Paleothea: the Ancient Goddess

I honestly thought that the next entry I posted was going to say, “Sorry, I’m done with this blog. See you in a few years!” But then someone sent me an email asking me to fix my entry on Medusa to reflect that Medusa was raped by Poseidon and thus the punishment was deeply unjust.

I thought about it. The emailer was correct that the word Ovid uses to describe their sexual intercourse does not emphasize consent. But, in the end I decided not to for two reasons: 1) I’m pretty sure Ovid considered Medusa responsible for the sex, and that is not a description of rape I am comfortable with, and 2) having re-read Ovid’s version, I now think that Medusa is an awesome resister of the patriarchy!

There is a third possible reason as well, namely that earlier versions of the myth describe “laying together in a soft meadow among spring flowers” and even Ovid later describes this event as a “mingling of soft embraces.” This could easily outweigh the one word “vitiasse” (which I have arbitrarily decided to translated as “spoiled”). But the reality is, I don’t think we SHOULD write off “vitiasse.” In fact, quite the opposite! I think that Ovid is making the point that Poseidon “spoiled” Medusa for marriage. I mean, Ovid’s whole introduction to this is about what a hot potential wife Medusa was! This would have been considered illegal for both parties in ancient Rome, which helps explain why Ovid continues that Athena’s mutation of Medusa was a punishment of her “filthy crime.”

So, if you believe as Ovid appeared to that Medusa was complicit and responsible for this whole sexy-sex with Poseidon (which, for those who don’t remember the details of the story, took place in the temple of Athena), then Medusa is not the pathetic victim that a current reading of the word “rape” might suggest. Instead, she becomes this totally awesome radical damn-the-man feminist! She says, “F* you, suitors, maybe I just want to have sex with a cute guy instead of sitting inside your women’s quarters for the rest of my life!” She says, “F* you, you daddy-loving, girl-power-hating Goddess! Maybe I don’t think you or any other representation of the system should get to decide where or with whom I get it on!” And, yeah, she totally suffers the consequence of breaking the rules, and, yeah, she is totally turned into this awful threat to women of “this is what happens to women who sleep with sexy men when they should be the property of their fathers,” but DAMN if she doesn’t go down fighting. Looking at it with a BIT of a revisionist eye, she lives out the rest of her life fighting against those “heroes” of patriarchal Greece. Even sitting on Athena’s shield should remind you of the dangerous power of a woman who decides to stop accepting the sexist rules and strikes out to do what she will!

Go Medusa!

I loved Greek myths when I was little. I loved that Athena trounced Ares on the regular and that she cared about the same kind of book-learning wisdom that I, and my privileged family, loved. I loved that Hera, for all that she was kind of annoying, did not just lay down and take it when Zeus cheated. I loved the wild youth of Artemis, and that she wasn’t sweet or kind but was truly fierce in a way Tyra Banks will NEVER understand. And I found ways to work their worship into my life, even as a self-identified Christian, when I spoke to the moon, or did my maidenhood ceremony with my mother.

But, just as the ancient Greeks worshipped their heroes, so did I. Antigone just about blew my mind (and even if I didn’t want to end up the way she did, you better believe I looked at the way she stood up to her uncle and cheered and wished my uncle were half so awful so that I be that cool). And the monsters? The Harpies can hardly fail to inspire your imagination, and in them it is easy to see the hunger, the snatching, selfish NEED that we all must carry somewhere inside us …

When I learned about them, really learned about them, I realized that they didn’t “really” mean to the ancient Greeks what they meant to me. That my use of them, my appropriation of them, wasn’t “authentic.” And as I started to learn more about ancient Greece - and, for example, the meaning of a motherless virgin like Athena who wants nothing to do with power for women - I began to have a great respect for what the world might have looked like for them.

The myths stopped being about me. And when they did, I stopped having a personal relationship with them. And when that happened, when the mystery about their place in the world was gone, I could not worship them any more. Not even in the little syncretic way I was attempting.

Maybe I should post a disclaimer on my site so that unsuspecting worshippers won’t stumble into relativism and out of their sacred cosmoses.

The truth is, even though there is SO much more to be said about the Greek goddesses, I’m just not spending much time thinking about them anymore. In fact, other than slowly reading Kirk Ormand’s book Controlling Desires: Sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome, I’m really not thinking about the Classics at all these days.

