Rose Anderson's Blog, page 30

Take the world by storm

So the Greek weather gods have left our area alone for a few days. Their focus has been elsewhere, namely creating Hurricane Arthur.

Hurricanes, cyclones, and typhoons are all the same weather phenomenon, by the way. Their differing names have to do with the location in which these storms occur. Cyclones occur in the South Pacific and Indian Ocean. In the Atlantic and the Pacific Northeast, hurricane is used. The same storm in the Northwest Pacific would be called a typhoon.

I’ve mentioned I have tornado anxiety — too much water under my bridge and too active an imagination thrown in to magnify the angst. Tornadoes just appear. A bad storm rolls in boom — conditions are ripe for one. Hurricanes don’t have the same effect on me. Perhaps it’s because they build slowly. A hurricane gives you time to batten your hatches. Tornadoes are rude by comparison. ;)

As incongruous as this next bit might sound, in light of all I’ve said, I would love to stand on the beach as a hurricane nears. No, I’m not looking to get the full blast when it makes landfall, I have no desire to be swept out to sea in the storm surge. I just want to feel the energy of it for a bit before I run for cover. I am an ion junkie. :D

In keeping with the theme of weather gods, those Theoi Meteoroi. Who might be responsible for such a storm as Hurricane Arthur?  This god’s name gives a clue — Typhon.

Remember in several posts past, I mentioned the ugly children of Gaea (Mother Earth), forced by their father Uranus to go back to the cave womb from which they sprang? Well, Gaea had other children beside those giant Hecatoncheires and their beautiful siblings the Titans. But who was around to father them?

As Hesiod writes in his Theogony, the first entities that came into existence were :

Chaos (known either as the Void or Air)
Gaia (the Earth)
Tartarus (a bottomless storm pit)
Eros (Love/procreation)

After these, a few more came on the scene:

Erebus (the Darkness)
Nyx (the Night)
Aether (the Light)
Hemera (the Day)
Uranus (the Heavens)
The Ourea (the Mountains)
Pontus (the Sea)

I find it interesting that the dark and light are dualistic entities. Erebus for example is male and Nyx is female. The same for Aether and Hemera.

Anyway…

In what could only have been a whirlwind romance (I crack me up), Gaia the earth had a son fathered by Tartarus the bottomless storm pit.  Their son was the monster named Typhon. According to the myths, fire-eyed Typhon was so tall his head touched the stars. He had the torso of a man, but his legs were enormous coiling snakes that writhed and hissed as he walked. His hands consisted of 100 deadly serpents and his head was host to 100 more. Odder still, each snake screamed the cries of various animals. He also had hundreds of wings covering his body. Yeah, that’s a monster.

Other versions of the Typhon story have him as the son of Hera. A son conceived without a father. That’s enough for today.

Tomorrow ~ Fun Day Sunday

Monday ~ more on Typhon.

 

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If you haven’t had a chance to see my post on Romance Books ’4′ Us

yesterday, do stop by. http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-hard-won-ground-by-rose-anderson.html

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés. There are 74 entries to come.

Here’s a cliché for today:

  To take the world by storm

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Today is Author Paris Brandon’s blog day.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

We’re running a little behind schedule but our July contest is coming soon! http://www.romancebooks4us.com

And today on our busy Exquisite Quills blog  ~ an interview with Author Stacy Juba

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

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Better than fiction

It’s my blog day on Romance Books ’4′ Us. In honor of Independence Day I’m sharing a little family history that’s better than fiction.

And it’s all true! Come see.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

Happy 4th of July.

Have a safe and fun-filled day today.

I just love this guy’s creativity.  :D

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés. There are 75 entries to come. To catch up, here are two for today…

History repeats itself

Think like a man, act like a woman

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Our July contest is running a little behind but I’ll announce the details soon. I hear there are a LOT of prizes planned.  http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

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Rude awakening

I have a lot to do over the next two days and no time for my morning research posts. 

I’m not a summer person. Not at all. I have my reasons. As a redhead who’s already gone through the unpleasant burn away skin cancer treatments, I need to keep out of the sun. There are years where our yard isn’t enjoyable for all the mosquitoes. I tend to faint if I get too hot. And, at my age I have all the heat I can possibly stand trapped right under my skin ready to flash on a whim. Nope, not a summer person at all. I’m hoping July and August fly by like June has.

