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A Hero’s Perspective

This week in class we talked about heroes and a hero’s journey.  Our professor brought up a quote that we have probably heard time and time again, “History is written by the winners.” and he connected the same sentiment with mythology. I thought this was a very interesting perspective and it got me thinking about how different stories have been told. Is there a perspective we are missing in these myths? Are the monsters really just representations for the true victims in these stories? Of course, my mind first went to the hero Perseus who killed the Gorgon Medusa. Two weeks ago I wrote a post regarding her story which you can find here, in which I summarized the different perspectives regarding the myth.  If you look at Perseus, he is typically viewed as a hero. The son of Zeus, a demi-god,  grandfather of the hero Hercules. He is a man of men, something to be looked up to. But if you look at him from the perspective of Medusa, he is the monster. He tracked her down and killed her because of a curse that she could not control, that was placed upon her by the Goddess Athena. Her victims only because victims because they also tried to kill her. When you look at how Medusa was a representation for unruly women, it seems like this is a story about a man putting a woman in her place. He is no longer a hero. Perhaps there are other examples of myths in which the hero is really the villain or visa versa. 

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Tales of Monsters: Medusa

Medus herself is a relatively well-known figure in mythology, especially in the western world. She is one of the three Gorgon sisters, followed by Stheno and Euryale. As for what a Gorgon is, they are defined as fierce, frightening, or repulsive women who have the power to turn anyone who looks at them to stone. But how did Medusa end up this way? 

Originally she was a priestess in Athena’s temple, devoted to her work. All was going well until Posideon did what most male Gods do, take advantage of her. He raped her on the steps of Athena's temple and she was cursed by said Goddess to grow snakes for hair and to turn anyone who looked at her to stone. Why she did this is still up for debate. Some say that Athena was punishing Medusa for what she had done, cursing her to be alone forever. 

This perspective was popular amongst Greek men, seeing as Greek myths often featured womenly monsters in order to warn against being ensnared by beautiful women. However, there is another perspective which I personally find very interesting. Medusa’s head was actually used to mark women’s shelters in ancient Greece, which leads some to believe that perhaps Athena wasn’t punishing the fallen priestess, but instead, she was protecting her. 

The Goddess gave Medusa that power to protect herself from men so that no one would be able to disgrace her as Posideon did. I really like this version of the story and I personally believe that it better fits Athena’s character. She was the Goddess of battle strategy and wisdom, it was known that she was amongst the least vindictive Goddesses. She would know that Medusa was not at fault for what had happened. The idea that she was gifting Medusa protecting, albeit at a cost, is a much better version of this myth, I think. 

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The interesting part of gifts from the Gods

It has always been interesting to me that things such as fire, the knowledge of writing, and other aspects of survival were gifts given to us by(or stolen from) the Gods. Things like this were considered things that we humans were too weak or foolish to create or come up with on our own. It is interesting to me that humanity itself chooses to discredit its achievements by considering them as gifts from a higher power. There is a sort of humility there that is not commonly found in the human race, unfortunately. There is also something to be said for the fact that these skills may have been stolen, as though the gods did not want us to survive at all. Do humans really see themselves as so worthless? I wonder what these old peoples had in mind, really. 

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athena  /əˈθiːni/  goddess of wisdom, craft, and war. “beauty might be dangerous but intelligence is lethal.”

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Creatures in Scottish Folklore: Ghillie Dhu

In Scottish folklore the Ghillie Dhu was a solitary male fairy. He was kindly and reticent yet sometimes wild in character but had a gentle devotion to children. Dark haired and clothed in leaves and moss, he lived in a birch wood within the north-west highlands of Scotland.

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i think I dreamt you, sleepy-eyed metztli whispers, her fingers caressing the soft white ear, the twitching nose. yes, i dreamt you. when the sun and moon were equals, the world beneath knew no fear of darkness. death had no shade in which to hide. until metztli hid her brightness beneath the rabbit, struck by its body, pressing her face close enough to hide her tears.

-eliot c.

collab with @archistratego

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– Belenus; celtic god of sun.

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modern day mythology: the mermaid

A mermaid is a legendary aquatic creature with the upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide, including the Near East, Europe, Africa and Asia.

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greek mythology | gods | moros | Μόρος 

moros was the god of impending doom

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photo by @Onodrim Photographie https://www.facebook.com/onodrim.photo/

Creation Myths

In the past week, we have learned a lot about what different cultures think about how this all came to be. The Earth, the sky, the sun, the stars, us, etc. It is incredible to see the diversity that is presented in how these cultures chose to represent the human race in these creation myths. Sometimes we were happy accidents, other times we were deliberate. But no matter what, we are subservient to the Gods who created us and must follow their rule. These myths have always been fascinating to me because they really help show us the minds of the people before us. Today, we have more of an understanding of how the world came to be. To see what people could come up with without any answers, it really shows how incredibly creative humanity could be. Of course, there were many themes that repeated themselves such as the egg, the twins, the idea of something coming from nothing. But I don’t believe that these common themes take away from the diversity at all, it just depended on how they were used. 

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common misconceptions of greek or roman mythology

» Nike & Dike are two different gods. Nike is the goddess of victory & Dike is the goddess of justice

» Hades is the god of the underworld & Thanatos is the god of death

» Persephone isn’t just the queen of the underworld, she’s the goddess of spring

» There’s two goddesses named Thalia, one of the muses, and one of graces

» In Greek, a name like Hekate or Kassandra would be spelled with a K, but in other languages it can be spelled with a C

» In Roman Mythology, Apollo is still Apollo (there many be other wording to how it’s spelt, but it’s still Apollo)

» Hermes could fly without his sandals as they were simply symbols for him

» The definition of the twelve Olympians changes because multiple texts decipher other gods/goddesses as being apart of the twelve Olympians

» The titans were not ultimately bad gods, some would say they were nicer to humanity and never tried to destroy humanity (this idea was popularized by Percy Jackson), and the Olympians attacked first

» There is no “Pandora’s” box, Pandora, who is actually a perfect woman created, actually opened the box after being gifted it on her wedding day

» Not many people worshiped Ares because he was majority of the time on the losing side & he was considered too violent and difficult to have on your side 

» At first Rome’s gods had no appearance until they absorbed more Greek Mythology

» The Trojan War is still being debated as actually happening, there has been debris found that could indicate that there was a siege to the city

» Male demigods tended to have higher-than-average ambition and physical powers, while female demigods (like Helen of Troy) only were gifted with exceptional beauty

»  Death gods were pretty laid back compared to other gods & the only person/god Hades ever killed was Asclepius, but only because Asclepius was bringing the dead back to life & disrupting the cycle of life

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“The Enuma Elish (also known as The Seven Tablets of Creation) is the Mesopotamian creation myth whose title is derived from the opening lines of the piece, "When on High". All of the tablets containing the myth, found at Ashur, Kish, Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, Sultantepe, and other excavated sites, date to c. 1100 BCE but their colophons indicate that these are all copies of a much older version of the myth.“

https://www.ancient.eu/article/225/enuma-elish---the-babylonian-epic-of-creation---fu/