The Sacred Grove, Demeter, Limos and Erysichthon, the King of Thessaly
Museletter 3, Beltaine 2024, Wendy Robertson Fyfe
The Sacred Grove, Demeter, Limos and Erysichthon
Welcome. Thank you for opening this Museletter which is more like an article than a Museletter, so you might like to choose/offer a time to read and consider connections, be curious.
As the Celtic Ceremonial Fast approaches, l’ve been considering the myth as above continuing to track me as l track her, as beloved lovers. I experience, maybe you do too, that myths are to be lived deeper in our lives if we are so blessed and cursed to be found by and hear them. This particular myth brought me to consider offering the Celtic Ceremonial Fast as holy feast whilst emptying/surrendering ourselves as an offering in holy fast by way of creating space for the Gods, Goddesses, Earth/Cosmic Community, Ancestors, Future Ones and Others to sing in and be present with. Here’s a taste of ‘the why’ in more detail below.
First though, my relationship with myths are that they hold remembering chords of ways we’re kidnapped from as well as draw attention to our deeper purpose life; with Earth and Cosmos community’s wild conversations and songs, animate dreams, deep imagination, sacred speech and wild wanders who continue to sing us by our true name when we those around forget. Kidnapped, of course, drawing upon a theme from Isle of Erraid’s famous writer Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped.
Yes, we can glimpse hints in myths towards possible trembling remembering of a deeper life and soul purpose; of original patterning when there is an almost absence of healthy elders who would normally speak them in our current human world ‘leadership’. That is, apart from a few elders such as Joanna Macy, Bill Plotkin, Stephen Jenkinson, Michael Meade, Pat McCabe, and Bayo Akomolafe. l also hold a listening ear, heart, body for any conversations that might be even earlier than the ancient myths, or, indeed, new myths emerging. The myth of the The Sacred Grove with Goddesses Demeter and Limos, and Erysichthon, King of Thessaly is one, however, who tracks me over a lifetime. l’ve now been tracking this myth more consciously over these last seven years or so like prey … preyed … prey …. pray …
The Sacred Grove, Demeter and Limos, and Erysichthon, King of Thessaly root stems at least from Ovid’s Metamorphosis which was written 8th Century AD from the way of Roman Mythology. The Romans, of course, coming over to Celtic lands in Alba/Scotland and conquering for short periods, as the Vikings did during the 9th Century AD and the English later. There is a reminder here too of the ongoing interweaving struggle/domination of cultures such as the Celts, Romans, Vikings, English, then ‘Western’, ‘Eastern’, ‘Middle East’, ‘Indigenous’ and so forth; and how far Celtic culture is entangled with or resonates with other travelling cultures as all strands morph, weave, and struggle into temporary hegemonic alliances.
I do not claim to be an expert on Ovid’s books of poems by any means, or indeed, all of this particular story of human history, though l am drawing upon my earlier cultural historian knowledge, l’m just offering a particular brief context to this particular myth who has travelled my way, seeded me and is living/speaking in a particular way. May you resonate here with who speaks and sings you that brings you too to deeper, richer living.
The first sentence of Metamorphosis goes:
“In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas / corpora; which is "I intend to speak of forms changed into new entities". (and often from the monstrous).
Like ancient Celtic myths, Metamorphosis applies to human and more-than-human worlds, into and from blurred and animate boundaries between plants, animals, fungi, pebbles and more. The world of metamorphosis can be mythically violent, unpleasant, ugly… who in their right mind would willingly go there? In fact, we might even ask if experiencing/feeling violence is in some way and times an essential part of metamorphosis; a core wound that strikes our heartbreak in the loss of innocence perhaps; the shift into sacred wound, from being one thing into another and being healed enough to hold a different experience, perhaps of ‘being taken’. Does a caterpillar changing into cocoon experience this death as violent/violation we might wonder, or as smooth transition, or both/and? This is not to make a moral judgement about violence, more life itself having violent aspects such as the explosions of galaxies, the crashing of earth plates in the making of mountains, dreamworld characters, humans now being a layer of Earth embodying a kind of human geology explosion in Earth’s current metamorphosis. The thing here is merely to wonder about, be curious, to be able at least to ask the questions in a world of metamorphosis.
