#greek mythology theories

[superscrub323]

Another thought occurs to me, there aren't a lot of Ares going on trips to smite random mortals who insulted him (and on the rare occasion there are, it's because they involve his children getting killed and even then when Zeus, Athena, or Aphrodite are involved he fails and has to resort to turning them into birds to give them peace while punishing them for their 'hubris') which means either one of two things. Either Mythic and Ancient Greece feared Ares so much that the idea of showing the tiniest iota of hubris and/or disrespect towards him and his domain was considered thoughtlessly suicidal. Or Ares doesn't really have a divine ego to bruise and is content to let insults of mortals slide because he gets enough of slaughtering mortals in his day job he'd rather be nailing baddies and raising the Nightmare Twins and Erotes to be respectable gods.

[sanska]

Ariadne explaining how to navigate the labyrinth (and after) to Theseus. It’s important, she’s committing treason for you Theseus, don’t look at her like that.

[mer-acle]

Mortals! (And gods)

So we all know how Athena pulled Aphrodite into Quick Thought in God Games, right?

But she probably only pulled her, not everyone. And then Ares used his own Quick Thought to intercept.

DOES THIS MEAN NOBODY SAW IT?

Like one second Aphrodite says "Let him rot", then the scene glitches and suddenly Ares is lying on the floor in the middle of the arena with Athena's spear at his throat and they both say "Release him"

DID OLYMPUS MISS GOD GAMES LEVEL 3 AND 4? cos it took place in like a single second?

[nataliescatorccioapologist]

The “Pomegranate Theory” in Yellowjackets

Background

The Pomegranate Theory is a fan theory in Yellowjackets inspired by the Greek myth of Persephone and Hades. The story follows Persephone, the daughter of Demeter (the goddess of agriculture), after she is captured by Hades and taken to the Underworld, where she is held against her will. Demeter is devastated by the loss of her daughter, and in her grief she neglects her duties as the agricultural goddess, causing all of the crops to wither and a massive famine to spread across the earth.

In the Underworld, if one consumes any food, they will be stuck there forever. Persephone, knowing this, initially declines all of Hades’ offers of food and drinks, no matter how desperately he attempts to get her to consume them. Eventually, Zeus demands Hades to return Persephone to her mother, but before Persephone leaves the Underworld, Hades tricks her into eating 6 pomegranate seeds. Since Persephone consumed food in the Underworld, she is bound to Hades forever. A compromise is reached that, since Persephone ate 6 seeds, she will have to spend 6 months out of every year in the Underworld, while the other 6 months can be spent on earth.

During this 6 month period each year in which Persephone returns to the Underworld, the earth once again becomes cold and barren of crops and greenery due to Demeter’s sorrow; and in the 6 months that Persephone lives on earth, the weather becomes warmer and the plants thrive. These changes become the 4 seasons. Spring and Summer occur while Persephone is on earth, and Fall and Winter occur while she is trapped in the Underworld.

Yellowjackets’ Connection to Greek Myth

Yellowjackets has been known to reference Greek imagery, particularly in one of the show’s most prominent scenes. While the group is eating Jackie in Season 2, we get dissociative flashes of a lavish feast that looks like this:

In these shots, the group is dressed in Grecian tunics, gathered around a table, consuming fruit and wine in a frenzied, euphoric manner reminiscent of the Greco-Roman Bacchanalia. These ancient Greco-Roman festivals, held in honor of Dionysus (or Bacchus), were originally exclusive to women and became infamous for their wild revelry, rumored to descend into violence and occult rituals. The parallels between the Bacchanalia and the group’s descent into savage feasting in this scene are clear and deliberate. This connection has led fans to speculate that Yellowjackets may draw from Greek mythology in more ways than just this moment.

Fans have speculated that Yellowjackets may incorporate elements of the Persephone myth, particularly the symbolism of the pomegranate seeds. In Greek mythology, consuming food in the Underworld binds a soul to it, and in the show, many characters experience death visions or dreams where they are offered food. According to this theory, the forest represents the barren earth, the dream space the characters enter when on the brink of death symbolizes the Underworld, and the Wilderness entity coaxes them into consuming food represents Hades. If a character eats in this realm, they risk being bound to this mystical afterlife, leading to their death in the real world.

Let’s explore the show’s examples of this:

Jackie’s Hot Chocolate

The first time we see this realm between life and death is when Jackie is dying from hypothermia. After she falls asleep outside, she awakens in a dreamlike space in which Shauna leads her back into the cabin. Here, Jackie is offered a cup of hot chocolate from Lottie which she eagerly accepts and drinks from. This shot of Jackie holding the mug of hot chocolate is the last time we ever see her alive, as she is found dead outside in the snow the next morning.

