Pomegranate and Narcissus

In true form, I’m all over the place again. This time I am evoking the Dark Goddess Persephone!

To quickly rundown the mythic story, Persephone, daughter of Demeter and Zeus, is out enjoying the beauty of the narcissus flowers (narcissus = vanity) when the earth opens up and she is kidnapped by Hades, God of the Underworld. She resists him, but is tempted to eat the pomegranate seeds. She eats 6 seeds and is doomed to remain captive during winter months with Hades. The whole ordeal transforms her (represented by the monolith) and she accepts her role as Queen of the Underworld. Here I have her personified as the most powerful form of loneliness in a boat crossing the river Styx.

Currently I am studying several of the dark goddess with Melissa Kim Corter. Melissa will be coming out with a book where she tells their stories in delicious detail. I will be sure to give her a plug when her book is out. In the meantime, I am happily painting little studies as the stories manifest through my own psyche!

To coincide with my latest love of geometry, I took the time to scribe the circles and divide them into six parts to form the pomegranate and each narcissus flower. Now that it’s spring, I’ve been hanging out in the garden center at Lowe’s photographing many gorgeous flowers. I know that every flower is formed by a particular geometry and my goal is to observe the differences in the many varieties.

I liked the idea of the monolith (definitely phallic) to represent her marriage to Hades and her transformation.

I’m not ready to divulge my my own dark goddess nature here. So I end with this image of Persephone under black lighting.