Deep Dive: Demeter and Dionysus

We take a deep dive into the fluidity of myth across place and time using Demeter and Dionysus as examples. While lesser known in our age, these two powerful gods once had thousands upon thousands of worshippers across the ancient Mediterranean. We explore their varied cults and the diverse versions of their myths.

We want to hear from you! Please rate and review us wherever you find this podcast. Join our Patreon: patreon.com/yourmythicu

Transcript

Erin Branham: 0:22

Hello, and welcome back to Mythic U. I'm Erin Branham.

Karen Foglesong: 0:25

And I'm Karen Foglesong. Glad to have you back

Erin Branham: 0:29

Absolutely

Karen Foglesong: 0:30

for the second part of Greek mythology and Roman mythology ish, ish.

Unknown: 0:36

So So last time, we sort of gave you an overview of ancient Greek and Rome and their pantheon. So today, we thought we had, we didn't quite get to all of the gods. And we thought we're gonna do a deep dive on a few that are left. We wanted to remind you that as we go through these, it's important remember that mythology means multiplicity, every one of these stories has multiple versions and multiple interpretations. We're going to talk about some of those.

Karen Foglesong: 1:06

Yes.

Erin Branham: 1:06

They changed over time, they changed each time anyone told them- you have to remember this is not a literate society. The elite people could read and write, but it was actually not a favorite form of knowledge. Plato himself said of writing, which ironically, we know because someone wrote down his words.

Karen Foglesong: 1:26

Right?

Erin Branham: 1:27

This is an actual quote, from one of Plato's books. "If men learn writing, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls, they will cease to exercise memory, because they rely on that which is written calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks." So essentially, he thought that books were going to destroy the human capacity for memory. I like to bring this up when everybody is when anytime, anytime anybody is complaining about newfangled social media, I remind them that everybody's gotten upset about every new form of media, all the way back to books.

Karen Foglesong: 2:04

Right? All the way back to books. There's probably somebody writing on the cave wall, somebody was like, No, you can't make the image.

Unknown: 2:14

You're gonna destroy these kids minds. They're just gonna sit there and look at that drawing. This prejudice against writing is actually why we don't have any writings from Socrates, he thought so much, that writing was not a good thing. And face to face communication was the only way to go. And he thought that these, this newfangled writing thing was going to confuse people as to the meaning of words.

Karen Foglesong: 2:39

And it has, I just have to point that out. People can write whatever they want.

Unknown: 2:47

It is true. It is true. Okay, so thinking about the stories that, that we know about the Roman gods, in their own time, these were usually heard and told, by bards who would know they was basically poetry, and they went around from town to town, and they customize the tale every time they told it, right? So

Karen Foglesong: 3:06

and remember, I have to point out here, too, that the Bards were the Netflix of this time period. Okay, well, you want to see the Bard, and he wants to make you want to see the Bard. ,

Unknown: 3:22

100%. These were very important part of this is actually what we could talk about the ancient Greeks, and there was actually no such thing as the ancient Greeks, Greece did not exist. There were individual city states, right? Athens was a nation, Corinth was a nation, Sparta was a nation, bards went between these two, these different places, telling the tales of the gods in the language that all these people shared. This is what we mean by the ancient Greeks, it was actually a cultural complex of people who shared religious and language ideas. So every time you go to a different town, right, so you're a bard, you're setting up in Athens in the, you know, Village Square at this time, and you're gonna sing that evening, and you are going to tell the stories of the Trojan War, or Achilles and Helen, and all that kind of good stuff. But you're also going to weave into the story, some of the local Athenian heroes, because that is what the people who are there want to hear. Then three days later, you go up to Corinth, and you don't wanna tell the stories of the Athenian heroes. That would upset the Corinthians very, very much. They don't like the other Greek city states, they're at war with them all the time. Right? So you would change those parts of the story and put in the Corinthian heroes. And so there's all of these stories, like when we hear about the ancient Greek myths, you have to remember every single one of them existed in as many different versions as there were Tellers, and the only reason that we think that there were specific ones is because somebody wrote them down. I'm talking about the problems with books. When you write something down, you end up with what's the authoritative word.

Karen Foglesong: 4:52

Yeah.

Erin Branham: 4:52

Right now people think this is the version when actually it's not. There were many, many - A version. So we got really into the issue of

Karen Foglesong: 4:59

That's how we've always done, right. A sort of like, it's all of these, this is the official version, this is the same thing. I would say, it's funny because people today rail and rail about Hollywood doing remakes, and they're just telling the same- doesn't anybody have an original thought anymore? And actually telling the same old tales over and over again was true of what humanity did throughout most of history.