According to the Pomegranate Theory, Jackie unwittingly traps herself in the ‘Wilderness death realm’ (the Yellowjackets equivalent of the Underworld) by consuming the hot chocolate. The moment she takes a drink, she dies on earth and binds herself to the Wilderness forever. The Cabin Guy also appears in Jackie’s death dream, which could imply that he previously consumed something while in this realm and is now trapped there forever as a result.

It could be nothing, but I think it is also important to note that Jackie’s death marks the first snowfall of Winter, similar to how Winter only occurs when Persephone is trapped in the Underworld.

Lottie’s Food Court Dream

We see this Wilderness death realm (for lack of a better word, very open to suggestions) again when Lottie collapses outside in the snow during her hunting battle with Nat. As she loses consciousness, she finds herself in a shopping mall, where her teammates are gathered around a table in the food court, happily eating. Lottie is offered a box of noodles and begins to scoop up a bite—only to be stopped at the last moment by Laura Lee.

Laura Lee disrupts the illusion, warning Lottie that if she doesn’t leave this dream space, she will die. She physically pushes Lottie, jolting her back to reality, where she reawakens in the snow, still alive.

Lottie’s survival hinges on the fact that she does not eat in this scene. The fact that Laura Lee is the one to intervene suggests she understands the consequences—implying that consuming food in this space would have sealed Lottie’s fate. Because she resists, Lottie is able to return to the living world rather than becoming trapped in the Wilderness’s eerie death realm.

Mari and Jackie Parallels

In 3x02, when Coach Ben holds Mari hostage in the caves, he gives her a mug of hot chocolate from the emergency food kit he found. Notably, the lines spoken as Mari drinks from the cup are identical to those in Jackie’s death dream. I feel like it is no coincidence that, of all the things Coach could have given Mari in this scene, she is given the same drink that Jackie consumes in her death vision. And, just like Jackie, Mari takes a drink (quite a few drinks actually).

Additionally, it appears that this might actually be the same mug that Jackie drank from. The setting of the underground caves might also serve as a representation of the Underworld from the Greek myth, as these caves exist beneath the surface level. So, if you believe the in the Pomegranate Theory, things unfortunately aren’t looking too good for Mari. Even though Mari’s scene does not take place within a dream sequence like the others, the parallels between this scene and Jackie’s death along with the potential foreshadowing of Mari falling into a pit in the ground not long before this might be hinting at Mari’s eventual demise.

Akilah’s Berries

The most recent example of a character eating food within a near-death dream space is Akilah at the end of 3x03. After presumably inhaling too much carbon monoxide in the caves and passing out, Akilah finds herself in the forest surrounded by berry bushes. She begins to rapidly consume them all before encountering a talking llama that reminds her “everything with teeth bites.”

Akilah’s consumption of the berries while in a dream state, along with the llama’s warning (crazy sentence) might be foreshadowing to Akilah’s death in the future.

—

You can choose to take this whole theory with a grain of salt, but I personally find it so fascinating and plausible (even if it’s just the show-runners creatively referencing this myth rather than it actually being canon). I feel like this theory will be even more solidified if Mari and Akilah die this season, so time will tell.

In conclusion, if you see one of your favorite characters eating something while in a dream, prepare to mourn.

[lenorayoder]

here's hoping that helly r has been euridice all along and gemma is persephone. like i need gemma to be able to leave. and honestly at this point gemma's chances look better than helly's. i think ms. casey and all the other severed gemma personalities would happily die for gemma to live. but helena's not going down without a fight and mark is too busy looking back at gemma to help.

[tripleburger]

Three of my favorite things are when a show’s opening sequence tells the audience outright what’s going to happen, when sweeping thematic parallels exist between characters, and when mythological and etymological references abound. Many spoilers up to S2E6 and crack theories below because Severance does it all best.