But for now, continuing with Ovid’s books of poetry, l have heard it said that change and love are two constants and that trying to shape chaos is futile since we move in laws way more powerful than and beyond humancentric-individualistic-defined-by-power laws. We may as well be asking stars and galaxies not to collide and, of course, we too are made of the stuff and fluff of stars.
This particular myth The Sacred Grove, Demeter and Limos, and Erysichthon, King of Thessaly who has me weaving and being weaved in its chords for years is one who is very rarely told and l’m curious why this is so. I don’t recall ever speaking of Limos and of her being known or heard of by anyone. Maybe this myth is just way too monstrous (for me) to truly face. It highlights, l believe, distortions and contortions of ways of living today that kidnap us from deep and animate intimacy with each other and the world. See and feel what you notice as you read and hear this myth.
As with soulcentric dreamwork the invitation is to let the myth have its way with you should you feel the myth living you or resonating. Whilst l believe each myth character has their own innate integrity, you might wonder what aspects, imagining all as animate, tug at and spill into/from your heart chords or/and repel you; what ways the myth has you in their net too. Which part has you identifying with/becoming them or not, and which parts you see enacting in the wider world right now. I’d love to hear.
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The Sacred Grove, Demeter, Limos and Erysichthon
“ … now, this is the myth of The Sacred Grove where-in dwells abundant scented pine, juicy pear, and deliciously sweet apple trees. In the warmth of the day you can smell the scent of pine in the air. When the fruit ripens you can smell their enticing aroma from quite the distance. The colours of the apples are an unbelievable deep red whilst the pears turn an astonishing bright yellow. It is said that at times they look like lights on dark-leafed branches in the uniquely shaped trees. The Sacred Grove is filled with the songs of birds. In Celtic ways, The Sacred Grove is associated with the centre, a dwelling place for the Deity and sacred law; a place and pathway for initiation rites and ceremony; a place also for The Fey.
This Sacred Grove is devotedly tended by Demeter. Demeter, as you may well know, is the beautiful Goddess of agriculture, harvest, fertility and sacred law; provider of food. You might remember her also by way of her daughter Persephone being kidnapped by Hades and taken down into the Underworld, but that’s another myth such as the way these myths interweave one with another … A favourite tree of Hers in The Sacred Grove is another tree altogether than mentioned yet, the tallest of tall poplar trees, though some say, in fact, that it is oak. Whichever, you can hardly see the tree top unless from far, far away. It is said the water that springs forth from this ground is of the freshest thirst-quenching kind. Demeter is completely, devotedly, tending The Sacred Grove, with the holiest of holy trees. It is also said that at times it is difficult to distinguish the body of these trees from the body of Demeter Herself.
The myth l hear is that Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, is preparing to build a lush banquet hall for a special feast fit only for a king and his regal guests. Upon hearing about these sacred trees Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, hastens, travelling quickly to The Sacred Grove with many of his giant strong men carrying their long and short handle axes wherefore they begin chopping the trees down before losing any time. Demeter, so devoted to The Sacred Grove, first begins feeling the pain of the chopping of the trees in her body before hearing the screams of the holiest of trees which Erysichthon, King of Thessaly and his men have now started chopping down. She rushes to The Sacred Grove to stop the desecration of this place where she practices her devotion to the Gods and Goddesses. However, Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, does not recognise who she is and tells her to leave before he chops her down too for he needs the wood to build a banquet hall for his feasting. Many of his strong men however, do recognise Demeter and these ones flee hastily away. Some of these giant men remain doing so only out of constraint. Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, proceeds to cut down all the sacred of sacred trees until there are no trees left in The Sacred Grove.
It is said that the cry of these trees can be heard in the lands across the waters. Maybe you can hear them. The Sacred Grove which was once a place for the devotion of the Gods and Goddesses, a holy place of Demeter, Goddess of agriculture, harvest, fertility and sacred law is no more. The place with the scented pine, holiest of tall trees whether poplar or oak, the astonishing bright juicy yellow pear trees, unbelievably delicious deep red sweet apple trees is now utterly barren.