We only have air-conditioners in the bedrooms. That’s just how this house is laid out. But I keep our house cool by opening and closing windows coupled with precise placement of fans — a choreography of sorts built upon nearly 30 years of trial and error. It’s basically blowing out hot air though an upstairs window while blowing in cool nighttime air downstairs. This generally results in a daytime temperature of 10° or more below the temperature outside. I have the system so finely tuned that people will actually step into my home and tell me how nice it is to walk into a house with air-conditioning on a hot day.

The problem with my house-cooling window and fan choreography is it all falls apart if it rains at night. So last night, or I should say in the wee hours of morning, I hear the rumble of a storm moving in. We have this nighttime-storm ritual here on the hill that goes something like this:

Wake from thunder >> take electric fans out of windows before they get wet>>yank the cord out of the wall first if they are>>run sleepily down two flights of stairs to unplug everything before lightning fries it>>try to go back to sleep. Try. Ha!

So last night I did just that, and then…my husband’s cellphone starts screeching. It’s 1:55 and we have a tornado on the way. I turned on the weather radio and sure enough, the tornado was seen 35 miles away and we’re in the projected path. The next 25 minutes we sat in the basement doing the math and listening to the robotic voice telling us that trailers will be destroyed and we need to take cover.



Tornadoes generally make me anxious. Too many close calls and a large enough imagination that unwillingly hangs on to the images of many a deadly aftermath. As you might imagine, nighttime tornadoes make me a nervous wreck. And sleep afterward? Not for me.

I sat there thinking of friends in the tornado path with me, especially those without basements, the whole while projecting my protective bubble around us all. The last ten minutes of this tense situation had the storm moving east of us one 30-second update at a time. I must have mentally shoved that tornado off its beeline to us! This afternoon I get to do it all over again. Another dangerous storm on the way. As usual, I’ll likely be without power and/or internet for a time. *sigh*

If power and internet hold, the blustery weather gods and I will return on Wednesday when I share more about the Theoi Meteoroi.

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés.

There are 78 entries to come.

Here’s a cliché for today:

Idle hands are the devil’s workshop



And one more for tomorrow:

All in a day’s work

There are now 77 entries to come.

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Today is Suzanne Rock’s blog day.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

The June contest is over. This month’s contest will had 2 winners who’ll each receive a $50 gift card for Amazon/B&N and a $10 gift card toward books from Secret Cravings Publishing. The rest of the prizes will be split between winners (randomly chosen by RB4U). Coming soon ~ our July contest! http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

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Fun Day Sunday!

If you’ve been here before then you know Sundays on my blog are all about wonder and smiles. In honor of mentally kicking back once in a while, Sundays are Fun Days! Each Sunday, visitors will find a fun, interesting, or unusual something here. I’m a nerd with a complex sense of humor and absurd wit. It could literally be anything.

These guys had me smiling.  :D

Tomorrow ~ more weather deities.

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés.

There are 79 entries to come.

Here’s a cliché for today:

Chief cook and bottle washer

۞>>>>۞<<<<۞

Saturday & Sunday Happenings

Sexy Snippets & My Sexy Saturday

http://calliopesotherwritingtablet.blogspot.com/

Seductive Studs and Sirens & Weekend Writing Warriors

http://theancillarymuse.blogspot.com/

A Saturday Teaser

http://ifollowthemuse.blogspot.com/

Sneak Peek Sunday

http://calliopeswritingtablet.blogspot.com/

Sunday Snippet

**promo op all all romance authors**

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

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Today is Sandra K. Marshall’s blog day.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

The June contest is winding down on the Romance Books ’4′ Us. This month’s contest will have 2 winners who’ll each receive a $50 gift card for Amazon/B&N and a $10 gift card toward books from Secret Cravings Publishing. The rest of the prizes will be split between winners (randomly chosen by RB4U). http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

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Shoot the breeze

I began this short weather deity series to coincide with lousy weather. We’ve managed to dodge more than one storm on the radar over the last few days so I’m hanging out my rainbow and putting away my umbrella.

I’ve decided to continue discussing ancient gods and goddesses who were said to influence the weather. Who knows where my interest will take me. If you’re here for the first time, the plan is to blog the weather gods of many religions. I’ve started my series with the Theoi Meteoroi — the weather gods of Ancient Greece.

Continuing on with the Greek winds, today is about the Aurae.