Like many Severance theorists, I believe Gemma is in a coma or is otherwise completely brain dead. She is the Eurydice to Mark’s Orpheus. Mark is special because Gemma is special because her body and brain were well preserved. Unlike Lumon claimed, the title sequence implies that in the accident her car sunk into frozen water, a cold harbor. Because of this, her file is called Cold Harbor and she has more time than most before her body, brain, and file expire. Lumon staged her totaled car beneath the tree, burning it to hide the evidence and the removal of her actual body. Her husband, who loved her so much he choked on her ghost, consented to or was coerced by the company into splitting his own consciousness to escape her memory. Then his Innie somehow managed to make enough progress on her file to have her semi-dead body and partially reconstructed brain actively work on the Severed Floor as an almost normal wellness counselor. The opening sequence shows a car sinking under the ice of a frozen lake, and I believe it’s Gemma’s, not Cobel’s. Mark’s new focus on taking down Lumon will distract him from finishing her file, Cold Harbor, and it will expire. She will expire. Eurydice won’t walk out of the underworld because Orpheus looked back.

Then there’s Helly, the second drowning woman, a more tangible and present Eurydice who may still be lost in the end, a parallel to Gemma. The season 2 title sequence shows Helly R and Ms. Casey beneath Mark and under the water, running away from him in opposite directions. He can only follow one at a time. Helly is depicted under water in the pineapple bobbing sequence of the Lumon propaganda video and again when Irving waterboards Helena/Helly during the ORTBO. In one title sequence basement elevator shot, Gemma literally becomes Helly, all blurred into one person from Mark’s partially reintegrated perspective, just like how he sees Gemma’s face when he has sex with Helly and Helena. Their fates are tied.

The S2 opening sequence is full of babies and Helly/Helena is certainly pregnant. The last baby in the opening sequence has a Kier head, another Eagan for the family dynasty, courtesy of Mark. In the opening, Mark’s own reintegrated head morphs into a portrait of the Malice Ram typically associated with Helly, symbolizing their union in the form of a baby, and Mark watches the painting being carried away. Then the camera pans over to Gemma’s car half-sunk in the water. He can follow the Malice goat (Helly and their child) or follow his Bride of Woe (Gemma) into the lake. He can’t do both.

In S2E5 there is a faceless character (Petey? Fields?), apparently a Lumon doctor, who travels to the sub basement while whistling Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a song about a real shipwreck with no survivors and how Lake Superior never gives up her dead. The Lumon painting “Kier Invites You to Drink of His Water” depicts Eagan looking out over what appears to be the Great Lakes as if he owns them. Superior—Kier—will never give up his dead. Gemma will sink under the cold water, too deep to retrieve.

But aspects of Gemma may live on. Ms. Huang, the only child in the show with a major role, is not depicted directly in the opening sequence. Other than Cobel, no Lumon employee is (unless you count Helly/Helena as one person, which should be illegal). I think Ms. Huang is likely not Mark and Gemma’s lost child, as some theories speculate. She may be a clone of Gemma, given the apparent goat cloning happening in Mammalians Nurturable, though that’s a stretch with the timeline and her age. This would be more likely if Gemma had been working for Lumon for years prior, much like Burt seems to have been involved with Lumon as early as 20 years ago despite the Severance procedure only being 12 years old. I don’t have a grand, unifying theory of Ms. Huang except to say that her surname translates from Chinese to mean yellow, gold, bright, shining, or phoenix, which is interesting when tied to Gemma. Lumon doctors could potentially take Gemma’s finished Cold Harbor file, which is stored on her Severance chip, and implant it in Ms. Huang’s brain, a true resurrection of both body and mind, exactly what Lumon needs to restore its founder, Kier Eagan.

Another interesting breadcrumb is Ms. Huang’s handheld water toy of Kier swimming with rings. It has green rings (Woe, the Bride), blue rings (Malice, the Ram), and red rings (Dread, the Crone), but no yellow rings (Frolic, the Jester). Milchick tells Ms. Huang, “You must eradicate from your essence childish folly” before truncating this statement to simply “Grow” while punishing himself for failure following his performance review. If the Gemma clone theory is true, Lumon may want Ms. Huang to mature faster (removing folly and frolic) to ensure Gemma’s adult consciousness can successfully integrate with Ms. Huang’s preteen brain. Gemma is the closest they’ve ever come to fulfilling Kier’s wishes. The phoenix has to rise again.

Now for Devon, absolute queen that she is. Mark outright calls her “Persephone” when she asks him to name her. She’s the Queen of the Underworld, the wife of Hades (Ricken, who I hope isn’t actually evil), splitting her time between the living surface and the dead world below. Devon’s a mother, she’s associated with life giving and pregnancy and caring for her little brother at the lowest point in his life. In the myth, Persephone is so moved by Orpheus’ music and plight that she convinces Hades to give him a chance to save Eurydice, as long as Orpheus doesn’t look back. I think she’ll convince Ricken to use their new “in” with Natalie, the Board, and Lumon to help Mark, however tragically it ends.

