And Ralph Fiennes as Hades. Because in Hollywood, as always, everything old is new again–including Clash of the Titans. Although from the pics and the stars, it looks like this version has a sizable budget behind it. This’ll be awesome!

I have been lackadaisical lately, but today I have a few nifty mythy links for you:

First, a book! That sounds right up my alley. It actually came out in ‘06, and I think I remember seeing or hearing about it, but while it might have interested me a bit back then, it makes me clap-my-hands-together excited these days. A short little review for you of Francesca Lia Block’s Psyche In A Dress.

Next, a museum exhibition that I desperately want to see, but it’s in Berlin. Gandhara – The Buddhist Heritage of Pakistan has all sorts of sculptures (my favorite!) from the first through fifth centuries CE. Not only are there Buddhist statues of all sorts, but given the area, there is all sorts of Western influenced-work in there too. See, if I had a half-million dollar book deal I would use it for VERY IMPORTANT RESEARCH and write wonderfully amazing things about ancient cultures smooshing their religions together, and why don’t we?

Since I’m currently eating up Jung’s essay in Man and His Symbols, I found this blogpost out on the blogosphere to be a wonderful reflection on how we modern people have boxed ourselves in to the point of cutting out parts of ourselves that don’t fit inside our conceptual box.

(Of course, the psyche can’t be chopped up into nice little pieces like an onion…and the ignored bits get pretty pissed and gleefully take over our lives with the intent to maim and ruin every chance they get. So we’ve doubly screwed ourselves on the whole repression dance.)

Ms. James reflects that if we just let some of the older tropes of human behavior that are found in myth back into our culture, we’d be a whole lot happier. At the least, we’d be far less hell-bent on actively making ourselves miserable for *utterly* no good reason.

And, if art and creativity were more prized, the higher my chances will be of making a half-million deal for two books. So let’s get cracking!

So, I’ve had this movie on my DVR since last September, and finally today I have brought myself to watch it.

Ba’al the Storm God was a SciFi Channel original movie. I really shouldn’t have to say more. The plot synopsis is pretty fabulous. From Hollywood.com:

A Smithsonian archeologist dying of cancer, is prepared to stop at nothing to retrieve the ancient amulets of the storm god Ba’al. He is determined to discover the portal between our world and the next, which he hopes might cure his disease or make him a god.

That’s right, even the main character had no idea what he was doing or why. But trust me, HE WAS GOING TO SEE THIS PLOT TO ITS HORRIBLE END.

I watched it because it is mythy. And, um. Well, Ba’al as a Semitic god is sort of mostly right. That they weren’t square on the head on that point I can live with; the word Ba’al got used by a lot of peeps in the Mediterranean two millennia ago, so it *is* confusing. And they got it right that El is generally considered an elder god compared to Ba’al, and is sometimes referred to as his father.

That’s about all they got right. Yeah, this film is pretty much a complete waste of time; it is not the sort of movie that traverses all the way through bad to arrive somewhere in the backend of good–no. But there was one very interesting moment.

At the end, disaster in the form of a WHOLE EARTH COVERING SUPERSTORM was averted both by the actions of the archeologists working within the (incorrect) ancient myths of the gods *and* by the military meteorologists taking 21st century measures to deal with the threat. At the last second one of the meterologists tries to abort their efforts as the archeologist’s efforts are paying off, but the Military Leader guy says: “It’s in the hands of God now.” And in fact its the combination of both myth and technology that save the day. Which, given my aim in life, I found to be a nice little twist.

But seriously. Don’t waste your life watching this movie. Ever.

I’ve been thinking waaaaaay too hard and way too much lately, and I am tired and not a little sick, so today you get mythy media links!

• First up: a new upcoming TNA wrestling star named Andromeda! This is possibly the most ridiculous thing related to mythology on the web, and I tried to close the tab on my browser and save you from the knowing of it. I tried *really* hard. But you know, sharing dilutes the pain.