In Greek mythology the forces of nature were usually overseen or personified by some god or goddess, some monster or the other, or by a different sort of being — the nymph. Technically, nymphs were not gods, nor were they immortal like the gods. They did eventually die, but in their death, most often what you got was a transformation. Nymphs were the personifide aspects of earth, their essence and being tied to the water, air, trees etc, in which they lived. The myths are filled with nymphs giving up their lives to transform into trees and plants, water and stone. The first time I read this I thought of Newton’s First Law of Thermodynamics — energy only changes form, it never disappears.

Aurae are the nymphs of the cooling breezes. In artworks of the time, we see Aurae with billowing garments that hold those breezes. And when you read about them, they are always seen in the plural. That’s a good thing to know because the myths are confusing enough sometimes. It would be easy to confuse them with Aura the Titan goddess of the Breeze and Fresh Air of Early Morning.

I’ve come across several origins for these ladies. Some say they were the daughters of Boreas and the wind brothers mentioned in previous posts. Most say they were daughters of Okeanos, the earth-encircling fresh-water stream. Others say the Aurae just were – sprung from the earth mother as is to become protectors who tended the various natural phenomena such as springs, lakes and rivers, clouds, trees and meadows, caves and beaches, etc. Although they weren’t goddesses, they had good standing with the gods and were always invited to attended the various assemblies on Mount Olympus.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Okeanos sends his daughters and their accompanying breeze to gently blow over a beautiful meadow on earth called the Elysian field. It’s there that Zeus slips away from Mount Olympus and enjoys perfect happiness for a while. He is a tormented husband after all. Later, the poet Virgil will write this field as located in Hades realm — a exquisitely beautiful place the worthy go after they die.  The Aurae continue to blow their refreshing breezes there too.

Sometimes these breezes have fits of temper and blow strong enough to carry ships off the water. Ah those temperamental winds.

Tomorrow ~ Fun Day Sunday!

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés.

There are 80 entries to come.

Here’s a cliché for today:

Shoot the breeze

۞>>>>۞<<<<۞

Saturday & Sunday Happenings

Sexy Snippets & My Sexy Saturday

http://calliopesotherwritingtablet.blogspot.com/

Seductive Studs and Sirens & Weekend Writing Warriors

http://theancillarymuse.blogspot.com/

A Saturday Teaser

http://ifollowthemuse.blogspot.com/

Sneak Peek Sunday

http://calliopeswritingtablet.blogspot.com/

Sunday Snippet

**promo op all all romance authors**

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/


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Today our is guest Alisa Anderson

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

The June contest is winding down on the Romance Books ’4′ Us. This month’s contest will have 2 winners who’ll each receive a $50 gift card for Amazon/B&N and a $10 gift card toward books from Secret Cravings Publishing. The rest of the prizes will be split between winners (randomly chosen by RB4U). http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

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The reaping whirlwinds

As long as my bad weather lasts, or longer if this topic is interesting enough, I’ll be discussing the ancient gods and goddesses of many cultures who were said to influence the weather. I’ve started my series with the Theoi Meteoroi — the weather gods of Ancient Greece.

I’m continuing with the Tempest-Winds — the Anemoi Thyellai.

Have you ever had your hat blown off your head, papers blown from your hand, or had a sharp gust of wind blow something just beyond your reach? The ancients would say you were visited by the Harpies. 

Born to Thaumas (an old proto or first god of the sea) and Elektra (a cloud nymph –more on her next week), there were originally five Harpy sisters: Aellope, Ocypete, Podarge, Celaeno, Nicothoe. In most of the stories I’ve found, these three seem to be the main players: Aellope, Ocypete, and Celaeno, their names meaning Storm swift, The swift wing, and The dark, respectively.

In earlier versions, the Harpies were described as beautiful, winged maidens. Hesiod describes them as maidens with lovely hair, as lovely as their sister Iris the Rainbow. Over time they became women with beautiful faces on vulture bodies. Later, they became ugly winged monsters equipped with sharp hooked talons. It seems to me in the later tellings they were often confused with the Gorgons (more on them later). Comme ci comme ça — like this, like that.

Some myths have them parented by Typhon and Echidna (again I do believe this refers to the Gorgon sisters). Other myths have them as the Hounds of Zeus sent to dispatch whatever he wanted them to with a windy gust.

