Day Eleven: Hercules the Playa

Special Valentine's-Day-ish edition: Hercules' love life!

So first off, we have Megara. Everybody knows her from the Disney version. "Kidnapped" by Hades, although I think she did it to herself. (She did volunteer, all Hades really did was hold her to the agreement . . .) Anyway, they had several children and life seemed good, but then Hera, being the angry, no good very bad high queen goddess that she was, decided to mess with Hercules some more. So she made him insane and he killed his kids and sometimes Megara, though that depends on the version. (In the versions where she survives, she's given to Iolaus.)

A while later, Hercules accidentally kills this guy Iphitus when he accidentally threw him over a wall in a fit of rage. As punishment, he's made the slave of Omphale, daughter of either the king of Lydia or a river god. Most records of her are MIA, but the general concensus is that she made Hercules wear women's clothing and stole his lion skin and club. After a year or so, she set him free and made him her husband (heiro gamos!). Then she just disappears from the story and he's suddenly single again.

Then comes Deianira, whom we just read about in Ovid. Hercules fought the river god Achelous for her, then a centaur named Nessus tried to rape her. Centaur dies and gives Deianira poisoned "love cloak," Deianira later sends it to Hercules, Hercules puts it on and has his skin burned until he dies. Nasty. Then "till death do us part" comes in, and Hercules is once again Single Bachelor of the Year.

Once Hercules arrives at the pearly gates of Mount Olympus, Hera has apparently decided to forgive him. Feeling a little bad for maybe being just a bit mean, she gives him her daughter Hebe, also known as Juventas, the goddess of youth. She also happens to be his half-sister. Yuck.






Other interesting note: When Hercules is in the "thirteenth labor" and kills the Lion of Cithaeron, King Thespius challenges him to have sex with all of his daughters in one night--all fifty of them. Hercules, being the amazing studly man that he is, does so with no problem. Every single girl becomes pregnant, making the entire next generation of the royal family of Thespiae his illegitimate children.

Yikes.

Day Ten: The Mystery of Canceled Class

(the following best appreciated if read in Vincent Price's voice)

Charity Kaufmann was not your ordinary hero. She was not descended of a god, nor was she blessed with many superpowers (or was she...). Still, this never stopped her from seeking adventure, and she went out one day in search of the biggest legend of America: Bigfoot.

After climbing the M to get a better view of the world, she decided to start looking in Butte. She searched the town thorougly, examing every room of every building, and when she finished ten minutes later, she decided to look in the mine ruins. To get there, she had to cross the most deadly ocean of all: The Pit.

As all Montanans know, The Pit is a massive lake made of acid, oil, refuse and other various nasty things that will kill anything that gets within ten feet of the liquid. Charity tried to make a rope bridge across, but the vapor rising from The Pit was too strong, and the ropes broke quickly. Thinking hard, she decided to stack several dozen boats on top of each other and fasten them with duct tape. As she sailed across The Pit, the boats dissolved in sequence, and she reached the opposite side just as the last boat dissolved into the water. (Luckily, not even sea monsters can survive in The Pit, so her journey was otherwise undaunted.)

Now on the other side, Charity walked into the woods and started looking for footprints when suddenly she saw . . .

Tune in to class Friday to hear what happens next!

Day Nine: Mithraism

The Cult of Mithra was based on worshiping the god Mithra, who in traditional Hindu religion was the god of the sun, solar system, sky at day, and other similar things depending on who you ask. Mithra was considered a minor deity until a guy named Zoroastrian came along and decided to reform the religion a bit. He created a branch that was essentially monotheistic with Ahura Mazda as supreme god. Directly below Ahura Mazda in ranking was Mithra, who was essentially the god's hero and went around fighting for the right.

The most interesting thing about Mithraism is that in a lot of ways, it's very similar to traditional Christianity. Besides the obvious similarity of Ahura Mazda and Mithra to God and Jesus, a lot of their traditions were very similar. Not a whole lot is known about the rituals of Mithraism, but they've found evidence that they had animal sacrifices, led what we would consider moral lifestyles, and had a ceremony involving bread and wine.

The Catholic church in particular says that Mithraism is probably similar to Christianity because they borrowed a lot of Christian ideas. They also say that a major difference is that Jesus Christ has been proven to have walked this earth, although whether or not he was the Son of God depends on your own beliefs. Mithra, in contrast, has no evidence to support his existence, and it was a fairly small area that believed in him, which some say is evidence against him.

Day Eight: Harry, Hercules and Hannah Montana

Just kidding, I won't talk about Hannah Montana : )

Well, it's a lovely Wednesday *checks clock* evening, and we are going to do a little run down on heroes! First off, a few definitions:

Merriam-Webster Dictionary: a man admired for his achievements and qualities
dictionary.com: a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities
wikipedia.org: a person who performs extraordinary deeds for the benefit of others

This hero figure will almost always acquire a "boon," that meaning something he brings back, learns or earns for the benefit of the general public, i.e. a special treasure, the ability to heal, being crowned king. There is also a cultural/psychological thing called an archetype, that is, our typical idea of what something should look like. The definitions above are all examples of archetypes; while one hero might be radically different from another, they're still expected to have those general traits.

