The Birth of Aphrodite – Revisited

This blog is a series of snapshots, taken at any one point in time. Like a photograph, it freezes thoughts, memories, and a huge amount of randomness onto this page. For example, this entry, will contain nothing that I forgot yesterday, nor does it have any room for what I’ll learn tomorrow.

What I am trying to say is, sometimes, just sometimes, what I’ve written is not only “insane” as my thoughtful brother described it, but also complete and total rubbish. So, sometimes the facts are a little skewed.

I think the best example of this so far, is the legend of Aphrodite. But let’s face it, I knew it at the time too, right? ๐Ÿ™‚ So, long overdue, are the corrections. With a little more recent research ๐Ÿ™‚

So there’s the daddy god of all god’s. I don’t think that’s Zeus, he’s just the leader, head of the superhero’s. And there’s the mummy god. She’s pretty important too.

There are actually two different versions of the story of Aphrodite’s birth. One of them by Homer (Iliad, Book V, 370), she’s the daughter of Zeus and Dione (Dione is just the name that is merely the feminine form of Zeus in Greek). That one’s not very interesting though, and doesn’t involve the rocks in Cyprus at all, so we’re going to go with the other one for now.

That’s the one by Hesiod (Theogony, 188-198) and resembles my vague recollection. So the father was Ouranos (Uranus). He’s still the father of the Gods.

They have loads of baby gods, and the youngest of them (he’s one of the evil ones in the Age of Mythology, Hades, or one of them), walks in on mummy and daddy god having sex. He’s a bit annoyed, so takes the harsh action of cutting off his dads testicles, and throwing them down to earth.

The youngest of the gods, is the Titan Kronos. I sort of remembered that, when we were driving back from Nicosia, and the tour guide pointed out a mountain that was named after him. I was right though, Kronos is an evil god in Age of Mythology. Thank you Microsoft.

Couldn’t find any reference to him walking in on his mum and dad, but he obviously didn’t like his dad very much either way – as he did cut off his genitals, and cast them into the sea.

Well, they land on earth, but daddy god’s a bit fertile, and impregnates Mother Earth, or nature. And then, presumably 9 months go by, and voilรƒฦ’ (our tour guide said voilรƒฦ’ a LOT), Aphrodite emerges from this rock on the Cyprus coastline.

There wasn’t exactly your standard 9 months involved in this birth. From the foam that gathered around Oranous’ genitals, Aphrodite emerged fully formed. In some ways, the story is a lot more analogous to one of those sponges you can get; you throw it in water, and you get a bigger sponge, or a flannel.

Personally I much prefer Hesiod’s, and I’m not alone. It supports the Aphrodite, Goddess of fertility idea. She has also been depicted by a number of artists as Anadyomene (meaning “She who emerges”).

Now that that’s cleared up – I’ll tell you the even more exciting news, that the HR department managed to come up with 5 days more holiday for me to use before the end of the year! so now I have a grand total of three weeks off in December, or something stupid like that. Two at the start, and one at the end after Christmas. So I have the travel itch again. I’m not sure exactly what I’m going to do with those two weeks yet, but I welcome any ideas you want to offer in the comments. Mimi from work has already suggested sorting the books in her basement and painting some rooms in her house. So you don’t have to go very far to top it ๐Ÿ™‚

I’m hoping for something more along the lines of “Oh look, you can spend 10 days in Peru for only 100 pounds around that time of year”. But I don’t think I’m that lucky ๐Ÿ™‚

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