Life, Death and the Hope that somehow something could survive

Persephone and Hades

I didn't want to write about this right now. Usually that's something I use to think about later in the year, not when the indian summer is that nice, when we are still enjoying the warmth of the sun and ignoring that the colourful leaves means that the wheel had turned again. But today someone passed away and that touched me very much, although I do not personally know him.

To be confronted with death is always a shock. And that everyone has to go this route, regardless of wealth, success, celebrity and genius frightens. You start asking yourself what the meanig of life is, this brief moment between the ages.

Will I be forgotten?
Who will remember me?
What will be remembered?
And ... is this really the end? Or what comes next?

Because death is a matter of living people, not the dead, many have already dealt with it. Where religion offered no solution, the mystery cults emerged.

Eleusian Mysteries

Well known is the regent of the Underworld - Hades.
The underworld - the world of the dead - is called Hades - like his ruler.
The ancient Greeks believed in the following concept: the dead people have their place in the underworld, as a shadow of their past existence, in the state of the moment they passed away, being aware that they are not alive, in full awareness of their weaknesses.
They are trapped forever.

But then something special happend: Hades felt in love with Kore (Persephone), Demeters daughter.
And bringing her in his kingdom and going to the story of loosing her for a part of the year over and over again brought compassion, empathy and hope - not just for him - for the living also.
Hades met the  love, and from now on he had to be patient in hope and in faith that he will see his beloved again.

Knowing Persephone and seeing her in the Mysteries was a grant for those who were alive to pass the Hades to the Elysion - "The Island of the Blessed" - where all the beloved of the gods are living as immortals in eternal youth.
This is the hope that all kind of mysteries offered (and still offers) - that death is not the end at all.
To go through the mysteries opens our hearts and plants the seed of hope, love and faith within us.
But the choice for this has to be made during lifetime.

We can approach the terrifying Deities and make them our allies - but not when we are dead already. We have to handle this when we are alive.

Therefore - behind all the shock and the grief - we should open our eyes and see death as that what it is: a part of the circle of life that reminds us to live and to make right choices by now.
Live in awareness that we will all see Hades and Persephone one day.

"But now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; and the greatest of these is love." 1 Corinthians 13:13

Dedicated to a great soul and to all who left the mortal world too fast.
Demetria, Oct 6 + 7, 2011

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true. Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”  Steve Jobs, Stanford University, 2005

Sources:
http://mythologica.fr/grec/pic/hades-persephone.jpg
http://www.freitag.de/community/blogs/jan-jasper-kosok/steve-jobs-netzschau-der-tod-ist-die-beste-erfindung-des-lebens