• You can now get the entire Watchmen comic book on DVD. I thought this was really intriguing. It’s a limited motion technique done on every single Watchmen panel, narrated by “Tom Stechschulte’s gin-soaked, film-noir voice.” This sounded rather intriguing to me. I’ve not read the comic (yet) nor have I seen the movie (yet), but I hear there is no little bit of Greek myth roots to be found in them. Though to be frank, the link I find more interesting for the curious advancement of printed media onto screen.

• This article is fantastico: Italian Peplums & Fusto Films: Muscleman Adventure/Fantasy Overview Part 3. The reviewer gets into Richard Harrison films and the entire genre of low-budget B-movie mythology re-hacks galore. It’ll have you dusting off your copy of Clash of the Titans and throwing it in the VCR…..

• An interesting book review about a forthcoming novel that is a re-telling of the Persephone tale: Radient Darkness. It sounds interesting, and the psychology behind it is sound. The entire maiden-queen-crone triple-goddess theme behind Persephone is a tricky one, and from a psychological point of view, modern readings of Persephone symbolizing the need for the young girl to assert her independence from her mother (i.e., Persephone didn’t get carried off against her will, she was really just flirting with the Bad Boy) is perfectly valid. The validation hangs on those six pomegranate seeds. If Persephone knew the no-eating-food-in-the-Underworld rule (and clearly she did, or she would have eaten anything she wanted to eat), why eat the seeds? Author Emily Whitman contends that it was out of rebellion…..

And two last links that are thinky. I tried not to go here, but these posts were so interesting….

An article claiming that science and religion need to stop throwing themselves at each other’s throats. I couldn’t agree more, but for slightly different reasons than stated in CJ’s article. I posted as such, so go check it out…he does have some interesting things to say.

Okay, and this post on literature, history, and literary criticism is really well done and I really want to have important things to say about it, but this evening my brain can’t coherent its way to a response that would be nearly erudite enough to make my point. But it makes fascinating food for thought so I didn’t want to let it slip by. I’ll try again with it tomorrow.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the heroes always end up dead after the quest because we kill them? Because after they have fought to save the world we, the world, want no reminders of the extraordinary lying about, staring our ordinariness right in the face and challenging it. Is there no place for a hero after their final battle is done?

Strange thoughts scurry about my head. What you should really do is go watch Sita Sings The Blues.

(Thanks to Tim for the link.)

It’s mythy updates around the web time!

Oki, this is possibly the best picture of Medusa *evar*:

Cute Medusa

It was made for the Monday Artday Greek Myth challenge. Talk about re-interpreting myth! Teehee! I love how the *rocks* are in love with her–were they formerly suitors that were inadvertently turned to stone when gazing upon her? And I love how she is cute and beautiful and knows it. Because what we look like really doesn’t matter as much as being happy, does it? And when we are happy we are beautiful….

Other fantastic artwork for this challenge can be found here.

Man these are renewing my itch to learn how to draw!

I found this article on the evolution of ancient Greek sculpture: Greek Sculptures. I really like how the author ties the changes in styles to the changes in overall cultural worldview:

“The shift from the Classical to the Hellenistic period happened during the 4th century. The Hellenistic period occurred after the Peloponnesian War. It introduced the depiction of a new reality in Greek sculpture. The sculpture was no longer confined to the idealistic. An important piece during this period is “The Boxer” where it shows the boxer’s bleeding knuckles after the fight. Ideal beauty is no longer of paramount importance.”

Important!

Wagner’s The Ring is playing from Feb 21 – Mar 15 at the LA Opera. And I really really want to go, and if you can, you totally should! The production looks fanciful and amazingly fun. Not Greek myth, but you know, if you trace the Gaulish invaders correctly, you can build a case for Norse myth having a huge impact in India and the Aegean. All myth is good myth!