Demeter is so enraged that The Sacred Grove is made desolate, that she sends one of her nymphs with a message to Limos in the North. Demeter cannot go herself since it is said that Demeter and Limos can never meet. Now Limos is not someone anyone would willingly want to meet and even the nymph found a way to pass the message on without seeing her face, the ugliest face, the face of Limos. Demeter’s nymph going only as she was instructed to do so. Though when l say ‘her’ face, l’m also told that Limos can be known as ‘he’ in some myths as well as ‘her’ in different cultures and times. However, the myth l hear whispered in my ear one day is that no one sees her as much as feels her presence and it is definitely not nice, or lovely. It is said that she sits at the gate of the Underworld in the service of Hades. Her image is also very rarely found in those by artists who prefer Demeter; this heightens the mystery around Limos even more.
It is said that Limos is the ugliest and barren of creatures; old, coarse white hair, darkened eyes inset a sallow face that does not light up like the yellow pears. Her opaque skin barely covers her visible skeleton and organs, her empty sagging breasts stretch to her visibly hollow belly. She is the one from whom a kiss cracks open a hunger so unsatiable that a life eventually can do no other than eat itself for want of a longing impossible to satisfy. Sometimes Limos goes by the name Fames, meaning source of famine.
But back to enrage; in her rage, Demeter sends a message to Limos via one of her nymphs since, remember, she could not go herself for remember Demeter and Limos cannot meet. Her message asks Limos to kiss Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, for his desecration of The Sacred Grove. Limos agrees to the kissing. She does so one night as he sleeps since, for sure, he would not - and who would, see her and be willingly kissed by her. As he sleeps, she quietly holds him in her bony thin-skinned arms and kisses him in a way of entering his very body as emptiness itself; entering his heart, mind, nose, ears, lungs, belly, genitals; his arms and fingers, legs and toes, and all the other parts of him not yet mentioned here, before returning North again.
When he wakes the very next morning, Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, wakes to a hunger pain he has never known before. He begins eating everything including the whole banquet he had laid out; eventually selling everything he has, including the new banquet hall made with trees from The Sacred Grove to buy food in an attempt to satisfy his hunger. But he is never able to satiate such a hunger. He even sells his palace to pay for food. Lastly, he sells his own daughter, since she is a shapeshifter a number of times, to slavery before finally eating himself.
Here ends the myth of The Sacred Grove, Demeter, Limos and Erysichthon, King of Thessaly …
Demeter Sculpture, nothing of Limos
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You will likely have grasped what a multi-layered myth this is and a number of ways to explore. However, l’d like to bring your attention to just a few chords l notice at this point:
The Sacred Grove of plenty beauty harvest is devotedly attended by the Goddess Demeter in remembering holy tending ways; they are intimately intertwined. Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, hearing of The Sacred Grove, gathers his men leaving at speed; he’s not beating around the bush. Like the current world situation, there’s no slowing down and taking time which can but surely lead to quickening death. Yet, The Sacred Grove has something he wants, that he hasn’t come across elsewhere and feels a rush towards. ‘Something’ recognised but not yet fully fleshed out. Perhaps a clue to what is needed for his own wholeness and the sacred, towards deep and intimate relationship with The Beloved, Soul, Mystery such as Demeter has cultivated. However, perhaps this also shows a nudge, a longing, his own soul beginning to speak. As David Whyte says:
The soul lives contented
by listening,
if it wants to change
into the beauty of
terrifying shapes,
it tries to speak.At this point, as one uninitiated into the ways of soul, the only way for Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, is to go down into the descent, into the pilgrimage of soul initiation. At this point though, he clearly forsakes his priceless soul for outer material power, wealth, and social prestige to build a feasting banquet hall with the sacred wood from the destruction of The Sacred Grove. In so doing, he is instead kidnapped by an old story of his particular Kingdom desire of power and control, destroying instead the sacred harvest feast he otherwise deeply seeks to serve in his banquet hall. We might say his shadow aspect core wound disconnection from The Sacred Grove and The Beloved/Golden Harvest Sacred Feminine; from a rich, deeper, full life.
