The Fall of Sophia

The Theft of Persephone

Persephone, Daughter of Zeus, blessed

Only begotten, gracious Goddess, receive this good offering,

Much honoured, you, overpowered by Pluto, you are beloved and lifegiving,

You hold the doors of Hades under the depths of the earth

The Orphic Hymns

The great epic recounted in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter encrypts a captivating parable on the theomorphic cycle of the soul separating and reintegrating with her divine center through the initiatory trials of creation and salvation. The story begins in the Garden of Eden before the Fall, where the radiant child of Heaven and Earth blissfully frolics in the virgin meadows of the divine innocence, picking flowers with the daughters of great Titan Okeanos, whose celestial river signifies the all-pervading and encircling aether of the Crystal Sea. Persephone characterizes the preincarnate soul of the Immortal Entity abiding in the empyreal realm of the Pleroma with the luminous spirits of the Angelical Harmony.

Yet the cloud of impending calamity ominously settles upon the idyllic pastures of paradise as Persephone spies the unparalleled beauty of the narcissus, as the sublime fragrance from its hundred petals releases an irresistible temptation to the divine princess. Persephone is bedazzled whilst reaching for the uncanny blossom whose narcissistic association implies the base desire for individuation. She is thus swallowed by the Earth herself who delivers the Daughter of Zeus to “the one who receives many guests”, as Hades, the Demiurge and Lord of the Underworld, seizes the Maiden of Light to be his lawful bride in the dark tomb of the Great Below.

 He seized her against her will, put her on his golden chariot,

And drove away as she wept. She cried with a piercing voice,

calling upon her father, the son of Kronos, the highest and the best.

But not one of the immortal ones, or of human mortals, heard her voice.

Not even the olive trees which bear their splendid harvest.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Persephone is kidnapped from the Elysium Fields and thereby deflowered from the Edenic State to symbolize the loss of paradise through a corruption of the primordial innocence. The numerous petals of the narcissus represent the indefinite dimensionality of the Dyad into which the fallen soul is separated and delineated from the divine unity, bound by the tide of creation to the helm of a mortal vessel within the chthonic harbor of Hades.  The olives trees symbolize the Tree of Life with their splendid harvests depicting the Heavenly Dew of Light whose medicinal oil fuels the burgeoning lamp of the heart.

So long as the earth and the star-filled sky

were still within the goddess’s view,

as also the fish-swarming sea, with its strong currents,

as also the rays of the sun, she still had hope that she would yet see

her dear mother and that special group, the immortal gods.

For that long a time her great Nous was soothed by hope, distressed as she was.

The peaks of mountains resounded, as did the depths of the sea,

with her immortal voice. And the Lady Mother heard her.

And a sharp lamentation seized her heart.

The headband [g1] on her hair she tore off with her own immortal hands

and threw a dark cloak over her shoulders.

She sped off like a bird, soaring over land and sea,

looking and looking. But no one was willing to tell her the truth,

not one of the gods, not one of the mortal humans,

not one of the birds, messengers of the truth[g2] .

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Persephone cries up to the heavens in lamentation of her plight, her heart somewhat soothed by the faint rays of the Spiritual Sun still trickling into her sphere of awareness. Her call of anguish reverberates through the mercurial currents of the World Soul and to the ears of her Mother Demeter in Olympus. Persephone represents the descended and partial soul while Demeter is her preexistent spirit dwelling in the Abode of Light.  Demeter characterizes the Personal Angel who hearkens to the plight of her fallen child, speeding off to ascertain the fate of Persephone by questioning the denizens of each of the three worlds.

By taking off her headband, the Angel has discarded the Robe of Glory, cloaking her luminous nature under the dark veil of materiality. The grief stricken deity thus abandons her post in the Pleroma and in her desperate search finally comes to the goddess Hekate, the Soul of the World who has heard both the weeping of Persephone and the grieving of the Divine Mother. The torch bearing Hekate leads Demeter to Helios, the Spiritual Sun and “the seeing-eye of gods and men”, who signifies the prophetic imagination of the Logos. They learn of the seizing of Persephone from Helios who also informs them that Zeus and Hades both stem from the Universal Root of the divine essence, and that the Father God has been complicit in the bestowal of his daughter to the dark prince of the underworld.

