THEMES & FOLKLORE

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MORTAL AND IMMORTAL LOVE

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In the myth of Endymion, sleep and dreams play a symbolic role in the relationship between the mortal and the divine.  In art and literature, Endymion's love of the moon is often portrayed as a kind of unrequited passion which symbolises humanity's obsession with the unattainable. A the outset, Endymion is literally 'moonstruck', in love with something far beyond his reach and outside of his natural sphere.

 

And it is right to say he his in love with 'some thing' - as the identity of the moon shifts between the lunar object and its personification in the figure of a goddess like Diana or Selene - all in all, a force of nature or of divinity that is bigger than merely human. Endymion's love for the goddess stands as a symbol of human longing for the divine in general - with the ideas of beauty, life and feeling as perfect and eternal states.

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Selene's love for Enydmion, too, is disturbed by her knowledge that his own particular vigor and beauty is ephemeral, and so she seeks to have him elevated to the sphere of the Gods.  The fact that this can only be accomplished—in this story at least— if he is also fated to eternally sleep, might be taken to symbolise the impossibility of bringing the mortal and immortal realms together. In some religions, humanity is granted eternal life: but in Greek mythology, immortality was not in the nature of humans unless granted as an extraordinary gift of the gods.

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The mytheme of the Endymion story is of the 'sleep' of Endymion. But many have taken the natural step of wondering about his dreams. The poet John Keats wrote a poetic epic of Endymion, in which the shepherd  hopelessly searches for a beautiful and mysterious goddess he first glimpsed in a dream. Some paintings of the myth are also titled as 'Endymion's Dream'.  Keat's story extends the metaphor of love and longing into the realm of dreams, another natural metaphor for the chase after things which appear fleeting and ephemeral.

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THE BATTLE OF THE GODS & THE CREATION OF HUMANITY

 

The stories of Endymion and Prometheus are combined in this tale because they are both symbolic of the relationship between the Immortal world of the Gods and the Mortal realm of humanity. Just as Endymion and Selene's story shows how there will always be an unbridgeable distance between the mortal and the divine, the story of Prometheus explains the condition of the human race and its relationship with the gods.

 

THE MYTH OF PROMETHEUS

 

The battle of wits between Zeus and Prometheus pits the rebellious and cunning intelligence of Prometheus, one of the Old Gods that symbolised the primal and elemental powers of nature, against the power of the new Olympian King, who symbolises the Natural Order embodied in the workings of Fate, and civilised law and customs. Prometheus is a constant threat to Zeus, who becomes a patron to humanity partly out of sympathy for their lowly condition, and perhaps from a desire to challenge Zeus' sovereignty. In this way, Promethues' patronage, and his gift of fire, which literally ignites the arts and crafts of human civilisation, represents the primal, aspirational spirit that is part of human nature, which can inspire us to greatness, but also to hubris.  

 

THE MYTH OF PANDORA

 

Prometheus' attempted deception of Zeus confers gifts on us, but inspires the God to retaliate and beggar us further. In the original story, the creation of Pandora, the first woman, is intended as a curse, as women are mysoginistically described as parasites who consume what men produce, but are needed to produce children and create the man’s patrimony. The fateful jar that she carries pours out curses on the earth which force men to work to bring food from the land, and introduce sickness and ill health into the world.

 

Our source for this story is Hesiod, and interestingly, scholars believe it is probably an intentional corruption and perversion of an earlier myth about a patron goddess who provided for humankind: a female alternative or counter-part to Prometheus, if you will. The name ‘Pandora’ itself means ‘Gift-Giver’, and archaeology has uncovered references to Pandora in the context of fertility cults and rituals. In this interpretation, Hesiod’s tale about Pandora would be a deliberate re-writing of the myth of a female benefactor to fit his own belief that women were the source of all the evil in the world.

