The Joy of Learning

[sdi]

The reason why being a student is so great is that you can be wrong all you want and it's not a problem—you just fix the mistake, learn something new, and off you go. Today was the first day in a while that I felt like I was capable of thinking well and so I spent a bunch of time reading and thinking about Apollodoros's account of the Theban cycle, when I realized that the Horos myth does have an exile-and-return. In fact, it even has a city! It's Bublos that is the equivalent of Thebai and Troia.

But it isn't Horos that gets exiled, it's Osiris; Horos is only "exiled" in the sense that his seed is contained within Osiris. Osiris is thus sort of the entire Greek host; his box being accepted into Bublos is not so very different from the Troian horse, and his coming back in fourteen pieces is like how the Greek host was scattered to the far winds in their returns.

But this means Aineias isn't Horos. But it turns out I already knew our Horos: it's Orestes, son of Agamemnon. (Which I suppose should have been obvious, since Orestes never goes to Troia, murders his mother, and avenges his father.) We see the same character in the Theban cycle in the figure of Alkmaion, who also murders his mother to avenge his father, is chased by the Erinues, undergoes purifications, etc.

But there were many heroes at Troia (and, indeed, at Thebai). I haven't chased them all down, but the one who really stands out is Diktus, who almost leaves Bublos, but not quite; this one is Akhilleus, who was also nursed-but-not-really by a goddess by day and burned in a fire at night, and managed to survive most of the way through the war before succumbing to passion. (I'm sure he would have left Troia alive had Peleus not cried out upon seeing him burning!) And, while I'm not 100% sure of it, the most likely candidate for Aineias is actually old Teiresias, who led the Thebans away before the Epigone sacked the city, helping them to found a new one.

Anyway, I've a long way to go, but I think there's two takeaways from this. First, always treat your knowledge as provisional; there is always something to be learned by ditching your assumptions. Second, if I want to reconcile my myths, it won't do to simply have a list of point-by-point in the stories: they actually form a sort of tree, with the core stem following Osiris-Horos, the house of Atreus, and Europe's magical necklace, but with branches splaying off at various points depending on which hero we are talking about. This strengthens the hypothesis that the ancients knew there were many spiritual paths and tried to support them...

Comments

[jprussell]

On the magical necklace, I meant to mention a point that might allow for further digging, but I'm not sure what exactly the implications for comparison might be. There's a theory that Freyja is actually the Goddess Dawn (Eos in Greek, Eostre in Old English, Ushas in Sanskrit), since "Freyja" is just a title meaning "Lady/Beloved." The evidence goes something like this: She's associated with sexuality, life, and magic, She's much beloved and revered, while the Norse don't seem to have the widely-known and beloved Dawn of other IE traditions, and a few other things.

If right, one (naturalistic, which I know you mostly disdain) explanation for her wondrous necklace, the Brisingamen, is the lovely ring of light around the horizon near dawn. This might help make some sense of Her trading sex with four dwarves for the necklace, as the Norse also believed four dwarves (the four cardinal directions) held up the sky.

1) I can't remember enough about the Europa myth to know if there's many parallels here (and Her being carried off to the West seems unfortunate for comparisons with Dawn), and 2) if you'd like, I can track down the link that went through the point-by-point comparisons (it was a discussion on Jive Talk hosted by Tom Rowsell of Survive the Jive with a couple of regular forum commenters without their own writing outlet).

For what it's worth, in my own practice, I've been treating Eostre and Frige as separate Goddesses, as I've learned to be wary of over collapsing "similar" Gods and Goddesses (Frigg and Frige seemed to be "obvious" divergences of an original single Goddess, but They let me know that treating Them as one wasn't right for my own worship), but I find the theory interesting.

Cheers,
Jeff

[sdi]

Thanks for these! I would be interested to see the link you mention, but please don't go to too much trouble to dig it up!

My copy of Taliesin's Map arrived yesterday and I was starting to look through it today; he makes the same dawn-goddess association with Helene. Also in favor of this is that Eos is said to A) be extremely beautiful, B) have an outrageous sexual appetite, C) have married her Troian lover Tithonos. You're right that I don't like naturalistic interpretations, but there's certainly a lot to be said for them...

I'm not really certain, yet, what to make of Europe's necklace; in all sources, it is said to give eternal youth and beauty (interestingly, the flip side of poor Tithonos!), but some sources assign the necklace to Harmonia (Kadmos's wife, daughter of Aphrodite and Ares) and say it was cursed (by Hephaistos, still mad about his wife's liason with Ares) to bring strife (hence cursing the house of Kadmos in the same way the Troia myth's house of Atreus was cursed).

Regarding "equivalent" gods/goddesses, I've had the same experience! While I've studied equivalent figures from a number of different myths (and equate them, at least symbolically!), I've only actually met one, and not even one that I've studied very closely. Go figure! At this point I doubt I'll make satisfactory sense of any of it, though I'm told that it's more important to try than it is to succeed...

[jprussell]

Well, turned out finding it wasn't too tough! https://podtail.com/podcast/survive-the-jive-podcast/is-freyja-the-same-goddess-as-eastre/

(If you have a preferred method for listening to podcasts, searching for "Jive Talk Is Freyja the same goddess as Eastre" should get you what you need).

Interesting details on the necklace! Other than being Freyja's signature item and the tale of how She got it, the only other Norse tale I know about it is that Loki stole it, Heimdall chased Him, they turned into seals, fought over it, and Heimdall brought it back. So there's certainly some strife going on there.

I think "more important to try than succeed" is solid advice for all this spiritual stuff!

Cheers,
Jeff

[sdi]

Thank you!