The most interesting of the Harpy myths concerns Phineus, the king of Thrace. Not only was he king, Phineus was also a prophet. Because he revealed too much of the gods’ plans to mortal men, Zeus blinded him and set Harpies to plague him. Whenever Phineus sat down to eat, the Harpies would swoop down and steal his food, starving him slowly by the day. This story might be the root of why Harpies were said to possess an insatiable hunger. Some versions say whatever crumbs and scraps were left on Phineus’ plate, they were fouled and inedible. To me this suggests the origin of the vulture body. (If threatened, Vultures will vomit their rotten carcass meals like throwing down a smoke bomb.) From here, it’s not hard to see how these beautiful wined maidens became monsters.

When Jason and the Argonauts came on the scene and saw what was happening to poor Phineus, the winged Boreads (those sons of Boreas the North Wind) chased the Harpies away. So pleased that he could finally eat, Phineus shared with Jason and his Argonauts a future glimpse of a successful quest, complete with how to get around certain deadly hazards.

Quick Harpie tidbits:

Harpies turn up as figures on ancient tombs. This suggests ties to the underworld. 
Harpies were amazingly agile and thus impossible to catch and kill.
Their name means whirlwind.
In Dante’s Inferno, he places the harpies in the Wood of Suicides where they screech from the trees.
Shakespeare made the name Harpy synonymous with relentlessly nagging women in his play Much ado About Nothing.
The Harpy Eagle is named for the Harpies. Check out their genus and species names — Harpia harpyja.

 

Tomorrow ~ wrapping up the Anemoi

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés.

There are 81 entries to come.

Here’s a cliché for today:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

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Today is Janice Seagraves’ blog day.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

The June contest is winding down on the Romance Books ’4′ Us. This month’s contest will have 2 winners who’ll each receive a $50 gift card for Amazon/B&N and a $10 gift card toward books from Secret Cravings Publishing. The rest of the prizes will be split between winners (randomly chosen by RB4U). http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

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Ride like the wind

As long as my bad weather lasts, or longer if this topic is interesting enough, I’ll be discussing the ancient gods and goddesses of many cultures who were said to influence the weather. I’ve started my series with the Theoi Meteoroi — the weather gods of Ancient Greece.

I’m continuing with the Tempest-Winds — the Anemoi Thyellai. Today is about the Keeper of the Winds ~ Aeolus

Like so many gods and goddesses, the name Aeolus is assigned to a few different characters. When Hesiod went around gathering all the different accountings of the myths for his Theogony, I imagine he was often confused.

Some tales portray Aeolus as a god who fathered the winds, others portray him the son of Hippotes a mortal king and an immortal nymph, while others have him as a mortal man given a divine task. I’ve come across tales where he is a divine king who packs mixed bags of winds (also known as clouds) and hangs them in the sky for the other gods to release for good or ill as mood strikes them. In some versions of the myths he keeps the winds in a cavern, while in other versions he has them locked securely away behind strong bronze walls.

Of all the tellings of Aeolus, Homer’s Odyssey pretty much nails him — Aeolus, born to the immortal mother mentioned above, was an immortal stableman working for Zeus and the winds were treated as horses, all kept in a corral on the small island of Aeolia.

The association of wind and horse isn’t too much the imaginative stretch. Horses are fast, after all. Imagine wind running over the tops of golden wheat or barley. I see that action here on my hill. The grass gets high and heavy with seed and the wind paths can be seen blowing them as if invisible horses are galloping over the tops. These amber waves of grain (or grass in seed) spring back after the windy hooves have moved on. Aeolus is also refereed to as Hippotades, which means the reiner of horses. From the Greek hippos meaning horse and tadên meaning reined in tightly. (unrelated to Aeolus but a fun fact to share –Hippopotamus means water horse. My kids got a kick out of that when they were little.).

So how ever it was he became such, Aeolus was the Keeper of the Winds. He plays a small part in the myths, his job to simply let loose the winds according to the whims of the gods and goddesses.

In Homer’s Odyssey,  Odysseus been gone 20-some years and is anxious to return to his wife and now grown son. Aeolus gives him a sack of winds to use to fill his sails for that long journey home.  Some tellings have Odysseus falling asleep just a few miles from home, in fact, home is within sight.  Only Odysseus knows what the sack contains, but the greed of his companions gets the better of them and they open it expecting to find riches. Because Aeolus packed a mixed bag of weak and strong winds, what the sailors unleash is a windstorm that nearly kills them and ends up throwing them all the way back to Aeolia. Aeolus determines the gods must be against Odysseus, which they were, and refuses to help him further.