I am, however, still thinking about stories, and myths, and religion, and women, and goddesses. Hopefully, that’s still interesting to the people who make their way to this website. I’ve been considering trying another start-up like the attempt I linked to in my post on Celtic Pretties, but this time doing it on some of the myths and goddesses of Mexico and Central America. There are tons of amazing goddesses to learn about - take the goddess Coyolxauqui, the moon, who tried to kill her brother Huitzilopochtli, and whose body was broken into pieces, or their mother Coatlicue (the Lady of the Serpent Skirt). I would love to learn more about them and share the awesomeness with you.

But I face a dilemma. I do NOT want to write about this in a way that goes: look! exotic! and encourages cultural appropriation. On the other hand, I do believe that these stories - while they should continue to “belong” to the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America - should be known and respected and retold and made relevant in new ways as continues to be done with Greek mythology. That said, I don’t necessarily think that I, as a white person with very little background in the topic at hand, should necessarily be the person making the call on how to go about doing that. While what I’ve done with (women in) Greek Myths hadn’t really been done when I got started, I’m not sure that it’s an appropriate approach to other mythologies.

I know people don’t come here for the book reviews, but IF you are interested in awesome children’s books like me, you should go get Lugalbanda: The Boy Who Got Caught Up in a War: An Epic Tale From Ancient Iraq. Although this is certainly something you could (slowly) read to your child, don’t be deceived, this is a serious retelling. It’s long. And just because the illustrations are outstanding, don’t think that this isn’t a book that any grown-up interested in mythology (particularly Greek, Babylonian, Sumerian, etc) should read. You should.

The description of the book is, “older than the Bible, the Koran, or the Torah, this stirring epic [is] the world’s oldest written story.” I can’t speak to that myself, not having looked farther than this book, but it is easy to believe. Apparently, it was written in cuneiform and wasn’t translated until the 1970’s!

And, even though this story is about a boy, it is also about Inana, the most important Goddess in the Sumerian pantheon and the Goddess of Love and War. (See, I’m making the ancient goddess connections!)

Highly recommend!

(As always, feel free to join me on Goodreads.com!)

So, for a while there, I was thinking about seeing if I was inspired to do something like Women in Greek Myths about Celtic junk. So I started the same I way I did when I was 13, compiling names and writing short descriptions. Slowly expanding my repertoire and leaving it open for anyone else interested to come along. I haven’t linked to it anywhere on my main site for two major reasons:

1) It doesn’t even come CLOSE to other sites on similar topics with regard to completeness, prettiness, citedness, or funniness

2) It was an experiment I wasn’t sure I would ever follow up on. Turns out, I pretty much abandoned it.

That said, if you are still reading this blog, I feel like the least I can do is throw this out there in case anyone is really curious. So here it is:

Women in Celtic Myth

and the beginnings of a Gallery of Celtic Women.

And if you go there and then wish there was some way to get back those wasted minutes? Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Well, I’m branching out a little today. Below I’ve linked to the hour and 20 minute movie “Sita Sings the Blues.” It’s the story of Sita (and Rama) as well as the contemporary story of the marriage of animator, Nina, all set to a collection of really amazing animation styles and Annette Hanshaw’s 1920 vocals.

From what I have previously read, this movie was pretty crippled by copyright stuff with the music and the lack of money available kept it from going big. So contribute if you like it!

http://www.thirteen.org/sites/reel13/blog/watch-sita-sings-the-blues-online/347/

ETA: And here’s a link to an awesome post called Sita Pays Her Dues by bossymarmalade. It critiques the film and the appropriation of Indian stuff.

As I mentioned in the last post, I am doing a bit of introspection about why I bother to write here (this blog and this site more generally).

The answer is that I wanted to know about women in Greek myths. Duh. But, really, that’s it. I mean, I wanted to know, not just their names, but why they were interesting.

I wanted to understand why some Goddesses, like Hemera, Gaia,  and Amphictyonis were relatively simple personifications of their names when others, like say, Persephone, have names, backgrounds, and myths so deeply ensconced in the past that we may never know what the deities represented.

I wanted to understand why the Greeks, so very long ago, had Great Goddesses like Demeter when we modern people, so much further along towards enlightenment (yes, I was a Hegelian youngster), didn’t even write spunky heroines that weren’t relying on men into movies!

And, perhaps most of all, I was hungry for stories of women that I could be proud to tell. Stories imbued with the rich respect of our mythical ancestors, but stories that I could make mine, that could make me stronger, that could root me.

