Hades abducted Persephone and took her to his underworld kingdom and made her queen.
Her mother Demeter, turned the whole earth to barrenness in her grief and rage.
Seedpod of a variety of milkweed on September 4, 2019
At length, the Olympians backing Demeter, Jupiter applying maximum pressure to Hades, he agreed that Persephone should spend a half year – autumn/winter – with him.
On September 16, 2019
Then she would be restored to her mother for the arrival of Spring and stay on the earth through Spring and Summer.
In gratitude for which, Demeter, returning the fertility of the earth to the earth, made a gift to Sapiens of wheat and of agriculture.
Autumn is beginning here.
The artist shows Persephone in near fetal position in meditation, in a field of almost all grey-black, as if in mourning.
She is preparing for her separation from the surface of the earth and her descent into her kingdom:
The Meadow, 2017
Stained glass: cut, sandblasted, engraved, painted and fired
Judith Schaechter, American born 1961. From the artist’s website
Mythological Introduction,
first published 1941
Philip Larkin, 1922-1985, British
A white girl lay on the grass
With her arms held out for love;
Her gold brown hair fell down her face
And her two lips move
See, I am the whitest cloud that strays
Though a deep sky:
I am your senses’ crossroads,
Where the four seasons lie.
She rose up in the middle of the lawn
And spread her arms wide;
And the webbed earth where she had lain
Had eaten away her side.
Below is Persephone: fate accepted and in ecstatic pose.
The translation of the right side of her body into the earth has begun.
This stained glass masterwork – The Life Ecstatic – represents the Dionysian principal acknowledged by many other systems of belief.
The Life Ecstatic
Stained glass: cut, sandblasted, engraved, painted and fired
Judith Schaechter, American, born 1961. From the artist’s website
Life eats life to live and is eternal. This is a mystery.
Mysteries are ecstasies: outside the rational order.
Because nobody – very few people – in their right mind wants to die.
A plate of Autumn