Erin Branham: 5:25

It's only in the early 20th century, in the modernist movement, we're starting to get super super into the idea of the original, the new thing, it's never been done, it's edgy, it's out there. It's breaking new ground that so that whole thread of things is only been around for 100 years or so.

Karen Foglesong: 5:44

And I would say it's not true anyway, they're just rehashing old stories still. I mean, a hero tale is a hero tale. There's it doesn't matter how you stretch it or bend, it's still a hero tale.

Unknown: 5:57

It's true. It's true. It's true. But anyway, this oh, what's interesting about all of this is that when you look at actual mythological stories they- like I said there's a different version for every teller, which is exactly the idea we're trying to get at here with at Mythic U, which is creating your own personalized version of mythologies, that work for you. That's actually the way it's supposed to work.

Karen Foglesong: 6:20

Yes.

Erin Branham: 6:22

The ancient Greeks say so!

Karen Foglesong: 6:24

The ancient Greeks say so, it must be true.

Unknown: 6:29

The argument from antiquity - we'll have to talk about that sometime, anyway. Okay. Well, to start us off on our remaining mythological story.

Karen Foglesong: 6:38

I think they're starting with Demeter, right?

Erin Branham: 6:40

Correct.

Karen Foglesong: 6:41

Okay, so, Demeter or Ceres. Ceres is the what we say the Roman name for this complex of stories - how's that? We can say complex of stories, that's more truthful. And Persephone is her daughter. Demeter/ Ceres is related to harvest, grain, seasons through Persephone, she becomes related specifically with spring and death of self and marriage, this is Persephone. But again, Demeter and Persephone are kind of a duality, right? Kind of they go together. Demeter helps to teach the humans about the cultivation of wheat. I think that Demeter is kind of a powerful goddess that's leftover from a previous time and gets shoved into a form. And we'll see with the story that we're going to talk about, that there's evidence even inside that story for that,

Unknown: 7:45

definitely, yeah, I love the connection of her and her Roman name, are these, each of her names have these really neat connections. Demeter, one of the major things that typically identifies her is that she is a mother, she has this child Persephone, who you often see with her, and the name Demeter, "Meter" in ancient Greek means mother, right? So it tells you right there in her name, that this is one of her major things. And her Roman name Ceres, which is connected to wheat is why we call our breakfast wheat cereal.

Karen Foglesong: 8:18

I love that. You can, you can ignore the mother all you want, but every day you eat cereal. She is okay, so Demeter and Persephone go on,

Unknown: 8:29

That's right that divine feminine is there. there. Definitely. There's not a whole lot of stories about Demeter. There's a few like of these mythological stories. It's why people know some of the other one god goddesses a little bit better because there are stories about them. There's one major story about Demeter that reveals a lot of this about what we were just talking about the multiplicity of mythology. So we do have this very well known story that is about her and her daughter. Demeter actually has several children but she's not really identified with them in the way that she is with Persephone, you actually often see them together and you have this one very important myth that is about them as a daughter, and a mother. Persephone's father Zeus, but that is not at all unusual. Zeus was the father of many of the younger gods. It was part of his function. You have to remember that Zeus was married to his sister Hera by which he had Ares, he was he also had this child with his sister Demeter - had Persephone and I think a son as well. But anyway, so if you want to tell the story, kind of outing like to a park say on a picnic with a bunch of other mothers and maidens. And Persephone is - there's a lot of time spent in every version of the story describing that Persephone is carefree and playing with the other maidens, making flower garlands and that kind of thing. Things that maidens do, right and she follows a flower, she sees a flower that she's never seen before. And she goes after it and the ground open up, opens up and Hades or Pluto grabs her and pulls her down into the underworld. And she is left there. Now, some versions of the story say that Zeus and Hades made an agreement prior to this, and that Zeus gave permission for Hades to marry, remember, marry at this time can be synonymous with abduction. Right? So absolutely, this is part - Essentially the young woman did not have to know about or consent to anything.

Karen Foglesong: 10:39

Suddenly her maiden like life is changed. So Demeter is not happy with this. She goes around she at first she doesn't know what's happened - just Persephone disappears. And she goes around the world looking for her child, and has no luck in finding her child. And she eventually, one version of the story I've read said that the West Wind finally tells her the truth that Zeus and Hades had a pact and so she's she knows that this is happening. And she's not getting any help. So she puts the Earth into a state of non growth. Nobody can harvest anything. It's like perpetual winter, right? Nothing is growing or anything like that. And this is where I'm saying there's some evidence that she is more powerful because Zeus has to acquiesce the other gods come to him and say, we have to do something, right.

