly what we need or desire at a particular moment, and our angry inner child re-emerges. The other flirts with someone, and infantile jealousy arises within us, fearing abandonment and death. There are moments when we feel as though we want to kill the beloved; at times we wish to destroy or terminate the relationship, resenting the partner’s power to determine whether we are happy or unhappy, satisfied or frustrated. Intimacy arouses all of these emotions within us. And we were told that love was supposed to be a joyful experience.
In the end, Persephone becomes mistress of two worlds. She is at home on the upper world, existing at a surface level of life. She can be bright, spontaneous, cheerful, innocent, and kind in casual conversation. But Persephone is acquainted with the underworld; she has touched the darkest emotions that live beneath the threshold of consciousness. Under an important Pluto transit, we may all have Persephone-like experiences: being forced to confront the underworld of our own destructive emotions through the catalyst of a close relationship… And like Persephone, we have the opportunity to be reborn, to become a new and more whole person.”
— Howard Sasportas, The Gods of Change, pp. 298–301
As Sasportas reminds us, “а myth is something that has never happened, but is happening all the time.” The records of our earliest childhood, when we first began to experience ourselves as separate from our mother, are records of “the abduction of Persephone into the underworld.” Some people have told me that they cannot experience negative emotions. But I know this is not true. All of us were once small, and in that sense all of us carry the records of Kore’s descent into the underworld—the symbol of the human unconscious. We simply differ in our awareness of this deeply buried part of our human nature. Pluto’s/Hades’ underworld is not “somewhere out there,” but “here and within.” Even the most loving and trauma-free parenting cannot spare us the experience of falling out of paradise. And when deep love reawakens the longing for reunion with paradise, the primal memories of separation are activated with tremendous force.
Knowing the myth of Persephone helps us understand something else that disturbs everyone who has been unwillingly abducted by Pluto. The “inhumanly” intense emotions of separation are due to proximity to the “gods.” And the gods are the archetypes—those contents of the collective human psyche that do not belong solely to us. This knowledge brings great relief, because it helps us not take personally the drama unfolding in our souls. In this regard, one of my clients once said: “After I realized that my jealousy is a god, it became much easier for me to deal with it.”
After her abduction into the underworld, Kore begins to be called Persephone—“she who loves the darkness.” We need to begin to love the dark emotions in order to return to the surface of the earth again. More precisely, when we begin to love what they bring us—the gift of separation and the birth of individual consciousness—we stop fleeing from the pain that accompanies them.
In alchemy, the processes of Kore’s transformation into Persephone are called Calcination. I have already written about it on the site (see the article “Calcination, or On the Meaning of Disappointed Love”), but because the topic is so important, I will share more about it in the next article.
Before that, I would like to summarize the essentials:
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Accept your frustration, anger, and disappointment as natural expressions of human nature.
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Recognize in the intensity and obsessiveness of your strong emotions the activation of processes of spiritual transformation.
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Turn your thoughts about how to deal with what gives rise to these emotions inward, rather than outward.
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Sustain your motivation for inner change with the understanding that pressuring another to give us what we want is not love. Even if we succeed, a part of us will remain deeply insecure, because it is emotionally dependent.
Kameliya Hadzhiyska
Note: The quotations are translated from Bulgarian and are not presented as verbatim citations.
- see the next article: Calcination in Alchemy: Transforming the Desiring Nature
