A couple weeks ago, the Trance Possession Club subset of my Lunar Shenanigans Crew invoked Persephone. (If I haven’t told any stories about that, oops. But everything you need for this post is contained in that sentence and the next.) I was neither Vessel nor Trance Guide, and the Vessel (who assigns roles for their ritual) hadn’t assigned additional roles, so my only task was to be ready to ask a question of the goddess when my turn came.
I’ve simplified my life a lot since we started this project, and I have really struggled to find questions to ask the gods we call on. In a couple cases, it’s been a matter of not wanting to owe that god anything, but more often – since we’ve gotten away from Hekate – it’s just a matter of having the parts of my life generally governed by those gods largely under control. So, when the question of devotional images came to me, it felt like a real moment of genius.
I asked for two images, but only got one.
The above art is the image I received of Persephone, alone: “life and death joined … mycelium” (the lacuna there being my inability to understand the words of the oracle). I sketched this image on my phone immediately after ritual: a skull crowned in mushrooms with a flowering tree growing out of it.
This image is definitely a tier or two above my existing wax carving skill, but it’s also too three-dimensional for my usual process, so … I guess I need to learn to be a better wax carver.
The second image I asked for was of Persephone as one of the two goddesses of the Eleusinian mysteries, for those devotees looking to discover and invent new Mysteries in that tradition. To that request, she answered: “I will say only that there was a reason I was known as the Dread Queen.” Which I partially take as, “not for you.” Which is fair, as I have no dream of rediscovering/reinventing the Eleusinian mysteries, myself, just being the personal jeweler of those who do.
It’s a little interesting and embarrassing that I didn’t think to ask that question before now. After all, I’ve wanted to create 21st Century magical images of the planets since I first started fucking with astrological image magic. For some reason, though, that didn’t translate into doing the same for the various gods my crew and I invoke.