Asphodel

In Homer, the Asphodel Meadows, which are located in the kingdom of the god Hades, are described as follows: “Past the streams of Oceanus they went, past the rock Leucas, past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, and quickly came to the mead of asphodel, where the spirits dwell, phantoms of men who have done with toils.” (Odyssey, Book 24)

Asphodels, whose flowers are mostly white, we believed to be perennial plants.

The realm of Hades being that of the unconscious in the sense of Sri Aurobindo, linked to the body and matter, the spirits who stay in the mead of asphodel symbolise the experiences, progress and realisations achieved and completed that are kept by this material unconscious. They can therefore be preserved from life to life, hence the immortal character of flowers.

This corporeal unconscious cannot be discovered until the seeker has reached the heights of the overmind.

The realm of Hades is the place where spirit and matter are united, this god being the force that works for this union. In this task, he receives the help of his wife, Persephone, who establishes the link between the unconscious and the conscious since she spends part of the time with her husband Hades in the underworld, and the other part on the surface of the earth.

She is the daughter of Demeter, ’the mother of union'.

Sri Aurobindo mentions asphodel in the canto titled The Paradise of the Life-Gods, where the powers of the light of Truth, the sun-herds, bloom.