Pomegranates, Persephone, the High Priestess and Poetry
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It’s the Autumn Equinox/Mabon Tarot Blog Hop, wrangled by Maureen Aisling Duffy-Boose. She’s given us quite a challenge. We must each create a tarot card, using imagery, words, or both, that answers this question.
"What does Mabon/the Autumnal Equinox/the Second Harvest mean to YOU?"
Being a complete devotee to the sun, and coming from the cold Northeastern US, the Autumnal Equinox was always a somber holiday for me. Now that I live in Florida, the approaching fall no longer fills me with dread.
On the other hand, anyone who says Florida has no seasons has never been to Florida. The shortening of the daylight hours is even more striking to me here than it was up north.
To celebrate the Autumnal Equinox, my community will reenact the abduction of Persephone. We will prepare for our own underworld journey, as the dark overtakes the light.
We will end our reenactment with the chant, “She changes everything She touches, and everything She touches changes”. We will think about how we ourselves are transformed by another turn of the Wheel of the Year.
The reenactment itself is always funny. I think it’s good to laugh in the face of oncoming darkness.
When I think about these themes, the tarot card that comes to mind is The High Priestess. In the Waite-Smith Tarot, she sits between light and dark. On her backdrop are pomegranates, the food of the land of the dead, whose six sweet seeds caused Persephone to become Kore, Queen of the Underworld.
Typically, the High Priestess is associated with Pope Joan, or Virgin Mary. I am excited to make a connection between Persephone/Kore and the High Priestess. Persephone's annual journey to the underworld seems akin to the High Priestess' journey beyond the veil and into the unconscious.
If I could draw, I know a pomegranate would figure prominently in my High Priestess image. I am a lousy artist, but I am a passable tarot poet. In fact, I am happy to be a contributor to the newly released anthology of tarot poetry, Arcana.
My goal is to write one poem for each of the tarot cards. I call it my "78 Poems Project". I've written thirty of the seventy-eight, and I've been stalled for a bit, until today. Perhaps from this trip into the Underworld I will bring back some poetic inspiration!
Here, then, is my tarot card for our blog hop, and a new entry to the 78 Poems Project.
Persephone as the High Priestess
Balancing mercy and severity
Dark and light, night and day
Holding secrets in silence
And serenity.
Seasons change
As she changes all she touches
And yet remains herself
Essentially the same.
The price women pay for wisdom
Can be counted
In her six sweet seeds.