By JILLIAN KRISTINA
The Queen of the Underworld is crossing the threshold once again, marking the end of six months of decay, composting and growth – the necessary workings in the darkness before the light returns and with it, Persephone’s ascent. Today’s vernal equinox ushers in the astrological new year, as the return of Aries season also marks the end of a full trip through the 12 signs of the zodiac; some celebrate it as the Witch’s New Year, the true beginning of the year and the renewal that’s been just out of reach as we’ve clawed and scratched our way towards the light that inevitably rises at the end of the tunnel of winter. We may find ourselves covered in the detritus of the soil, of the bones crushed to ash as our bellies have scraped the bottoms of our personal underworlds, wounds gaping and blood streaming. This is not just a rebirth. This is the death rattle before the sun rises again in those moments that Kore thought she was going to break apart and sink into the abyss of the void, seeing nothing, becoming nothing…
This is the threshold of all thresholds, and once again, just as Solveig (Toby Poser) and Mickey (Zelda Adams) embodied Hekate and Persephone in Mother of Flies, we find ourselves enveloped in the Queen of the Underworld and the Torch Bearer myth. Persephone emerges from the darkness, from her throne next to not her King, but her partner, and leaves behind the parts of herself that learned to love the dark – and thrive in it – to call back the echoes of the girl that once lay in the flowers, basking in the sun, unaware of the duality and paradoxes of life, unaware of her own chthonic power, waiting to be awakened.
There are many ways one could interpret Persephone’s abduction story, but what if the abduction was a portal to liberation? A reclamation of sovereignty, or a discovery of it? Too much sunshine can be oppressive – blinding. True growth happens in the dark, away from prying, controlling hands and eyes. In this isolation, a story had space to speak, to breathe an ancestral inheritance into existence. Through the ash and bones of voices long past, whispers of freedom reached Kore’s ears. The compost of lives lost laid the foundations upon which her own life would be reclaimed, and how she would become her own torch….
Her own raging inferno. Just like Izzy (Zelda Adams) in Hellbender, Persephone would find her fangs and sharpen her claws and meet the primal rage and power that Demeter had been trying to suppress, just as Izzy’s mother (Toby Poser) tried to suppress or protect her. But we know how that story goes. Izzy had to become her own Hekate to guide herself from the world of spring to the land of death, the terrain of the Hellbenders. Because she was starving on raspberry root and twigs. She needed the sustenance of her bloodline. She needed the flesh of her ancestors. She needed not just to know, but to become.
And the Queen of Wands steps forward from the shadows to remind us of just how indelibly powerful we are. She is all that is Witch – sovereign, passionate, fierce and wise. She walks with the ancestors who had no choice but to work their hands and magick in the shadows, their voices and hearts flowing to and through her as she rises to support us in the personal and collective work that must be done. She is the torch of Hekate. She is the sovereign of Macha. She is the fire of destruction and creation of Kali Maa. She is the will shared between Mickey and Solveig to transform and transmute death. She’s the torch lighting Izzy’s way back to herself, one corpse at a time, because death is as essential a component as life. Death is sustenance. Death is the doorway to begin again. And she knows the cost of shapeshifting from the smallness of survival into the profound presence of self-emboldened empowerment.
This spring equinox, as the balance shifts, lean into what the darkness taught you. Thank it. Take it in and assimilate and digest it. As the first quarter of the year culminates and the light expands over the rippling liminality we’re all navigating, hold tight to your fangs. Sharpen your claws. Fortify your boundaries and refresh your protections. The torches you carry are not just yours, as those who carried them before walk with you now. So, write the stories you wish to burn, because those tales are not just your own. Let’s use this portal, this threshold, to unite our torches and rewrite the heaviness of our inheritance. Let us alchemize the pain into power. Let us call our ancestral witches from the shadows and give them a safe space by our sides, because make no mistake, our unseen beloved dead are waiting in the wings, ready for our call. And call, we must. 2026 is a year like no other, and today, we doggedly and diligently pursue it with an arsenal of fierce lineage behind us.
