Note to self... and you as well

After extensively researching the Greek god, Morpheus, I couldn't remember his or his brothers' names for the life of me. Why was remembering these names important? Because our class was given a quiz on Monday. I figured if I write down everything I know about Morpheus, I'll never lose those 3 points on a quiz again. Thus, this blog post is created:

Morpheus - Greek mythology: the god of dreams; "shaper of dreams".
Morpheus is the son of Hypnos, the god of sleep, and nephew of Hades, god of the underworld. He already seems to have an interesting connection with death and sleep. His line of work falls somewhere between his two relatives. The drug morphine is named after Morpheus.
He has two brothers: Phobetor and Phantasos. Phobetor appears in dreams in the form of animals or monsters; he his, essentially, the god of nightmares. From his name, we get "phobos", or fear. Phantasos appears in dreams as inanimate objects. His mother is the goddess of hallucination. From his name, we can derive "fantasy". The three bros live in Morpheus' dream world. When Morpheus is off in the human world, he leaves Phantasos in charge. This leaves Morpheus with the more likely dreams. The three of them make up the Oneiroi.

But what about this guy:

Does Laurence Fishburne's Morpheus of The Matrix have any connection to the Greek Morpheus? YES
In a world where machines grow humans and keep them imprisoned in the Matrix, Morpheus is a pretty big deal. That is, he's popular in the last human city outside of the Matrix, Zion.
The Greek Morpheus lives with his family in a dream world protected by the Gates of Morpheus; beyond the gates are the River of Forgetfulness and the River of Oblivion. In the film, the Matrix Morpheus offers Neo a blue pill or a red pill: one to forget about his new knowledge of the Matrix and continue his life within in, and the other to enter the real world and be "unplugged".
hmmmm.....


Also, here's a short clip from the Chappelle Show. Seemingly unrelated? Not so. It's a parody of Neo's conversation with Morpheus and attempt to escape his office.
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=11886&title=real-movies-the-matrix

There's a good chance I'll never forget what I've written in this post and hopefully, won't lose points for lazy forgetfulness. Opportunity to relate this to Morpheus as well? Yes, but I'll let you make that connection.
Perhaps I'll just blog about things I don't think I'll remember so easily in the future. Or take less notes on aquatic life and miscellaneous...

DEJA VU!

After my latest post, I was interested in reading the entire story of Cupid and Psyche. So, naturally, I wikipedia-ed a synopsis of the plot. And what did I find? I already knew the story before I had finished a quarter of the summary. It was the strangest thing... It's either mythical powers I'm slowly retaining from lectures, or I've read a similar story.

Back in my home in Fairbanks, I have a picture book entitled East of the Sun West of the Moon, an adaption of the Norwegian fairytale (but for the sake of relevancy, I'm going to say fairytale is another word for myth). The book was definitely in my top ten when I was at a picture book reading level. It's a great story and the illustrations were amazing.

So maybe the cover looks slightly creepy for a six-year-old... but don't be intimidated. This is just a picture of one of the father winds. We'll get to him later.

The point of this post is to show the parallels between this story and the one of Cupid and Psyche. The best way I can do that is to tell you both tales:

East of the Sun, West of the Moon:

(mind you, this is a sloppy summary, but hopefully I'll get the main points across)

The White Bear comes to a poor man's house and tells him he'll make him rich if he lets him marry his youngest daughter. The daughter is hesitant, but the White Bear compromises, saying she can return to visit her family. Agreeing, the daughter is taken to a rich and enchanted castle. Every night, the Bear changes into a man. However, he doesn't allow any light in the castle at night, so she can never see him.

She becomes homesick and the Bear agrees to let her visit her home, so long as she doesn't talk to her mother alone. When she gets home, what does she do? She has a chit-chat with her mother, alone. When her mother hears about the Bear's enchantment, she convinces her to sneak a candle back to the castle to see him at night. She obeys and sees the man is a very handsome prince, but wakens him when she spills three drops of melted tallow (that's wax, for all you green horns) on his shirt. He tells her that if she had waited a year to see him, he would have been free. Now he must go back to his wicked stepmother who bestowed this curse upon him and marry her hideous daughter. Before he leaves, he tells her that the castle is east of the sun and west of the moon.