 

Our version of the Pandora subverts by borrowing an idea used elsewhere by the Greek playright Euripedes, who wrote a play about Helen of Troy in which the real Helen was abducted by the gods to a fara-away island, and a illusory shade or phantom, called an Eidolon in Greek, was put in her place. This illusory version of Helen was the object for Paris’ lust and the whole of the Trojan War: Helen the person was not present at all.   Euripedes' story allows for a critique of the traditional character of Helen as a sexist construction: held up as an ideal of beauty and desirability, but also a symbol for sexist ideas about female infirmity and wickedness.  It also lays the blame in a much more appropriate place: it is not Helen, but men’s desire to possess and control their idea of ‘the most desirable woman in the world’ which leads to the hubris and destruction of the Trojan War.

 

As well as recasting the Pandora myth using the concept of the Eidolon, we also looked to Plato’s alternative story about the origins of love for a Greek tradition that embraces broader concepts of gender, identity and sexuality than those found in Hesiod. 

 

THE SPLITTING OF SOULS

 

Plato’s Symposium is a philosophical dialogue exploring the nature of love. It is remarkable on the one hand for basing its discussion of love primarily around homosexuality, and also for including a partly comedic account of the origins of love and the concept of ‘soul mates’. Within the dialogue, the character of the comedien Aristophanes explains that human beings were once bi-partite creatures with eight limbs and two heads. Some of these hybrid creatures were made of two male halves, some of two female halves, and some were androgynous, made of a male and female half.  Zeus split these creatures in two, because, as so often in these myths, these human beings were hubristic and sought to climb up to Mount Olympus and displace the gods. The result was that human beings were deprived of one half of their being, leaving them to forever search for and chase after their missing halves, with the implication that homosexual, lesbian and heterosexual love arose from these original three kinds of being. 

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THE FIRE OF DREAMS

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In mythology and early philosophy, the element of fire was often materially identified with the divine power or spirit which was the life of the human mind.  Fragments from the early philosophers referred to dreams as fires of the human soul kindled within the body at night; while Plato believed that vision was explained by a subtle stream of fire which poured out of the eyes, causing dreams when it was shut inside the body at night.

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As the Promethean fire allows for craft and invention - cooking, light in the darkness, metalwork - so it stands as a symbol of the imagination, our capacity to 'dream' in the sense of envisioning, planning and creating new things. It seems significant that in Aeschylus' plays, Prometheus may be responsible for the gift of 'Blind Hope', the only thing left in Pandora's jar.  Hope here is blind because we don't know our fate like the gods do—but our ignorance leads us to always hope and strive for the best.

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In this way, the story of Endymion's dreams and Prometheus' fire go together perfectly as emblems of human nature. Our hopes, our dreams, and our creativity - our perpetual striving after impossible dreams, even if they will always be frustrated.

— Rick

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​​ASTROLOGY, ASTRONOMY AND LUNAR LORE

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There are many other legends and folktales about individuals who either fall in with the moon, try to chase it, or bring it down to earth.  These traditions are probably the origin of mythemes that relate love and lovesickness with the influence of the moon.  Endymion's love and observation of the moon has also given rise to the notion that he was the first astronomer (or astrologer, the two not always being distinct in the past).

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Selene is connected to many other mythological figures associated with the moon in mythology. As a celestial body that stood between the realms of heaven and earth,which rose and fell above and below the sky, and which appeared and disappeared in distinct phases, the moon was often thought of as a transitional force, a crossing or a doorway between different realms like the heavens and the underworld. Gods linked to the moon were thus described as similarly transitional - the gods of paths, crossroads or the underworld.  As a potential bridge for power from these realms, the moon and its gods played a significant role in the occult and witchcraft.  In the Greek mythos these included Hecateand Kirke (Circe), goddesses of witchcraft and sorcery.

THE GIFT OF FIRE

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The story of the theft or gift of fire recurs in many places in world mythology. Maori legend, and there are strong echoes in the Halloween tradition of Jack of the lantern, who receives a burning coal from hell to light his way in the world.  We ourselves drew on this tradition to create a new adaption of an existing Christmas folktale, which we called The Christmas Coals.