Unknown: 11:35

Definitely. I think it's significant that one of the reasons this myth is very well known is because it does speak to sort of very core things, how humans are at the mercy of nature. And you know, she's personifying nature in this particular case, and the power that she has, ultimately, because she can withdraw her power from the earth, which is the power of fertility. And when she does that, her two brothers who are considered like some of the most powerful beings in the universe, have to give into it, like the idea that a mother could get her daughter back from a marriage is like you only get to do that if you're a goddess. And right. Yeah, so that actually does happen. And there's some interesting things we were talking about whether or not Demeter goes back to an earlier period. There are some specific instances and various versions of this myth that are going to come into play a little bit later, as we talk about this. Demeter and Persephone had a very powerful cult - but cult doesn't mean back then what it means today, it meant that they had a group of followers and worshippers at right at the town of Eleusis. And that is because in the myth, while she's looking for Persephone, she stops in Eleusis and she is befriended by the king and queen who asked her she kind of comes on as they're disguised as their nanny to take care of their child and that myth, and what accompanies it is actually a later version of another myth about Isis, the ancient Egyptian goddess, right? When she was looking for her slain husband, Osiris. So if you go back like another 2000 years, you will find this story, at least this piece of it again, in the story of that goddess. So it's kind of interesting, because there's these echoes that go on.

Karen Foglesong: 13:22

They're almost exact at some points. Yeah. With the holding the child in the fire. Exactly. Yeah, definitely. So but that's a different myth. We don't want to go down that path. Yeah, we want to stay with Persephone.

Unknown: 13:33

We'll come back to this. Let us know if you're interested in the other one. And we can always do an episode. Yeah, so So Persephone is allowed to come back however she had eaten of the food of the underworld. And when you have done that, and you've had some of the hosts food, you have some obligation to return. So she basically she is coerced to spend part of her time her married time with her husband. She is married to him after this point, he has taken her, he has married her, which means he has raped her. And she is now his bride. And but she gets to go back and spend part of the year with her mother. And she has to spend part of her year in the underworld and this is why there are the seasons. Right? Right, right when Persephone is with Demeter, Demeter is happy. And she is making the world grow and when Persephone retreats to the underworld Demeter withdraws her fertility and we have winter. So we're gonna get into some of the interpretations of this myth because it it has. It's very interesting. It has lots of different facets to it. One of them is what we were just saying. It's what's called an etiological myth, which is a myth that explains why things are the way they are. So in explaining why the seasons are what they are, the Demeter and Persephone myth covers that, right? It tells you this is what happened that we now have the situation that we have, and there's these myths you can find all over the world that explain why things are the way they are.

Karen Foglesong: 14:58

And this myth is wonderful because it's has so many pieces, like you said earlier like you can classify it as an etiological myth. But there's also more to it than that, too. Right?

Unknown: 15:09

Definitely. And researching this, I found some very interesting things. And I had been told this by a scholar from when I worked at the J Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa, which is a museum that holds specifically ancient Mediterranean collections. And it's all about Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome. In the ancient world, there were very specific, we can tell that this was an actual active of myth within young women's lives by a few things that are have been left around the ancient world. For instance, in southern Italy, which is an area that was heavily colonized by the Greeks as they moved out of their city states and founded new city states, families would give pre marriage offerings to Persephone. And in Athens, it was common if a young woman died before she was able to be married, she would be buried as a bride, she would be buried using the bridal vase vessel, and there were special rituals that she did because she was going to be basically she was going to be a bride of Hades. And there are all these tragedies that were written by the various ancient Greeks also that talk about the brides of Hades and this idea of marriage and death being connected for young women. Because in the ancient world, of course, marriage and death were connected.

Karen Foglesong: 16:19

Yes, it's the death of the self for a young woman. You're about to be subsumed

Unknown: 16:25

in very specifically a whole bunch of other ways. Like, right, so Zeus and Hades decide that Persephone is gonna get married. Persephone has nothing to do with it. She is carried off. That was the actual experience of ancient Greek young women. You'd be married at the age of 13 to a man of 30, that man of 30 would have made a deal with your father, and you had nothing to do with it. You went, once you got married, you were cloistered inside your husband's house, you were not allowed to go outside of the house except on specific religious occasions. And right who spent the rest of your life in there having babies and there was an incredibly high maternal death rate. Childbirth was super dangerous. That's why there are so many stories in the old times about stepmothers, right because that means the first mom the first wife has died probably in childbirth, and or in caring for the children. And now you have a stepmother. So the actual experience of girls is they were going to be stoked, sold off, in the same way that Persephone was. They're going to have to go into a space which they are now and are not allowed to leave like Persephone did.

Karen Foglesong: 17:24

No more flowers.

Erin Branham: 17:25

They're very likely to actually die and end up in the underworld where the queen of the underworld is Persephone, right. Who understands what they've gone through. Yes, so they end up in her realm so you can see the way that, how comforting this must have been for these girls who had very you know, very little choice in life to go, well, we have this image of a goddess who went through this, and we're going to end up in her realm, like, that is, shows you how mythology really functions.