He is the brother of Zeus, whose seed is from the same place. And as for Tîmê (Honor),

he has his share, going back to the very beginning,

when the three-way division of inheritance was made

He dwells with those whose king he was destined by lot to be.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

The “One of Many Names” is sanctioned his fair due [in tribute] for his marrow lies with the ancestral beginnings of the Golden Age, when the three-way division between spirit, soul and nature was atemporally apportioned to Zeus, Poseidon and Hades as the respective rulers of the intellectual, imaginal and material realms. Hades dwells with the dead, receiving those souls for whose lot it is to populate the innumerable loci of physical embodiment within the hylic arena. Born into the perdition of spiritual blindness within the darkness of the cosmic tomb, the Incarnate Entities are bound by the “Lord of Riches” to the worldly enticements of material passions on the Wheel of Samsara.

Helios warns the Mother Goddess that she should “not have an anger without bounds” for it is “unseemly” and has brought disharmony to the cosmos. For Demeter’s forsaking of lofty Olympus has wrought infertility to the Earth, as the displacement of divinity has disrupted the lifeblood of spiritual vitality flowing down the World Axis for the perpetuation of the three realms.

Nevertheless, the grief-stricken Demeter bitterly shuns the company of the gods and descends unto to Earth, to hide amongst humanity in search of her lost daughter.

Until, one day, she came to the house of bright-minded Keleos, who was at that time ruler of Eleusis, fragrant with incense.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Demeter thus makes her way to the holy city of Eleusis, signifying the divine center within the mortal kingdom as the analogic surrogate of the Pleroma symbolizing upon the terrestrial plane of existence, for every divine principle emanates a corresponding manifestation/analog at each level, state and modality within the cosmic hierarchy. The scent of the sacred proliferates the earthly mecca just as the movement of the stars themselves exhibit the nonspatial orchestrations of a much deeper and more sublime constellation.

The spiritual heart within every entity or locality represents the intersection of the vertical axis upon the horizontal state of manifestation, where the dissemination of the transcendental consciousness enters the individuated locus of the soul, as the most inward point and essential root of every creature through which the fragrant Breath of the Merciful blows the Spirit of God for the continuity of their existence. Certain sacred sites exhibit a closeness to eternity through which the intoxicating perfume of the Real perpetuates an ethereal field for the sanctification of life flourishing within its grounds.  Demeter entering the sacred city of Eleusis is equivalent to the Shekinah descending to dwell in the Temple of Solomon as the Holy Spirit of the Most High shining from the Heart of the World.

Demeter makes her way to the courtyard to rest beneath an olive tree, symbolizing the decline of the World Axis into the terrestrial Garden of Paradise. She is greeted by the daughters of the bright-minded King Keleos and invited to feast in the palace with the lord of the blessed city, whose intellect already gleams with the faint glow of the Pleroma to signify the philosophical bearing of a divine king.  The Goddess seats herself upon a fleeced chair in the banquet hall, sullenly refusing all food and drink while drawing a dark veil over her somber face.

The masked deity explains that was waylaid by pirates, until daringly making her escape “to travel over the dark earth of the mainland”. The tale alludes to the incarnational descent of the soul by allegorizing the archontic powers of the Demiurge who figuratively “abduct” the vessel of the Immortal Entity who is thereby carried into embodiment upon the lunar current of manifestation. After telling her story the heart of the Goddess is sublimely turned by the mantic verses of the court jester, whose bardic musings finally rouse the Sakina from her earthly torpor.

Unsmiling, not partaking of food or drink, she sat there, wasting away with yearning for her daughter with the low slung girdle, until Iambê[g3] , the one who knows what is dear and what is not, started making fun. Making many jokes, she turned the Holy Lady’s disposition in another direction, making her smile and laugh and have a merry Thûmos (Heart). Ever since, she has been pleasing her with the sacred rites.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Demeter then orders that the holy sacrament of the Kykeon be prepared from the mixture of barley, mint and water, thereby concocting a Eucharistic meal to ritualize the recongelation of the three worlds for the restoration of the Edenic State. The chalice symbolizes the ubiquitous archetype of the Grail, the Lost Elixir of Immortality that is bestowed upon an impoverished humanity by the compassion of the Mother Goddess.  

Upon hearing from the monarchs that their heir is sickened from the weakness of his late birth, the now inspirited Goddess agrees to nurse the child back to health with the ambrosial milk of her divine refulgence.  Yet in the final stages of what amounts to a spiritual baptism, Demeter is interrupted by the frightened queen whilst immersing the infant in the Holy Fire of divine purification, thus abrogating the divinizing conference of deathlessness.  This blasphemous act characterizes the heedlessness of the mortal who lacks both the faith and preparedness necessary to place complete trust in the mysterious workings of the spirit.

