meta: The Soul Is Made of Stories - The Rings of Akhaten...

[lonewytch]

...in which Who is totally aware of itself as myth, the World Tree is in play, the Leaf is life and death and life again, Clara eats the fruit of the Otherworld and is a contradiction, and the Doctor is a Sun God.

Comments

[janie_aire]

Yay! *happy dance*

Have you been peeking at my Christmas list?

Love the bit about eating the fruit of the Otherworld. I knew there was something there, I just couldn't put my finger on it. Blue, glowing fruit!

This ties the Persephone myth into the Doctor bringing Clara back home at the end. Persephone eats the fruit of the Underworld, but it doesn't permanently consign her there -- instead, she travels back and forth between the worlds, working with Life above and the Dead below.

[lonewytch]

Hades, Persephone's husband was in the Underworld. the Doctor has often been presented as Hades in Moffat era Who....yeah, Hades tricks Persephone into eating a pomegranite which binds her to the Underworld for part of the year- she always has to return there. Like the Doctor pushing companions to their limits and changing them forever.

[lonewytch]

Oh yeah, i love you point out that it links with the whole idea of her being kept in prison for him. Like sea_thoughts says below, there's different versions of the myth from Hades abducting her, to Persephone deciding to stay out of love. That kind of reflects on how we read the show, i guess - i mean, i've heard people say that the Doctor was unreasonable in what he expected from River, that in some ways she was tricked, trapped as much as the Silence trapped her. But for me, it's fully her choice to do this and she does it out of love. Interesting about the Doctor playing Demeter as well...though in older versions of the myth Hecate journeys to the Underworld to find Persephone - River has played Hecate in the past.

[sea_thoughts]

Depends on which version of the myth you read. The part about the fruit literally translates as "he slipped it round her". Persephone is a goddess, she can't starve to death, she doesn't have to eat. But she doesn't want her mother upset, either, as Demeter's mourning is ruining the world above. So she eats six seeds of the pomegranate, so she can return and keep her mother happy, but she isn't confined to either world. :)

[lonewytch]

I like the reading of Persephone as the one who has the choice in the myth, that she chooses to return to both worlds out of love for her mother and for Hades. River reflects that so much - she's a threshold walker in a lot of ways I think, wlaking in the Docotr's world and her own world - which we can see through the fact her character recurs so much while having her own life and agency.

[lonewytch]

And...considering where one ends up after eating the fruit, and considering the monomyth, very interesting that the next ep is on a submarine - so similar to the belly of a whale.

I expect we're going to see some heavy underworld/subconscious/shadow self stuff in this next ep .

[janie_aire]

No creature may attain a higher state of nature without ceasing to exist.