Persephone

First off, I'd like to thank Rufus for turning me on to the Cramps, which led me to the video I posted above as the opening video for this Mabon. It fits-somewhat-in the context of the above picture, which is of the Greek Goddess Persephone, who is now departing for her tenure in the Underworld as the coerced bride of Hades, who abducted her as a young maiden and tricked her into bonding with him by causing her to drink from the waters of the Underworld. Or at least I think we can all agree that the Autumn Equinox, which marks the time when the days start getting progressively shorter than the nights, is the time when she begins preparing for that journey, accompanied by the God Hermes, who will likewise go to retrieve her from the Underworld at the Vernal Equinox, in what was a desperate kind of compromised arrived at between Zeus and Hades in order to prevent Persephone's mother Demeter from sending the entire earth into a state of permanent famine and despair.

The myth was an agricultural one, but it very cleverly and powerfully makes use of a very common phenomenon of ancient times, that of young children-babies, adolescents, and teenagers-dying well before their parents. One would be hard pressed to find a family which did not experience at least one such death.

This myth, I believe, gave some degree of meaning and comfort to these families, and even, possibly, gave them hope, and helped them pull together as a part of a larger community-a family who pulled together.

Seen in the larger context of the "death" of fertility, it made it easier to find such hope in the symbolic imagery of a return to life in the spring, and to take comfort in what remains.