Stories

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 6.2 The Patterns of Reality

Persephone sneaked out into the gardens the next morning, grateful to have a few quiet moments to reconnect with her plant companions.
Everything had spirit in the Underworld, even the rocks and the streams, and her beloved trees were the goddess’s most trusted friends.
The poplars flittered in the twilight, their gold leaves shimmering in ways which would have gratified Demeter, who always thought her daughter’s attire too plain for a goddess and often urged the latter to show off her riches. 
Persephone didn’t need to impress in the nether realms, where even the leaves of the trees in her garden were made of pure gold. 
She grabbed a handful of the soil beneath her feet, picked out the glossiest onyx, obsidian and jet pebbles to place in her little knapsack and let the rest fall to the ground. 
The muses had inspired her to create a mosaic that morning, and she was on a mission to pick the most colorful gemstones for its motifs.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 6.1 Going Home

She said goodbye to her mother at the mouth of the cave of Taenarum, crumbling under the weight of her sorrow and tears, and harboring guilt over feeling relieved when she finally stepped into its dark depths and its silence.
Hecate was supposed to meet her and lead the way, but Persephone had walked that path so many times she really didn’t need the dark goddess to guide her. 
She grabbed a lit torch from the wall and started her descent, feeling a little spacey and out of reality, and wondered whether this is how all those postulants she appeared to in dreams must have felt.
The path looked the same as theirs too, something she had never noticed before, careful as she was not to fall behind Hecate’s quick stride. Everything was dark and quiet, so quiet. She’d forgotten how still the Underworld could be, compared to the world of the living, where the noise never ceased, not even in solitude.
The narrow path swept between large rock formations, who had been shaped and carved by underground streams, and their constant flow had covered them in rainbow layers of reds, ochres, blues and whites, almost like somebody had painted them on purpose.
The path was covered in soft silt. Persephone had to guess this narrow tunnel must have been a riverbed at some point, which now dried up. Its silky consistency cradled her feet without a sound, making her footsteps softer than those of a cat.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 5.3 Thesmophoria III

To say that everybody woke up the next day nursing a headache would be an understatement. The wine and the herbs left a parting gift - a vicious nausea, amplified to epic levels by the main part of the ceremony.
The Antleriai, the wailers, descended into the Megara pits, specially outfitted with snakes for the occasion, to retrieve decomposed pieces of the pig sacrifices, which were then placed on the altars to be blessed by the goddess, and then taken home, as they were believed to offer bounty and protection to the crops when buried in the fields. 
The only silver lining of the previous day’s overindulgence was one couldn’t be sure anymore whether the smell of rotten meat was real or the result of a massive hangover.
Through the headaches and bleary-eyed confusion of the morning after, the celebrations continued, however, libations, dances, obscene language and all, and actually helped the participants feel better, because it provided them with a cure in the guise of the hair of the dog that bit them.
The third day was all about fertility, and honoring Kalligeneia, the goddess of childbirth, for protecting those in labor, nursing mothers and the well-being of their infants. 
They never missed out on enlisting Demeter and Persephone’s help in the matter as well, since childbirth, the most perilous endeavor any woman would ever go through, and which cost so many their lives, needed all the help it could get. 

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 5.2 The Thesmophoria II

A mournful song and the unmistakable scent of winter filled the mist the next morning, when the festival attendants woke up to an eerie landscape.
The meadow grasses were covered in a thin dusting of ice, and their dried flower heads, which the freezing rain had pounded relentlessly overnight, were encased in transparent globes of ice that acted like magnifying glass to enhance every detail of their intricate structures.
The most beautiful among them, the latest flowers of the season, had been caught by the sudden freeze while still at the peak of their bloom, and the icy shells displayed their half opened blossoms like works of art, like summer frozen in time, insulated by a magical crystal ball from the harshness of the dark season.
Towards the morning the cold and the rain gave way to a plushy fog, thick like soup, which caressed the frozen wonderland with ghostly fingers and muffled the sounds. The warmth melted the surfaces of the ice globes, making them glisten in the low light, and look polished like mirrors.
Nature was so quiet in the fog, a soft, comforting and unnatural silence which reminded Persephone of home.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 5.1 Thesmophoria I

“Have you prepared yourself, daughter? You have to set an example for all the married women: fast for nine days, refrain from the pleasures of the flesh and purify yourself to be worthy of the Goddess’s blessing.”
“Yes, mother. Although I find it a bit ironic that I need to prepare myself so I’d be worthy of my own blessing.”
“You are a role model, daughter. Everyone is looking to you for guidance. Among the Attic women, you should be the strictest follower of the ritual preparations.”
‘Shouldn’t be that hard,’ Persephone thought. ‘We only eat ambrosia, and I haven’t even seen my beloved in months. What is ambrosia made from, anyway? I hope it’s a proper lenten meal.’
“Have you chosen your pig, dear?” Demeter asked innocently, reminding her daughter of the unavoidable and loathsome drudgery of sacrificing some poor creature, which seemed to be mandatory for every celebration, be it of joy or of mourning.
“Why don’t you choose one for me, mother?” She smiled back, waiting for a snarky retort, but her mother was in a good mood, so she took her daughter’s bratty comment in stride.
“I wouldn’t dream of making choices for you. You’re a grown woman, mistress of your own fate. Just make sure to pick a fat one this time. The ladies seem to believe it makes a difference in the abundance of next year’s harvest.”

