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sethnakht:

This isn’t very deep, but I like that Hades and Persephone match

Before he dies, Hades is shown wearing a hand-jewel that contains six dark spots around a red, circular gem reminiscent of pomegranate. Six months with Persephone – or without her – in hell, one might be forgiven for thinking.

The creature who inherits his hand and gem and is transformed by Woden retains a version of this structure – six golden dots orbiting a center sun, almost:

THE WICKED + THE DIVINE: 1831, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Stephanie Hans

As for Persephone, her constellation is first seen next to Ananke’s twelve-star snake as a twelve-star hexagram:

THE WICKED AND THE DIVINE #20, written by Kieron Gillen, art by Jamie McKelvie, colors by Matt Wilson

Across the ages, Persephone appears with the six-pointed star in her jewelry or clothing, as though in reference to the six seeds eaten by her mythical counterpart in the underworld in the context of her twelve-month cycle. (When she first becomes Persephone, she wears a necklace with six pinkish beads around the main strand much like six seeds.) As worn by Persephone, however, the hexagon center tends to be replaced with a circle, thus turning the hexagram into a kind of six-petalled flower or stem. Laura wears it blue or pink; her predecessors favor pink (below only a small sample):

(So curious about the 1640s pantheon. Blake cites it alongside the 1920s pantheon as an example of the kind of pantheon he likes, but that may just point to his Asian fetish. The star on the naginata is a nice detail in any case.)

What does it mean? No idea. In-universe, Ananke’s sister is certainly seen tossing six pomegranate seeds into her mouth as she tells her grandson that she will tell Ananke “a simple lie”:

But her hope is that one of the children will figure out how to end the story – how to stop telling it. And what is the Hades and Persephone myth if not story – a story Laura has already given up?

We also don’t know what Ananke ended up doing with the creature made of Hades’ hand …

Something also to consider is that Amaterasu wears a jewel similar to Hades in the very first issue of the series, only that there are eight dots around the eight rays of her sun-symbol:

This panel reappears in Woden’s remix issue with his rather ominous caption, “I can have anything”, giving the scene potential additional weight (how does Woden have access to Laura’s perspective on Amaterasu, btw? Or is this not Laura’s perspective? Or does that not matter in a remix?)

Moreover, Amaterasu has a necklace with a red jewel at the center that Woden has been using for scrying. It’s distinct from the ring he gave her explicitly, the ring she shows Brunhilde, the ring she wears at Lucifer’s trial. If Woden didn’t give her the necklace as well, how did he get his hands on it? Or is the implication that he made it just like he made Baal’s necklace?

In any case, it’s notable that the necklace has a six-or twelve-ray (as opposed to eight-ray) pattern, much like what Persephone wears on different necklaces, rings, and shirt decorations:

But Amaterasu’s necklace was last seen when she wore it to confront Sakhmet (to distract with the red dot, in a sense), and we know how that ended

Anyway, this is likely rather redundant, but I love the mystery