I like to imagine Aeolus as that one version suggested. He spends his days rounding up winds, stuffing them into cloud sacks, and hanging them in the sky.

Tomorrow ~ the rest of the Anemoi

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés.

There are 82 entries to come.

Here’s a cliché for today:

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride

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Today is Sam Cheever’s blog day.

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

The June contest is winding down on the Romance Books ’4′ Us. This month’s contest will have 2 winners who’ll each receive a $50 gift card for Amazon/B&N and a $10 gift card toward books from Secret Cravings Publishing. The rest of the prizes will be split between winners (randomly chosen by RB4U). http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

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The missing wind

As long as my bad weather lasts, or longer if this topic is interesting enough, I’ll be discussing the ancient gods and goddesses of many cultures who were said to influence the weather. I’ve started my series with the Theoi Meteoroi — the weather gods of Ancient Greece.

Today I’m continuing with the Tempest-Winds — the Anemoi Thyellai



The other day I mentioned that Euros was the only one of the wind brothers not associated with weather in Greece. Today I found the reason and it put a slight meander in the topic. To explain, I must first go to Hesiod and Homer.

Mention ancient storytellers and Homer, the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, is usually thought of first. Hesiod was a contemporary of Homer’s sometime in the 7th or 8th centuries BCE. Homer was the poet whose works survived the pillaging and destruction of the ancient libraries. Tragically, just a sampling. Hesiod was a scholar whose body of work was no doubt lost as well, but enough survived to know what he was about.  While together these men are credited with establishing Greek religious customs, it is Hesiod to which we owe the myths. He wrote Theogony — a vast Greek cosmonogy — the story of the origin and development of the universe. And in it, all the deities and their stories we are so familiar with and captivated  by today. He collected the tales and presented them in one epic work. This great work is not a book by the way, Theogony is a poem.

So how does Hesiod figure in to the winds? Because he’s the original go-to guy for our Greek myths,  his telling of the stories are the versions we know. I discovered the reason so little is written about Euros the East Wind. In Hesiod’s time, the Greeks recognized only three seasons — spring, summer and winter. That being the case, originally there were only three seasonal winds — brothers Zephyros, Notos and Boreas. Somewhere along the way, he tucked Euros in with the others. And the rest is history. Mythic history, that is.

Here are the remaining lesser winds on the compass points. I’ll add more about them as I uncover it. So far, some references say they are not personalities, simply directional winds.

Circius the North Northwest Wind

– a.k.a. Thrakias

Euronotus the North Northeast Wind

– a.ka. Meses

Libonotus, the South Southwest Wind

– the Romans called this wind Leuconotos

Phoenicias the South Southeast Wind

– a.k.a. Orthonotos

Tomorrow ~ the Keeper of the Winds

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés.

There are 83 entries to come.

Here’s a cliché for today:

Variety is the spice of life

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Book Hooks

http://calliopesotherwritingtablet.blogspot.com/

Horny Hump Day

http://theancillarymuse.blogspot.com/

Hump Day Blurb Share

(open promo opportunity)

http://exquisitequills.blogspot.com/

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Today we have guest Cris Anson

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

The June contest is winding down on the Romance Books ’4′ Us. This month’s contest will have 2 winners who’ll each receive a $50 gift card for Amazon/B&N and a $10 gift card toward books from Secret Cravings Publishing. The rest of the prizes will be split between winners (randomly chosen by RB4U). http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

Oh so windy!

As long as my bad weather lasts, or longer if this topic is interesting enough, I’ll be discussing the ancient gods and goddesses of many cultures who were said to influence the weather. I’ve started my series with the Theoi Meteoroi — the weather gods of Ancient Greece.

Today I’m introducing the Tempest-Winds — the Anemoi Thyellai 

The four brother winds: Boreas, Zephryos, Euros, and Notos, saw to the four cardinal directions on the compass. Apparently each never left their set place in the sky, because they weren’t alone in directing winds and breezes. I’ll begin today’s post with the four wind gods who saw to the winds directionally between the aforementioned Anemi. I’ve whipped up a little graphic.  :D

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Often confused with other winged deities who wreak havoc, these minor winds Kiakias, Apeliotes, Lips, and Skiron have their own personalities and dispositions. I can’t find much on their origins, but I’ll venture a guess — they too were born of the Titans. I find it interesting that the more menacing of these four come from the north. While the two happy go lucky winds are in the south.

