dark hair’d

Sudanese people and Palestinians are not interchangeable just because we're Arab and / or Muslim. I cannot believe I just saw a post where a Sudanese person asked for help for her family and someone image ID'd the family as 'Palestinians'.

Homer is not reporting for a newspaper or a scientific journal or a history book. He’s composing a story, and doing so with all the tools of a writer - metaphor, invention, exaggeration.

(also thank you so much for the kind words on your reblog! it means a lot!)

thank you for your very thoughtful response as well! i think that calling on the gods respective to their domains is a wonderful idea, and this provides a new perspective and ideas for me to think about, adapt and squirrel away as well!

in my personal practice, i find that i have been calling on poseidon and zeus more often as i have a lot of fears related to domestic life, particularly utilising their epithets domatites (of the house) and ktesios (of the house/property) respectively and laoites (of the people) for both of them.

You’re allowed to be casually religious, a “Yule Pagan” if you want to steal “Christmas Christian” from the Jesus club. You’re allowed to dedicate a day or two to worship and just stare at the sky or ground and mutter the rest of the week.

quick disclaimer that while this aims to be as accurate as possible, it is impossible to know exactly what festival was done when and the intention behind it, owing to the inherent nature of ancient history. only what was preserved remains, and that begs the question of why was it preserved? and what hasn’t been preserved? calendar below the read more <3

Off the top of my head, I think Helen is one of the few people who gets complex, interesting characterization in modern retellings and discourse, ironically enough. She’s allowed to be vain and aware of her own beauty while also often having a great deal of agency. At the same time, she is frequently depicted as both victim and as offender. She’s allowed to want to be in Troy, but also to miss her husband and daughter.

Some days I feel like I could write essays about pop mythology and the way people reduce mythological figures to one dimensional caricatures. And how these retellings are never as progressive as people think, fixing some issues but exacerbating others. I do think retellings end up being an excellent resource for identifying what social issues bother us and how we would like to address them.

Take Aphrodite, for example. Yes, she's the goddess of sex/lust/beauty, but she absolutely is a war goddess as well, at least for some people. Here are some of Aphrodite's epithets listed on Theoi: Nikêphoros (Bringer of Victory), Areia (Of Ares, Warlike) and Hôplismenê (Armed). There were statues depicting her wearing armor and carrying weapons. And yet, if you read the Iliad, you'll find a scene that depicts her as laughably incompetent in battle. So what's going on here?

Here's a quote that helps explain:

What are the functions and implications of Aphrodite in cult when she is Οὐρανία [Ourania]? Her cult at Athens demonstrates that she is, like her forerunner, associated with procreation, specifically with having children. It emerges there that she is also a goddess to whom women make offerings before they get married...in Sparta the epithet Οὐρανία has a connection with Ishtar-Astarte: it is one of the few cults in Greece in which Aphrodite’s worship is linked with warfare.

[Breitenberger, Barbara (2007). Aphrodite and Eros: The Development of Greek Erotic Mythology.]

So we can see that separate cults had completely different views of the same goddess. There is and was plenty of diversity of thought in Hellenism.

As well as the differences between places, there are changes over time. Medea's a good example of this. As you mentioned, Medea commits horrific crimes and is still sympathetic--at least in Euripides. But other sources raise questions about whether she was actually guilty in the first place. A papyrus fragment was discovered that predates Euripides, talked about in the Wondrium documentary "Music of Ancient Greece." Here's the relevant quote:

Narrator: Here, Medea swears by the goddess Hecate, that she did not kill her children. To hide them from Jason, she placed them for safe keeping with a nurse.  Annie Belis: What does the Papyrus bring to mythology?…Well, it's quite simply revolutionary. It's the complete opposite of the mental image we still have today of infanticide par excellence, represented by Medea. Here, she's completely innocent. It's very audacious to propose an innocent Medea.

There's also her supposed crime of fratricide. In Apollonius of Rhodes's version of the Argonautica, Medea's brother is a warrior who's tricked by Medea and killed by Jason. She can't even bear to watch the deed as it's done. In later versions, Medea's brother is an infant who she cuts into pieces so her father's army has to slow down and collect the body parts. So this powerful woman, sorceress, and foreigner gradually becomes more evil over time, until she's (somewhat) redeemed by Euripides.

What's even more interesting is the difference of individuals. There's a post that was going around a while ago that showed depictions of Persephone's marriage to Hades in which she's sometimes happy and sometimes being dragged off. Part of the quote in that post says:

The most common pinax types are the 'divine' and 'imitation' scenes. In both cases, these range from unambiguous abductions where the maiden clearly struggles against her captor to images in which it appears the girl is complicit in her own kidnapping sometimes even taking charge of the chariot herself. The range can be accounted for because, as James Redfield points out, "no doubt some brides felt more abducted than others".” Mackin, Ellie. “Girls Playing Persephone (in Marriage and Death).” Mnemosyne 71, no. 2 (2018): 209–28

The image of Persephone and Hades allowed people feel, understand, and express their own life experiences. So, Hades is in fact a brooding knight in shining armor--to some people. And he's a heartless kidnapper to others.

Lord Apollo's altar!