I realize, now, that, although I still long for such things, I have given up on finding them in ancient Greek myth.

The first blow came when I fully appreciated that, in fact, things weren’t as feminist as they appeared. I learned that, while visibility is definitely a powerful thing, being visibly powerless isn’t nearly so exciting. I also discovered, somewhere along the way, to reject a progressive history and with that I lost the need to rely on the authority of our mythical ancestors in Classical civilization.

My interests changed, and I began to find more stories I could be proud of today (go see my Goodreads shelf to find some) and saw ancient Greek myths interesting primarily as a cross-culture comparison. And, for a few years there, I was allowed to read these myths in exquisite detail. But now that I do not, and now that I am surrounded by so many more cultures with rich mythologies to learn from, I am not sure what my new connection to this will be.

Persephone Again

Everyone wants to talk
about Persephone.
Especially the poets.
How she was grabbed
and carried off,
how she was kept in darkness
so many months,
while her mother searched everywhere,
waited for her darling
to come home.

Some say
the daughter
liked what had happened
(you know the story,
how women really want it
even when they say no),
others claim it is in fact
the mother who is at fault,
that it is she
who drove her daughter
away, forced her to
leave home and
flee into that hidden world,
because of her own impossible
demands.

And then of course
there are those
who read it as a simple
nature myth–six months
of fertility and sun,
six of winter and death
over the land.

What do I think?
I think she is the soul
of each of us,
going down to obscurity,
resurrecting like a flower
over and over
as the seasons return.

Dorothy Walters

December 10, 2008

This is reposted with permission from the poet from her blog: www.kundalinisplendor.blogspot.com

My favorite holiday of the year is coming up very very soon!

In my first year of college I was Arachne. It was awesome. And if there weren’t quite so many awesome amazing women to dress up like left, I would be her again. I walked around campus with an enormous spider hugging my torso and a noose hanging from my neck. I’ll grant that my peasant-skirt and bright red vest with cleavage only a freshman girl feels no shame at had little to do with an historically accurate representation, but that costume - and the make-up - was amazing. Awesome. Off the chain, even.

So this year? I’m not absolutely sure yet. At first I thought of Medea, but then I was like, hmmm, maybe carrying around two bloody baby dolls is a bit much outside of a Haunted House. The next thought was of a monster, and trying to get away from the overly dark Medea costume, I considered the sexy Sirens. But the thing is, being half birds, that’s more of a costume than I can throw together from my quite limited wardrobe. (Particularly now that my partner has been making me throw away the more eccentric parts of it and insidiously replacing them with very classy pants, skirts, and shirts that would be appropriate at any dinner party or office meeting.)

So now I’m thinking about Delphyne with cut off hands in a basket and dragon-y make-up to make the point, or Demeter with some sheafs of wheat and a crown or something, or Selene and make my partner dress up like Endymion. What do you think I should be? (Keep in mind, I’m not going to a party, this is just for handing out candy.) What are YOU planning on dressing up like this year?

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Goddess-Like Penelope (Part 1), Hera-Like Penelope,  Artemis-Like Penelope,  Aphrodite-Like Penelope, and Athena-Like Penelope below.

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The end of the Odyssey is no surprise. The tale is not, contrary to what Felson-Rubin suggests, open-ended, leaving the audience on their edges of their seats to guess what will happen. Rather, as in the Iliad, we are pulled into the lives of the characters. We empathize. We feel Penelope’s confusion in that laugh she forces through her teeth. But we do not fear what the end of the story will bring.

Felson-Rubin says, “the references to her possible inconstancy form a virtual leitmotif,” and I do not disagree. (Felson-Rubin, 164) But rather than argue that this inconstancy (ie, the possibility that she will abandon Odysseus and go off with one of the Suitors) pulls the audience into doubt, it seems clear to me that it serves the same end as the scene between Hector and Andromache in Book Six of the Iliad. Hector’s confident reassurance pulls at our hearts as does Andromache’s; we know the end will not bring them joy and we suffer through their hope. Similarly, our hearts go out to the humanity of Penelope. Unlike “god-like Odysseus,” who is so god-like, in fact, he not only gets to see what’s happening in the plot, but have a degree of control over it, Penelope can only think about what is going on. We feel distress at her distress. We sympathize with her brave attempt to continue down the correct path without evening knowing which god is steering her fate. Her uncertainty is the reality of all humankind, and it is only acknowledging her confusion and her perseverance that the Odyssey reaches its true depth.