Another article, this time combining history and myth, which is my favorite game. You have to check out From Lycos to Lupercal: The Politics of Spring in the Ancient World. I know this sounds really boring, but here’s the tagline:

How Alexander the Great and the Goat-god Pan’s ancient fertility cult set the stage for the birth of Imperial Rome.

Fertility cults, people. Get thee on over.

Hmm, looks like someone learned a thing or two from The Reduced Shakespeare Company: Check It Out: ‘the Iliad, The Odyssey And All Of Greek Mythology In 99 Minutes Or Less’. While Adam Long & Co are a hard act to follow, you never know, right? If you are in the Orlando area check it out.

Ok, so I have no idea if anyone from Kalamazoo reads this blog (hee! kalamazoo!), but if you do, this showing of “Oedipus” re-done with an African context (and music!) at the Western Michigan University Theatre sounds like fun.

As the mythology research continues, there is something I just have to say.

(And I realize saying this practically makes Athena my personal savior, and it’s good she has a big shield so when the feminists come out and pelt me I have something to hide behind.)

When researching Greek mythology, you find out this: there was this sweet pastoral culture in place in the Aegean peninsula where everyone got along and cultivated the land together in small, close knit communities. And everyone worshipped the Great Mother Goddess as the earth, as the giver of food and life, and as the representation of all that there was in the universe. And things were lovely and then the MEAN EVIL HUNTERS INVADED with their storm god and their brutish customs and cut and hacked their bloody way through the Mother Goddess Civilization of Light and Goodness.

Ok, it doesn’t get put quite like that. At least, not by most scholars. Mostly. The particular thing that irks me is that the Neolithic village society is called matriarchal, and the Paleolithic hunter-gather conquering warrior society is called patriarchal. And then we get the whole centuries of matriarchal repression by patriarchal societies statements, and the “movements” to go back to a matriarchal/Goddess culture, because clearly that was better–or at least less bloody.

And maybe it *was* better. But “matriarchal” implies that one sex had all the power while the other was subjugated. It implies that the universe is a better place when it is looked at through a paradigm of femininity. I’m sorry; how is this better than a patriarchy? Where are men supposed to fit in and be ok being male? The “way men are” doesn’t cause atrocity: fear does. And if you look at the right sources, (try Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth) you’ll learn that in order for the Goddess to be the earth that sustains and gives life, she must be impregnated by the Sky God (yay rain!) for her to bring forth the miracle of growth from the nothingness.

See?! Both elemental energies working together. *That* is a right way, I think. So can we please stop being sore over the MEAN EVIL patriarchy that’s been so MEAN and EVIL? And instead of trying to smother everything over with Goddessy-goodness as backlash, let’s focus on making room for everybody. Something which might maybe could begin with changing our terminology to stop emulating the war of the sexes.

I’ve some new pages up over at my Story of Myth website. One on Metis called “About Metis Mythology” (oh, Google, how you make us murder the English language for keywords), and one on the birth of Athena. I think when I get to the next chapter in Kerenyi I am going to have more to add to both. Still, I find it all very fascinating, so I hope you enjoy!

I’ll begin with my own updates, because, hey, this is my blog.

I’ve got a new page up about Athena: Athena the Goddess. And a quick one about Hera that I shall expand anon: Hera Goddess of Marriage. The info on these two pages comes from Kerenyi’s Athene: Virgin and Mother in Greek Religion, with much more Kerenyi-laiden goodness to come.

There is so much good myth stuff! So much!!

Ok, first is a book review of Gods Behaving Badly. I haven’t read this myself, but with this review I think I am going to have to acquire a copy:

That said, with a rudimentary understanding, this is a very funny story. Apollo reduced to being an oracle on cable? Artemis the dog-walker? And let’s not even talk about Zeus… Perhaps the funniest two are Eros and Athene. Eros, the Christian. And Athene, mind-boggling intelligent… but articulate? Not so much….

Teehee!