His actions have consequences, as actions will want to do, setting a chain in motion. For Demeter the response to The Sacred Grove being desecrated is rage leading to a connecting alliance with Limos through a nymph since Demeter harvest/feast and Limos hunger/famine can never meet. There is a deeper and more powerful sacred law than the human-centred decreed law, or even of the Gods and Goddesses. Here it relates with the sacred feminine (both Gold and Dark) as initiators. However, Erysichthon, King of Thessaly, is unlikely to experience initiation it is at this point but more as punishment; that’s if he knew what was/is happening for he is unconscious. Any of this sounding familiar to you too, and in the world today ie violence and destruction, unconscious action? Nothing new.
We might notice the Limos kiss, a kind of shadow intimacy filling a body with emptiness and a longing hunger; perhaps also like the consumer world today eating the planet in an empty longing of a deeper life, or current increase in addictive survival ways. Indeed, we might ask what you/we too are hungering or thirsting for and the ways these show up currently in you. Meanwhile Earth, and as Earth, is also being destroyed, being descrated. I’m remembering a quote, though not sure where from: “they talk about my eating but not about my hunger, they talk about my drinking but not about my thirst.”
Whatever, Limos, being a gatekeeper of the Underworld, is another kind of annunciation, of ‘going down’, with a particular kind of hunger; a hunger that the King cannot buy his way through because he is paying attention only to his surface survival wound, not his deeper soul hunger. His soul is priceless, cannot be bought. As the myth goes, the longing hunger pain at this point is so great that everything is eaten including himself … again, like the planet too is being consumed in an addictive longing for particular survival; where sacred groves are being chopped down to create certain ‘undernourishing banquet halls’ and sold for money to buy poisoned food whilst abandoning priceless holy lands … or even dropping bombs alongside food parcels. Perhaps the greater the unravelling/destruction of land; the greater the annunciation into the Underworld becomes. In his hunger even the shapeshifter daughter of Erysichthon is sacrificed over and over as is the future sacred feminine life that the king also denies in himself.
It is also interesting to consider what and who is not in this myth. For example, there are no healthy men or ways of the sacred masculine here. Here, it’s the absence of the sacred masculine and the presence of the sacred feminine who annunciate the entrance to the descent to soul and a world of dream, metaphor, symbol, deep imagination, the unbidden, and possibly never seen/heard/felt/touched before. But we also have that clue, devotion to The Sacred Grove, the Beloved and marriage with the land that we are.
I’ll not go into connections with other myths fully now, but just note threads of this story with other myths such as: not looking directly at the face of the Dark Goddess (Medusa); the kiss of a mythic old woman (Cailleach); a father sacrificing daughter (Psyche, The Handless Maiden); The King and relation with creating barren lands when not marrying the land as in Celtic Myths. Such is the way myths can become needed elders when we see wider threads in the web that have us but are not made visible.
This myth ends with the king eating himself. With death. The myth can’t continue as it is. Maybe you recognise something of this in your life previously, now or to come. Maybe you recognise the human way of life currently in/as Planet Earth too, Earth dying, morphing in consumption. Such is the way when we cannot see, feel, become lost, disorientated, unravel, dissolve …
In terms of human development, this myth is showing a way beyond death. What if, in his death, Erysichthon is now entering a dissolving cocoon of metamorphosis, a particular kind of death; his old life has indeed died. Heartbreakingly, l believe people do die quite literally at this point or suffer greatly such as through the mental health system since in this current ‘Western’ culture there are very few ways of being and seeing this as pilgrimage and providing preparation as a way of living and time ‘in the wilderness’ to surrender, create ways of offering. It is also not possible at this point to know who or what will emerge; is not assured, certain or planned unlike a particular workforce needed for a particular economy and the harm that creates. The latest figures from EAPA (Employee Assistance Professional Association) state that £300billion was spent on mental health in England alone last year, more than the financial cost of Covid 19 Pandemic.