Did you hear me people? Penelope isn’t just a side show, she is what makes it deep.

Her uncertainty draws us deeply into the story, but it does not cause us to question the outcome. I clearly remember my feelings when I read Penelope’s entreaty to Artemis to slay her and take her away from the unbearable pain of living without Odysseus. I was not afraid, any more than any ancient Greek would have been, that she would die at the hand of that “arrow-pouring” goddess. In fact, the cry reinforced the realization that it is not Artemis who has her hand in the mix, but Athena. She will not die, she cannot die, and there is no doubt of that to any with the least familiarity with the story (as most ancient Greeks certainly would have). There is, however, a contest, and a marriage is clearly in the works, so perhaps it would be harder to deny the certainty of how the story will end. To this point, I must argue the same line as those who suggest suspense: Penelope does not know what’s going on. She has constructed the contest in such a way that she continues to have options, and as far as she’s concerned both Aphrodite’s Life and Artemis’ Death are alternatives. It cannot be stressed enough, though, that her uncertainty is not ours. Even if we don’t know Penelope’s inner thoughts, we are positive that Athena and Odysseus are prepared for the contest of the bow. So you see? The contest is another example of Penelope’s cunning, and another example of how it is Athena’s option - that of Survival - that is in store for Penelope.

In the end, Penelope is a mixture of all the goddesses and none of them, like all humans. She is exceptional in form and prudence, of lofty stature, accomplished in skill, and a participant in a most wonderful of marriages. Despite her exceptional nature, we do not see Penelope as a goddess, but as irrevocably and amazingly human. The presence of each goddess reminds us of who this wife of Odysseus truly, complexly, is and reiterates how, inevitably, the story will end. Her story gives us all hope that we, too, will reach our happy endings without ever really knowing which hand guides us.

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Felson-Rubin, Nancy. “Penelope’s Perspective: Character from Plot.” Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays. Seth L. Schein, ed. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1996

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Goddess-Like Penelope (Part 1), Hera-Like Penelope,  Artemis-Like Penelope, and Aphrodite-Like Penelope below.

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“Ordinary men may surmise that “some god” has intervened, but the poet [Homer] knows which one,” Clay points out. But the audience doesn’t count as “ordinary men.” Odysseus and Penelope don’t know who has intervened, but the audience (us and the ancient Greek audience listening to the same story some 2500 years ago) realizes that “the goddess Athena quickly emerges as the source and sponsor of the plot that follows.”(Murnaghan, 61) And while Hera offers only a currently unattainable status quo, Artemis brings chaste death, and Aphrodite gives new life with a suitor, Athena is the embodiment and purveyor of survival. She clearly celebrates all the lies and tricks and skill that bring Odysseus through to Ithaca and his happy ending. It is almost easier to see her through the cunning acts of Odysseus that she endorses.

Although Penelope does call upon Athena in Book Four, the poet doesn’t say they are alike, as she is like Aphrodite and Artemis. Instead, she only seems to be like her. Penelope is a weaver, like Athena, and what’s more, she weaves mêtis (a cool word meaning craftiness, prudence, wisdom, trickiness, etc and not coincidentally, the name of Athena’s biological mother who was swallowed by Zeus) into her work. The epithet most associated with Penelope, periphrôn, thinking-around, is clearly more like Athena than either the Huntress or the Goddess of Love. And Athena has a distinctive way of approaching the situation. Although she nearly necks Penelope in order to get her to submit to a makeover, she does not send her down as Aphrodite might have, itching for a man. She sends her down conflicted. In order for the tricks to succeed, the inner conflict, displayed to the audience in Penelope’s laugh through gritted teeth, is necessary.

Athena never deals directly with sexuality, but only through mêtis, even inspiring Nausicaa in the guise of a virgin friend. (Murnaghan, 66) Despite the extremes represented by Artemis and Aphrodite, for Penelope, as for Athena, sexuality is something to be controlled. I argue that even the reason for Penelope’s silence on her true emotional state is a result of either her likeness to Athena or Athena’s direct action. Emoting is not what Athena does, and despite the number of tears the run down Penelope’s cheeks (a common enough reaction in epic poetry), her thoughts are still mysterious enough to have inspired an entire generation of Classicists to write.

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Goddess-Like Penelope, Hera-Like Penelope, and Artemis-Like Penelope below.

