Host Boston Blake connects the dots between Wonder Woman, Aphrodite, and the origin of the world according to Greek mythology.

Persons, places, and things mentioned in this episode:

Wonder Woman (the movie)

Wonder Woman (comics)

Clash of the Titans

Archetypes

Joseph Campbell

D'Aulaire's Book of Greek Myths

Edith Hamilton's Mythology

Mythos by Stephen Fry

Hesiod

Homer

Apollodorus

Wolverine

Entropy

Welcome to Mythic, a podcast where we explore meaningful

living through the power of myth.

I'm your host, Boston Blake.

So this podcast came out of a question.

At the beginning of 2020, I was prepping for a PhD program in mythological studies.

I've been obsessed with mythology since I was a little kid, but in the wake of the

COVID outbreak, I had to close my body work practice and my income dried up to

nothing and grad school was off the table.

The question became, what's another way to engage with other nerds who love mythology

enough to go into a lifetime of debt, just to discuss and learn about them.

So here we are, welcome to the podcast.

It's my attempt to teach some of what I know and learn.

What others think about this stuff

Now, where to start?

Yeah.

The beginning of time is just too far back.

Let's start with the beginning of my obsession.

Wonder Woman.

That's way more fun, anyway.

If you've seen the movie, you know that Wonder Woman, also known as Princess

Diana of Themyscira, is an Amazon.

Amazons were an all female tribe from Greek mythology.

Whether they were historically real is a matter of some debate, but based on the

evidence I've read, I believe they were.

The movie says that Diana was the daughter of Zeus, but that is a damn lie.

Wonder Woman was sculpted from clay by her mother and given life by Aphrodite.

She didn't have a dad.

That was kind of her thing.

She grew up to possess, and I quote: the wisdom of Athena, the

strength of Hercules, the speed of Mercury, and the beauty of Aphrodite.

Now I was five years old when I learned this.

Now, today, I know that it's still a pretty big departure

from classical mythology.

According to which the queen of the Amazons is the daughter of Aries.

The god of war, Ares, was the guy in the movie with the bad mustache that

Diana blew a hole in his chest with her unexplained magic lightening powers.

But that's not the point.

The point is that as a kid, I had to know who these characters were.

I was five and reading at the "see spot run" level, not so much the

level of the "daughter of Hippolyta who relinquished her immortality."

But the fates smiled upon me.

The very next year, Clash of the Titans was released in theaters.

Not only did it instill in me a lifelong irrational fear of

scorpions, it also introduced me to the larger world of Greek mythology.

Zeus and the Olympians, the hero Perseus, Pegasus, the winged horse,

and Medusa, who was really just minding her own business when Perseus

came and chopped her head off.

But that's another story for another episode.

Even though the movie wasn't totally true to the myths, it captured their

essence and their astounding sexism, and it remixed them into a fantastic

movie that I love to this day.

They tried to remake it in 2010 and well, Hey, Sam Worthington is hot.

So there's that.

Anyway, as my reading improved, I sought out D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths,

Edith Hamilton's Mythology, and anything else that mentioned gods and heroes.

I loved these stories, but there was something else.

They seemed familiar somehow.

It would take decades to name it.

But I eventually came to recognize the Greek stories as

complex multi-level metaphors.

They were at once a weather map of my own psyche, my own inner world, and a

template for all the political and social dynamics that I saw going on around me.

Myths are stories of archetypes in motion.

They're universal repeating patterns.

Joseph Campbell called myths, public dreams, and dreams, private myths.

No, it's not the only collection of great stories.

The Bible contains incredible teaching stories, but I could

never get into it because it was taught to me as factual history.

And that just didn't make sense.

Even when I was five.

Mythology was allowed to stand on his own without any dogma.

That let me observe these ancient patterns in the stories and in modern

life and make those connections.

The first deity I dove into was Aphrodite.

She's the goddess of love, but what does that mean?

Where did she come from?

The short answer is that she was born from the sea foam.

And that's accurate.

In fact, her name derives from aphros, which means foam.

But that answer is woefully incomplete.

It's like a kid asking where do babies come from and answering mommy's belly?

Sure.

It's not a lie, but it leaves out some pretty important details.

So where did Aphrodite come from?

Well, to answer that.

Okay.

Really answer that.

Now we're going back to the beginning of time.

But before we do, two things I need to note.

First, the Greek myths are from an oral tradition.

They had been told and retold for centuries before anyone wrote them down.

There is no true version.

