Day of Persephone's Return
From the Pagan Book of Hours
Calendar of the Sun
19 Eostremonath
Cerealia: Persephone's Return
Color: Green
Element: Earth
Altar: Upon a green cloth set as many spring flowers as possible, a bowl of earth saved from the day of Persephone's descent, and the figure of a girl's head emerging from the earth.
Offering: Flowers. Begin something new.
Daily Meal: Dark, coarse bread. Root vegetables. Poppy seeds. Millet. Nuts and seeds.
Invocation to Persephone's Return
Let the Earth take joy!
Demeter's heart is warmed,
For her beloved daughter,
The maiden of Spring,
Has returned to the upper world!
Let all upon the Earth take joy!
Flowers spring from her footsteps,
Grass spreads between her toes,
The promise of the summer wind
Falls like butterflies newly loosed
From her hair the color of poppies and clay.
Let us all take joy!
She who descended in the autumn,
She who is married to Death
And yet arises in the bringing of Life,
She who has passed the bodies
Of a thousand corpses,
She who has sung with the shades
Of a thousand ancestors,
She rises to greet the morning sun
For as long as it is her time.
Then, like all things, she will descend again,
Into the depths of the Earth,
And we, we shall learn to love that cycle
Of rising and falling, of birth and death,
And truly call it a blessing.
Chant: Kore Chant
(Let one chosen for the work of the daily ritual carry the bowl of earth from person to person about the hall, and let each one take a bit of the earth and rub it on their faces, and let it remain until the evening ablutions.)