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Aphrodite, on the other hand, offers Penelope New Life. The myths of the Goddess of Love are in many ways the most applicable to Penelope’s situation. Think, for example, of the fling she had with Ares, the God of War while she was still Hephaestus’ wife, or the fact that it was her intervention that caused Helen to leave Menelaus and elope with Paris, thus beginning the Trojan War. These are examples of Dalliance as described by Nancy Felson-Rubin.

Nevertheless, Aphrodite does not merely advocate free love in this scenario but new marriage. This is particularly noticeable in the quotation below where it is she, and not the Protectress of Marriage (Hera), who petitions Zeus for the marriage of the daughters of Pandareos. When Penelope washes her face in the ambrosia of Aphrodite (18.185), the hardship, the old weighing life she had, falls away and she is born anew, just as the Goddess of Beauty ritually renews herself in the sea.

So if Aphrodite is running the show, Penelope would do well to go ahead and choose one of the Suitors for her husband and start a new life with him. Likewise, if Artemis is running the show, the only option that will bring her relief is a chaste death. Hera, as we saw in a previous post, is not well-equipped to help women in Penelope’s position and indeed, barely manages when her own husband isn’t in eye-sight.

It’s also worth noting that Aphrodite is a powerful goddess, and more of a personality in the Odyssey than Artemis - who, as you may recall from the last post, represents the chaste-death option for Penelope. Helen, who comes down the stairs looking like Artemis, of all people, is the one who makes that power most obvious. Helen takes no responsibility for her behavior; she was forced, she says, by Aphrodite. Poor Penelope. She knows the story of Helen, and that of Klytaimnestra, and so she knows the influences that Aphrodite can have on women’s lives when she chooses to interfere. But she does not know which goddess is running the show in her own life, and is caught in between trying to decide on the correct direction.

Felson-Rubin, Nancy. “Penelope’s Perspective: Character from Plot.” Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays. Seth L. Schein, ed. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1996

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Next week: Which goddess is Penelope really like?

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Goddess-Like Penelope and Hera-Like Penelope below.

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Artemis, the Virgin Goddess of the Hunt, is directly, and somewhat confusingly, compared to Penelope. Artemis, most frequently described as hagnê, pure, is alternatively depicted as possessing a particularly lofty stature and as being incredibly deadly, most especially to women . This isn’t surprising, since she is often understood to represent the time in the life of a parthenos, or virgin, directly before marriage: a time as desirable as it is off-limits.

In the quotation I mention Part 1, Artemis offers her “lofty stature” to the daughters of Pandareos but ultimately the daughters died. Penelope actually prays to be destroyed her like them. Felson-Rubin calls this plot-type the Bride of Death but I would combine it with Tease because of the parthenos, or virgin, aspect of the Goddess and what that means. It is worth pointing out that, ultimately, Penelope cannot ask Artemis for the marriage that a virgin girl would be looking forward to. Her husband’s big house and her grown son Telemachus are constant reminders that the only gift Artemis can give to Penelope is the violent one. Death can keep her from “not only an unwanted marriage, but betrayal and infidelity as well” (Felson-Rubin, 181).

If Penelope is like Artemis in the Odyssey, it must be in her longing for Death.

You may have heard by now about Nailin’ Paylin. It’s being made by Larry Flint and that’s really all you need to know.

Although I understand people’s anger, I think that’s exactly what Flint is challenging. I see it as a critique of Palin’s and the West’s (especially the U.S.’s) hypocrisy about sex and sexiness.

What is it that makes her sexual portrayal of herself in beauty contests more acceptable than her portrayal in porn except for societal values about the lines of acceptable sexuality? (Well, that and consent - but that’s why it’s a critique.) As a beauty queen she is like Artemis, irresistible but untouchable (think of Actaeon, people). But make her Aphrodite’s devotee, as porn star/sex worker in this scenario, but it could as easily have been as sex education advocate (remember Jocelyn Elders‘ ideas about masturbation?), and she would be perceived as vulgar. As she is now, beautiful and inaccessible but also the “ideal” mother,  Palin is a walking reinforcement of patriarchal standards of acceptable womanhood; she’s a friggin’ Hestia for goodness sake.

