Known as the goddess of metamorphosis transformed from maiden to the Queen of the Underworld in Greek Mythology, Persephone could help have a glimpse of the imbalanced dynamic between us and certain food. The curse that makes her constantly shift between the light and dark also interpret a process of us experiencing a cyclical pattern of recovering and relapsing as we heal the addiction to certain food. The cure also buries deep in her story, which could support us to eventually break free from this endless pattern as we heal.
Persephone appeared as a carefree girl earlier in the myths, gathering flowers in the field. Then Hades, King of the Underworld suddenly turned up and took her into the underworld by force to be his unwilling bride. Before she was rescued by the Messenger God Hermes whom were sent by her mother Goddess Demeter, Hades fed her some pomegranate seeds, which restricted her freedom on Earth for she must return to the underworld several months each year. When Persephone returns to the Earth, every living thing on Earth thrives. When she goes to the underworld, everything dies or withers away.
The pomegranate seeds that make Persephone swing constantly between light and dark serve as the trigger that keeps her partially captive to the underworld. When a woman is dominated by her chaotic subconscious decision-making with food, she enters the underworld of her shadow consciousness. Eat, or not eat, what can we eat? That is a simple yet crucial question to all women struggling with addiction to certain food. No matter what food we eat, we will face the feeling of either compensation or restriction at a later period of our lives.
Would you feel like eating something sweet to lift you up when you feel really down?
Would you feel like having some hot and spicy food to swiftly kick away the anxiety and stress?
Would you feel like taking in food that contains a lot of fat to maintain a certain balance when your brain is so overworking that you can feel you are not grounded?
Yes, what you have been unconsciously feasting is your emotional traumas buried deep.
What lies in every kind of food that triggers your addiction is the low-vibrant emotion that you have not processed with timely. Each time you revisit that low-vibrational emotion, you will be caught up in a loop. drawing to the same low-vibrational food. Your trauma finds you the food that you think could cure you. Instead it only feeds your addiction rather than heal your trauma. The addiction could be caused by the emotional traumas this life time or some other extreme soul lessons in the past such as famine. The sense of lack would store in your physical body then look for compensation this life time. The body would also attempt to keep you grounded by consuming a large amount of food every time the emotional trauma were triggered.
Meanwhile, the disharmony with food might also reflect the disharmony with other relationships in your life. The archetype of early Persephone is the maiden. This is the image of “child-woman”. She does not know who she is, what she want, what she is capable of. She also has no interests to explore. She obsessively pleases everyone but herself. She lets others make rules in her own territory while she lives in a mold defined by every one else. When encountering seemingly misfortune she does not foresee, she lets the victim part in her rule, giving away her power, refusing to take full responsibility of her own life. Her boundary is weak, which evokes her to go back to the underworld when being tested by holiday feasts, work lunches or unexpected dinner parties. She tends to escape from digging the underlying reasons behind the disharmony every time pomegranate seeds being triggered. There are times that she wants to try, but the Earth splits again and consumes her. With the overwhelming fear, she eats more food from the underworld while what she actually needs is to sort out her emotion, seeking the professional guidance to heal, turning to the spiritual food instead that she has been thirsting for.
If Persephone’s story resonates with you, you are probably at a crossroad of transforming the Persephone maiden Archetype in you into Queen of the Underworld. Persephone is the goddess of an alchemical process. It is a journey of reconnecting to your suppressed anger, learning to decline all that are not aligned to your highest path. With the professional and aligned support, you will learn to express the lost feeling and complicated emotions. You will shed the layers of addictions caused by emotional traumas as you heal. You will take up the courage to transform your old fear, making your own decision, take back the sceptre and rule your life.
Pearl of Sharro 