It can be tempting to think that there is ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in this myth. I prefer to think in terms of different stages of human development or as Bill Plotkin notes, arrested development. However, l believe all are holy; everything here is holy all being part of Earth, an Earth ecology, of Earth Community; they might all be particularly needed, have their place in a particular way in order that a particular metamorphosis becomes possible to bring a unique gift into the world that we don’t know what or who beforehand. Maybe there is also something else going on in the world right now that this myth helps us with in relating all the unravelling, destruction, violence alongside the beauty of Earth more to myth and the Underworld rather than a particular rationality; maybe there is a different conversation and invitation to die and live into a shift of Earth consciousness.
In many ways we could say this particular mythic ecology reflects something of a pilgrimage of soul where the old story of survival, though needed at the time, is surrendered through developing wholeness, becoming whole (or hole, holy) before/during a descent to soul when old skins are shed and wounded/protective/addicts/shadow parts are brought home all whilst the hunger longing pain for the divine home, The Sacred Grove becomes more conscious, lived and longed for in remembering our birth uniqueness gift contribution to life.
Perhaps the longing for The Sacred Grove, for tending an entangled and intimate reciprocal belonging is possible in this pilgrimage. Perhaps it is possible to make the transition from core wound to sacred wound, to The Sacred Grove where we also meet Earth’s longing hunger for us belonging in deep love conversations, each in unique Earthborn ways. Perhaps it’s not, for example, that Erysichthon isn’t holy but rather his relationship to and with the holy of whom he and the world already are, that is distorted. The current distorted world of a separate, human-centred rational controlling individual life as king can become a soul uniqueness within a particular ecological place as Earth Community. Or as Bill Plotkin states:
“The gift you carry for others is not an attempt to save the world but to fully belong to it. It's not possible to save the world by trying to save it. You need to find what is genuinely yours to offer the world before you can make it a better place. Discovering your unique gift to bring to your community is your greatest opportunity and challenge. The offering of that gift — your true self — is the most you can do to love and serve the world. And it is all the world needs." (Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche p.13)
The Celtic Ceremonial Fast offers a way to make a particular pilgrimage through/as the holy tending becoming a feast for Mystery whilst emptying, surrendering in longing hunger love for The Beloved to come in through a particular portal; to surrender to the chaos Ovid speak of rather than attempt to control … the divine; or the emptiness so many people are currently experiencing. In this way, maybe it is possible for feast and fast to meet in a resecration of both human and land in a descent to soul. Maybe it is possible that in doing so the holy is realigned in a person, in a culture and in Earth. We do not know and cannot know who or what will emerge through the alignment and maybe that’s not the point.
Is this kind of Celtic Ceremonial Fast calling you, are you feeling the hunger call?
An aspect of the image of my mythos, PI’A of Earth Mother, is that she is married physically, in union with, the canyon wall. One aspect of her being is that she has one breast facing out to feed the world and another breast facing in to feed her/the Earth. Here is an open flow of holy intimate reciprocity with Earth and sacred law. The sacred wound of desecration she experienced previously through eons, with similar hunger longing pains relating with the Dark Goddess Limos and the kiss of descent, her empty sagging breasts, with self-healing, healing, and wholing work, opens her to soul ready with an experience of a different kind of Sacred Grove, the singing forest; for which she has offered a lifetime’s devotion to the holy Earth. She too is annunciation of the Underworld Pilgrimage of Soul.
May this myth of The Sacred Grove, Demeter, Limos, and Erysichthon carried by PI’A like a deep Earth seam conduit feed these hungry times; feed you. May this Celtic Ceremonial Fast contribute towards realigning death and life personally, mythically, culturally in and as Earth metamorphosis/Cosmos; be a prayer, a poem, a song where the gods, goddesses, human and more-than-human, others, ancestors, future ones can circle together; where you remember and live your true name. Where living your true name is all the world needs.
It is so.
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May you and your kin enjoy a great feast as the sun descends and dusk approaches here with the arrival of Beltaine in Alba/Scotland. May your tending flourish.
Wend
… walk … talk … dream … vision … myth …
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