Medousa and Perseus

Akrisios ruled Argos. He received an Oracle that is daughter Danae would have a son who would kill him. He had a brozne chamber built and imprisoned Danae. Zeus had sex with her by turning himself into a shower of gold and puting himself in to her lap. She gave birth to Perseus. Akrisios refised to believe that Zeus was responsible and out her in a wooden chest and floated her off to sea. She was picked up by Diktys brother of the King Polydektes.

Perseus grew up and Polydektes fell in love with Danae but Perseus tried to thwart it. The King pertended is was betrothed to Hippodameia and asked for a bridal gift. Perseus said he would get him a Gorgon's head. The King thinking he would not return agreed. Perseus was helped by Hermes and Athena who advised he should meet with Gorgon's sisters. Pephredo and Deino. They had one eye and tooth between them. They let Perseus borrow them and the Nymphs have him winged sandals and a Kibisis, a bag and cap of invincibility. Hermes gave him an invisibilty cap and a sickle of Adamant.

He land on the Gorgon's island of Medousa, Stheno and Euryale they had hair of writhing snakes and boar tusks and turned anyone who looked at them in to stone. Perseus averted his gaze and severed Medousa's head and helped by Athena a winged horse Pegasus sprung from her neck and flew off with the head in the kiblisis.

He flew to see Atlas, who refused hospitality. He showed him the severed head and he was turned in the Atlas Mountains. He went on and found Andromeda chained to a rock because her mother Kassiopeia said she was more beautiful than the Nereids. Poseidon flooded the land and sent a monster to eat her. The Oracle said this could be rectified if she would be sacrificed to the monster. Perseus fell in love with Andromeda and said he would kill the monster he could marry her. He killed the monster with adamant. But Andromeda was already engaged to Phineus. Perseus showed him the head also. They got married and had a son Perses who was the ancester of the Persians.

When Perseus returned to Serophos he found Diktys and Danae were badly treated by Polydektes. He showed him the head also and installed Diktys as king of Seriphos and returned the tooth and eye. Athena took the severed head and put it on her shield and snake-fringed part of her Aegis. She also gave a lock of hair to Herakles to protect Tegae

When he returned to Argos with Andromeda and Danae Akrisios fled. Perseus continued on to Larissa where in a pentathalon his discus accidentally hit Akrisios and he died (fulfilling the prophesy]]. Perseus was ashamed and made the son of Proitos, Megapenthes king of Argos and he became king of Tiryns. They had more children and were the great grand parents of Herkales.

Similarities between Danae and Andromeda

1. Danae is persued by her uncle Proitos and Andromeda by her uncle Phineus. 2. Danae isolated by her father Akrisios. Andromeda isolated by her father Kepheus 3. Both were saved by Perseus from an unwanted marriage

Other similarities

1. Akrisios and Proitos, Polydektes and Diktys, and Phineus and Kepheus are mutually hostile brothers the first being threantening whereas the other is benign. The threatening brothe is turned to stone.

Three sets of sisters

1. Old and grey sisters - Pephredo and Deino 2. Beautiful Nymphs 3. Grisly Gorgons

These can be analyzed using the psychoanalyst or structuralist approach. However the Mycenaean Age (1600-1200bce) is often used as the setting for the tales and the importance of the town during that age correlates to its importance in the Mycenaean age and not its historical importance e.g. Mycenae 37° 43' 51" N, 22° 45' 22" E , Tiryns and Pylos

The tales often have Kings and Queens, which was not the norm in historical times. So kings are good to think with

Freud and Medousa

Freud's analysis of Medousa was something along the lines that the severing of the head was akin to castration and the fear of Medousa was fear of castration. Also

• The snakes are penis's
• The sight of Medousa is an emotion reaction to castration

Those who created the tales did not consciously add these motifs in to their tales, it was done in most cases subconsciously

• Being turned to stone is an erection.

Sylvia Plath's Medousa

Off that landspit of stony mouth-plugs, Eyes rolled by white sticks, Ears cupping the sea's incoherences, You house your unnerving head -- God-ball, Lens of mercies, Your stooges Plying their wild cells in my keel's shadow, Pushing by like hearts, Red stigmata at the very center, Riding the rip tide to the nearest point of departure, Dragging their Jesus hair. Did I escape, I wonder? My mind winds to you Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable, Keeping itself, it seems, in a state of miraculous repair.

In any case, you are always there, Tremulous breath at the end of my line, Curve of water upleaping To my water rod, dazzling and grateful, Touching and sucking. I didn't call you. I didn't call you at all. Nevertheless, nevertheless You steamed to me over the sea, Fat and red, a placenta

Paralyzing the kicking lovers. Cobra light Squeezing the breath from the blood bells Of the fuchsia. I could draw no breath, Dead and moneyless,

Overexposed, like an X-ray. Who do you think you are? A Communion wafer? Blubbery Mary? I shall take no bite of your body, Bottle in which I live,

Ghastly Vatican. I am sick to death of hot salt. Green as eunuchs, your wishes Hiss at my sins. Off, off, eely tentacle! There is nothing between us

Criticism of Freud's hidden meanings

Criticisms stem from the meanings having only one theme i.e. Only castration, being almost entirely negative and repressed. It also requires some level of collective subconscious (see also Jung)because human dwell on a set of similar motifs (archetypes). Is Freud guilty of over extrapolation. There are plenty of other examples of metamophorphosis in to rocks - are they all erections?