So here's a hero in our generation: Harry Potter. Let's do a bit of evaluation, shall we?
Starting at the end of the series, Harry's boon is that he kills Voldemort. Fairly obvious, yes? I think it's about the only good thing he did for society overall, so there we go. He fits the general archetypes of being extraordinary (duh, he survived, plus he's extraordinarily hot), talented (well, in some ways?) and generally courageous, selfless, that sort of thing. See how he doesn't fit every detail but still has the general ideas down well?

Then you have your more professional heroes, like Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and John Lennon. Any more clever ideas? Be sure to comment with them!

Day Seven: Nut and Other Nutty Gods

Is it just me, or did anybody else have trouble reading the Isis Osiris myths without having that Prince of Egypt song stuck in their head? You know, the one where Hotep and Hoy name off a bunch of gods and they all make snakes?

What confused me the most was the fact that Nut was pregnant with all of their kids at once. I'm pretty sure that's not how it works, but who knows? Maybe anatomy and conception was radically different back then. Or maybe they just had better excuses for adultry . . .

Anyway, it was also interesting that the story of Isis hiding Horus in the Nile was so similar to the story of Moses. Angry powerful people want child dead, child hidden in river, child grows up to deal with said no good very bad authority. So far Horus hasn't led a nation of slaves through a sea and eventually to freedom, but give him time, right?

Here's a few more things I don't think the Egyptians understood very well: physics and plant life. Okay, if you throw a wooden box containing a person into a river, it could possibly float, depending on the weight distribution, but after dipping it in lead? Come on. And then it just grew into a tree somehow?

Well, at least they weren't pretending to have sex with horses like somebody we know of . . .

Day Six: Inanna-Ishtar

First off, as promised, a bit of goddess background:

The Gaia Hypothesis: the earth is a live system (Mother Earth) constantly working to bring things to order, like Fern Gully

Great Goddess Hypothesis: just like it sounds, goddess > god, woman > man

Societies that have a supreme goddess instead of a supreme god tend to be more woman-focused. These societies are called matrifocal. If the woman is also the head of the family, the husband will take on her name when they get married, which is called matriarchal society. Not many of those left today. As far as I know, the only major religion today that has a supreme goddess is Wicca. Fun fact: matriarchal societies tend to have less violence and more gender equality than patriarchal (male-focused) societies.

There's a Queen of Heaven (aka supreme goddess) who was known in Samaria as Inanna and in Akkadia as Ishtar. It's also possible that she's the goddess Tiamat from Babylonian stories, as well as Isis in Egypt. My first thoughts were that I read a manga once about a princess named Ishtar. I'm pretty sure there's no relation though.

<-- Ishtar from Vampire Game. Yeah, I know, it has "vampire" in the title, but it's actually well-written and has development, as well as legitimate vampires, not sparkly effeminate century-old-teenagers who creep on little girls as they sleep.

Inanna-Ishtar was apparently just chilling out ruling everything one day when her brother came over and said she needed new sheets on her bed. She disagreed, but he insisted, and finally he admitted that what he really meant was that she should get married. (I don't get that analogy either.) He introduces her to this shepherd and they get married and live happily ever after, until one day she has to go to the underworld. Possible reasons include a funeral, visiting her sister who is goddess of the underworld, or maybe she was just bored and wanted a change of scene.

Going off on a tangent here--underworld. Happens in a lot of myths, right? Heracles, for one, and I'm sure I'll think of more after a mug of coffee. But why? What does it really mean or matter if they go down with the dead people for a stroll?
Well, according to psychiatrists like Freud, it symbolizes going into your own unconscious and facing your "demons"--guilt, nasty memories, bad habits, that sort of thing. (Since Freud supported the theory, it probably also has something to do with your mother.) And apparently, in order to mature, we have to face our own demons.

Scary thought, huh?

Day Five: Ireland

I'm going to be perfectly honest here: until yesterday, I knew almost nothing about Irish mythology. In fact, I don't remember ever even thinking about whether they have mythology. Except for Halloween, of course.

Here's the Halloween story, which is actually proven and not just a myth: According to the Catholic Church, November 1st is "All Saints' Day." The way that works is more or less that every day of the year is some saint's day, but November 1st is one humongous holiday to celebrate everybody at once since you probably forgot one or two throughout the year. On All Saints' Day, you're supposed to be on your absolute best behavior. Way back in *checks wikipedia* the 5th century, Catholic missionaries went to Ireland and started setting up churches. The people that lived in Ireland, the Druids, were fairly open-minded about this new religion, but there were still some that didn't like the idea of being good one day. So it became a tradition that every year on October 31st, the night before All Saints' Day, they would do as many bad things as they could. This included making enormous wooden cages in the shapes of people and animals, shoving sick people, old people and criminals inside, and setting them on fire. (Also, after these fires all that would be left was bones, which is where we get the word bonfire.)

Okay, back to mythology class. I don't know about everyone else, but I found the origins-of-Ireland story to be a bit confusing. What I got out of it was that Ireland was constantly taken over by different groups with each group being less godly, the first legal case ended with an adulturous woman winning, and finally the ancestors of Irish people showed up. One of them wanted to be on good terms with the goddess whose body is Ireland, but another one thought they didn't owe her anything. I wish it had said more about how
that worked out for them in the long run.

The big deal with this particular myth was that it introduced the idea of a supreme goddess and a matriarchal or matrifocal society, which I'll discuss more in my next post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geX8IVBv4wk&feature=related