Among ancient archetypes (see, for example Red Pine's introduction to the Tao Te Ching, 1996), the phases of the moon often represent a spiritual journey, nurtured first in the darkness/womb of the new moon and evolving into light and immortality (full moon). The well-known Taoist symbol represents these two phases
in cyclical rotation.  

Goddess of Boundary Lines
"Hecate is [the moon] goddess of boundaries. She stands guard not only at crossroads and doorways, but also at the dividing line between life and death. She is the mistress of souls, whom she guides in both directions across the line. It is in this function that the Homeric Hymn to Demeter mentions her: she is witness to the descent of Persephone [L-54-58], the daughter of Demeter, in Hades, and her return to the living daylight [L-438-440]. Since she holds power over souls and daemons, she is a patron deity of magicians (Johnston 1990 21-18, 143-148)."

from "Proclus' Hymns: Essays, Translations, Commentary," p.258, by Rudolphus Maria Berg / R. M. Van Den Berg (2001)
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Seeing Persephone
"When the Hekate of our Hymn reports to Demeter and Demeter to Helios what they know of the abduction of Persephone, they both tell of receiving information by ear but having failed to see what happened. Later, when Demeter proffers her demand that Persephone be returned to the surface of the earth, she swears to withhold the fruits of the earth until she has seen her daughter with her own eyes. [...] Visual clarity is an ideal and influences the way many [ancient] Greeks think about reality. [...] For Plato, what is real in an object is its eidos, translated sometimes as form and sometimes as idea, but essentially it is the surface of an object, whose visual form can then be grasped as an idea, a concept. [...] The culminating rite of the Eleusinian Mysteries is called the Epopteria which means the things that have been seen. [...] What Demeter demands of the gods will be fulfilled in the presence of the participants of her rite — her daughter must be seen as she emerges from the darkness of the underworld." [L-409]

from "Persephone Unveiled: Seeing the Goddess and Freeing Your Soul," p. 30, by Charles Stein (2006)
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^{Peano Curve as Meander
Like Necker's Cube, an optical illusion in this image creates a shift between background and foreground as the eye moves from top to bottom. If the "background" evokes the past and the "foreground" the present or future, there is additionally an ambiguity, or fluidity in time. Likewise ancient myths take the reader back in time in order to illumine questions in the present.}
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Edith Wharton & Hecate's "News"
"[In Edith Wharton's 'Pomegranate Seed' (1912)] Wharton's concern with language is explicit from the start. Demeter wonders 'what word' [L-053] Hecate can bring her of Persephone, and Hecate answers, 'Word have I.' Demeter exclaims, 'I need / Thy word as parched valleys need my rain!' Hecate has solid information, emotionally nurturing to Demeter, and Hecate's 'word' is figured as material nourishment; the verbal act of one goddess happily parallels the physical act of the other."

from "Persephone rises, 1860-1927: Mythography, Gender, and the Ceation of a New Spirituality," p.78, by Margot Kathleen Louis (2009)
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Fearless Access
to the Subconscious
"People longing for an idyllic antidote [...] may sometimes forget the real miracle was not 'Greek serenity' but Greek fearlessness — the evident possibility that these immensely sophisticated people were in touch with the savage beginnings of their own civilization. Both Taylor and Shapiro made it clear that rituals necessary to purge fears of drought — the rituals, say, that provide the background to the 'Hymn to Demeter' — were still emotionally important to the people who invented democracy, built the Parthenon, and asked questions about how we know what we know. They were civilized men and women with access to the unconscious. Since they weren't afraid, they had no need to simplify things, and they made drama, not melodrama, the struggle of right against right rather than right against wrong."

from "Great Books: my adventures with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf and other indestructible writers of the western world," p. 135, by David Denby (1997)
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