Persephone Rising: Awakening the Heroine Within

Nautilus Award Winner

In this empowering work, the bestselling author of The Hero Within and Awakening the Heroes Within speaks to the heroine in every woman, offering potent strategies to forge lives of greater happiness and fulfillment—through activating the archetypes inherent in the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone.

Our era of professional and familial pressures, constant connection, and a renewed debate on “having it all” presents unprecedented challenges to contemporary women. In Persephone Rising, celebrated scholar of depth psychology and archetypes Carol S. Pearson brings a fresh vision for meeting those challenges and rising above them, as only she can. Drawing on her profound understanding of myth's enduring power to catalyze transformations, Pearson guides readers on a journey of self-discovery, teaching us how to activate and apply the archetypes of Demeter and Persephone, as well as Zeus and Dionysus, in our own lives— empowering readers to see the unexpected choices and opportunities available to us all.

Illuminating ancient wisdom for a modern audience, Persephone Rising offers meaningful and effective strategies to answer the call to heroism in our own lives: to locate and harness the unique potential within each of ourselves, and ultimately to develop our own innate heroic gifts. Just as Demeter and Persephone discovered, in the midst of great difficulty, their own powers, gifts, and abilities for creating a better path not only for themselves, but the world, Persephone Rising teaches that each one of us has more options than choosing whether to lean in or out—we have the power to change ourselves, and thus our world.

|

The Mythic Guide to Becoming a Modern Heroine

Just in time, this revelatory manifesto speaks to the heroine in every woman and man, offering potent strategies drawn from ancient Greek wisdom that can help us find happiness, even in today’s unfinished social revolution. Four archetypal plotlines—two feminine, two masculine—chart this path toward greater life satisfaction.

|

“For many of us women the story of Demeter and Persephone is the most challenging and illuminating of all myths. Each of us retells it in her own way, a way that reflects what it means to her. Carol Pearson’s rich revisioning focuses on Persephone’s rising, on her return to the upper world as emblematic of the power inherent in all of us to move beyond failure and conflict to lives filled with joy, fearlessness and abundance. Wisely, she recognizes that the deepest message this myth conveys comes from attending to all the archetypal energies represented in it, not just Persephone but also Demeter, Zeus, and Dionysos.” - Christine Downing, author of The Long Journey Home: Re-visioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone for Our Time

“For many of us women the story of Demeter and Persephone is the most challenging and illuminating of all myths. Each of us retells it in her own way, a way that reflects what it means to her.” - Christine Downing, author of The Long Journey Home: Re-visioning the Myth of Demeter and Persephone for Our Time

A stellar voice from the past has resurfaced to mark the introduction of HarperOne’s new line of books. It marks a very auspicious beginning. Carol Pearson’s gentle reframing of the tale that served as the basis of the Eleusian Mysteries, brings these gods and goddesses to life and makes it clear that the power of the archetypes they represent is as relevant today as it was in the ancient world. It’s followed by a no-nonsense description of the Mysteries and exercises that help readers recreate that initiatory experience. Pearson writes with an eye toward empowering women, not by disparaging men, but by pointing us in the direction of our lost history. She speaks of a little recognized keynote that can be heard in familiar movements, such as Civil Rights, Gay Rights, and - of course - Women’s Rights. Her work has always been an exploration of the flowers that bloom through the cracks in the sidewalk. It would appear that those flowers, and Pearson herself, are now positioned for a spectacular moment in the sun. Consider displaying this book with Pearson’s classic The Hero Within and with Gadon’s Once and Future Goddess, Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade, and Woodman/Dickson’s Dancing in the Flames which Pearson references. - Retailing Insight

Carol Pearson’s gentle reframing of the tale that served as the basis of the Eleusian Mysteries, brings these gods and goddesses to life... Pearson writes with an eye toward empowering women, not by disparaging men, but by pointing us in the direction of our lost history. - Retailing Insight

“Persephone Rising spoke to my bone marrow-its truths resonating with clarity and power. A beautiful retelling and updating of these ancient archetypes-so relevant today. ” - Christiane Northrup, M.D. and author of the New York Times bestsellers: Goddesses Never Age and The Wisdom of Menopause

“Through these classical archetypes of antiquity, Pearson guides us moderns in examining not only our fundamental, underlying beliefs but also those of our greater society.” - Spirituality and Health

“Persephone Rising leads readers down the processional path of the ancients into a modern initiation where the power to change reveals we can all awaken the heroine within.” - Rewire Me