Last but never least, Harmony Cobel. The blank, glowing face staring down at a book of the grassy goat field, watching Mark and Helly heads roll around the pasture. Innie Mark carries Outie Mark into this field, illuminated by Cobel. She’s not done watching them and, quite literally, has Mark on the brain. The sequence then follows the Mark in her head to the basement elevator. I believe that Cobel is Apollo, god of light, prophecy, and music (she sings!), in the Orpheus and Eurydice analogy, a parent of Orpheus himself. This is not to say that Cobel is literally Mark and Devon’s mother, though I’d love to see that madness, but that she views Mark as her son, often mentioning her own mother when they chat. She wants Mark to thrive like Apollo wants Orpheus to thrive. Extending this comparison to the Greek gods of the Orpheus myth, you have Milchick as Hermes, the messenger god so fond of his big words, the god who travels the world (on his motorcycle), and leads souls to the Underworld. Hermes takes Eurydice back to hell when Orpheus turns around to see her one last time.

[hecates-corner]

When I first heard There Are Other Ways, I was a little disappointed by the fact that Circe didn’t successfully seduce Odysseus, considering the huge Greek Mythology nerd I am.

Bear with me.

Then, I played the saga, and that song, for my wonderful mother tonight. About halfway through, I gasped.

The story is accurate to the Homeric version: he confronts her (clandestinely at first), she fights back, he pulls the sword.

But she’s not afraid. Of course she isn’t.

Why would an immortal being, with the rage and power of commanding a million different beasts if her Plan A goes down, be afraid of a measly man with a flimsy toothpick to her throat, just because he ate a flower and said “Be afraid!”?

That’s right! She wouldn’t.

Because Jay didn’t submit to the blatant misogyny of the tale.

Read this article for incredible information, if you please. It changed the way I saw Circe’s story.

If Circe cowered, simply because a man held a sword to her throat, only then would she have seduced him (if we’re going ultra-canon with the storyline, which Jay isn’t), which would have, yet again, thrown off the balance of power.

Circe could give less of a shit about the sword, in the song. She thinks he’s pretty hot, and maybe she’s manipulating him into coming to bed with her so she can trick him, so she offers a tryst or two. Here, if you read the article, she is throwing off the nature of men and women by being the active sexual partner.

He refuses, too enamored with Penelope, and shuns his curiosity in her. You can hear how it pains him, it’s a struggle to say no. But he does. He’s strong, he’s no god, cheating on his wife for the sake of sex appeal. He’s just a man.

He begs. That’s the thing that got me. Not her, him.

“So I beg you, Circe, grant us mercy, and let us puppets leave~”

Then, Circe offers to help him — not because she’s restoring the nature of being submissive — but because she has empathy and compassion for the man. She helps him because he’s proved himself, to be weary, and faithful, and human. She knows the feeling of love.

So, yes. So many layers. Like an onion, worthy of making you cry.

1. Jay is spitting in the face of misogyny and gender roles, and having her help him because she empathizes. Because she’s in power.

2. It’s sort of a jab, if interpreted a certain way, at sexual assault. He says no, and he holds true to it. Even though everything is telling him to give in, to let it happen, he refuses, and remains as sure as he can be.

3. It shows how very human Odysseus is. Athena forgot it, and somehow held him to it. Even the men forget it. But he never does. There is only so much he can do.

This is my favorite saga so far.

[gotstabbedbyapen]

Apollo: *turns into a swan and lets Hyacinthus ride him across the land*

Zeus: *turns into an eagle and snatches Ganymede to the sky out of nowhere*

[anniflamma]

My next animatic will probably be Ruthlessness. So I have been sketching out some ideas, I guess, for Poseidon, and I ended up making him a horse. So I like to depict the gods as animals or change sizes when they are expressing big emotions. And Poseidon has this calm anger throughout all of his songs, but his anger is simmering beneath. So my first ideas, I started out having him as a dark horse chasing Odysseus' boat. And when he becomes angry, he becomes more horrifying. But then I realized that meant that I had to draw a freaking horse throughout the whole animatic, and I didn't want that, so I gave him a human form....

His human form isn't really 100% decided yet. I don't really know if he fit of the delivery the song.

If I remember right, in the snippet of Get In The Water, Jay said that there will be a "twist" in the song. Probably Athena will appear or something. I don't know what it can be. But I do have some theories.

I have a headcanon about Poseidon in the musical. I see him more like a personification of vengeance itself. It's based on the parallelism between Odysseus, Poseidon, and even Hector.