Next a really fantastic article on how myth evolves over time called “Look Within For Value; Look Beyond for Perspective”. Marc examines the myth of Prometheus to prove his point:

An excellent example of a divine myth which has changed both shape and significance over time is that of Prometheus as illustrated by first Hesiod in Theogony, and then Aeschylus in Prometheus Bound. In these plays that were created over three centuries apart, the character Prometheus evolved from a typical trickster who is to blame for humanity’s hardships, to a celebrated divinity responsible for bestowing great benefits upon mankind.

My point exactly! Myths keep evolving to help us deal with changing societal notions. Society is nothing more than a group perspective, and if enough people change their minds an entire culture can change on the turn of an….election.

This next find really got me thinking (ph3@r!). Ms. Cassie Gafford is doing her Classics thesis on earthquakes in ancient Greece and Rome:

The questions Gafford must ask in her research relate not only to literature but to religion, science, and culture as a whole. “Were natural catastrophes seen as punishment from the gods, random natural occurrences, or omens?” she wonders. “I want to know what Greeks and Romans wrote about the destructive, unforeseen shaking of the ground.”

Now see. This is lead-in to a quibble that I have had ever since I started researching mythology. Myths nowadays tend to be explained as: bedtime stories savages told themselves to account for natural phenomena they didn’t understand. Which makes me hopping mad, because they weren’t stupid primitives, and science isn’t the One True Way.

*koff* Um. Perhaps Ms. Gafford will help dispel that impression.

Next up: a review for the new mythy video game on Playstation, XBox, and PC: Rise of the Argonauts. You get to be Jason! Watch out for Medusa…

Archeology! Those kids love them some euhemerism. A recent dig in Arcadia seems to “prove the myth true” that Zeus was born on Mt. Lykaion:

“This new evidence strongly suggests that there were drinking (and perhaps feasting) parties taking place on the top of the mountain in the Late Helladic period, around 3,300 or 3,400 years ago,” said Dr. Romano.

Ok. And lastly, because it is the AWESOMEYIST, you have to go read This book review by D.A. Riser where he reviews Rick Riordan’s PERCY JACKSON books. The books are about the Greek gods so Riser writes his review by interviewing…the Greek gods:

ME: Is it true that the half-blood heroes have ADHD as the book says?

ZEUS: Of course, it is true. Double check next time you cross one of these mortals. Like Percy Jackson, all demigods have ADHD and dyslexia. It keeps them hardwired for battle ready mode, enhancing their lightning fast reflexes, if I do say. How it took Percy until junior high to figure this out just shows that Percy is Poseidon’s son. Learning you’re related to Poseidon would be a shock to anyone, but mortals like Percy seem to struggle most with it.

HEEEEE!

So the little bird that tells me about mythy blog posts on the web had an intriguing one for me. Scott Kistler on Endued wrote in his article ““A Window on the New Testament” about the story of Pandora:

Women were thought to be a punishment on men for gaining the gift of fire from Prometheus…This is very different from the Genesis teaching of women as perfect partners for men. Although Pandora opening of the box of evils might be compared to Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit, the difference is pretty clear in that the Bible confers dignity on women from the beginning, while the Greek myth portrays them as a punishment from the beginning.

Huh! Now this is an interpretation of the Pandora myth that I’ve never seen. Notably, I had never seen Pandora referred to as the first human woman, like Eve. And being the curious type that I am, I ran to Sacred-texts to see what the writers of yore had to say about Pandora.

