Persephone Rising Awakening the Heroine Within

by Carol Pearson

Now with an updated preface from the author celebrating this groundbreaking and increasingly relevant book. Four archetypal plotlines—two feminine, two masculine—chart this path toward greater life satisfaction. In the myth, the earth mother wins a power struggle with a patriarchal god, thereby ending a famine (think climate change) that threatens human survival. As this is occurring, a youthful goddess gains her freedom, asserting gender partnership and equality, and as a result gives birth to joy and celebration. The archetypal figures and narratives that galvanize attention in the public world also activate them within us as individuals. The challenge, then, is to live these stories wisely, shifting their expression within us for our own good and that of our society. The example of the four major mythic characters illustrates how readers can move from feeling powerless to purposeful, disrespected to esteemed, trapped to free, and anxious to joyful. Drawing on her profound understanding of myth's enduring power to catalyze such transformations, Pearson guides readers of Persephone Rising on a journey of self-discovery, teaching us how to apply lessons from Demeter and Persephone, as well as Zeus and Dionysus, in our own lives—examples that reveal unexpected choices and opportunities available to us all.