Hector was the man who died and couldn't protect his son from the perpetrator. Poseidon is the man whose son became mutilated and is trying to take revenge on his perpetrator. Odysseus is the man who does everything he can to make sure he won't end up in the same spot like Hector/Poseidon.

So this design of Poseidon is more based on what if Poseidon was the representation of Hector's ghost trying to take revenge for the murder of his son.

It's a stretch, but I kind of like it!

[anthurak]

So... Volume 1 showed Pyrrha as being pretty passionate about Faunus rights (almost on the same level as Blake, who is a Faunus herself AND a former member of the White Fang), while Volume 3 revealed that her favorite Fairy Tale is "The Shallow Sea". Fairy Tales of Remnant (the book) would later reveal that Fairy Tale to be a Faunus Creation Myth.

Which like, has me wondering...

Do you think it's possible Pyrrha's dad is a Faunus?

World of Remnant did imply it would be a coinflip on whether the child of a human and a Faunus would end up as one or the other, after all.

Yeah, that could definitely be the case.

In fact, now that I think about it, Pyrrha's dad being a Faunus even plays well into her mythology allusion.

After all, Achilles is actually a demigod via his sea-goddess mother Thetis. So in keeping with the Team JNPR genderbending, it would make total sense for Pyrrha to have a non-human father.

Or maybe there isn't a genderbending and Pyrrha actually has two moms whichjustfurtherprovidesmoresetupforRosebirdParents- okay I'll just stop talking now :D

[yourlokalescholar]

Haven’t seen anyone talk about how the bulk of The Odyssey’s plot is told BY ODYSSEUS. Y’know, Odysseus the liar? Odysseus whose sob story leads Alcinous and his guests to gift him a ridiculous amount of valuable treasures? Odysseus who makes up a completely new elaborate backstory every time someone questions him whilst in his beggar disguise?

What I’m saying is that, yes, he might’ve been spewing complete shit, but that’s boring. A more interesting take is that he could’ve twisted the story to make himself look better

His crew disobeying him and staying at Ismarus for a night, allowing the Cicons to call for help? Maybe Odysseus didn’t really foresee that battle, and in reality was just as careless as the rest

Maybe the six men who were eaten by Polyphemus died not because Odysseus’s plan meant that they were stuck in his cave for a day, but because he was too hesitant or afraid to take action?

Maybe Scylla didn’t take six of his crew because they were too slow to come to a decision when they saw Charybdis. Maybe Odysseus chose to sail past Scylla’s rock, knowing they would die

I dunno, probably someone has brought this up before, but I haven’t seen anyone point it out

[superscrub323]

A Personal Head canon

tl;dr: Ares doesn't care for doing divine punishment because it's boring so he cultivates the reputation of being a violent psycho that puts fear into everyone so he doesn't have to go smiting.

Alright, most people are aware of Ares' reputation for being a ruthless, bloodthirsty, violent warmonger in Greek Mythology (or diet Khorne if you play WH40K). He literally has Strife, Fear, Dread, and Bloodshed follow him where ever he goes and he Loves them all more than most of the Gods on Mount Olympus (Aphrodite, Hestia, Dionysus, and depending on the mood Artemis excluded) But another thing about Ares is that he has almost no myths of showing his divine wrath off the battlefield unless they involve his children getting hurt, which in that case you better have Athena and/or Zeus on your side or your ass is grass. Which is kind of weird when reading about how...petty Gods can be over slights. So a Head canon I propose is...Ares doesn't care about enforcing the divine order of punishing hubris because to him there's no honor in killing mortals off the battlefield and it distracts him from training with his sons and the Amazons but he can't exactly let hubris go unpunished or else risks making Olympus look weak. So...he instead cultivates a reputation that is so scary, so horrifying, so dreadful that he makes it so that even the idea of showing the tiniest iota of hubris towards him is something that is considered hopelessly dumb. Which considering that his sons are the personifications of Fear and Dread probably makes that job infinitely easier for him making it so he doesn't have to waste time smiting people.

[firinnie]

Let's torture Metis again, shall we?

One version of how she was eaten by Zeus is that she was transformed into water at that moment, and I've always wondered how the smartest person in his life could be so easily fooled by, you know… him. So here's my idea.

What if she could transform and merge with water at will, travel as a stream, admire the sea as part of it, play with others as a wave, etc. And what if she had a habit of transforming into a droplet that Zeus would put on the shoulder strap of his robe and travel with her incognito over the years they knew each other, so she had no objection to becoming tiny water drop again and falling into his hand, but this time Metis realized too late that she was trapped.