Freud's analysis seems much too narrow, rooted in the biological and sexual and based around the repression of the conscious. Jung, as far as I can understand it, expands the approach and focuses on the collective unconscious through the repetitive use of similar achetypes that all people could identify with, which can be both negative or positive. However, both see the hidden meanings in myths in terms of an individual's psyche.

A more externalistic view would see the hidden meaning of myths as being rooted in the events, social structures, functions and norms of Greek society (Propp, Burkert). Hidden Meanings almost seems to imply something deliberate but more likely they were accidental and a by-product of the myth rather than the purpose the myth itself.

For instance at the time the Myths were being told there were the conflicts such as Persian and Peloponnesian wars and we have the Iliad using hero archetype such as Akhilleus and Odysseus. The hidden meaning, if there is one, is that Greeks should do their duty. Similar analogies could be found for

• The maintenance of the social orders - The killing of the suitors

• Patriarchy and the role of women when men go away to war- Zeus and his seductions and The Oresteia

• The Study of strange new sciences Mathematics/Medicine/Astromony - Prometheus gift of fire to man, The riddle and the Sphinx

Finally I think most of the 'hidden meanings' can transcend time. Although the details are different, we still do have wars, plagues, new scientific discoveries, struggles between the sexes, democratic tensions etc, which allows to reinterpret the meanings for our own times

Commentary on Hidden Myths

Taking the story of Perseus and Andromeda, could the turning to stone of the minster guarding Andromeda be a greek explanantion for the discovery of dinosaur or African fossils that were being dug up by Greek farmers.

Alternatively the stories might be entertaining in themselves. The superficial "in your face" part of myths can be very alluring, interesting, and holds the reader. We have largely replaced myths in the modern world with Hollywood, and for a movie to be enjoyed by the viewer, watched repeatedly, and even to have long lasting appeal (e.g. Gone With The Wind is 73 years old), it does not need to necessarily have a deeper meaning. The war does not represent Scarlett's inner conflict regarding her feelings towards her father, it just represents the war and the setting of the movie. Similarly, myths "hold their own" very well based only on their superficial elements. They are perfectly entertaining and worthy of academic analysis at face value.

The concept that humans, as the writers of the myths, having a pattern of thought which may suggest underlying meaning is logical and personally very appealing. Jung's idea of a collective unconscious seems attractive, as it seems to suggest a collective way of thinking inherent in the species due to the way we organise our thoughts. Therefore, myths would not have a "hidden" meaning in them, but more accurately would have certain patterns with "alternative" meanings. This comes through from Jung's archetypes.

Finally, to move to Freud, some remain unable to accept the analysis from that perspective. Snakes are a penis? Compensation occurs with multiple penis's which means castration? Comfort that I still have a penis because I am turned into stone? The entire interpretation (as presented in our text) is just too focussed on a certain topic and arbitrarily applied.

However, a lot of us rightly feel that a myth or film cannot mean one thing. To whom? To me?, to the writer?, to the person in the myth?, etc. Can it mean different things? Can the meaning change? Can at times it be just what it seems? It is more about the exploration that psychoanalysts find useful. Exploration that began with Freud but is not limited to Freud. The theories have changed with time and clinical experience.

May be we can conclude that myths are structured in such a way as to invoke thought, contemplation and realization in representation. Were they written with only one view in mind, or to induce further thought? I believe the later, so whether or not Freud's obsessions were indeed intended to be masked within the myth, or whether myths say something about the unconscious view of a culture, the point is that they make us contemplate something greater. I don't think that any definitives can be drawn from myths; but are subjective to individuals and their cultures

See also [1]

A quite different approach was taken by another, dissident student of Freud, Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961).[1] Though heav­ily indebted to Freud in his early works, Jung eventually parted company with his master and developed a theory of his own, which seemed to make headway. Essentially similar images and symbols, Jung held, recur in myths, folktales, and dreams, be­cause inherent in the human mind is the tendency to represent certain inherited, "archaic" patterns, which he called "arche­types," though he noted that these representations "often vary greatly in detail, without forfeiting their basic form."[2]

Thus, Jung progressed beyond the notion of a mythopoeic childhood of mankind. The ability to create myths, he asserted, lies in each one of us. From Jung's mythopoeic mind it is but a short step to Levi-Strauss's esprit humain, with its fundamental ability to express itself in symbols, of which myths are copies. Myths are created from the immanent store of archetypes; it is in this way that they become expressions of the human spirit. It is not difficult to understand why Karl Kerényi gave up his early views of myth, which he had borrowed from Schelling and Otto, in order to apply Jung's theory of archetypes to Greek myth.[3]

But there is a crux here. Whereas, for Schelling, Otto, and the early Kerényi, the mythical images that well up from the human spirit are manifestations of the divine and the constancy of the mythical images is guaranteed by that of the divine, Jung dis­pensed with the notion of transcendence altogether. In so doing, he had to offer his own account of the origin of the archetypes. He saw them as "an instinctual tendency." If the archetypes are instinctual, then they must be transmitted just as biological pro­grams are, that is, as pieces of genetic information. That takes us into the realm of the unverified.

