More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
March 4 - June 28, 2020
I wish there was more provided about what we know about the site’s history before Apollo. That seems more interesting than dubious efforts to “translate” myths into clues about the religions historical origins. That being said, a cave often referred to as a womb or vagina, and which conceals the navel of the earth does scream out “mother goddess.” It is somewhat odd to find a god situated there, especially one that is not connected with fertility, death, rebirth or any of the other traditionally chthonic affects of divinity.
This disappearance during the winter is the only real chthonic thing about Apollo. If the site did have a pre-history associated with a mother goddess, or with a more chthonic male god, is this practice a possible holdover?
I am now being as bad as Eliade in my rampant speculation.
The “nothing is random” school of divination returns.
Despite often being proposed as the source of her transports. I think that the “fumes” preposition that is often mentioned relies on confusion between the oracle at Delphi and a similarly chthonic oracle near Rome. I cannot now recall the name of the Roman site, but it was dedicated to the Sybil.
Are we saying that Apollo is the god who got attached to the shamanic traditions? Does his worship date back to shamanic times? Were their more animist beliefs later hung upon this classical era divinity?
Was the bow and arrow an invention that was universally disseminated among humans? I cannot, off the top of my head, think of any area of the world where the bow and arrow was not used. Was it repeatedly invented in different places, or is this an invention so old it radiated with human-kind out of Africa? I guess it could have been invented after man had dispersed from the Rift Valley and been disseminated subsequently, but it would have need to have been done before the Americas became isolated from Eurasia. Something like 20,000 BC, I think?
A new religious vision symbolized by the bow and arrow which grants us mastery over space, and which requires concentration to use properly. That concentration is associated with wisdom, which seems to make sense as it bears some similarity to meditation or contemplation. It is associated with the shamanic tradition which was also focused on wisdom gained through various forms of concentration, and on mastery over space. All of this is embodied in a god who represents wisdom which he demonstrates when he takes aim and focusses on a target, and who inherits the tradition of shamanic religious practices. This is Apollo, our god of priests.
He represents the process of harnessing the instincts that lead to inspiration and using them to gain knowledge by more systematic means.
I thought that the heaps were named after Hermès, not vice versa.
Like the herders and thieves he travels, even at night. As he travels, he makes an apt messenger,
A guide of souls to the land of the dead.
Is he more a god of hidden knowledge than Apollo? Are they both gods of knowledge, but gods who approach the acquisition of it from slightly different angles.
To move freely between the realms of men, gods and the dead requires more than mere wisdom; it requires occult knowledge and the access to magical powers.
He becomes a god of secret knowledge.
This is the one that makes Odysseus immune to Circe’s magic?
It becomes interpreted as something that allows us to preserve our true self in the face in transformation into a natural or bestowal form. Is this a thing that can allow us to preserve ourself past the threshold of death?
Do we know of pre-Greek inhabitants of Argos?
Of or related to the earth.
It seems odd that a perpetually virgin goddess should be a Martin if childbirth. It feels like she should show up to say “I told you so” at the hardest part of the labor.
That’s a good connection.
I feel like, in many ways, she may have been more important to contemporary Greek religion than Hera herself.
I did not know her name was of non-Greek origin.
I get it, she’s a domestic goddess, the domus she protects happens to also be a seat of government, housing warriors and soldiers, so this domestic goddess takes on a decidedly martial bent.
She’s a goddess of war who is not blood-thirsty and violent like Ares. Her role in war encompasses strategy, honor and heroism. Ares encompasses chaos and violence.
How do we know that?
Interesting, in addition to being a goddess of war, she is also a goddess of crafts and artisans.
A goddess of poise.
A governing council made up of priests.
Distinguishing the Greek concept of hero from our own. Our heroes are men who do things in an a admirable and amazing way. The Greek heroes were not normal men, they were something else entirely.
Like they are sort of a relic from an earlier era of ancestor worship. I wonder what led Rhodes to connect them with the earth. Their presence in Tartarus?
I was never exactly certain how hero worship (get it) fit into Greek Religion, though I always had an idea that it did.
Meaning that they previously existed as gods, but with very specific portfolios (for lack of a better word)?
It’s almost like saying that they are all allegorical figures of one type or another.
They always seem to exist in a past that is imagined to be more fluid than the present.
I think we always imagine the past as an era when boundaries were more fluid because the rules were still being written. We seem to always be wrong.
The first inhabitants of a place, and often the ancestor of all subsequent inhabitants.
Was this initiation universal, or was it associated with a specific class / profession?
The hero who taught agriculture to the Greeks. He traveled in a flying chariot pulled by three dragons. He later became central to the Eleusian Mysteries.
Builder of the Oracle at Delphi
One of the Seven Against Thebes and Alcmaeon’s father. He went to war knowing he was doomed. He was swallowed by the earth when Zeus hurled a thunderbolt in his path as he fled from another hero.
Theseus’ son
Hence, continue to be worshipped.
A monument erected to a person who was buried elsewhere.
I guess this is why Rhodes associated the heroes with the earth.
A big deal in Greece.
They are not always good. They are usually tragic. The same traits that cause them to become great also cause them to act horribly, and usually bring on their demise.
The heroes are horrible brutes, but they are the horrible brutes who built a world that held no place for horrible brutes like them.
I think I remember learning at some point that the whole ritual edifice was built upon Persephone’s descent into the underworld, her return / resurrection, and her forming a lasting accommodation with death.
The fruit / nectar which gives the gods immortal life.
I had not realized that Eleusis figures prominently in the original myth. I had always thought that Eleusis leant it’s name to the mystery cult because that was where the first practitioners of these rituals lived and worked.
