The Company: What Does Nekyia Mean?
Thousands of years ago, on the shores of the Mediterranean, Homer chronicled the tale of Persephone’s abduction by Hades, Lord of the Underworld. The innocent daughter of Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest, Persephone was out picking flowers when she caught the eye of Hades, who rose from the earth in his chariot and abducted her.
For six months Hades kept Persephone prisoner while she resisted his entreaties and gifts, promising her all the riches of his kingdom if only she would be his queen. On earth the fields lay barren as Demeter protested the captivity of her daughter.
Hades persisted until, one day as Persephone sat on her throne by his side, she was tempted by a round, red pomegranate that lay on a tray of fruit. Unable to resist, Persephone bit into the pomegranate, thereby embracing the underworld. From then on, Persephone was fated to spend half her time with her mother, half her time in the House of Hades with her new husband.
This tale is one of the best known of countless tales of death and rebirth that appear throughout mythology and psychology. It is the archetypical dark journey of the soul in which we confront, and finally embrace our deepest, darkest selves and become reborn as a balance of dark and light. This tale is so powerful that it formed the impetus for the Mysteries of Eleusis, one of the largest and most enduring of the ancient mystery cults.
It was also at about this time and place in history that the nekyia (pronounced nek-eye-ya) emerged, a ritual journey into darkness, in search of light. Persephone’s story is one of countless appearances of the nekyia all over the world. Chapter Eleven of Homer’s Odyssey, titled The Nekyia, tells of Odysseus’ conversations with the shades of Hades, who he calls up from the underworld to ask the way home. In the mid 1900s the nekyia was reinterpreted by Ezra Pound, who used this chapter of the Odyssey as the central theme for his well-known Cantos.
Our contemporary understanding of the nekyia comes primarily from Jungian psychology. Jung described the nekyia as the dark journey of the soul by which one descends into one’s own inner underworld, confronting one’s darkest fears. In doing so, the dark and light are joined and the journeyer emerges whole and healed from the cave of initiation. It is the ancient shamanic tradition of birth, death, and rebirth, and can be couched in either spiritual or psychological terminology with similar results.
It is this journey that inspires The Nekyia’s dance and music.
Always you will find that within you the shadow and the light go together... It is up to you to know how to utilize the one to realize the other.
-Sri Aurobindo