Encounter with Hades: Loss and Vulnerability
One moment, Persephone had nothing more on her mind than which beautiful flower to pick; the sky was blue, the sun was warm, and all was well. The next moment, she was in the underworld and nothing was the same as before. Her innocence and security were violated; she was helpless and at the mercy of forces beyond her previous knowledge. This myth applies to everyone. Persephone is the innocent part of men and women, youngsters and elders, who encounter Hades as the perpetrator of incest, rape, mugging, betrayal, of any unexpected and unforeseen act that shocks us into an awareness of our emotional or physical vulnerability. Hades is also the symbolic event that exposes us to a specific awareness of good and evil. Before Hades, we feel protected; after Hades we know that we are not. Once a laboratory test comes back positive or a biopsy reveals cancer, through whatever means we learn of a life-threatening illness, the effect is the same: Persephone—the assumption of youth and health, the assumption of safety and immunity from disease and death—has been violated and taken into the underworld.
For many of us, poetic metaphor expresses our feelings and is a means through which we communicate our perceptions and understand the meaning of an experience. Illness as a descent of the soul into the underworld is a metaphor that brings to the intuitive mind and knowing heart a depth of understanding that cannot be grasped consciously otherwise. It is also in the language of the soul.
The Underworld of Fear
When the possibility or reality of a major medical illness arises, when we or someone we love are to be hospitalized for observation, diagnosis, or treatment, it is metaphorically like being abducted into the underworld—that subconscious or unconscious realm—where we are assailed by fears and vulnerabilities that we usually keep buried there and at a distance. We may be exposed to fear of death, pain, dismemberment, dependency, disfigurement, dementia, and depression. The possibility of becoming seriously sick or impaired exposes us to fears and realities to do with the loss of relationships, of work, of manhood or womanhood, of opportunities and dreams. We fear being a burden, financial and otherwise; we fear for our children or others who depend upon us; we fear that we may no longer be ourselves; and those fears are sometimes compounded by how others treat us or how we react when childhood insecurities become entwined with present-day adult anxieties. We can lose the best of ourselves in sinkholes of self-pity, or become mired obsessively in “Why me?”
Sick or potentially sick people are often infantilized, women especially. Doctors and others often talk about us as if we were not there. If we make a fuss, we are not being good patients. Everyone is concerned with the medical problem, not with the psyche. The message we get as patients is to keep our fears to ourselves and put on a good face; be a good girl or act like a man, and do what the doctor says. We are not to be angry. We are not to question authority. We are now in the underworld of our fears but are not to mention it. If we are angry or self-pitying, if we become emotional, if we want doctors or nurses to pay attention to our feelings, we are being a problem. Attending to emotions takes time, and when there is just so much time to do hospital rounds, or so much time allotted to see each patient, a patient or a relative who needs or wants reassurance or further explanations is often seen as demanding or even as requiring a psychiatric consultation.
The Underworld of Depression
The underworld can also be a state of mind that resembles the realm of Hades in which abducted Persephone was an imprisoned captive. It was a dim world inhabited by the shades of the dead, which were recognizable but without substance, bloodless images like holograms or like memories devoid of emotion. This is the realm of depression when we are cut off from our feelings, which illness and the effort to repress all feelings and fears can bring us into. We then act as if we were inanimate, obedient, cooperative objects. The diagnosis of a life-threatening illness and the need to respond immediately to medical advice about what to do invites us to dissociate from our feelings. Whether from depression or from dissociation, the result is often the same. Detached from emotions, a person can then be the picture of the good patient who enters the hospital as if it were a body repair shop.
The Underworld of the Soul
The underworld is also a soul realm, a place of great inner richness. This is the realm of Pluto—the Latin name for Hades—which means riches or treasures underground. This is the psychological layer that contains the potentials we have not developed, the talents and inclinations that once mattered to us, the emotions we hid from view and then lost touch with. Beyond this personal level lies the richness of the archetypal or symbolic layer of the collective unconscious, where patterns, instincts, all that is human resides, a deep core of meaning that dreams and creativity draw from. Here are the wellsprings of the soul, the spiritual instinct that directs us toward divinity in the same unconscious way that flowers turn to face the sun. Here the psychological quest for wholeness and meaning begins. Here in the archetypal realm, death and rebirth are metaphors, and the reality of physical death, which may be terrifying to the ego, is countered by dreams which have an entirely different perspective.
We can enter into this soul realm by musing upon the symbols, themes, and possible meaning of dreams that we record and remember; by following impulses to play, sing, or listen to music; to dance, paint, or draw; to honor and express what comes up when we are open to our own flow of feelings; to keep a journal; to write poetry; and through prayer and meditation, to be in silence or conversation at a soul level. When these gateways to the soul realm are familiar, access is not difficult.
This inner world of the soul is a foreign country for many, however. The extroverted person who prides himself or herself on being practical and logical, the caretakers who focus on the needs of others, the work-oriented for whom being productive is a measure of their worth, often have not ventured into their inner world very much. The resources of the inner world that can be tapped to help heal body and soul then need to be learned—which later chapters focus upon. To learn of the potential riches of this aspect of the underworld, to want firsthand knowledge and be willing to spend energy and time to get there, is the beginning. Keeping a journal— on paper, in memory—is a next step, out of which comes the value to oneself of attending to images, phrases, feelings, and thoughts that emerge out of one's own depths. A vivid dream needs to be attended to by writing it down; it will not likely be remembered otherwise, and even if remembered, details will be lost. Paying attention to the details of the dream may lead to musing upon parts of it, which leads to further memories and associations. It may move a person who otherwise might be either unfocused or focused on discomfort, or focused obsessively, to become absorbed in a communication from the dreaming psyche. To muse induces a meditative attitude, which is an open, receptive mind and heart. This is what solitude, meditation, or being receptive in prayer does for some of us. This is what backpacking, running, fishing, gardening, or sewing does for others.
Whatever it takes for us to hear the small still voice within, or reach the still point at the center, is the means, the access to the inner world of soul. When this realm is unknown terrain, or when illness makes ways we once used no longer possible, we can try ways that have worked for others, or learn from others. Just as one seeks a referral to a doctor and checks on credentials, experience, and affiliations, so is it possible to seek counseling or classes on various means of meditation, spiritual development, dream and journal work, and expressive therapies.
The Underworld of the Spirits
Life-endangering illness can have the effect of thinning the veils between this world and the otherworld of the spirits. People tell me such things as having had vivid, distinctly remembered conversations with figures they clearly saw and yet knew were not part of their ordinary reality, or of feeling the comforting presence of people who had died even though they neither heard nor saw