Karen Foglesong: 17:56

Yes, and I think in modern times as femininity has grown, Persephone has been interpreted as a powerful character who has faced the darkness or the unconscious and become the queen of herself. So that's another way that as like in a modern feminine sense, you can see relationship to

Unknown: 18:18

100% I was gonna say that as well in the in the Persephone. Divine Feminine movement that really gained a lot of steam at least in America in the 80s and continues unabated today. This idea of looking to ancient goddesses for better models, better models of divinity, better models of what God could be, more models that feel more comfortable to people as we're saying to do. And a lot of people have started looking at goddesses Persephone is often seen as exactly that - someone who has recovered from trauma, somebody who has faced great darkness and become a survivor, who has rebuilt herself as the Queen of the underworld, as you say. There's also the symbology of you know, Persephone descends into the darkness and returns to the light. So she's very much about rebirth. Regeneration, yes. And also going deep inside yourself to find great wisdom. Yes, and then coming back out to the life to bring that with you into your everyday life

Karen Foglesong: 19:12

into the world. Right. Definitely. And you mentioned something earlier about the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Unknown: 19:18

The Eleusinian mysteries, right so so that's also like that's a real have a lot of interest in Neo pagans today definitely in the ancient world it was it was a very ancient mystery cult. Mystery in this case means that it you didn't get to know what really went on inside the temple unless you became an initiate and initiates were forbidden to, of speaking of what happens inside of a temple. So you would go through these special rites and and they would lead you to a kind of a spiritual awakening. Mystery cults were very, were always around the ancient Mediterranean. But once you get into the Roman period, like after the Roman Empire begins, in those early years mystery cults start to gain great popularity in ancient Rome over the the classical cults, which again, Rome didn't exactly worship the gods the same way the Greeks did. Rome worshiped Rome. I mean, really like, honestly, it was a civic, it was a civic religion, meaning that you you had to pay taxes to the Civic religion to the idea of Rome itself. There were gods about, but it wasn't the same kind of relationship with the Greeks had with them. So anyway, in this time, they Eleusinian mysteries are still going on. They've been going on for like 2000 years all throughout Ancient Greece and into ancient Rome. The Eleusinian mysteries are going on. And they're becoming they started to get really popular in that time period, the Dionysian mystery cults start to become popular in that period, the mystery cult of Mithras. And there's another cult it was like that weird new Jewish off shoot, guy.

Karen Foglesong: 20:58

Oh, no, no, you're talking about that guy. You're talking about Jesus.

Erin Branham: 21:04

Yeah, that was the guy that was the guy.

Karen Foglesong: 21:05

I even I even read that and thought that was a great setup, and I still fell for it.

Unknown: 21:13

Anyway, yes. And the at the time what was considered to be a weird little offshoot Jewish cult was running around about this mysterious dude who died on the cross and saved everybody. Anyway, so yes, this was a mystery religion. And one of the things the mystery religions offered was a better afterlife. As we've talked about with the ancient Greeks, the idea of the underworld as you go down there near shade forever, right? In the Odyssey, at some point another Odysseus goes into the underworld, he meets Achilles, who's now dead. And Achilles says this is tells you what the Greek idea of the underworld was Greek says I would rather be a slave in a poor man's house and be alive than be just a shade in the underworld be here. So it was not a happy picture. But this mystery cults did offer they offered ideas of paradise. Yeah, in the afterworld or personal redemption, these kinds of things. So yeah, like you see, like this in the in the whole Eleusinian mystery had to do with that what the initial we know a little bit about what the initiates did. Now. Not a lot, not everything. But we do know that they reenacted Persephone's descent into the underworld, right. And so you would actually go into the temple and go down and go down and go down. And then there was an or some kind of a revelation that was to spark a spiritual awakening awakening in the initiates. But we don't really know what that was. All right, because it was so well kept secret that we still don't know.

Karen Foglesong: 22:37

But some of our listeners have experienced this, even if you just go into a cave, and then you actually get to walk out of it, like you survive, it's a scary thing for your body to be entombed like that. So even just going into a cave and walking out of the cave, without any ritual or anything gives you kind of a sense of, you know, this kind of rebirth in a casual sense. So I think packing it on with ritual would intensify the importance of it. And I think more often than not, you would have a spiritual experience with the practitioners. Right?

