her become aware of “nerve endings I never even knew about be-
fore.”
UNCOVERING A CAPACITY FOR
ECSTATIC RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE
The archetypal affinity of the goddess Persephone for Hecade and
Dionysus may provide a clue to the ecstatic, numinous priestess
qualities that some Persephone women develop. They become intox-
icated by ritual and feel possessed by a god or goddess. Within
Christianity, they may be “charismatics” who “speak in tongues”
when the spirit moves them. And today, with the revival of goddess
worship, where spiral dances evoke the goddess spirit, some women
who seem ordinary Persephones by day become uncanny Hecates
or Dionysian maenads by night.
DEVELOPING POTENTIAL AS MEDIUMS OR PSYCHICS
As the guide for mortals who visited the underworld to speak to
the shades of the dead, Persephone had a function metaphorically
similar to that of mediums who hold seances and allow the spirits
of the dead to speak through them. The diffuseness of her personal-
ity, with its generalized receptivity and lack of focus, also facilitates
receiving ESP. To develop psychic ability, a Persephone woman
must transcend her identification with the Kore to find the
Persephone-Hecate element that is unafraid of the uncanny, at home
in the underworld, and wisely knows when she is at a dangerous
crossroad and must seek the safer route.
BECOMING A GUIDE TO THE UNDERWORLD
Once a Persephone woman descends into her own depths, explores
the deep realm of the archetypal world, and does not fear returning
to reexamine the experience, she can mediate between ordinary and
nonordinary reality. She has had awesome or terrible irrational ex-
periences, visions or hallucinations, or a numinous spiritual en-
counter. If she can transmit what she has thus learned, she can be-
come a guide
Goddesses in Everywoman