It wasn't the trickery that lost her, it was pure trust in one she loved. Live with it.

[minimafioso]

Dazai's Star Gazing Card in Mayoi

🧵I love astrology stuff so seeing Dazai's Star Gazing card is interesting! He's the only one talking about stars as directional guides, stories & anecdotes

Btw he's a Gemini!

"It's said that's a constellation of twin brothers" Now I'm imaging Teen Twin Dark Star Gazing

I fell down the rabbit hole and learned quite a bit about the Greek Lore of the Star, Castor and Pollux, the twins (of dif fathers… blame Zeus)

A major theme of this star is the power of brotherly love, duality of life, of mortality and immortality forever intertwined.

Anyway, TL;DR I made Dazai's Star Gazing Card about SKK because I will literally wither and die if I dont make everything about them

[boymanmaletheshequel]

One facet of Hellenistic and Roman, /Greco Roman paganism that I’ve always found extremely interesting to me, is how inherently human and relatable it’s gods, and their correlating counterparts are, especially when compared to deities in other ancient religions. They are divine, of course, this is made clear enough, but they all have aspects and traits to them that are inherently human. Rage, lust, joy, love, conflict. They represent, if nothing else, key elements of humanity and the human condition, which is something that no other ancient religion I’ve studied quite compares to in the same way. And not only that, but their relationship to people and humans as gods is clearly very symbiotic. They rely on their subjects for their fulfillment, interact with them directly on a regular basis, and often times even respect and revere them as not necessarily always equals, but as at the very least, creatures worthy of their consideration and respect, sometimes even falling in love with, and baring children with them. This is something that doesn’t really happen in any other ancient religion I’ve seen, sure, there are aspects of it in them, but not nearly are they portrayed as objectively or centrally as they are in Hellenism and Roman paganism. Each god represents some aspect of humanity in ways that are inherently non-Devine, Aphrodite is a lover, sometimes desperate to a vulnerable degree you wouldn’t expect a god to be. Dionysus is regularly consumed by madness as a result of his addiction and mental illness, and falls into spirals of depravity that are hauntingly ungodly. Artemis hunts even though she doesn’t need to, she respects her body as a goddess woman just as much as any human woman would, and fights back just as violently as well. Apollo finds much of his joy and happiness through the humans he falls in love with, and faces much of his suffering and sadness through them as well. Persephone fucking dies. maybe not literally in the sense of human, medical death, but absolutely metaphorically, and the grief her mother Demeter experiences is so inherently human, and so shockingly, gut wrenchingly tragic, that it is pretty obvious that this is what her story is meant to represent: a divine allegory for death and grief, an element that so many religions completely separate from their deities. Even Zeus, the primary deity, is a father figure who’s connection and relativity to fatherhood as seen in human men is almost identical. and if it weren’t for the pre-established lore and status of him as a an extremely powerful deity, there are moments in his Mythos where you might even forget that he’s a god, an all powerful, all divine, objectively non human god to begin with. I think it’s what makes Hellenism so emotional and so drawing to me, and to many other pagans, it’s a relationship that is mutual, and relatable, which is an element that is lacking in so many religions, even the major ones like Christianity and Islam. Yes, there are still elements of this in those religions, but it always feels like the stories constantly hammer in the fact that they are divine, so divine, so utterly unrelatable, so inherently disconnected from their subjects and their plights as a superior enitity, that there’s a limit to how connected one can feel to them. In hellenismos, this limit doesn’t seem to exist, and that’s something that makes it so much more personal and fascinating to me than any other religion I’ve studied. The gods are us, and we are the gods. At the end of the day, I think that’s what all religions should be about, and ultimately, are about, wether we realize it or not.

[whoops-im-obsessed]

Ok but are we all ignoring the fact that in Greek mythology Kaos/Khaos/Chaos was the first primeval entity? Kaos 'birthed' the primordial Gods including Gaia (Earth) who birthed the Titans, who birthed the Olympians. The show uses pretty plain English most of the time but in the prophecy it isn't chaos reigns, its Kaos. Kaos isn't technically a God, she's a sort of entity or sometimes even a place which is personified but in the canon of the show where everyone is pretty humanoid, could Kaos be a future character? Is Zeus really afraid of the humans uprising or is he afraid of great grandma coming to beat him up? Or is the general state of Kaos that the world started in going to be what returns when Olympus falls? Is the prophecy predicting the end of the world?