Unknown: 23:17

Definitely. It's interesting you say that about caves, because as near as we can tell, those are the oldest temples. When you go back to the sort of oldest version of what people that seem to be ritualistically left remains, it's the neandertals and it is cave bears right and deep into cave bears caves themselves, you would find like cave bear skulls with the leg bones crossed and put into the mouth, right? And so the bear is eating itself to get that same idea of rebirth and regeneration. Yes, the circle of life, all that stuff, and it happened inside of the cave. So definitely so that's Demeter and Persephone - you can see how much things change over time, how myths are plastic, how they like I said it exists in many different versions. Let us know in the comments if the myth of Persephone is particularly moves you or if there's something else that you think about any of that, that reminds you or remind you of going down into the darkness and coming back - a story that's powerful for you about that we'd love to hear

Karen Foglesong: 24:20

and always be grateful that these mystery religions gave us something to look forward to in the afterlife because prior to this, there wasn't much. This is a great evolution in the history of religion, right? Or development. Absolutely. We're moving on to Dionysos.

Erin Branham: 24:36

Yeah,

Karen Foglesong: 24:37

or Bacchus. I have to say this is one of my favorite. It's not an accident that I leave him at the last of the list because I like Dionysos. And here's another great word relationship to the Roman Bacchus leads us to Bacchanalia, which is, you know, still a word that is often used in our culture today.

Erin Branham: 24:58

And it still means the same thing.

Karen Foglesong: 25:00

Yeah, crazy party

Erin Branham: 25:01

and that was Dionysos, he was the god of a crazy party.

Karen Foglesong: 25:04

Right? Altered States crazy anything that leads to shifting the norm, the status quo, which is why I like him. But he's also associated with grapes and wine because these were ways that at this time period were known to alter states. He's connected to the subconscious because of this. I heard a person speaking about the difference between Apollonian and Dionysian poetry just recently, and I thought it was very interesting that Apollonian is about giving order to the chaos, and Dionysian poetry is about bringing something new out of the unconscious to the light of day. And I thought that was really interesting. We're still using these terms of these Godheads in a useful way.

Unknown: 25:57

Definitely, it was Nietzsche, who coined those I was trying to remember I just had to look it up. It was really Yeah, who coined talking about the Apollonian side of humanity and the Dionysian side of humanity, the idea of sort of the rational versus the barbaric aspects of humanity

Karen Foglesong: 26:16

wild. Yeah, that it makes sense. And I think we we have to balance those two things in ourselves. So I think Dionysus is interesting too, because he's very similar to the stories of Jesus, believe it or not. I know Jesus is not the wild party guy. But otherwise, there's, that. And Dionysus is, again a son of Zeus, right? And what's interesting about Dionysus in this way is that he's not born of a woman, like Athena comes out of Zeus his head, Dionysus is born of Zeus' body as well. Because his mother is where I say Semeal do you say Semeal or do you say Semele?

Erin Branham: 26:57

Semele.

Karen Foglesong: 26:58

So, Semele is in love with Zeus, which is interesting. This is a little bit different, because often Zeus is pursuing someone and tricking them, but Semele is actually in love with Zeus and they have a good relationship, and they hang out together. And Hera finds out about it and turns herself into an old lady, and comes and presents herself as kind of a nursemaid to Semele. And she starts to trust her and starts to tell her her secrets, and she tells her nursemaid that she is in love with a god and that the god comes to visit her. And Hera knows this already, right? So she's all like, Well, how do you know he's a god? How can you be sure because men lie, right? And so she convinces Semele to ask Zeus for a favor. And he, and she has to ask for the favor before she says what the favor is because the favor is for Zeus to reveal his true godlike self to her. And you guys, everybody knows this right? Even if you just started into mythology, what happens when you are in the presence of a god? You burn up! So Semele is about to expire, and Zeus reaches in and removes Dionysus from her womb. And some versions of the story says he puts Dionysus in his thigh. I like the ones that say that he puts Dionysus in his penis, because I think that's closer to actual childbirth. But at any rate, at the appropriate time, Zeus cuts open the member of his body and Dionysus is born. So he is not born as a woman, from a woman's body, which makes him extra special in a patriarchal culture.

