Persephone at the Gate of The Return
“From winter to green, the unseen is now seen.” -Judith Berger
When a newborn baby is making their way down the birth canal and into the land of air and breath, they do a kind of dance, an ebb and flow in and out process. Birth is a process~ this is the typical way of it, of course there are exceptions, but in this dance the baby, we assume, needs to take their time. Birth is challenging on both child and mother. Neither of them have been in this particular process together, or as individuals, ever before. It has yet to be seen. We can see ourselves in this process of ebb and flow. When there is something we want to create, we might pace in circles around it for a while, contemplating, gathering our energy. It’s a tremendous thing to give birth to something, to create something anew. The natural world mimics this too. Have you noticed how it will suddenly feel warm on a late February day, some blossoms start to peek out- only to have cold March winds blow through and knock all the petals down, chilly rainy days seeming to wipe out the first flush of spring’s return? Its a kind of titration, where we are given a bit at a time, only so much we can handle, that can both bolster our hope and anticipation, but also remind us that every new life takes its unique time to come into being.
March heralds the beautiful and tender moment we call The Return.
I turn year after to year to the story of Persephone who has gone underground last Autumn Equinox, whether by force, or her own choosing…it could be either, it could be both.
She knows, though, that there is something for her there, in the deep dark and chilly soil, the frozen ground of the dark season. Why is it that fish in a frozen pond can sink down lower into the water to stay warm? How is it that the bare ground all winter long, seemingly asleep, dead perhaps in its visage, holds all the potential of what will spring forth into life when Spring Equinox comes around, turning to May’s desirous herald of life, and June’s incredibly bright sunshine days?
However Persephone goes in (we will get to that great subject when Autumn arrives again), it is this precious moment of the year when she Returns. Her cycle of in-out-in-out is a repetitive spiral of genius. The Return is an arc on the turn where she brings with her many treasures, small, large, internal and outward manifested from her long sojourn down below. My teacher and Priestess of the Wheel, Kim Duckett would describe Persephone as emerging from the underworld with sticks in her hair, a wild look on her face, clearly she has seen things she cannot even begin to describe, but one thing is precise: her eyes are crystal clear with sight.
Where has she come from? We don’t entirely know, though we are aware that when the chilly days come again, she will always go back down, descend into the dark time of year, take her time going down the spiral staircase lit only by candlelight into the Depths of great Mystery.
To know this truth is to treasure the Return even more deeply.
The Spring Equinox correlates with the beginning of the astrological new year, entering into the sign of Aries, represented by the newborn. It begins at the close of Pisces season, the very last zodiac sign, one associated with the dreamy depths of the oceanic waters of the unseen realms, the sign of Pisces carries within it elements of all its previous signs, but, in contrast to Pisces’s wisdom and depth, Aries is brand new. The tarot card “The Fool” reminds me of Aries: the beginners-mind concept in Buddhism, where this fresh perspective is the exact medicine we need as Spring comes back around. The fool is wise because they do not know. Pisces has instilled us with the dreamworld, the place from which our creations come, but Aries can begin to learn as a young child would, with untrained hands and brand new eyes, how to utilize the tools here on earth to build out the creations only just recently dreamt about. It’s our creations in the hands of the untrained, just birthed, that might give us great pause, but what is the Wisdom in this cyclical story?
To begin anew we must forget where we’ve come from.
To create from the source of our heart and truth, we must know that we do not know.
The Return holds many symbols, many ways in which we can notice its genius. Persephone’s story is but one of them. How do you relate to The Return? Is it in a moment of freshness in your daily routine? Or an arc of growth you notice in yourself over several years? Becoming more skilled at something? Returning to an ancestral homeland? Return imples we’ve been here before, but never at this exact moment. Like returning to a place we know, but for the first time as who we are now. What is this experience like?