In the morning, the palace is gone and she goes out in search of him. At a mountain, she finds a woman playing with a golden apple. She asks for directions to a castle east of the sun and west of the moon. The woman refers her to her neighbor and gives her the golden apple. The neighbor is playing with a golden comb and doesn't have directions either, but refers her to another neighbor and gives her the golden comb. The third neighbor has a golden spinning wheel. She doesn't know the directions either, but gives her the spinning wheel and refers her to the East Wind. (Norwegians are an uber generous people... and apparently pretty strong too, carrying golden fruit, combs, and spinning wheels.)

The East Wind has never been to the castle, but takes her to his brother, the West Wind, for he is stronger. The West Wind takes her to the South Wind, who takes her to the North Wind. The North Wind recalls blowing an aspen leaf to the castle once, and remembers being exhausted after. He agrees to take her.

The next morning, she takes out her golden apple, which sparks the interest of the wicked stepmother's daughter. The girl lets her have the apple in return for a night with the prince. The evil daughter gives the prince a sleeping drink and the girl cannot wake him. The next day, the same thing happens, but with a trading of the golden comb. Again, the prince can't be woken. The third day, some of the imprisoned townspeople in the castle had heard of the girl and told the prince. The girl sat outside with her golden spinning wheel and traded it for a third night with the prince. This time, the prince does not drink what the evil princess brings him and tells the girls how she can save him. He will declare that he can only marry the woman who can clean the shirt stained with tallow drops. The next day, he makes his speech to the castle, insisting it's his wedding shirt. The stepmother and her daughter can't do it; in fact, they only make the shirt more dirty. When the princess tried, the shirt was made perfectly white and clean. The stepmother and her daughter, enraged, exploded on the spot (whaaaaaaat?) and the prince married the girl.

Cupid and Psyche:

Venus is jealous of the mortal Psyche's beauty and tells her son, Cupid, to shoot her with his golden arrows and make her fall in love with an ugly creature. Cupid agrees, but seeing her asleep, he takes pity on Psyche and accidentally scratches himself with his own arrow. He falls in love with Psyche and Venus is enraged. The goddess places a curse on Psyche that prevents her from finding a husband. Cupid strikes against Venus and refuses to use any of his arrows, causing Venus' temple to fall. Venus finally lets Cupid have his way and love is restored to the world.

However, Psyche's curse isn't lifted and her parents consult an oracle. They are told to leave Psyche on top of a mountain, for she is too beautiful for a mortal man. Zephyrus, the west wind, carries her to marry and sleep with Cupid. He visits her every night, but doesn't allow any light to identify him. Zephyrus takes Psyche back to her sisters; Psyche is warned not to listen to her sisters' argument that she should try to find out who he really is. Her jealous sisters tell Psyche that she is rumored to be married to a serpent who is going to eat her and her unborn baby (oh, forgot to mention she's pregnant at this point in the story). They convince her to light a lamp and kill her husband. When she lights the lamp, she sees her husband is the god Cupid and accidentally pricks herself on one of his arrows. Consumed with desire, she tries to kiss him, but drops oil on his shoulder and wakes him. He flies away and she falls from the window.

Psyche finds she's in the city where one of her jealous sisters lives. When she tells her what happened, the sister convinces her that Cupid has chosen another wife. Her other jealous sister tells her the same thing. Both sisters go to the top of the mountain and jump, awaiting Zephyrus, but fall to their deaths.

Searching for her lover, Psyche is approached by the god Demeter who tells her to call to Venus. Juno gives her the same advice. Psyche finds a temple to Venus. The goddess orders her to separate a huge basket of mixed grains before dark. An ant helps her separate the grains and Venus is outraged. The goddess then tells her to go to a sheep grazing field and retrieve some of their golden wool. The sheep are vicious and strong, but a river-god advises her to wait until mid-day when the sheep move to the shade; then, she can pick wool stuck to tree branches. Again, Venus is outraged and orders her to get water from a cleft guarded by serpents. An eagle helps her with this task. For a fourth task, Venus sends Psyche to the underworld to retrieve some of Persephone's beauty in a box. On her way back with the bit-o-beauty, she is curious and decides to sneak a peek. She finds there is nothing in the box, but is overcome by an infernal sleep. A forgiving Cupid flies to his love and wipes the sleep from her eyes back to the box. He then flies the two of them to Mount Olympus and asks Jupiter to help them. Jupiter gives Psyche a drink of ambrosia and she is made immortal.