Unknown: 28:50

Generally, theories that I know about Dionysus was what would you call a late addition to the Pantheon, meaning that you can find references to the older gods. And I mean to some of the gods in the pantheon at much older periods of ancient Greece and Dionysus only really starts to show up amongst the Olympians pretty late in the game. As far as the ancient Greeks go, and there - generally there's this theory that, you remember, the Greeks are colonizing, they're leaving the, what we think of as Greece, they're going out and these little boats and they're moving all over the Mediterranean and they're, so they're colonizing all up and down the coasts. And they went far, like they went all the way down the coast towards Spain, into Spain. They went all the way the other way into what is today Turkey, right. And as they would do this, they would encounter new gods of course. They would encounter people who had different gods, and if they liked a God, it was very easy to assimilate them into their pantheon. All they had to do was go - oh! okay, it's cool. Must be as son of Zeus and then it was done. So yeah, essentially, that's what happened they think happened with Dionysus, and also what they think it happened with Aphrodite, except Aphrodite was a very, very old goddess, so if that happened and happened a long, long time ago. But yes, she was from the island of Cyprus, remember that's also to the east, closer to Turkey. And it would have been something that the Greeks would have probably encountered, but very, very old goddess as opposed to Dionysus, much younger one, as we know him amongst the Greek pantheon. Right. Yeah. So he was interesting too, because he also had, besides the story of his birth, there are a few other stories, but he really had a lot of worshipers and he had a mystery cult that there was dedicated to him as well, that also promised special things in the afterlife are really lovely, you know, beautiful afterlife, and all of that sort of stuff. I found some good information on these. There was a another mythic figure, Orpheus, who you may have heard of who supposedly wrote these hymns to Dionysus that became the focus of the cult, right. And you would have these private rites performed for you for the remission of sins. And for the Orphic, Dionysus was a Savior God, so he had these redeeming qualities. He was in this version, he was the son of Zeus and Persephone, as opposed to Semele, and yes, and was therefore the successor to Zeus' throne. So what you have here is kind of competing ideas of, like I said, at different places in ancient Greece, you're gonna run into these different ideas, right? So we're talking about branding that's localized here, where they're like, Oh, Dionysus isn't the son of Semele, he's the son of Persephone, and he's like, the heir apparent to the throne of Olympus. And other people would have been like, well, that's a weird thought. And they're like, No, but that's the way it really is. You have to think about it, like the denominations of right, just right how Protestant would talk to a Catholic who would talk to an Eastern Orthodox person, right? Right. They're just different versions of the same things. So the whole idea there was that when the Titans had attacked, and they had dismembered the baby of Dionysus, so Zeus in retaliation, blaze the perpetrators with his thunderbolt, and then from the Titans ashes, the human race was born. And but they were burdened by this terrible inheritance of an original sin,

Karen Foglesong: 32:01

which is death of a family member.

Unknown: 32:03

So the Orphics, the people who are dedicated to this cult did not consume meat. They were not to be buried in woolen garments. And they've their finds, these are people along Southern Italy, northern Greece, Crete, some of those different kinds of pla- uh, places are where this cult was active, which I just thought was very interesting. The way you see you can see these different versions of -

Karen Foglesong: 32:27

Yes, and how they move.

Erin Branham: 32:29

Yeah. But the kind of more, this is interesting, kind of more mainstream version of Dionysus. Which is the stuff that you know about his worship involved, really great parties. It often involves leaving the city and going into the wilderness.

Karen Foglesong: 32:46

Yes,

Erin Branham: 32:47

It would mean getting really, really drunk. If there were other ways to alter your mind that as well. And it frequently involve things like capturing small animals, ripping them - live limb from limb and eating their flesh raw.

Karen Foglesong: 32:59

Right.

Erin Branham: 32:59

So Dionysus was sort of punk rock in the ancient world.

Karen Foglesong: 33:04

The Maenads were bad, man!

Unknown: 33:07

These were his followers, his semi divine like his demi-goddess, followers. Yeah, maenads - you didn't want to run into a maenad.

Karen Foglesong: 33:15

No, because they would do the same. It's very important that these rituals are secret. And so they would do the same thing. If you just happened upon them in the middle of their ecstasy, they would rip you limb from limb as well, because you can't go back and reveal what you saw. Right?

Unknown: 33:31

Right. So again, that's the mythic story, and then the version of it that people reenacted wouldbe to go into the woods while they were really drunk and eat small animals.

Karen Foglesong: 33:42

Right. Other part of that it was done, you know, that would have been a small version. Right? Again, you have to think about it like denominations today, right? Like that would have been sort of like the Charismatics, the people who, you know, play with the snakes and drink strichnine amongst the Christians. There was a small set of people who would like actually go and do that. But then they were much more staid, you know, worshipers of Dionysus in the city. If you just enjoyed a good cup of wine.

Erin Branham: 34:05

Right, or poured out a libation, or that sort of stuff. So again, what I like about Dionysus is is you can really see the breadth and the - because he was a later God. So we actually have, you know, good material on him

Karen Foglesong: 34:17

Records! Yes. So we could trace how he developed. Yeah, exactly.

Unknown: 34:22

So that runs you through a couple of what are typically considered to be minor gods, but you get a chance to see how the mythology really worked. And we mostly are doing this because it proves our point that there should be as many mythologies or versions of a story as there are tellers.

Karen Foglesong: 34:38

Right?

Erin Branham: 34:39

And to say that even in the ancient world, even with real mythology, it was like that.

Karen Foglesong: 34:46

Heavy quotes, heavy quotes there. Right.