There are only different versions told by different people for different reasons.

This is my telling, combining various versions I've heard and read

into a story that I hope is both entertaining and illuminating, but

also true to the facts as they were recorded in the oldest versions.

In general, I lean on Hesiod, Homor, and Apollodorus to provide

the most essential story bits.

Secondly, I am an American.

We're just getting used to the word gyro.

I will undoubtedly butcher the pronunciation of a great

many beautiful Greek names.

My pronunciation choices are pale imitations of Stephen Fry from his Mythos

book because I love Stephen Fry and I want to be just like him when I grow up.

Now.

The beginning of time, or really just before.

What was before time?

Well, the primordial elements.

And there were five of them.

At least five that concern us right now.

Anyway, they were Chaos, Gaia, Tartarus Eros, Erebus, and Nyx.

What exactly does primordial mean, anyway?

It comes from the Latin word primordius.

It's a compounding of Primus, meaning first and ordiri, meaning to begin.

So primordial refers to what has existed from the beginning.

In biology, it indicates the earliest stages of cell development.

In the beginning, that was only Chaos, the void, the ultimate primordial

deity, sentient nothingness.

The Greek word we've translated as chaos meant chasm or abyss, but

this myth has made its way all the way into scientific storytelling.

The default state of the universe, quantum physics tells us, is entropy.

That is to say Chaos.

From Chaos the universe emerged and to Chaos it shall return.

Everything that seems so solid now, from our bodies to our buildings

to our civilizations will one day decay, and where their shapes

once were, will be emptiness.

And I think that in all of Greek myth, Chaos is the only entity that is not

gendered, which I find fascinating.

You want to see a picture?

Check out the Hades video game.

It's so freaking rad.

From Chaos, gaia emerged.

Not Chaos' child, but a divinity who formed within the emptiness,

something solid, a place to stand something orderly within the chaos.

Gaia, not yet mother earth, was not just the mud and the clay and the

dirt, but the entire material world.

In fact, the words, material and matter derived from the

Latin word for mother mater.

Gaia, whose Roman name was Terra as in terra forma, terrain, and terrestrial.

And along with Gaia came a being called Tartarus.

Now, was Tartarus a god or a place.

Well, why not both?

This is an important thing to understand about Greek myth.

Everything had a spirit, a unique sentience earth, sky, rivers, caves,

emotions, and even concepts as fundamental as beauty or abstract as commerce.

Everything was animated, meaning it had an animus or anima, a

soul-- even emptiness itself.

This is difficult, if not impossible, for us to really grasp in today's world.

We are deeply conditioned to separate body, mind and spirit.

But in these tales, nearly everything possessed all three.

Tartarus then was a personified place, situated deep beneath Gaia.

It was a hellish realm in the furthest reaches of the underworld.

And it would serve as a prison for the violent monsters and human criminals.

Psychologically tartar us is where we would exile parts of ourselves that

terrify us, that we think are dangerous and that we have to submerge in order to

build and maintain human civilization.

And regardless of the sound and spelling Tartarus has absolutely nothing to do

with a calcified gunk on your teeth.

Also out of Chaos came the god Erebus, the darkness, and the goddess Nyx, the night.

And then there was Eros, the irresistible god of love, who could

make men and gods alike, abandoned reason in pursuit of passion.

Eros, the force that pulls living things together to mate, and also

maybe the same magnetic force that binds the entire universe together.

It was Eros who made it possible for Erebus and Nyx to conceive the goddess

Hemera, the day, and the god Aether, the light, or perhaps the visible space.

This story might be thought of as the story of the development

of human consciousness at the individual and collective level.

As infants, we begin in the undifferentiated experience

in our mother's womb.

When we're ejected from that, we become aware of something that is not us.

We may differentiate darkness from light.

Eyes closed from eyes open.

We find comfort in the solidity of our mother's body, which

supports and nourishes us.

And thanks to Eros, we have desire to pull us forward.

Then eventually we begin to explore the world beyond.

Now back to the story.

All on her own Gaia gave birth to two sons.

Pontus, the sea, and Oruanos, the sky, who would become her mate.

We usually pronounce his name Uranus, but since I have the sense of humor

of a 14 year old, I'm going to leave Uranus alone and stick with Ouranos.

Otherwise we'll never get anywhere.

Also on her own Gaia, birthed mountains, hills, valleys, and all the terrain where

all the action would eventually happen.

Because if you think about it, nothing had actually happened yet.