Demeter is infuriated by the disturbance of her ritual and prophesizes that “every year, the sons of the Eleusinians will have a war, a terrible battle among each other”, implying the dark ages of spiritual blindness and misperceived separation that humanity must endure through the passing of cosmic cycles, until they finally master and elevate the chthonic power of their own passionate desires unto their highest expression in tribute to divine will.  The Goddess nevertheless commands that a temple should be built in her honor to reestablish the sacred city as a divine center and receptacle for empyreal munificence, a place of solace where the indwelling of the Sakina resides at the meeting point of Heaven and Earth. Demeter teaches the inhabitants the proper mode of worship and thereby founds the holy mysteries of initiation, typifying the transmission of spiritual influence by which the gods themselves instruct humanity on the sacerdotal methods of purification, theosis and communion.

And I will myself instruct you in the sacred rites so that, in the future,

you may perform the rituals in the proper way an thus be pleasing to my nous

So saying, the goddess changed her size and appearance[g4] ,

shedding her old age, and she was totally enveloped in beauty.

And a lovely fragrance wafted from her perfumed robes. [g5] 

The radiance of her immortal complexion shone forth from the goddess.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

The Goddess transforms her size and appearance to indicate a change of state and intensification of the divine presence, discarding the cloak of mortality to reveal her eternal youth and irradiant splendor. Demeter shines with the Light of Glory as the cosmic veil of her avataric vessel begins to secrete the medicinal perfume of the Beloved, pouring the wine of grace as the Buddhic Ray of revelation and [ecstatic] inrush of the Holy Spirit.

 Yet outside the spiritual mecca of Eleusis the land herself bleeds from the pain of the Mother Goddess, who remains withdrawn in the heart of holy tabernacle just as the Sakina dwells in the Ark of the Covenant, “seated inside a temple fragrant with incense”. By this point the progressive disease wrought by the Wound of Separation had reached a most dire state of corruption, as the disconnection from the spirit caused by the displacement of the deity has wreaked disharmony and infertility to the whole of creation by disrupting the natural order of cosmic sympathy between Heaven and Earth. For it is when the humans stop practicing the sacred rites, sacrifices and offerings to the gods that the chaos of dissonance inevitably ensues and the entirety of existence is put into jeopardy, as the wilting flower of the cosmic mandala is uprooted from its uncreated seed in the divine essence.

Zeus sends down a company of gods in a vain attempt to placate Demeter, who bitterly refuses.

She said that she would never go to fragrant Olympus,

that she would never send up the harvest of the earth,

until she saw with her own eyes her daughter, the one with the beautiful looks.

But when the loud-thunderer, the one who sees far and wide, heard this,

he sent to Erebos the one with the golden wand, the Argos-killer Hermes,

so that he may persuade Hadês, with gentle words,

that he allow holy Persephone to leave the misty realms of darkness

and be brought up to the light in order to join the daimones [the gods in Olympus],

so that her mother may see her with her own eyes and then let go of her anger.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Hermes personifies the Messenger of the Gods as the Agent of Intelligence who is sent by the Most High God to awaken the slumbering soul imprisoned in the dark tomb of material opacity, negotiating with the Demiurge for the release of the Maiden of Light. Hermes is the mediator and channel of the Living Water, the mercurial sea of the quicksilver that interposes spirit and nature to transmit the Medicinal Sapience of Sattva through the sophianic revelation of Vidya-Maya.

Hermes did not disobey, but straightaway he headed down beneath the depths of the earth, rushing full speed, leaving behind the abode of Olympus.

And he found the Lord inside his palace, seated on a funeral couch,

along with his duly acquired bedmate,

the one who was much under duress, yearning for her mother,

and suffering from the unbearable things

inflicted on her by the will of the blessed ones.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Persephone has had to suffer the torment of separation from her Beloved, enduring the trials of her passage through the underworld initiation at the providential bequest of the Divine Command, as the creational edicts of the Word issues forth the transformational rite of the cosmic pilgrimage through the ontological motions of procession and conversion. Hermes explains to Hades the devastation that Persephone’s disappearance has caused and that the compassionate will of the divine itself has ordained the return of its child in exile. 

“Hadês! Dark-haired one! King of the dead!

Zeus the Father orders that I have splendid Persephone

brought back up to light from Erebos back to him and his company, so that her mother

may see her with her own eyes and let go of her wrath and terrible mênis[g6] 

against the immortals. For she is performing a mighty deed,

to destroy the tribes of earth-born humans, causing them to be without menos[g7] , by hiding the Seed [g8] underground—and she is destroying the tîmai[g9]  of the immortal gods

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Hades accepts the beseeching of Hermes with a knowing smile, cordially agreeing to the release of Persephone whilst surreptitiously giving her the “honey-sweet berry of the pomegranate to eat”, for the Lord of the Underworld does not wish for the Maiden of Light to remain with her Mother in Olympus forever.