Unknown: 34:48

Sorry! Which, this is why we did classical mythology because that's what people for the most part think of as real

Erin Branham: 34:51

But are, were experienced more as a presence mythology. And when you understand that, no, there's not one version of it, there's lots of versions of it, it changed from place to place. It changed from time to time. And that is the fluidity of mythology. It's also why we think that kind of a mythological approach to life is, is a smart one because it takes into account that fluidity. It says Yes, right. Myths are fluid, myths change, myths, you know, flow and come through you and sometimes the myth fits for a while and then it doesn't. And it doesn't you should let it go. I wanted to bring up our as our last two because these are two who have almost no stories about them. and were experienced are more as they're like, really useful gods.

Karen Foglesong: 35:41

Yes.

Unknown: 35:42

Right. They're very utilitarian. They're about everyday things. That's part of why I like them.

Karen Foglesong: 35:47

Yeah, absolutely. Everyday things. Yeah.

Erin Branham: 35:50

So here's Hephaestus you go ahead and do Hephaestus.

Karen Foglesong: 35:52

Hephaestus, so I think Hephaestus is interesting, because he's said to be ugly. And remember, for the Greeks, this just means that he was asymmetrical, right? And one version that I know of is that he is the child his his Roman name is Vulcan, right, which, when I was lecturing on this subject, I always put up a picture of Spock, the Vulcan because he's a Vulcan.

Unknown: 36:20

That is where it comes from. That's why Spock is called a Vulcan because the planet Vulcan is supposed to be very, very hot like a forge.

Karen Foglesong: 36:26

Right like a forge. There you go, which is Hephaestus or Vulcan is associated with the Forge just like Hades is associated with the ore in its untended state or its natural state, Hephaestus works the or so he turns it in, he makes Supposedly he makes all of the attributes of the gods, Athena's owl, Athena's shields, Zeus' Thunderbolt - so all of these things that we associate with the gods, their attributes are made by Hephaestus.

Erin Branham: 37:00

All their tools.

Karen Foglesong: 37:00

Right - all their tools.

Unknown: 37:02

He's very utilitarian so there's not a ton of stories about him. He wasn't like, you don't hear a ton of what we would call mythological stories about him. But in the you know, where he sat in the pantheon - the Smith is an incredibly important figure.

Karen Foglesong: 37:18

You can't do anything else without it.

Erin Branham: 37:20

Right. He was in everything that everybody used. This was a culture of warriors and farmers. Yeah, citizen farm. I mean, citizen warriors like you are farmer part of the year and you're a warrior part of the year - that was just the way that it worked. And so it was all about swords and plowshares you know, like you had you had to have these things in order to live. So Hephaestus was super important, as you say he was considered ugly, but in an ancient world and these cultures, Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, ugly meant that he was, he was disabled. He had like a deformed leg, right?

Karen Foglesong: 37:53

Yes. Like you said, there's not a lot of drama stories about Hephaestus because he's not - the thing that he represents, metallurgy, blacksmithing. He's also associated with volcanoes, and he's considered the god of fire. These things we don't want to be dramatic, right? We need to have control over these things for a successful civilization. But as we've said with many of these gods, there are multiple versions of these stories. But the one that I have always found interesting is that sometimes Hephaestus is considered to be Hera's child alone, and she bore him in retaliation for Zeus having brought forth Athena, but after Hephaestus was born, Athena was not happy with the way his facial structure was set up, because we're very, this time we're very aesthetically oriented into this kind of aquline look, and it's got to be really balanced and supposedly, Hephaestus is considered ugly. And so she flings him from her. And he goes out of Olympus and falls to the earth and he's immortal. So he doesn't die but he is forever after lame and we do see usually Hephaestus pictured as being lamed. Some versions later on have Hephaestus married to Aphrodite. And I'm sorry, I every time I say that, I think about the Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Robin William plays the moon and the Baron is going around visiting all of his ex lovers and Hephaestus is following him, right, so it's kind of a way of giving Hephaestus some drama, I think in the later stories. That's what I think.

Unknown: 39:37

Hephaestus is a common- or certain parts of those stories are a common subject in some art, particularly what was called like neoclassical period, which looked back a lot to really ancient Roman stories. You said the thing about Hephaestus and volcanoes. His Roman name was Vulcan, which is- his forge was supposed to be in the heart of a volcano. And that was why the volcano sometimes exploded was just because Hephaestus was doing really big work. So yeah, there's a big association there.

Erin Branham: 40:10

I always thought that was a good one. But there's

Karen Foglesong: 40:10

Nice. often stories or depictions in art of a couple of famous stories in which Hephaestus is the wronged husband. Yes. Aphrodite was married to him. Yes, partially because there was a there's a story about there was going to be some giant throwdown over amongst the gods over who got to marry her. Right.

