Aeneas -- Archangel?

Oh Aeneas... You have such an impressive number of vowels in your name. :)

The above image shows the final scene in today's reading: Aeneas, looking especially glorious and well-lit, places his foot upon the soon-to-be dead body of his enemy Turnus. I couldn't but help to make the connection here to another, similar scene from the christian tradition.

The is St. Michael the Archangel in all of equally radiant and triumphant glory. I would say that all Aeneas is missing is the set of wings, but then Aeneas is the son of Venus. He's half-god. I feel as though metaphorical wings come into that somehow...

Anyhow, the point is that Joseph Campbell really must've been onto something. His classic Hero archetype is not difficult to pick out of most epic myths (just so long as the reader perhaps tactfully fudges a few of the individual stages of the journey), and there are some striking hero myth similarities to be found which cross the boundaries of both time and culture. Pretty awesome, huh? :)

Consort to Ishtar? No Thank You Very Much!

I pulled this nifty diagram of The Hero's Journey off another site. (As with most images on this blog, clicking on it will link you right to the source.)

For today's class we read Gilgamesh, the story of a Mesopotamian king who starts out as a bit of a pain in the rear and ultimately goes on a long journey during which he becomes a decent person and gains vast amounts of knowledge to bring back to his people. I must say the best part of the story (which occurs during the "Challenges and Temptations" portion of the above diagram) was where the hero Gilgamesh meets the goddess Ishtar and refuses to marry her.

Basically, Ishtar decides that Gilgamesh is pretty hot stuff (as well she should - by all accounts he was a hunk) and so she entreats him to come and marry her. Being the fertility goddess, she has quite a bit going for her. Still, Gilgamesh refuses. Even before he goes into his long explanation, we can all guess why. We've read about this woman before.

Gilgamesh's reply is just too fantastic not to repeat:

"'And why should I marry you?' Gilgamesh asked. 'You have harmed everyone you ever loved!... You are like a pan of hot coals that go out in the cold. You are like a back door that fails to keep out the blasts of a tempest. You are like a palace that crushes the king within it. You are like a headdress that does not cover the head. You are like an elephant that shakes off its carpet. You are like a pitch that blackens the one who carries it. You are like a waterskin that soaks the person who carries it. You are like a limestone rock that falls from a stone wall. You are like a shoe that pinches the foot of the one who wears it.'"

Pure awesomeness. And there you have it: hieros gamos from the consort's perspective. ;)

The Hero

"I don't think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it." -- Joseph Campbell

The Magical Goodness of Nyquil

So... I've sorta been down for the count for the past week. I mean, I certainly haven't missed any classes, but other than that... Schoolwork has pretty much been about the bare minimum. Tragically, this poor blog has suffered. :(

Truly, I feel terrible about that. This blog is fun! It's entertaining. I get to read what everyone else is up to and that never fails to brighten my day. (Thank you) But I caught an illness of what I'm going to call mythical proportions and it briefly took over my life.

And that brings me to the point of this blog entry. Anthropomorphism. Not just a key vocabulary word for tomorrow's quiz, anthropomorphism is a fascinating phenomenon in everyday life. Just look at germs. Do we say, "Oh, I came in contact with a virus and proceeded to feel quite poorly while my body counteracted it?" Of course not. We talk about "catching" things, "fighting" them, having our lives "taken over" by them. And that's not the best part. The best part is the drugs.

Let me tell you something. I love Nyquil.

Seriously. All this talk of gods and goddesses combined with my recent illness makes me seriously want to write a myth in which the personification of Nyquil rules the world. (Lucky for you all, I'm not much of a writer.) But it's that awesome.

So as I sat here, mulling over lists of vocab and key concepts and generally panicking at the thought of tomorrow's quiz, I found my mind wandering and decided to google "Nyquil". Here are a couple of gems that popped up:

It's magic! Nectar of the gods? Morpheus, perhaps? It certainly makes a body see things...

Oh yeah. It's that powerful. Entirely worthy of godhood.



Just for the record, I am not a drug addict. I was simply struck by the way in which so many people (myself included) can take the concept of a scientific medicine and resort to mythic vocabulary to describe it. This is certainly not because we don't know the truth, but because our description is so much more interesting.

And that's the gist of anthropomorphism. In the end, bland definitions may get the job done but there's no denying that life is simply better in color 3-D with surround sound. :)

The White Horse

Wow, there are a lot of white horses all over mythology. I must say, though, none as strange and disturbing as this Irish fertility ritual I stumbled across...

As instructed, I googled Giraldus Cambrensis in connection with Irish fertility myths. This is one of the things I found.

It seems that one of the Irish rituals associated with fertility involved the king/king-to-be and a white mare. It's all totally disgusting and incredibly unhygienic, but supposedly granted that man power and dominion as well as ensuring the fertility of the land. Fun.

And there's that spiral symbol again...

Inanna Ishtar -- A Goddess Not To Be Reckoned With

Here's a link to a summary and interpretation of this week's Inanna Ishtar myth.


The story is a bit... odd. It left me wondering what was so special about Dumuzi that we would presume Inanna had gone down into the underworld to retrieve him. Or if he was so very expendable as to ultimately sacrifice for her own return to the land of the living, what other reason would have compelled her to embark on such a deadly journey in the first place?


The first train of thought led me to this... and this.


Huh. We have been talking in class recently about ancient fertility rituals involving a king and marriage/intercourse (and the frequent ritual sacrifice of said king). Well, here it is again. Inanna and Dumuzi may well have been the center deities of a similar tradition.


I find it very interesting that even though sex can be easily viewed as an act of male dominance, in this case it is not. Rather Inanna, The Goddess, remains the source of power throughout, allowing Dumuzi to come to her chamber where, as Stuckey says, "Afterwards, pleased by and with her lover, Inanna decreed long life and sovereignty for him and fertility and prosperity for the land."


Strangely enough, Inanna's decidedly female figure (let's face it: her chest is enormous in every image!) does not seem to be paired with an especially female attitude. At least not stereotypically so. She's not just the goddess of fertility, but also of war. She may be super curvaceous, but she also has claw feet and seems to call the shots when it comes to her marriage bed. She is a bit difficult to categorize. Definitely a conundrum.


One last thing, albeit unrelated: It might be noted that Inanna enters the underworld of her own volition, is stripped of all of her powers one by one, is sent before the ruler, sentenced to death, killed, and rises again. I think there's something a little familiar there, if you look hard enough...