Hello family,
I’m back to you after a while. Quick check-in: how’s everybody doing? How are you doing?
When I first started this draft, I wasn’t doing that great, but like always, I’m glad to be here writing for you.
What’s so strange about my blog is that I constantly think about it, but I don’t take the time to write. What’s up with that?
I miss writing. I know I am supposed to be writing, but why don’t I take the time to stop and write? Am I still even a writer?
Either way, I have lots to discuss with everyone. Since we’ve last spoken I’ve celebrated another birthday. And in true Lexis Kai fashion I did something unorthodox and recorded a song for my birthday. It’s linked at the end!
Honestly, I’m so, so appreciative of this body of work. It’s been a catalog of my personal development downloads and the inner work I’ve been so focused on over the past 7 years. Seeing the true progress made and documented is so powerful.
How Do You Give What You Never Received?
Not news, but I had a very emotionally disturbing childhood.
The more I process the realities of it, the worse I realize that it actually was. And even worse, how much it’s fucked me up mentally and emotionally. But at the same time, it helps me. With my own children, with my family, and, even more importantly, with myself. I’ve learned to treat myself better by reparenting myself the way I needed as a babe.
But also having to realize that the unconditional love of a parent, the real attunement to me and my needs, is never coming. I would need to provide myself with that level of love and support forever; there was no mother to get it from, and it has been a damning realization. Even more so when you factor in the truth that I’ve been a mom since before I could drive, before I was even in high school. Almost half of my days on Earth, and one day soon, more than my days on this mutha, will be with the responsibility of providing unconditional love to two beautiful human beings.
Which begs the question: how did I learn to give my own children something I never received? The answer, I’m learning, lives somewhere in the Underworld. And the mythology of Persephone has been trying to tell me this for the past three months.
Crowned in Hell: The Persephone Principle
Here we enter into this idea I’ve been teetering with all year, with different motifs confirming and refining the concept. I bring to you the story of Persephone: the most powerful alchemist. Think the Empress card in tarot, the embodiment of the Dark Feminine. I’ve been acknowledging the rise and reclamation of the Divine Feminine for the past two years.
Before I jump in, I am by no means a Greek mythology expert, even an enthusiast. Still, I write what I feel, and what ultimately comes to me. Always has been so.
In the story, Persephone, daughter of Demeter and Zeus, is kidnapped by Hades, ruler of the Underworld (stay with me, please). Demeter, goddess of the harvest, is so distraught at her daughter’s capture that she forsakes the Earth, which falls barren and introduces the first winter.
Persephone, miserable in the Underworld, makes the mistake of eating a pomegranate, which guarantees that she must always return to the Underworld. Her father, Zeus, eventually coaxes Hades to release Persephone (even though some accounts say he suggested she be kidnapped in the first place, but I digress). Since she had eaten the fruit, she must return to the Underworld during some parts of the year. So the story goes, half the year is spent in Hell, the other half on Earth.
The myth serves as a folktale about the cause of the seasons: Persephone ruled her Underworld kingdom during the fall and winter and spent time with her mother during spring and summer. Which makes me think of Virgo symbology – the maiden of the harvest, bringing the Earth’s bounty at the end of summer. Y’all know I’m a Virgoat.
It’s also a story of death and rebirth; these Plutonian concepts I’ve been studying personally and alongside @ijaadee as a devotee of sorts. Recently I learned the Greek word Katabasis, which describes the hero’s descent into the Underworld to die and be reborn on their journey. Think of when Hercules loses his powers and must defeat Hades’ goonies, then eventually get them back. Maybe I do know more about Greek mythology than I give credit for.
It’s this motif of death, whether physical or metaphorical, and rebirth, in the same respect, that has been cycling through my subconscious realm for months now. As I continued editing this post I witnessed my paternal grandfather transition.
I haven’t been as expressive about that process here. More specifically, I’ve been channeling this idea of death/rebirth/marriage to the devil storyline for months. I even told a close friend of mine I felt as if I married a demon as his penance in this Earth realm. At the same time, in other mediums, particularly Instagram, I had been chronicling my descent into my own personal Hell. We call it an ego death. I felt like, and in a lot of ways still do, my life is falling apart.
Yet, knowing what I know now, understood through the story of Persephone, this descent is necessary and should also be alchemized to my greatest potential. I can mope around and be miserable, or I can make life my bitch.
The Garden Taught Me
Just think about it: Persephone took being kidnapped and turned it into both co-ruling the Underworld and bringing light and abundance to the Earth via the harvest bounty she naturally holds as Demeter’s daughter. Even my short time gardening has solidified this understanding, as I watched plants grow and die over and over, to then turn into abundance that can be digested, literally. My garden has been my most honest teacher this year. Every plant that died fed the next thing that grew. Nothing was wasted. Everything was becoming something.
It’s magic, in the simplest sense. The reason we have religion and deities at all is that the Earth was so supernatural we needed more stories to describe it.
I feel I’m living the story of Persephone, bound to return to Hell over and over again. Wondering how many times I’ve eaten my own pomegranate — consumed something out of hunger or loneliness — and bound myself to return to a hell I thought I was leaving. Yet in the words of legend Denzel Washington, “I’m leaving here with something!” That something is the power and authority I know I’m owed.
If I married the Devil, it was to show me the Devil within. There’s power in the dark as much as the light, so all things can be alchemized into my highest good. I’ve learned that I’m a carrier of abundance, as evident in my garden, from which I’ve consistently harvested various vegetables every week. Most importantly, I know I’m royalty, to be crowned in the spiritual realm instead of this one.
This was quite a journey! Thank you for returning to the blog, and be sure to subscribe so you’ll be the first to know when my latest project will be released.
Until next time,
Cousin Lex
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