Analysis: Persephone’s Feeling

By Miss T/MythIsaMirror

What is it?

In Episode 131, “Interview with the Barley Mother,” Persephone says,

“My name is Kore, and I was born to be the Goddess of Spring. Aside from natural powers, I was also born with a feeling… When I was young, it was barely a whisper… Every day, my powers grew, and the climb was exhilarating. But then, one day, I peaked… And from then on, every day felt the same. Every day was the same. Suddenly, the feeling was no longer quiet.”

In Episode 132, Persephone explains that she felt out of her body as the feeling couldn’t be stopped and a man was killed. Her horror and shame then made her body grow over large and cause further mortal deaths. This feeling she describes touches on so many different facets of Persephone’s life, image, and mentality, it is hard to define. In our weekly recap on Instagram, we suggested it could be related to any or all of these topics:

Ambition

The eyes of this feeling see Persephone even when she tries to ignore them and her mother hides her away. Is it seductive because it sees her when others don’t? Persephone worries about being immortalized as a forever-child, cereal figurehead. She also lives with the reality of being disrespected as a minor goddess or village girl by man - mortals, Ares, Apollo, Zeus, and others.

Repressed Self

Much like Hades, Persephone has vivid nightmares. The feeling seems to be similar to the voice in her dreams and her mirror self. In one, Demeter locked her in a greenhouse with no doors. In another, Hades asked to come into the greenhouse and spoke about her ambition. Demeter and Hades both hinder and help her struggle with identity, self-awareness, and purpose. She seems to push away these voices just as she tried to ignore the feeling.

Dark Side

In many ancient cultures, nature outside settlements was feared and personified in myth as monsters, the struggle between civilization versus chaos. Women often represented chaos or figures drawn to chaos where men represented heros who brought order. Then came terms such as “hedge” witch. The hedge is the outer border of a settlement. Magic, disorder, and peril exist beyond the border of civiliation. Persephone’s feeling seems to come from these natural, dark, hedge-like borders.

Chaotic, fertility power

Persephone’s true nature and purpose is much like her version of Spring - wild and chaotic. Her natural fertility power is strong enough to grow a giant tree where nothing else can grow. That power is also dangerous. The danger seems to come when it is repressed too long or others hurt the ones she loves.

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We asked the Instagram fandom what this feeling meant to them and got some new perspectives.

-100

“As a trans person, I could go on about this. The feeling is made to be evil, but it isn’t.”

“The feeling is like another version of the duality of man. Come on out Dostoevsky!”

“She is nature, because nature is both light and dark; loving and cruel. One cannot survive without the other.”

“Greek gods had very human traits. The more we pretend, the more we crave the freedom chaos gives.”

“Maybe it is not an evil feeling, but the wild nature of Spring that has been kept inside Kore for so long.”

“This makes me think about "Inside Out" and the struggle between Joy and Sadness. We can't always be just one thing. We have to feel ALL our feelings, otherwise all those pent up emotions will boil over. Persephone has grown up only knowing about growth and beauty, but there's just as much beauty in death and rebirth. She needs to experience the darker side of herself to fully become who she needs to be.” - @arneray09

Responses to our Instagram story question

Death Card in Tarot

A really intriguing analysis came to us from Instagram user @temple.and.arch. They said,

“This feeling makes me think of the death card in tarot. It’s meant to symbolize rebirth, and I think that’s such an essential part of Persephone’s identity and power. There is the growth which is beautiful and sweet but limited. This side of her is largely what we’ve seen, and we’ve only seen this feeling come through in her frustrations, like a fruit so ripe the skin bursts. I think this feeling scares her because it is this feeling of rebirth, except instead of being something that happens sporadically in one’s life, this feeling is constantly moving around inside of her, restlessly. It is not even inside of her because that would indicate it’s separate. It’s woven into the fiber of her being. She feels a conflict with it because she’s only been socialized to understand the sweet growth side of herself. We can’t exactly blame Demeter either. She is the Goddess of the Harvest and only knows to nurture and reap the fruits of the growth. Having fought in a war, she is all too familiar with death and rebirth. She likely hopes to shield Persephone from this pain without realizing that she is stifling the essence of her daughter’s being. Demeter’s realm is that of taking things in their peak form and preserving it, while Persephone rules the idea of change and transformation.”

Sometimes great art has no single answer. One can sit in a gallery and view a painting and see, feel, interpret, and find meaning it it that is different than the person sitting just beside you. Persephone’s journey in Lore Olympus, and this “feeling” in particular, is one such piece of art.

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