Person: a voice; a mask, in the sense of a mouth or body to speak through, embodying the latent power of the seed in the fruit or in the body of the girl Persephone, daughter of the earth goddess Demeter. As such, person is the power of the voice and the manner in which the potential for life becomes life, as more than the body that gave it forth. It is not another body that is created but the power of life itself, channelling the seed in the fruit, through the moment of its realization in air, into the plant and then the grain and its latent power for recreation. The ancient Eleusinian Mysteries were built around this feminine force. After 2000 years of practice, they created the sense of a spoken voice, or individual, spoken out of a common body that we know as human life today. The usurpation of this power by the rationality that eventually sprang from it is documented by the philosopher Plato in his parable of the cave in his The Republic. Alone among the ancients, he betrayed in it the oath of secrecy that allowed individuality to remain an expression of community rather than individual power. A surviving male adaptation of this power is the voice of a parson, the person who represents, by speaking, the body of the church, or of a community of persons that he speaks through and for.

Rockland Spring

Not New Life from Old but new life from potential, new potential from life, or life from life, in the sense that life is not a physical thing, but a physical speaking forth and the power of person. 2,000 years after the end of the Eleusinian Mysteries, we all remain celebrants.