Kiakias the North East Wind was often depicted as an old long-bearded man who sported a shield full of hailstones. Because he could drop his hail on a whim and ruin crops and kill livestock, Kiakias was considered a “dark wind”.

Apeliotes the South East Wind blew in refreshing rains for the croplands.  Often depicted as a youth carrying fruit, flowers, and grain in a draping cloth, he was the farmer-friendly wind.

Lips the South West Wind was a friend to sailors. With a breath he could quickly clear the skies. He’s often depicted holding the stern of a ship. He too was a good wind.

Skiron the North West Wind is the wind that blows winter in. Like his brother Kiakias, he too is depicted as an old bearded man, but instead of hailstorms, he tilts his cauldron to dump the harsh winter he’s been brewing all summer and fall.

* Interesting to note: Skiron’s Roman counterpart Corus (also Latin for crow) is one of the oldest gods in the Roman pantheon. While Rome absorbed and reassigned many Greek gods and gods from other cultures as well, this one was theirs from the very beginning.

Tomorrow ~ more winds!

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés.

There are 84 entries to come.

Here’s a cliché for today:

Second wind

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Today is Author Cara Marsi’s blog day

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

The June contest is winding down on the Romance Books ’4′ Us. This month’s contest will have 2 winners who’ll each receive a $50 gift card for Amazon/B&N and a $10 gift card toward books from Secret Cravings Publishing. The rest of the prizes will be split between winners (randomly chosen by RB4U). http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Find my novels wherever books are sold.

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

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Running with the wind

As long as my bad weather lasts, or longer if this topic is interesting enough, I’ll be discussing the ancient gods and goddesses of many cultures who were said to influence the weather. I’ve started my series with the Theoi Meteoroi — the weather gods of Ancient Greece.

Today I give you a bit more on the Anemoi ~

Boreas the North Wind and his brothers Zephryos the West Wind, Euros the East Wind, and Notos the South Wind are considered directional wind gods, that is, they are responsible for the four cardinal directions. They were born to cousins the Titan Astraeus the god of the stars and planets and his wife Eos the goddess of Dawn. As Titans begat Titans, the family of Anemoi consists of several winged gods and goddesses. I’ll go over the rest this week. Each had their personalities.

Zephryos was considered a god of springtime. It was he who breathed the gentle winds. The word zephyr, taken directly from his name, means gentle wind. But as everyone knows, winds do have a violent side. They do things like snap trees, form destructive tornadoes, vertical sheer croplands, and create wind tunnels to devil pilots. 

The four cardinal wind brothers were said to father fast horses. You can see how that came about. A fast horse would appear to have wind at its back. Not only did Zephryos father Zanthus, the horse of Achilles, he also had two-legged offspring. When Zephryos took Khloris the nymph/goddess of greenery (also the Roman goddess Flora) as his wife after running her down and forcing himself on her (a common habit of the Greek gods), together they had a son — Karpos –whose name means fruit.

Zephryos was a pederast (another common practice for the ancients and their gods that went beyond simple lust). He dearly loved a prince of Sparta named Hyakinthos. One day he came upon Apollo and Hyakinthos playing a game in a meadow and it threw him into a fit of jealous rage. While the pair tossed a disc back and forth between them, Zephryos took his angry breath and blew a strong gust in their direction. So fierce it was, it caused the disc to hit Hyakinthos in the head. The young man was killed instantly. Grieving, Apollo transformed Hyakinthos into a larkspur flower.

*Interesting to mention here — the Latin name for the flower is consolidia. Apollo sought to console himself for his loss as only a god could.

*In one version I came across, the youth was named Hyacinth and so was the flower he later became. That story doesn’t mesh with the consolidia though.

Tomorrow ~ Anemoi Thyellai — introducing the Tempest-Winds

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For 100 days, I’ll post something from my chosen topic: Clichés.

There are 85 entries to come.

Here’s a cliché for today:

Shoot the breeze

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Today we have guest Author Beverley Bateman

http://romancebooks4us.blogspot.com/

The June contest is on Romance Books ’4′ Us and the theme is wedding. This month’s contest will have 2 winners who’ll each receive a $50 gift card for Amazon/B&N and a $10 gift card toward books from Secret Cravings Publishing. The rest of the prizes will be split between winners (randomly chosen by RB4U). http://www.romancebooks4us.com

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Love Waits in Unexpected Places - Scorching Samplings of Unusual Love Stories

Sample my love stories for free!

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/333971

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