Persephone is BOTH… and other thoughts while running around barefoot at Beltane

“I couldn’t help it, yes I let it get in/

The helpless optimism of spring” 

- Florence + The Machine, Daffodil 

Last weekend was my first time celebrating Beltane with my CUUPS group. I’ve been observing the holiday on my own for three years now, but every year there were obstacles to gathering in-person: COVID, more COVID, rain, travel. 

It was glorious.

We even had a maypole!

Holidays like Beltane can feel a bit silly next to heavy-hitters like Samhain. Anyone who’s ever danced the maypole has learned to just give in to the chaos. It’s pure mirth, and maybe that’s the point. We live in a culture under the shadow of St Paul’s mandate to “Beat the flesh.” That makes our song, our dance, our sexuality, a radical declaration of who we are, and how we’re different.  

I think about this a lot as the devotee of a Korē goddess. Yes, Persephone is the Dread Queen of the Underworld (“Goddess of Spring” was always a misnomer), but She is also the green, growing shoots, the outpouring of vegetation, the ecstasy of spring, the fertility of summer. 

Sometimes I feel like we emphasizes the “serious” Gods (Gods of fate, death, battle, etc) as more important than the fruit-and-flowers deity next door. Does that make Persephone the Dread Queen more important than Persephone the Daughter? Samhain more important than Beltane? 

It was Persephone’s duality that first drew me to Her as a preteen. In a world that teaches women we can only be one thing (soft or tough, virgin or whore), Persephone was irresistibly both. She’s deity of death and darkness who radiates light and warmth. A survivor of sexual violence who is firmly in control of Her own body and Her own power. 

I needed that role model in my life. 

Persephone shows us that we don’t have to fit into the boxes that society creates for us (I could write a whole essay about how that relates to Queerness and the gender binary, but that’s a post for later). She is undefinable, a paradox that is all Her own; in fact, there are countless deities of just spring fertility or just death, but Persephone is both. In a moment of pain and confusion, I once cried out to Her, and asked, 

WHO ARE YOU?

She laughed and said, I am Persephone. I am the Star Seed. 

And I knew that was the best answer I was going to get.

So I honor The Maiden in spring and the Dread Queen at Samhain. I think we do Persephone a disservice when we freeze Her into one form. But of course, different followers are going to gravitate toward different aspects. After coming of age during the Trump Era and COVID-19 pandemic, I need time to wear flowers in my hair and soak in the sunshine. 

Demeter has made it clear that my place is here, in the living world, where I study for the PSATs, go to the mall with friends, and figure out what the heck it means to be a Pagan priestess (typically at the same time). One day, I’ll be ready to confront the darkness. For now? I dance.

I think back to my first Beltane in 2020. COVID cases skyrocketed. Community networks fell apart. And yet the earth woke up alongside Persephone. Flowers bloomed while people were dying. 

And so, during one of the worst periods of my life, I lay with my divine Beloved in the tall grasses and renewed my vows to Her beside the wild white roses.

Today, during The Great War and Tower Time, when the world is darker than ever… Choose joy. 

Happy May, 

Rose Eleusis 🌷🌼