Padraic Colum writes in his Orpheus: Myths of the World the story of Pandora, who is the wife of Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus. In his version, Pandora is given the jar of evils by Hermes as her dowry, and neither Pandora nor Epimetheus open the jar:

Then the woman who was thought to be wise said, “This Golden Maid is lovely to look upon because she has lovely apparel and all the means of keeping herself lovely. The Gods have given her the ways, and so her skin remains fair, and her hair keeps its gold, and her lips are ever red and her eyes shining. And I think that the means of keeping lovely are all in that jar that Epimetheus brought with her.”
…
The lid, once tightly fixed down, had been shifted a little. As the hands of the women grasped it to take off the lid, the jar was cast down; the things that were inside spilled themselves forth.
…
The jar, like Pandora herself, had been made and filled out of the ill-will of Zeus. And it had been filled, not with salves and charms and washes, as the women thought, but with Cares and Troubles. Before the women had come to it one Trouble had already come forth from the jar–Self-thought that was upon the top of the heap. It was Self-thought that had afflicted the women, making them troubled about their own looks, and envious of the graces of the Golden Maid.

Well now that’s a new one for me too, though I must say I like where the blame is placed.

This version is by a Reginald C. Couzens, in his Stories of the Months and Days. Clearly he made the Eve connection, because here is his version:

Prometheus’ brother, Epimetheus, married the beautiful Pandora, and at first lived with her in great happiness, for in those early days the earth was free from pain, sickness, and ills of every kind. One evening they saw Mercury, the messenger of the gods, coming towards them and bearing on his shoulder a huge box which seemed to be of great weight. Tired out with his burden, Mercury begged permission to leave the box to their care, promising to return for it in a short time. Pandora and Epimetheus readily granted permission, and Mercury placed the box in their house and hastily departed. Pandora was at once filled with great curiosity as to what the box might contain, and suggested to Epimetheus that, they should just peep inside. Epimetheus was shocked by Pandora’s lack of good manners, and, replying that they must not think of such a thing, he went out, calling to Pandora to follow him. But Pandora’s curiosity was now thoroughly aroused, and the temptation overcame her when she found herself alone…..

You can guess what happened next…..

My favorite find was in Jane Harrison’s The Myths of Greece and Rome. I’ve read some of her Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, and this lady did some amazing work. She gives us the original lines from Hesiod’s Works and Days:

“He spake, and they did the will of Zeus, son of Kronos, the Lord;
For straightway the Halting One, the Famous, at his word
Took clay and moulded an image, in form of a maiden fair,
And Athene, the grey-eyed goddess, girt her, and decked her hair.
And about her the Graces divine and our Lady Persuasion set
Bracelets of gold on her flesh; and about her others yet,
The Hours, with their beautiful hair, twined wreaths of blossoms of spring,
While Pallas Athene still ordered her decking in everything.
Then put the Argus-slayer, the marshal of souls to their place,
Tricks and flattering words in her bosom, and thievish ways.
He wrought by the will of Zeus, the Loud-thundering, giving her voice,
Spokesman of gods, that he is, and for name of her this was his choice,
PANDORA, because in Olympos the gods joined together them,
And all of them gave her, a gift, a sorrow to covetous men.”

Harrison theorizes that this version of the myth is basically propoganda by Hesiod:

When Pandora opens her box it is not the light-minded woman temptress letting out woes and ills to mortal man; it is the great Earth Mother who opens her pithos, her storehouse of grain and fruit for her children. In the “making of Pandora” the Great Mother has become the temptress maid, a bane and not a blessing. Through all the charm and glamour of Hesiod’s verse there is an ugly glint of theological malice. He is all for the Father, and the Father will have no Great Earth Mother in his cloud-capped, man-made Olympus.

I love it! Look at all the different interpretations of a handful of verse! Everyone is right, of course; that is the beauty and trap of myth. Even Hesiod and Homer’s versions of the myths were mostly garnered from local legends and given a personal spin. And these local legends were different in every provence, in every town. And as they were disseminated they were changed again to fit the new local culture. Thousands upon thousands of retellings of the Pandora myth have happened throughout one and a half millennia. Each version is correct, because each version fits the time and the person and the place that it is told in and by.

Though I have to say, poor Pandora. Not once in any version that I’ve seen does this chicka catch a break.