·         [For once Persphone has tasted the infinite potentitalities of the Dyad, she is “hexed/lured” to return once more to the darkness of the tomb]

He did not want her to stay for all time

over there, at the side of her honorable mother, the one with the dark robe.

The immortal horses were harnessed to the golden chariot

by Hadês, the one who makes many sêmata[g10] .

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

Hades is “the one who makes many sêmata[g11] ”, for it by the artistry of the Demiurge that the multifarious icons of the cosmic mandala are crafted as the semiotic transmission of Divine Speech, whose symbolical morphologies refer back to the ideal principles prefigured in the empyreal Pleroma. Thus mounting the golden chariot of the Merkaba, the divine messenger Hermes carries Persephone back through the cosmic veils of mountain, sea and sky upon the same ethereal vehicle used to abduct her, finally entering the heart center of the Eleusis where she rejoins her beloved Mother. This sequence symbolizes the celestial ascent of the soul on the mystical flight of her solar return through the Seven Heavens of the Anima Mundi.

Demeter is delighted at the sight of her daughter, rushing forth “like a maenad down a wooded mountainslope” to metaphorize the ecstatic frenzy of the Sakina bursting forth from the Ark of the Covenant (or Fountain of Life) upon the awakening of the Kundalini, descending as the Holy Ghost from the celestial peak of the Holy Mountain to assimilate the intensification of soul consciousness within the mutual waystation of the Holy Communion. But their reunion is bittersweet, for Persephone explains to Demeter that her life energy (Biâ) has tasted the honeyed berry (infinite potentialities) of the pomegranate[g12] , signifying the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge that the soul partakes of to know good and evil through the imposition of duality that is her objectivized experience of cosmic exile.  She must thus honor her wedding vows and rule a third of the year in the wintry darkness of the Underworld with the Demiurge.

Then the loud-thundering Zeus, who sees far and wide, sent to them a messenger,

Rhea with the beautiful hair, to bring Demeter, the one with the dark robe,

to join the company of the special group of gods. And he promised tîmai (Tribute, Honor)

that he would give to Demeter, which she could receive in the company of the immortal gods.

Zeus assented that her daughter, every time the season came round,

would spend a third portion of the year in the realms of dark mist underneath,

and the other two thirds in the company of her mother and the other immortals.

Homeric Hymn to Demeter

The Most High God sends Rhea, the Universal Mind of the Nous and reasoning principle of the Madonna Intelligence to bestow the “Epinoia of the Light” upon Demeter and thereby invite her into the heavenly court of gods dwelling in the Abode of the Blessed. The arrival of Rhea signifies the redemptive act of salvation as the individuated state of the partial soul is reintegrated into the Temple Body of the Pleroma. Rhea personifies the Savior as the transcendent unity of the Great Spirit who vertically descends unto conjunction with the autonomized vessel of the Incarnate Entity, who is thereby perfected unto the wholeness of her own Perfect Nature. Rhea, Demeter and Persephone thus represent aspects of the greater Self in signifying the Celestial Anthropos[g13] , Personal Angel and embodied soul respectively.

It is Rhea, acting as the Virgin of Light and feminine persona of the Word who indoctrinates the fallen soul into the greater mysteries of the return, while Demeter signifies the individuated aspect of the Celestial Twin who has taken on the suffering of those she would redeem.

The story formed the liturgical basis for the initiations and festivals of the Eleusinian Mysteries, whose members reenacted the myth of Persephone to participate in the cosmic rite of salvation, ritualizing the symbolic elements of the story into a dramatic practice of transcendence. Adepts completing the greater mysteries experienced the Beautific Vision of epopteia, the direct revelation of divine truth through which they enjoyed unmediated intimacy with the gods through the ecstatic communion/feast of the Unio-Mystica. By invoking the primordial myth of redemption, neophytes could attain the “Epinoia of the Light”, filling with the presence of the Sakina to restore their own divine identity as an angelic citizen of the Pleroma.

The story parabolizes the cosmic journey of consciousness through the cycle of life, death and rebirth, as the seasons of the soul alternate between the light of divine intelligence and the darkness of spiritual blindness. The myth alludes to the metaphysical principles behind the perpetual rhythm of existence, as the descent of Persephone symbolizes the lunar current of manifestation and lesser mysteries of creation, with her following rescue and exaltation implicating the solar mysteries of the return by which the Incarnate Entity is finally reunited with her Celestial Twin to complete the sacramental rite that is her existence.