Moreover, Jung hardly got past the hypothetical stage; he only began to furnish the massive body of empirical evidence required to prove the existence of the archetypes. His quite im­pressive comparative studies seldom range far beyond European culture. Much work remains to be done in this area. Still, these archetypes, even if it could be proved that they exist, can account for static symbols, at best; they cannot explain the narrative se­quences that constitute myth. To put it in figurative terms, Jung­ian theory could establish that the same main characters recur in all the plays ever written and still tell us nothing about the plot of any single one of them. Finally, even if we believe in a collective unconscious, the archetypes must be seen in relation to the individual psyche, its problems, and its experiences. Why myth plays such a prominent part in the social life of the cultures in which it resides is a question that remains to be answered.

F. Graf, Greek Mythology: An Introduction, tr.T. Marier, Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993, p.38 f.

---

[1] See G. Baierle, "Le mythe clans la psychologie de C. G. Jung," Cahiers Internationaux de Symbolisme 35-36 (1978) 151-62.

[2] C. G. Jung and M. L. von Franz, eds., Man and His Symbols (London, 1964).

[3] C. G. Jung and K. Kerényi, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, 1963; orig. 1941). See further P. Radin, The Trick­ster: A Study in American Indian Mythology, with commentaries by C. G. Jung and K. Kerényi (New York, 1956).

Prometheus

The Prometheus Myth is intriguing. The fact that he brings fire in a fennel stalk probably reflects an actual event (fire can be carried this way) and witnessed by early man would this have seemed miraculous and could only be accountable in terms to have been stolen from the Sky God, the thrower of lightening which causes fire. The Sky God being Zeus. In Archaic Greece fire rituals seemed to be widespread and for worshipping the gods, so Zeus trying to stop men from having fire seems odd. Zeus appears to have seen through the ruse to offer the gods the bones but still goes ahead deny fire..... Then he allows Pandora to be created to make the life of mankind rather tedious because of the fire theft. I feel there is something else going on here but can't see it. It must be something linked with passion as it is the liver that Zeus has attacked (the Greek seat of passion). Zeus is pleased that his son, Herakles, releases Prometheus, what going on here?

Why the east, the Caucuses Mountains, for Prometheus's chaining and punishment? This is close to the land of Medea and the Golden Fleece, and an area just being explored by the sea-faring Greeks. But does it indicate the sources of the myth?

In Classical Mythology, A Very Short Introduction (Helen Morales 2007) there are a couple of instances of a modern take on Prometheus. The incongruity of using him in a statue at the Rockefeller Centre, New York, representing progress in a commercial world, and more interestingly, in a film by Tony Harrison, Prometheus (1998). Here Prometheus (who is again featured as a statue) is the antithesis of the commercial use in New York and seen as a bringer of devastation in a post industrial world and his failure to resist the despotism of Zeus. Just goes to show the power of this myth today and the very different meanings attributed to them.

Freud’s (1932) paper “The Acquisition and Control of Fire” is another one I had never read before. This one I found more complicated and, like many of Freud’s paper, he doesn’t tell you outright what his point is, rather he takes you through his thought process and through the different possibilities he has considered. This is what I got [my interpretation of Freud]: He wondered what was significant about the fire in the myth of Prometheus and the myth of Herakles. He asks several questions:

- Why was Prometheus punished for bringing fire to men? (it was stolen from the gods as punishment again for the trickery of the meat, but didn’t Zeus see through the trickery and still chose the bones?)

- Why did his liver (Greek view of liver as seat of all passions) continuously regenerate? (and thus his sentence being one of interminable torture – the eagle eating out part of his liver)

- Is there a connection in the theme of Prometheus bringing fire to humanity and Herakles’ use of fire to kill the multi-headed hydra? (acquisition and control)

He changed the title of his paper 3 times: previously “The Acquisition of Fire”, “The Acquisition of Power over Fire”. He also makes reference to his “Civilization and Its Discontents paper”, where some of these ideas are explored in more detail – ultimately, what do humans need to have but also control within themselves in order to live with others in civilized society?

Freud’s idea of there being regenerating drives, so to speak, and how these are vital for life but also need to be controlled. He wonders how these drives are satisfied and/or controlled. This is a two page long paper and he makes brief reference to the id and super-ego.

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