UW
Into the Underworld
Welcome to Our Home
It may not seem so, given the solemnity here, but we are delighted you've chosen to honor us with a visit.
Most are not here by choice. The shades, shimmering souls of the dead, come to us by obligation. But they've found a home here, in the dark, where they cast off their masks and live according to who they truly are. While you may be living and your presence here temporary, they still have much to impart.
Whether you desire to escape the mundane, explore the hidden landscapes both in and beyond you, or heal the deepest wounds, you will be changed.
It is your transformation, not ambrosia, that sustains us.
We thank you for your company.
--Hades & Persephone
Hades
God of the earth's riches; assumed greedy.
Serious and careful Lord of the Dead; assumed cruel.
The absence of love & appreciation pains gods, too.
I am called avaricious. Cold, like the stone that entombs veins of gold, gems and minerals that glitter throughout my kingdom of shades.
I didn't ask to reign over the dead, but once I realized I was meant to serve as witness to their pain, confusion, sorrow, and occasional joy as they mourn the loss of their lives, miss their loved ones, move into Elysium or forget me while preparing for rebirth, I would not choose any other home in the whole of the universe.
It is my failure that the pain I felt upon learning that mortals feared my name crossing their lips caused me to distance myself from them when they arrived on my shores. They, as well as my family, called me cruel and unyielding. I resented that they couldn't see the earnestness with which I care for their eternities.
But love has a habit of changing souls, mortal and immortal. To have love reciprocated, after a long existence of assuming I am undeserving, softened me and others can see, if they so choose, that my stern demeanor is misunderstood compassion, felt equally for both the lightest and darkest of souls. How could I not love the darkness within my realm when someone has shown that the darkness within me is so loved?
After my father attempted to destroy me at birth, and the subsequent war that imprisoned him, I drew the shortest lot and came to rule the darkest realm, isolated, with only others' fear of me as company until an arranged marriage of sorts, badly handled, brought the light of innocence in the form of a woman, oft underestimated not only by me, but by all who meet her, into my underworld.
And then she left me.
Persephone
More than just someone's daughter and someone's wife.
A maiden and a queen.
Divine innocence meets the gravity of death.
Mortal stories paint me as a perpetual victim, secondary to my mother's mourning, my father's objectification and my husband's desire.
I made a choice. I literally swallowed my fear, trapping myself in a world of darkness, surrounded by the wails of the dead.
Slowly, I found that while shades and living mortals may send prayers to me, it is they who answered mine.
I transformed my perceived victimization into a power that subtly bludgeons assumptions about who I am. I am the Goddess Queen of the largest portion of the all of the worlds. I care for the souls of the dead, assure that spring returns for mortals, and lead those who wish to follow into mystery and communion with spirit.
I found my own identity at the bottom of my trauma and rose from it stronger and more independent than anyone assumed possible. What my family perched safely among the clouds on Mount Olympus refuses to recognize is that my power, underestimated since maidenhood, lies in my willingness to surrender to my despair without suffocating beneath it.