The world if girls would project their mommy issues on Clytemnestra and Electra, Helen and Hermione, Cassiopeia and Andromeda, Hera and Angelos etc. instead of Demeter and Persephone:
Clytemnestra is busy having my 'this guy less informed then cut me off again and people are telling ME to not tell him off instead of calling HIM out for being a rude asshole, where is the man-killing axe' issue projected.
If I touch Electra she'd probably end up as the projection of women who support men at the expense of other women, which I'm pretty sure is not her deal originally (I'll read the sources and have an actual opinion sooner or later)... So I'll probably keep away.
I don't know about Hera and Angelo's/Hecate enough to care and I hate to see Helen a bad mom, she was away almost her whole child's life but she was being kidnapped for most of it ok π my baby
Cassiopea and Andromeda is where people who want an evil mother and a woman saved by the dashing hero should go. It's basically the exact narrative many push on Persephone and it's right there, ready for consumption!
About Persephone.
I have been entertaining an idea of her story being about loving the person trauma turned you into despite what it cost you becoming that person. What you lost and what you, for better or worse, gained .
She went through hell and despite being lucky enough to be saved from it, part of her now belongs there. She cannot be just who she was anymore, l she's more than that now.
She has to learn how to be spring again, accept she cannot keep up the happy outlook forever anymore; and how to be death again, on purpose this time.
She has to learn to come to terms with who she is now, with the darkness that settled inside her; there to stay. From a victim of the darkness to the queen of its dominions, the path to embrace her being both Kore and Despoina, the Spring Maiden and the Dread Mistress.
Demeter whose love was so strong she made hell itself spit back what it dug its teeth into. Persephone, saved by her mother's love (like Maleficent saving the princess with her true (mom)love), later allowed Dionysus to take her mother away from hell, saving his mom as she was saved by hers π€π
Showing the kindness that you were shown, for even death itself smiles once in a while.
Once again I find myself discovering some small obscure piece of mythology and going down a rabbit hole of trying to find whatever information I can find. In this case it is the desire to find out more about Angelos, supposedly a daughter of Zeus and Hera.
First, let me just say what an absolute pain it is to find information on a goddess that has a name still in use to this day. Every attempt to try and find research papers on the topic is hindered by the fact that most searches tend to think I'm trying to find papers using the author's name. Attempting to use advanced settings has thus far told me there are zero papers about Angelos. Or at least zero papers accessible to someone without academic access.
Now for what I was able to find. There appears to be only one surviving story on Angelos written by the Greek poet Theocritus. Except that's not entirely true. From what I can understand the surviving story isn't actually the original story, but instead commentary on the original story. This commentary is on Theocritus' poem Idyll II.
Okay so let's look at Idyll II before we get into the commentary. The summary isn't super helpful in my opinion because it says the poem is a monologue by a girl named Simaetha who is laying a fire-spell upon her neglectful lover and that feels like a major simplification of the poem if you read it. Reading the poem yourself you find that Simaetha seems to imply that she slept with this lover after he courted her and, once he got what he wanted, he ghosted her and is pursuing other loves so now she's calling upon Hecate to curse him.
Alright, so now the question is how does this relate to Angelos? Well from what I understand the commentary likely has to do with the mention of Hecate in the Idyll II. Supposedly Angelos might be a proto-verison of Hecate. Of course I can't be 100% certain what the commentary says because the only source for it is the book Scholia in Theocritum Vetera by Carl Wendel. Now good news is you can read this book for free here. Bad news, it is only readable if you can read ancient Greek, which is why a lot of what I've written on the commentary is speculation gleamed from what others have said about it.
This circles back to the one English source I found on Angelos which is Wikipedia. Wikipedia claims the one myth for Angelos involves her stealing Hera's anointments and giving them to one of Zeus' lovers (Europa). Hera does not take kindly to this and Angelos is forced to flee and hide from her mother. She first hides with a woman in labor before hiding among some people are carrying a dead man where Hera finally gives up chasing her. Zeus than orders Angelos to be cleansed by the Cabeiri (another rabbit hole I am pointedly looking away from) in the waters of a lake tied to the Underworld.
The scholia commentary I am unable to read apparently cites this myth when talking about possible origins for Hecate, which seems to imply that after Angelos is cleansed in the Underworld's waters she becomes Hecate. Also if I'm understanding the references on Wikipedia correctly they all seem to imply that the ancient Greek write Sophron is the one who wrote down the Angelos myth the scholia refers to.
Overall Angelos seems like a really interesting character that appears to have become the unfortunate victim of the passage of time and a lack of interest in lesser known Greek deities.
EDIT: I had ignored the 4th source on the Angelos Wikipedia page because it was an old German encyclopedia which I had zero hope of finding. Except apparently the full text that is being referenced is on Wikisource and can therefore be read. I completely forgot that Wikisource exists. This source appears to corroborate that Sophron is the source of all the information we know about Angelos. The notes indicate there may be more information about Angelos in another part of the encyclopedia so I've got more researching to do.
I have the scholium in translation if you still need it:
Hera lay with Zeus, gave birth to a girl, and gave her the name Angelos. After her birth this girl was given by Zeus to the Nymphs to bring her up. When she was fully grown, she stole the myrrh with which Hera was accustomed to make up her face, and gave it to Europa, the daughter of Phoenix. When Hera discovered this, she flew at her and wanted to punish her. When this happened, Angelos sought refuge first at the house of a woman who had just given birth, then with some men who were carrying a corpse. And when Hera relented, Zeus ordered the Cabiri to take and purify her; so they took her and made her holy in the harbour Acherousia. So, they say, she was assigned as goddess to the dead and those beneath the earth.
Thanks for the translation!