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 4.2 Kore

“Mother, aren’t we going the wrong way?” she asked Demeter when the ship left the shore and started following the sun due west instead of sailing towards the sunrise.
Demeter smiled, but said nothing.
“Where are we going?”
“Sicily.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see, the latter smiled in anticipation.”
Anthesphoria was a festival of flowers, and as such, dedicated to Persephone, or, more precisely, to her incarnation as the maiden, Kore.
The mind creates sophisticated models to get a grip on reality, abstract structures which are often personified to make it easier for it to relate to them. 
These models may not make sense rationally, they are archetypal, and are useful in interpreting the world in the absence of knowledge.
They build stories to explain the unseen patterns of nature, which are experienced, but not understood.
The archetype of the Goddess kept shifting, depending on its symbolic meaning.

The Gates of Horn and Ivory - Chapter 4.1 A Trip to Magna Grecia

The delegation left early in the morning, poised to reach the shores of Magna Graecia at sunrise.
Everywhere else Persephone was just another goddess of the Pantheon, but in Locri, she was the goddess.
Two majestic temples were raised for her worship, and the city had bestowed upon her the additional honor of being the protector of childbirth, thus managing to intrude upon the attributions of both Hera and Artemis, and therefore offend them both.
Persephone tried to suppress a smile, and figured out if any of the lands of Hellas were going to have the gumption to question the gods, they had to be Locri.
The city had been founded by the Achaeans and was protected by Poseidon; its citizens were aristocratic and never backed down from a fight.
Their sophisticated, unbendable laws, and their appreciation for athletics, culture and the arts, were supported by the enviable wealth of their thriving commerce.
The women of Locri were very special to Persephone, who favored them as much as they did her.
They were independent and powerful, undaunted by their men’s ambitions, and they didn’t indulge the whims and demands of the latter.
They were masters and administrators of their own homes and wealth, acting like earthly goddesses in their own right, and so they didn’t aspire to gain the favor of Aphrodite, and her enchanted binds of desire, or Hera, the ideal obedient wife, or either one of the virgin goddesses, who had to forgo marriage in order to enjoy their freedom.

Chapter 3.3 - Summer Festivals

“Welcome back, daughter,” her mother greeted her, all smiles, at the mouth of the cave.
Persephone felt a little stiff from sleeping on the ground and still a little turned around after traveling back and forth twice between worlds within the boundaries of one night.
“I take it you had a pleasant journey home,” Demeter continued, way too cheerful so early in the morning. “How is your husband?”
“He’s well, thank you,” Persephone mumbled, squinting from the crude light.
“I take it your followers are still looking for you,” her mother pointed to the group, which meandered through the forest and valleys carrying torches in the middle of the day.
“I wouldn’t deprive them of the excitement of finding me, eventually. Let’s give them a few hours. I have a few things to tend to in the meantime.”
“Your husband gave you homework, dear?”
“No. It’s a favor I promised a friend. In fact, I was wondering if you’d be able to help. It’s a plant.”
“For Proteus.”
When you spend so much time switching between realities, whether it’s from death to life or from sleep to consciousness, you are bound to cross paths with the shapeshifting god of the unconscious, whose gift of prophecy and ability to alter the properties of matter were unmatched, even among the gods.

Chapter 3.2 - The Eleusinian Mysteries

The communicants started their descent into the depths of the earth, with nothing to light their way other than the high priestess’s torch.
The latter was tall, and her pallid members stood in stark contrast with her long hair, black as night, which flowed freely and draped around her shoulders like a mantle, and the black chiton, tied around her waist three times with a thin golden girdle.
She wore a tri-faced mask, which wrapped around her head, hiding her identity, and on her temples, the silver horns of the crescent moon: the symbol of Hecate.
As they continued their descent, the trail became narrower, sweeping between large boulders, overgrown with tree roots in places, its quietude disrupted by the sounds of an underground river flowing nearby.
The supplicants’ faces looked carved in stone, they all look the same, as if their spirits have left them. 
They seemed unaware of each other’s presence, their fixated stare darting into the darkness before them, as if something powerful inside it pulled them into its unknown depths, a ghostly army of the dead whose footsteps were muffled by the soft silt on the path.
All of them had partaken in the ceremonial drink, a hot wine mixed with herbs and spices which felt like liquid fire running through their blood, a paradoxically still fire, bringing peace beyond understanding. 
Their spirits turned inward, leaving their earthly shells vacant and making them look as if they were sleepwalking down the path.

Chapter 2.3 - The Moirae

The world is surface, a shimmery veil of illusion, woven from gossamer and dreams by the Moirae to give the unbound consciousness a home.
Behind this elusive veil, the fundamental action principles of existence, known only to the gods, continuously transform reality, sometimes unseen, sometimes picking at its back and putting waves through its diaphanous fabric.
Its visible side glistens like a mirror, reflecting any consciousness that is there to see it, its ever changing imagery shifting to harmonize with it, an exquisite mirage, poised to fool the senses.
It looks solid and permanent enough, but it’s not, and if you touch it, it shrivels under your fingers like a mimosa plant, contracting into itself and letting you hold on to thin air.
Reality is made of nothing, just like dreams; it comes from nothing and has to return to it eventually, it just does it so much slower than the latter.