Did you catch any similarities? This really seems too obvious to list them out.

Vladimir Kush blows my mind

Since visiting an art gallery in Hawaii over Christmas break, I've been obsessed with artist Vladimir Kush. He's like... a sober Dali. Also, his pieces have strong connections to mythology.

The above painting is titled "Narcissus". In Greek mythology, Narcissus, a hunter known for his beauty, looks into a clear pond and falls in love with his reflection. Every time he tries to lean over and kiss himself, the image is scattered in the ripples, so he resorts to sitting at the edge of the pond and staring into the water. Eventually, he turns into a beautiful flower (that can be found growing on the edges of small bodies of water, hmmmm). In Ovid's version, he commits suicide and the flower grows in his place. This is also where we get the term "narcissism".

This one is simply title "Pearl". According to Greek mythology, the titan Chronus cuts of Uranus' genitals and throws them to the sea. From the foam collected around the immortal flesh is born Aphrodite, goddess of love, beauty, and sexuality. In Roman mythology, the goddess is Venus and she is born in a clam shell.

"Horn of Babel": in the Bible's story of the Tower of Babel, the people attempt to construct a tower high enough to reach heaven. God punishes them, depriving them of their common language. With language barriers, they aren't inclined to come to an understanding. Vladimir, on the other hand, paints a "Babel horn of plenty". In this town, people live in a horizontal community, which is known to be much more disposed to communicate among themselves and understand each other than residents of the "vertical" (e.g. apartment towers).

"Icarus": the Greek myth tells of the builder, Daedalus, and his son, Icarus, who tried to escape King Minos. Daedalus made wings for the two of them out of feathers left on their cell window sill and wax from candles. They take off from their window and fly above the Aegean sea. Icarus, ignoring his father's warning, flies too close to the sun and the wax on his wings melts; he falls to his death. The feather on the ledge represents their wings.

"Departure of the Winged Ship" is by far my favorite Kush painting. I'm really not so interested in the mythology connections in this case, but seeing as this is for a mythology lit class, I feel obligated to make this relevant...

Apparently there's a lot of references to butterflies in myths. In Ancient Greece, butterflies were linked to the human soul and were considered the souls who had passed away. Also, the Greek word for butterfly is something like "psyche" (as in Cupid and Psyche). Psyche literally means spirit, breath, life, or animating force.

There's more where that came from.... just google Vladimir Kush.

Giants

Here's something that's been bugging me for at least a week: why are giants so prevalent in mythology? It seems, at least in Greek myths, that there are only a few non-human categories: the titans, their offspring (the Olympians), the children of the Olympians (a few gods and immortal hero people), and giants (the children of Uranus and Gaea).

After some research, I found that "giant" comes from the Greek "gigantes". I suppose this is somewhat irrelevant, but etymology knowledge seems to be one of those things that people like to have and store away, but rarely use in day-to-day happenings; like roller blades?

I also learned that giants were not always colossal, one-eyed monsters. In the Old Testament, Goliath was considered a giant. In Islam, God (Allah) created Adam to be 30 meters tall. Since then, his offspring have gotten shorter. The Prophet Mohamed said "so whoever will enter Paradise will be of the shape and form of Adam". In European tales, giants appear cruel and stupid. Heroes who kill the often did so more by wit than by strength.

I'd like to reach some general consensus about the main reason for giants in mythology. Unfortunately, there appears to be nothing consistent between all ancient cultures. In Hesiod's Theogony, (Greek mythology) Zeus releases three cyclops (giants) from the dark pit of Tartarus, where their father had banished them. They provide Zeus' thunderbolt, Hades' helmet of invisibility, and Poseidon's trident. Greeks believed some cyclops were buried under the earth and their tormented quivers resulted in earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Giants might seem to consistently act as primeval creatures associated with chaos and wild nature. If it weren't for Islam, this would be true. Thanks a lot, Islam. You may have made incredible contributions to literature, architecture, art, and provide slightly over twenty percent of the world's population with a religion, but you sure do create annoying outliers in world mythology.