Nothing could actually happened yet.

In fact, everything I just described had to happen all at

once and it couldn't happen at all because time hadn't started yet.

And without time there are no happenings.

Just be with that for a second.

I'll wait.

Now, Ouranos and Gaia became inseparable.

Literally.

He covered every inch of her.

The two of them locked in internal coitus, Mother Earth and Father

Sky were the worlds first couple.

And their incessant lovemaking spawned lots of kids.

The first brood included 12 gigantic powerful, beautiful

beings, six male and six female.

The Titans.

One of these 12 Titans was Mnemosyne.

She was Memory.

And with Memory, we start to be able to link events.

And before and after start to take on meaning.

This is the beginning of time.

Now with time started, the insatiable Ouranos, who had nothing else

to do, impregnated Gaia again.

This time she bore the Hekatonchires.

Their description is in their name.

Hekaton means 100 and chire or chire means hands.

And to add to this biological impossibility, the Hekatonchires.

Oh, I love saying that word.

The Hekatonchires also had 50 heads each.

If there happens to be an artist listening, I would love it.

If you would draw a picture of this and send it to me.

What does this look like?

50 headed 100 armed monsters.

It makes my brain stop.

My best guess is that it was, is a metaphor referring to various tribes

of about 50 people, strong and dangerous, but unorganized and barbaric.

But I am totally pulling that out of my ass.

Gaia's third and final set of children were the triplets, the Cyclopes.

Okay.

You probably know these guys.

Giant one eyed, monsters.

They were strong and energetic and they were skilled builders and Smiths.

Their names were Brontes.

The thunder.

Steropes, the lightning, and Arges, brightness.

Together, they were the thunderstorm.

And volcanic activity with its smoke and rumbling and sparks indicated

that they were deep, underground, hard at work, forging new lightning

bolts and other such godly crafts.

Despite the differences among his three litters.

Ouranos felt equal affection for all of them.

Absolutely none.

He despised them.

He would not allow them to emerge into the world at all.

Every time any of offspring tried to come between him and his

wife, he shoved them back insider.

There was no room for them.

Literally, between this inseparable pair of primordials.

It broke Gaia's heart to see her children stifled this way, unable to occupy

the beautiful world she had birthed.

Also it hurt.

There was no room inside her either.

Imagine an endless pregnancy that results in 12 full grown

children inside your uterus.

Finally fed up, Gaia visited her Titanic firstborn to enlist them in an

uprising against the tyrannical sky.

god.

She presented her kids with anadmamantine sickle.

A sickle in case you're unfamiliar with ancient farming practices, is a

semicircular blade used to reap grain.

It turns out it can be used to reap other things too.

As for adamantine, it's a mythical unbreakable metal.

It lives on today in the claws of the Marvel mutant, Wolverine.

Adamantium all.

The Titans were terrified at the very thought of opposing their father,

all except one Kronos, the youngest Titan hated Ouranos for what he had

done to him and to his siblings.

So Gaia gave Kronos the sickle and he hid himself, waiting in

ambush for the next time, the horny sky god was ready to get it on.

And soon Ouranos approached.

Draped in stars, he stretched out and lay across the earth expecting

another epic lovemaking session with his wife when suddenly slash.

In a single motion, Kronos whipped out his sickle and sliced off his father's

genitals, catching the severed bits with his free hand, he then hurled them

through the air, blood trailing behind and spattering to the ground, and into the

storm tossed, see where blood and semen swirled in the surf, frothing and foaming.

And then something even more unlikely happened.

A woman rose from the foam.

And not just any woman.

Aphrodite, the smiling laughter loving goddess of love and beauty.

Aphrodite, whose name means she of the sea foam.

Or just foam lady, if you don't want to be precious about it.

It's ironic.

Isn't it?

That something so beautiful could be born from such an ugly act,

such violence and bloodshed.

But that's the way of it.

Now, do you see what I mean?

She was born from the sea foam is just flat out insufficient

and give short shrift to this batshit crazy origin story.

Now with love in the world and the Titans able to live independent lives.

The order of things was about to change.

And the world was about to become a lot more interesting.

And that's exactly the story I'll tell in the next episode of Mythic.

That's it for this episode of Mythic.

Thanks so much for listening to discover additional episodes, information,

and a host of other resources.

Visit mythic podcast.com.

That's also where you can find a link to join the online community, where

we can discuss all things Mythic.

And I'm on Twitter at myths pod that's M Y T H P O D until next time, journey on