An Ode to the Ghosts: The Myth of Persephone & Demeter
“Ghosts / Take shape under moonlight, / materialize in dreams. / Shadows. / Silhouettes / of what is no more.”
Our 9th full moon of the year rises on September 17th, and with it comes ghostly muses and ghostly women, pomegranates, grain, and a few mysteries harvested from nature. As this week's full moon falls just a few days shy of the Autumn Equinox, it's sometimes called the Harvest Moon.
In agricultural societies, land tenders work late into the night to keep up with autumn's bounty. People use the moon as their lantern and helpmate, a seasonal torch known intimately by the reapers. The reaper's job was not purely physical; land tenders were also seen as agricultural mystics. In much of the world, people harvest corn during the second harvest to feed their families and animals, as well as their ancestors—the ghosts of seasons past.
I mentioned this to Caitlyn over a series of voice notes one afternoon. I was recapping The Unforgivable by Christina Campo, sharing a few passages from the woman who translated Virginia Woolf into Italian while also writing several poetic creations of her own. Afterward, Caitlyn and I returned to my earlier realization. Many of our muses were ghosts.
