with her own sexuality is a potential of the Persephone archetype
consistent with mythology. Once Persephone was Queen of the
Underworld, she had a connection or a bond with Aphrodite, God-
dess of Love and Beauty. Persephone may represent the underworld
aspect of Aphrodite; Persephone is a more introverted sexuality, or
a dormant sexuality. In the mythology, Adonis was loved by both
Aphrodite and Persephone. And both goddesses shared the pome-
granate as a symbol.
Morever, Persephone’s acceptance of the pomegranate seeds from
Hades meant that she would be voluntarily returning to him. By
this act, she ceased being the unwilling bride. She became his wife
and Queen of the Underworld, instead of the captive. In real life,
sometimes after years of marriage, a Persephone wife may cease
feeling that she is a captive of an oppressive, selfish husband to
whom she has resentfully stayed married. She feels differently only
when she is able to see him as a vulnerable, decent, imperfect man
and can appreciate that he loves her. When her perception changes,
he may know for the first time in their marriage that she is with him
to stay and that she loves him. In this new context of trust and ap-
preciation, she may become orgasmic for the first time and view him
as Dionysus the evoker of passion, rather than Hades the captor.
In ancient Greece, Dionysus’s intoxicating spirit moved women
to ecstatic sexual heights. He was worshipped in mountain revels
by Greek women who would periodically leave their traditional re-
spectable roles, their hearths and homes, to participate in religious
orgies. Dionysus transformed them into passionate maenads. And
tradition and myth link Hades and Dionysus together: Dionysus
was said to sleep in the house of Persephone in the intervals and
between his reappearances. The philosopher Heraclitus said, “Hades
and Dionysus, for whom they [the women] go mad and rage, are
one and the same.”^4
A contemporary Persephone woman can have a parallel “Dionysi-
an” encounter. One woman said, “After I left my husband, I went
out looking for what had been missing in the marriage. I figured a
lot of it was me—uptight, well-brought-up, I saw myself as Miss
Priss.” In a coffeehouse she met a man who became her lover. He
was very sensual, and helped
Persephone: The Maiden and Queen of the Underworld, Receptive