Erin Branham: 40:32

Because she was so beautiful so to sort of sidestep that they, Zeus gives her to the ugliest of all of the gods. However, it is Aphrodite, and if she wants to fuck somebody, she's gonna fuck him. So she was super into Ares, the god of war. Yeah, he was very handsome and very beautiful and the manliest of manly creatures - until he got hurt. And then he was always a big whiny baby. Just an interesting statement about masculinity from the ancient Greeks.

Karen Foglesong: 41:02

I always said Ares was the the ultimate bully.

Unknown: 41:05

Yeah, so there's a very famous story in which Ares and Aphrodite are caught by Hephaestus. He weaves a magical chain, or net over the bed. And then when they're in flagrante delicto, it falls down over them and captures them there. And then he lets in all the gods who then laugh at Aphrodite and Ares for being caught in adultery and for being caught there, naked. So I know of a couple of depictions of that in art and,

Karen Foglesong: 41:35

and notice the shift right, Aphrodite was the most powerful at the beginning of our stories, because she's born before the Pantheon is even born in many versions, and now we have to pin her down, right? We have to get her married. And then we have to show that she's no better than any other woman. She could be embarrassed by adultery,

Erin Branham: 41:57

May be.

Karen Foglesong: 41:58

The very goddess of love.

Unknown: 42:00

But that's one of the interesting things about Hephaestus is he does take this very interesting position because typically when you see Aphrodite in relationships and art, it's never Hephaestus, it's always she's with Ares, or she's with Adonis, or she's with one of her other lovers, but you do not see Hephaestus depicted in very many cases, unless it's this particular story where he's caught them cheating and gets to show everybody.

Karen Foglesong: 42:25

Right.

Erin Branham: 42:26

But I like Hephaestus. I always found him a very friendly, like the Smith, the one who makes useful things. So he has a real kind of every day, down to earth function that I think is really interesting. And certainly in a what was essentially a Bronze Age, Iron Age culture, like Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, the Smith is an incredibly important figure.

Karen Foglesong: 42:49

Absolutely.

Erin Branham: 42:49

Because you don't have anything without a Smith, which also brings us around to the final one, which is the member of the Olympian Pantheon that people frequently can't remember. Or don't know.

Karen Foglesong: 43:00

Right?

Erin Branham: 43:01

She's almost never depicted in any kind of art, because she doesn't have to be she is in your house right now. If you have a hot plate, or an oven, or any kind of a fireplace, Hestia, the keeper of the hearth is there. Yeah. And she, I, when I was young, I would just forget, there were no groovy stories about her. So I didn't really care about her. As I've become older, I have great appreciation for Hestia. And that idea of having- of animating, right, of animating that spirit, the warmth of your house. The food, the fire that cooks your food, the fire that warms you, and the care that you have to take with it. So I really - I dig Hestia. I think she's somebody you can only appreciate in maturity.

Karen Foglesong: 43:50

That may be I'm sure she becomes more important as you become a mother too, because there's a lot more you can put up as an individual then you can, protecting your kids, right? Like you're not you're gonna allow yourself to be cold longer than you will allow your child to be cold.

Erin Branham: 44:08

100% So she's a really lovely figure. And we just wanted to bring up these last two because when it comes to thinking about ancient mythology and ancient classical mythology, which most of us in the West know, it's interesting to see these little different divisions of you know, the ones that have big stories, or the ones that have really specific attributes and the ones that are just part of your everyday life.

Karen Foglesong: 44:31

Yes, yeah. And Hestia is there if your home is functioning it's all Hestia

Erin Branham: 44:39

That's right. So remember tonight to go by and give your stove a little pat and thank Hestia for cooking your food and keeping your house warm. And I think that's all for us this time at Mythic U. Please let us know in the comments or reviews that what you thought about this and what you think about the ancient Greek and Roman gods. Are there any ones that you particularly identify with, any story that's particularly meaningful for you? We'd love to hear about it.

Karen Foglesong: 45:06

Absolutely, pay close attention to which ones of these Pantheon that you're attracted to. Those are clues to your subconscious.

Unknown: 45:13

Absolutely. If one of them is singing for you, look into them. That means something there is important for you.

Karen Foglesong: 45:20

Absolutely. Thanks for joining us. Yeah.

Erin Branham: 45:22

Thank you so much. We'll see you next time. Bye.

Karen Foglesong: 45:31

Thank you for joining us at Mythic U, we want to hear from you. Please visit our website at mythic u.buzzsprout.com That's mythic u dot Buzz sprout.com. For more great information on choreographing your own spirituality. Leave us a comment and donate if you have the means and the interest. If you'd like to support our work more regularly, visit our Patreon and become a member of mythic you. Depending on the level at which you join members receive early access to new episodes, bonus episodes and free Mythic U gifts.