The search of Demeter follows the ontological movement of the soul through variable states, levels and modalities of being across the spectrum of the cosmic hierarchy, as the spirit becomes cloaked in the dimensional sheathes of the cosmic extension before unveiling the subtle layers of the heart on her return journey through the planetary spheres and psychic centers of the chakras. Persephone must spend the winter with Hades as the embodied soul who performs her divine service, honoring the oath of the Covenant as the spiritual knight who enters the cosmic arena in righteous duty and commitment to the Most High. The sacrifice of the soul provides the offering necessary to breathe new life into spring, as the moment of death opens the chthonic gate of regeneration. The perdition of the Immortal Entity preordains the compassionate response of the divine who itself submits to the conditions of mortality in order to raise the fallen back into the Garden of Paradise.

The myth narrates the Substantial Motion of the alchemical transformation as the descent of the Goddess into the Black Madonna of materiality sets the stage for the divine act of redemption, through which the symbolic veneer of the cosmos is penetrated, rarefied and interpreted to reveal the Virgin of Light, as the Mistress of Beasts is courted by the faithful lover of wisdom who finally lifts the veil of Isis in the epiphanic realization of his native immortality and essential oneness with the Good.

For the Morning Star of Venus has both a higher and a lower aspect, as seen in her various personas through Aphrodite, Ishtar, Shekinah, Sophia, Isis and Nepthys, whose multidimensional facets represent the presence of the Goddess as the substantiation of divine energies upon the empyreal, ethereal and hylic realms. This dualistic concept mirrors the existential dichotomy of the partial soul who splits from her ideal archetype in the Pleroma, embarking upon her avataric vessel to proceed through the rigors of the cosmic pilgrimage only to finally rejoin her Personal Angel upon her heroic completion of the Spiritual Quest.

The underworld initiation symbolizes both the trials of the soul’s journey through life on earth and the visionary descent of the wayfarer who ecstatically travels the imaginal planes in order to uncover the Fountain of Life buried deep within herself and thereby partake in the Eucharistic meal of the gnosis. This correspondent affinity denotes the parallel refraction and simultaneous manifestation of same metaphysical principle; that of initiation, operating and interpenetrating at variable levels within the metahistorical weave of the cosmic tapestry. The subterranean symbolism may thus refer to either the hypostasis of physical nature or the twilight kingdom of the imaginal realm, alluding to the Mystical Earth of the Celtic Otherworld and the Emerald Cities of the Arabic alam-al-mithal

The Theft of Persephone depicts the fall of the soul as such, elucidating the emanation of the Virgin of Light who projects her cosmic reflection into the psychophysical sphere of creation, perpetuating a cosmogonic procession whose very existence necessitates a soteriological reaction [of divine grace] to reintegrate the phenomenal extension of plurality into the essential oneness and transcendental unity of the Borderless World.

In the tale we see the prominence of sorrow, yearning and mourning used as an emotional catalyst for transformation, ecstasy and theopathy, as the flow of ardent tears opens a channel for the mediation of divine energies.

Thus through the mystical exegesis of nature, Hades reveals his higher aspect as the “Giver of Good Counsel”, releasing the celestial valve within the perception of the soul, by which the revelatory effulgence of Vidya-Maya converts the image of the cosmic tomb into a radiant temple of light, rarefying the adornments of the creational mandala to unveil the blissful fullness of Olympus.

While appearing brutal and paradoxical on a surface level, an esoteric reading of the myth reveals the descent of divine wisdom into the native symbology of the human condition in order to draw the soul of mortality up from the dregs of disharmony and into direct confluence with God and Spirit.

The soul is enriched by the tribulations of her cosmic journey, filling her cup through the harrying trials of separation and final joy of reunion.

As the quintessential Maiden of Light, Persephone represents the medicinal element of the Living Water, the channel of noetic lifeblood flowing out from the spiritual heart within the Ark of the Covenant. As Kore Soteira, she is the “Savior Maiden”, the “Goddess of the Springs” who extends the olive branch of peace as the ambrosial sap of love secreted from the Tree of Life. As the patroness of honey she represents the solar food of manna that is the essence of tranquility; the soma, amrita or haoma of the gods which confers the gift of immortality [to the wayfarer] as the consolation of the Holy Ghost.

As the presence of divine immanence, the torch bearing Persephone shines the light of revelation for the illumination of the cosmic tomb, flowing as the Water of Life to germinate the spiritual seed of the Incarnate Entity and thereby reveal the true nature of their angelic constitution. She is the Grail of the Heart and the Vase of Abundance who pours forth the celestial rivers of prosperity, felicity and serenity through the Kiss of Peace that imparts the divinizing Mark of the Sakina as the baptismal Seal of the Covenant.