As for the inclusion of Condi and Hillary, these two women have generally been cast in our culture as Athena and Hera, respectively. Condi as the asexual woman who is the Man’s scion (Bush as Zeus here) extending His power; Hillary as the long-suffering wife who cannot be sexy except in the context of her stereotypically sexist relationship (Bill Clinton as Zeus here) and longs for ultimate power in her own right. And yet, sadly, they are both the symbols of success for woman in this culture. This video turns that on its head, challenging public conceptions, expectations, and values that are sadly consistent with some from ancient Greece.

By thrusting them without consent into Aphrodite’s realm, Larry Flint reminds us of the violence inherent in our current portrayals of acceptable gender and sexuality. If we could embrace Aphrodite - the erotic - in our public and private lives, it would take us far closer to the equality we long for.*

I figure most of my readers are going to disagree with me, and that’s fine. One of the best things about a video like this, no matter where you fall on the issue, is the discussion that it motivates. Passionate discussion. Because sex matters and gender matters and they matter even more in politics, the public forum for our national identities.

*And there, too Aphrodite is should be our teacher as longing, himeros, is  under her jurisdiction.

This is a series on Penelope, who rocks and everyone should know more about. The breakdown is based on my reading (in ancient Greek, thank you very much) of the Odyssey and with some help from Jenny Strauss Clay, Nancy Felson-Rubin, and Sheila Murnaghan. Read Part 1 below.

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Hera is in some ways the least obvious connection to Penelope. Penelope is not described as being like her, and Hera’s part in the Odyssey is much smaller than in the “prequel,” (six mentions to the Iliad’s 115 or so) having no active role at all and only passing mention in metaphor. That said, it is still possible to construct a specific identity from the examples.

It is significant that three out of the six examples are formulaic phrases actually referring to Zeus: “Zeus, mighty husband of Hera.” It seems from the construction that the Father (that would be Zeus) gains power from his association with her, and reinforces the common theme of homophrosyne - this awesome idea of being-of-the-same-mind - and the unstoppable power of a strong couple. The other two examples are describing the protection that Hera has provided for other heroes, specifically Agamemnon (you remember his wife Clytemnestra?) (4.512) and Jason (impossible to forget his fling with Medea) (12.55). These examples emphasize the savior aspect of the goddess, and one that is particularly focused on a safe nostos, or homecoming.

In many ways, it would be easy to imagine this story as the brainchild of the Queen of the Gods (Hera) instead of the virgin Goddess of Wisdom (yep, Athena! the real power in this story). This connection is only heightened by the passage quoted in part 1, where Hera gives Clytie and Cameira (the daughters of Pandareos) form and prudence, the two things for which Penelope is most renowned. In fact, it would be easy to see the relationship of Penelope and Odysseus as mirrored in the relationship of Hera and Zeus (at least as far as that relationship is portrayed within the Odyssey).

But Hera’s domestic power, while able to keep kings safe through scary straits, is not equipped to aid women with long-term separation from their partners (as is the unfortunate case of Penelope). In fact, as we see in other myths, Hera is often involved in tracking her wayward hubby down - something that is certainly not an option in Penelope’s position. Because this plot-type is not even among the options listed for Penelope, Hera’s role in the Odyssey is relatively minor, but she still serves to remind the audience of the “connubial fidelity” both she and Penelope embody.

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Next up: Artemis-Like Penelope (Part 2 continued)

You may have picked up from previous entries that I really dig Penelope, but now you’ll start to understand why in this series!

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There has been a great deal of work done in recent years to “reclaim” the Goddess. Women look to Her for spiritual guidance, for wisdom, for empowerment. They call out to Her by her various names. I myself participate in this new Goddess movement to some degree and it makes sense to me to see goddesses as archetypes guiding or reflecting human behavior. Furthermore, this seems to apply flawlessly to reading the Odyssey, especially as relates to the much-debated action of Penelope.

There are many goddesses in the Odyssey, Kalypso and Kirke come to mind, but it is the Olympian goddesses - specifically, Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite, and Athena - who so nicely guide our perceptions of Penelope and the outcome of the story. These four only show up once all together, in the context of Penelope’s confusing metaphor describing the daughters of Pandareos:

Hera gave them form and prudence surpassing all other women; pure Artemis gave them an lofty stature, and Athena taught them to do renowned works. When bright Aphrodite had ascended to holy Olympus seeking the accomplishment of a blooming wedding for the girls from thunder-loving Zeus (for well does he know everything, both what shall happen and what not happen to mortal humans) the Snatching winds came and snatched them away and gave them to the hated Furies to care for.

