Welcome to Persephone’s Journey
Explore Persephone’s story through art.
Your task: match each part of her journey with the painting that best represents it.
There are three parts:
1. The Beginning— light, innocence, and growth
2. The Descent — shadow, discovery, transformation
3. The Return — integration, harmony, renewal
See the artworks, reflect, and choose wisely.
Part I — The Beginning
Persephone was born into a world of light.
With Demeter as her mother, she lived surrounded by warmth, growth, and endless spring. Everything she touched bloomed. She gave freely — flowers, laughter, life itself — without knowing what it meant to lose anything.
But even in this bright world, she felt a quiet pull.
Sometimes, in the stillness of the fields, she sensed something beneath the earth calling to her. Not in threat, but in recognition — as if there was more to life than the innocence she’d always known.
And then, one day, the ground opened.
QUESTION:
Which artwork best represents this descent into darkness and self-discovery?
Part II — The Descent
Persephone fell into the underworld, where light could not follow. The air turned to stone, and silence surrounded her. There she met Hades — not as a monster, but as a ruler who understood shadows and endings.
He showed her a world where nothing pretended, where truth was stripped bare.
In that darkness, Persephone discovered parts of herself she had never met: her depth, her strength, her agency. She learned that life and death were not opposites but partners, creating a circle that never stops turning.
Hades became her guide, not her captor — the one who helped her step beyond childhood and into the reality of what she could become.
QUESTION:
Which artwork best represents this descent into darkness and self-discovery?
Part III — The Return
When Persephone finally returned to the surface, she was no longer the girl who had walked through endless spring. She carried the underworld within her now — its knowledge, its weight, its clarity.
Her return brought life back to the land.
Demeter’s joy turned to rain, and the world bloomed again.
But Persephone was changed. She belonged to both realms — light and shadow, life and death. She had become a queen in her own right, a bridge between worlds.
And her story became a truth every person recognizes:
to rise, you must first descend.
To fully live, you must understand what lies beneath the surface.
QUESTION:
Which artwork best represents this descent into darkness and self-discovery?