:: 2012 :: 100cm x 100cm in four 50cm panels :: Acrylics, Inks & Markers on Canvas ::
We pass into the Telesterion and wait for the discovery that, just as Persephone emerged from the cave to be reunited with her mother, now she manifests before the Anaktoron, the inner sanctum of Eleusis, in all her queenly glory. We are rising up out of the realm where the darkness of silence prevails and into the Ineffable, wherein the celebrant is enfolded into numinous experiences beyond words.
And here, we become the Mother, overjoyed and ecstatic to be reunited with the Great Triple Goddess who was lost – Persephone Queen of the Dead, Demeter Queen of the Earth and Rhea Queen of Heaven – and the great wounding that accompanied her loss is now keenly felt and healed. The secrets of the kiste are now revealed - eggs, phalloi and figurines so ancient that the goddess herself must have touched them – as archetypes of fertility, renewal and rebirth as, through the final image of Persephone we emerge again from her visionary womb into new life.
Persephone, who in the wild variations and shapeshiftings of the Mystery, will soon become mother of the Divine Child Dionysos, who is simultaneously Hermes, and Plouton, and Brimos the Thunderer, and through this transformation, the cycle can begin again. To her left is Eleuthia, Cretan goddess of childbirth, with her bag of magic herbs for the easing of pain, drinking deeply from the kykeon cup and partaking of the narcissus fragrance as a final experience of this life. And then there is Chthonia, in whose hands the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, eating the red-blooded pomegranate as a symbol of her transcendent office.