Each of these goddesses has a different gift to give the unfortunate Pandareides and they each have a similar role in the greater telling of the Odyssey. Nancy Felson-Rubin has already done a good job of identifying plot-types, however, by seeing the role of each goddess tied into the story more clearly, the function of those plot-types takes on a different meaning. Felson-Rubin states, “Until 23.205 [the end of the Odyssey] even the knowing reader feels suspense as to whether Penelope or Odysseus will happily reunite,” but I hope to show that what the audience, and the reader, feels is not suspense but empathy, suspense being impossible in a story where the end is known. And with a story this famous, who could fail to know the end?

Felson-Rubin, Nancy. “Penelope’s Perspective: Character from Plot.” Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays. Seth L. Schein, ed. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1996

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Coming soon: Part 2 - the roles of the Goddesses

Here’s whatcha need to know:

• The Underworld is where people’s souls go when they die. All people, good and bad. It is, unsurprisingly, located under the world we inhabit
• It is not Hell and people aren’t generally punished (with a few exceptions)
• It is shady and dark and covered in boring flowers called Asphodel except for the Elysian Fields which are bright and sunny, but only really special people get to go there (like Achilles and Helen)
• It is ruled by Hades, and is sometimes confusing referred to simply with his name (or more often the genitive form of his name in ancient Greek) and he has a big scary three-headed dog
• It’s also ruled by Persephone, who got stuck there by eating a pomegranate, but neither she nor Hades judges you, they have three other guys for that.
• Once you die you get coins put in your mouth to pay the Ferryman who’ll take you to the Underworld; he will not take you back.
• Once you get there, if you’re normal, you drink the Kool-Aid the River Lethe and forget your life, which may be a blessing; also you may get back some memory if someone (like Odysseus) digs a trench and gives you some blood
• Going there and getting out is a good way to know you’re a hero

This is a little different if you’re into Orphism in which case the Underworld is just a place to go and get reincarnated until you’ve wiped sin from your soul (the sin of the Titans, from whose ashes humans are born in the Orphic tradition, eating the murdered Dionysus).

It is a fascinating place and the center of lots of chthonic power, but you alread know about that from reading Dark Earthy Death Goddesses and How To Pronounce “chthonic”.

[EDIT] Check out an awesome post about the mythic descent to the Underworld and its gender ramifications over at Gorgon Resurfaces.

I’m writing here about what I cared about when I was younger: the Otherworlds of Olympus and Underworld. Most are aware of their existence, but few have any detail, and fewer still can really imagine Olympus, thus my focus today. Part of me would really like to post instead about the world of the Othered silent ancient Greek women, children, and low-status people who never seemed to make more than a cameo in any serious story, but as that is more mundane than the intent I read in Mahud’s invitation, I will save the inspiration for another post.

When Aphrodite was ushered to Olympus by the Horai, what did she see? I always imagined a house on a mountain, like the rich folks in California or Cuzco’s summer palace in The Emperor’s New Groove, but apparently the ancient Greeks didn’t catch that movie. For them the world was a disc with the vault of heaven (including the paths of the sun and moon) above it and Olympus, truly in the Heavens, above that. So, Mt. Olympus both signified the mountain and the sky, and both were the home of the Gods at once. To quote Harris and Platzner, “For many Greeks, the gods’ ultimate home was Mount Olympus; like the ziggurat, Olympus served as an earthly pedestal to which divine beings could descend.”

Yes, yes, but what did it look like?  Well, for one thing, it was sunny. Homer (Il. 749) tells us there was never wind or rain (I TOLD you it sounded like Southern California), but instead of one big palace, each god got dibs on a peak or ravine, with Zeus, of course, in the penthouse at the highest point, and that’s where all the gods met up. They all had thrones and presumably something to house them. Remember, too, that the Horai had to open the clouds to allow people to enter, that’s because the clouds functioned as a form of Gate. Everything else about the place seems to be lost to the ages or left to the individual imagination.

I wanted to write up something about the Underworld, too, since it seems to titillate people’s imagination more, but this is the second week of classes and I’m overwhelmed right now. If you ARE really interested in getting a similar post on the Underworld, let me know. It would probably be much longer, though, since there are many more extant sources.

