Almost midnight. First thunderstorm of the season. Not a major one, but beautiful to listen to anyway. This time next week I’ll be in the new apartment, and I won’t be listening to the traffic zoom up and down Ridge and Hollywood every time the windows are open. I never realized how much it bothered me until the last few weeks.

So on to something that I haven’t written in a while. Spiritual experiences. I was exhausted after Karate this evening. Positively worn out, ready to keel over. I stopped at walgreens to buy some epsom salts to put in a bath for me. I ate and then George and I made some final lists and talked about the move a little. Then I went to take a bath.

I’ve been feeling for a little while that I haven’t been paying my gods nearly enough attention. In fact, it feels as though I haven’t really paid a couple of them any attention at all for months and months. Along with my current focus on building stronger, healthier relationships with the energies in my life, I have been trying to reapproach my relationship with Diety.

You see, although I’ve been working with Persephone for a little more than four years now, before that I really only considered the gods in a general way. Much as I might refer to the Powers that Be. (Which is an expression from Angel, but possibly one of the better ways I’ve ever heard to refer to the higher powers, benevolent and otherwise.) In the grand scheme of things, four years isn’t that long. I’ve been learning a great deal about myself and my path in that time.

One of the things that I’ve learned, perhaps one of the most humbling things I’ve ever learned, is that I rely upon the support of the spirits and gods far more than I like to think. I’ve always considered myself self-sufficient. Though I’ve learned to accept help, and even ask for it on occasion, I’m by and large a loner. I take care of myself and those around me, and I don’t need anybodies help. For my entire life, that has sufficed. I haven’t always been comfortable or happy, but I have never truly gone without or been unable to get through tough times on my own.

In the past few years however, I’ve come face to face with the truth of the matter. I may be self-sufficient, but I have had a lot of help being self-sufficient. Every step of the way the gods and spirits have given me strength to endure. When I have reached the end of my capability they have arranged things to my benefit. I have come to realize that even during all those years where I pretty much shunned spirit work, they didn’t shun me.

One of my teachers told me a few years ago that he sees me following a shamanic/mystic path. Among his reasons were “The spirits are definitely around you. They gather and follow you wherever you are.” Since then I’ve come to recognize the truth in that, and though I try, I’m still no where near as attentive or conscious of it as I feel I should be. It is a long path, and there is much still to do there.

Something that has made this very difficult for me is the fact that I’m not sure why I deserve their love and support. Though I work very hard not to let it hinder me, I have very deep talent-guilt. I don’t know why I was given the gifts I have. No matter how I logically move away from it, the communist tendencies of our society have me by the balls. I feel as though I don’t deserve what I’ve been given, and so I tend to act as though I’ve somehow a) earned it or b) just got lucky.

I know very well that neither of these are entirely true, although neither is entirely false either. The simple truth of the matter is that it is what it is. I have these gifts. As my name seems to promise, I am adored by the spirits, by the gods. Sometimes, when I pay attention to the spirits around me, I feel a bit like a pet. Like a treasured jewel or a particularly interesting experiment.

So the point is, that I do not believe I’ve been paying enough attention to my gods. And tonight, since it is moon dark, and finally spring, and there is all this gorgeous earth nurturing rain, I decided to spend a little time focusing on Persephone/Kore.

A bit of background. Persephone is the first Deity I recognized as having a relationship with. I’ll save the full story for another time, but suffice it to say once I recognized her presence she wouldn’t go away. She has since given me space from time to time. Sometimes I feel her blessings in my life on a daily basis. Sometimes I won’t feel her for weeks or months. But at first, she kept nagging at me until I owned up to the connection.

So as I lit candles in the bathroom and filled the tub I mentally prepared myself for communion with Persephone. She has left her palace in Hades, and made the long ascent to earth again. Her feet are bloody from the journey, and the rich, fertile blood of the underworld nourishes the fields her mother has coaxed back into life upon her return.

I am often annoyed by depitions of Persephone, because she is so often regarded as being distant, and sometimes even vestal. Most statues I find portray her as flat chested, wearing very concealing clothes, with her hair in a tight bun. Though this may be traditional, it is not at all the visage of her I carry in my mind.

To me she is slender, but carries the curves of womanhood, as a goddess of the spring should. She is beautiful, of course, and her long hair varies between raven black, the deep color of autumn, and the fair color of wheat. If one were to see her from a distance, they might still see the young goddess of spring who was plucked from her field of narcissus flowers so many ages ago. But upon closer inspection, her time in the underworld has produced a much different creature. Never truly a woman, but never again a child. She is caught between the vitality of youth, and the wisdom of change.

And it is here that her wisdom and power lies. And in a lot of ways, I can see why she is my first, and in some ways the goddess with which I personally associate most closely. I’ve spent a lot of my life balancing that same line. As a child, I was never comfortable with children. I spent most of my time with adult friends who I considered my peers. For all my niavete and youth, I always carried death wisdom. And my life is not so different now. I was just talking with George the other day about my self-perception.

I’ll be 29 in a couple weeks. In my mind I’m much younger. On an average day I feel about 20. Maybe 21 or 22. It’s not uncommon however, to find myself feeling like a young child of 7 or 8, or a teenager. No matter how many years I’ve lived as an adult, how often I’ve dealt with the mysteries, my inner-eye sees me as not quite a man.

But back to the topic at hand. I eased myself into the bath after mixing in the epsom salts and a few drops of lavender essential oil. I cracked the window of the bathroom so I could listen to the rain a little, and then washed myself slowly, cleansing my body and opening up to the world around me. In my heart I began calling to Persephone.

Eventually I spoke out loud, flowing words of honor and grace, praising Persephone and the gifts she has brought to the land. I called her to me with my heart and my thoughts and my words and my spirit. And after a time she came. I spoke then, first, offering my apology for not keeping my thoughts of her at all in so many months. I opened myself to her and made devotion with the water of the tub and the pouring forth of the dark moon.

Her response should not have surprised me. I wrote something about how we stupidly try to limit our gods only a few weeks ago. I know better than to second guess them. Of course, I was surprised. She said:

“I am not so petty as to abandon a love because he turns his eyes to other beauty.” Though she didn’t say it, there is a hint of her feud with Aphrodite here. I dare say it is a bit more coridal and simply done out of habit today, but my goddess is quite scathing in her opinion of the goddess of love. “I have given you the path you need to walk, there is no shame in having taken it. Only now, try to remember my gifts to you in equal measure with those others you may discover.”

There is much more that I can’t put into words. She left me with a sense of peace and stillness that only comes of communion, and with a task to perform when the moon begins to swell again. And I’m smiling to myself now.

Spring is here. Persephone has arisen.