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Other participants in this synchroblog include:

1. Faith and the Hero’s Journey (Hawk’s Cry: The voice of a witch)
2. Journeying to Otherworlds: Access Denied (Between Old and New Moons)
3. Lions at the Door (Quaker Pagan Reflections)
4. More Than These Words (Aquila ka Hecate)
5. Journeying to Otherworlds (The Dance of the Elements)
6. Mythology Synchroblog 4: Children’s Story for Mabo (Pagan Dad)
7. Underground Ruminations (Gorgon Resurfaces)
8. Synchroblog: Journeys to the Otherworld (Bubo’s Blog)
9. Symbolic Saiho-ji and Otherworld Journeying (Symbolic Meanings)
10. Becoming pagan in America - an otherworld journey (Executive Pagan)

I’m actually not in Ecuador anymore and have successfully moved across the United States to my new home by the University where I’m going for my MA and then PhD. That’s why 1) I haven’t posted recently and 2) I may end up punking out on this blog. But here’s hoping I can keep up with it all and keep this baby running.

So anyway, back to the Ancient Greek Ladies. Sort of.

While I was visiting Quito, I encountered the very beautiful Virgin of Quito. I fell in love. This is a virgin who is also called “The Dancing Woman” and “The Woman of the Apocalypse.” It was the latter name that helped me put the pieces together: crown of 12 stars, check; moon under her feet, check; dragon, check; shiny clothes, check; eagle wings, check; this chick is straight out of Revelation! So I dug out my trusty old New Oxford Annotated Bible and read what it had to say.

One well-known version of the story tells of the goddess Leto, pregnant with Apollo [and Artemis, thank you very much], who is menaced by the dragon Python who pursues her because he knows that Apollo [geez, stop forgetting Artemis!] is destined to kill him. Here this material is reinterpreted in terms of Jewish traditions and expectations as the story of the birth of the Messiah.

So there you have it. I’m excited. I love stuff like this. Sychretism=my favorite.

P.S. Do that poll thingie. I don’t feel like this blog fits too easily into any one of those categories, but hopefully you’ll disagree and help me with registering this durn thing in other people’s lists.

Carol P. Christ, author of (most recently) She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World and (most famously) Womanspirit Rising, has been blogging over at Women and Spirituality for some time now and I think she’s great. Over the past month or so she’s written a series of posts (1, 2, and 3 with promises of more) on the dismissal of the Goddesses of prehistory that I think ought to be extremely relevant to those who makes their way to Paleothea.com. Although her posts inspired this one, I’m not going to attempt to summarize her; I strongly recommend reading at least one of her entries yourself (those who took part in the Dualism synchroblog might be particularly interested in the second part).

It makes a great deal of sense to me personally that separating one’s worship from oneself physically - either by worshiping an utterly non-corporal deity, or locating the deity far from one’s experience of the world (e.g. in Heaven), or theologically denying physical experience (such as death) - might put the feminine divine at a disadvantage. As a woman, I root a number of my conceptions of my own gender in my body’s (hypothetical) ability to produce life. I am extremely aware that this has been a crucial definition for my foremothers. Thus it seems “only natural” that feminine deities - particularly the Great Ones - should include as a crucial element of their identity the creation (and potentially destruction) of physical life.

However, I cannot escape nagging doubts on a couple of points: 1) menstruating and having a uterus are cool and all, but they are not all that is required to give life any more than sperm is (as those ancient Greek doctors I mentioned last week seemed to suggest), 2) the relegation to the principal role of Mother and only secondarily anything else (if at all) feels like something feminists should be rejecting, and 3) different cultures have vastly different ways of connecting things like birth, death, and eternity with their spirituality. The final point is the most important. Although it is obvious to me (again, personally, feel free to see things differently) that conceptions of the divine in religions such as most branches of Christianity reject both the Feminine and the Physical as one, that does not mean that embracing one (such as having a Great Goddess) inherently requires the celebration of the other (the physical body, birth, etc.).

Ironically, my last entry was all about how the two concepts are inextricably caught up in each other in ancient Greek mythology, particularly for women and goddesses. But here I want to take a step back and think about what a Great Goddess, or simply a non-patriarchal goddess, might have looked like or felt like to the women and men who worshiped her.  And though I am pretty convinced that some experience of Athena was as I described it in the last post, I am equally sure that there were others who experienced her utterly differently.

This was a tough post for me to write and I’m afraid I finish with more questions than answers. I am interested in any thoughts anyone else might have on this or a related topic and hope I’ll get a couple of comments on this one.