May 6, 2021 • 19 mins
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:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Welcome to Mythic, a podcastwhere 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 preppingfor a PhD program in mythological studies.
(00:29):
I've been obsessed with mythology since Iwas a little kid, but in the wake of the
COVID outbreak, I had to close my bodywork practice and my income dried up to
nothing and grad school was off the table.
The question became, what's another way toengage with other nerds who love mythology
(00:49):
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 someof what I know and learn.
What others think about this stuff
Now, where to start?
Yeah.
The beginning of timeis just too far back.
(01:11):
Let's start with thebeginning of my obsession.
Wonder Woman.
That's way more fun, anyway.
If you've seen the movie, you know thatWonder Woman, also known as Princess
Diana of Themyscira, is an Amazon.
Amazons were an all femaletribe from Greek mythology.
Whether they were historically real is amatter of some debate, but based on the
(01:34):
evidence I've read, I believe they were.
The movie says that Diana was thedaughter of Zeus, but that is a damn lie.
Wonder Woman was sculpted from clay byher mother and given life by Aphrodite.
She didn't have a dad.
That was kind of her thing.
She grew up to possess, and Iquote: the wisdom of Athena, the
(01:55):
strength of Hercules, the speed ofMercury, and the beauty of Aphrodite.
Now I was five yearsold when I learned this.
Now, today, I know that it'sstill a pretty big departure
from classical mythology.
According to which the queen of theAmazons is the daughter of Aries.
The god of war, Ares, was the guy inthe movie with the bad mustache that
(02:15):
Diana blew a hole in his chest with herunexplained magic lightening powers.
But that's not the point.
The point is that as a kid, I hadto know who these characters were.
I was five and reading at the "seespot run" level, not so much the
level of the "daughter of Hippolytawho relinquished her immortality."
(02:36):
But the fates smiled upon me.
The very next year, Clash of theTitans was released in theaters.
Not only did it instill in mea lifelong irrational fear of
scorpions, it also introduced me tothe larger world of Greek mythology.
Zeus and the Olympians, the heroPerseus, Pegasus, the winged horse,
(02:56):
and Medusa, who was really justminding her own business when Perseus
came and chopped her head off.
But that's another storyfor another episode.
Even though the movie wasn't totallytrue to the myths, it captured their
essence and their astounding sexism,and it remixed them into a fantastic
(03:18):
movie that I love to this day.
They tried to remake it in 2010 andwell, Hey, Sam Worthington is hot.
So there's that.
Anyway, as my reading improved, I soughtout D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths,
Edith Hamilton's Mythology, and anythingelse that mentioned gods and heroes.
(03:39):
I loved these stories, butthere was something else.
They seemed familiar somehow.
It would take decades to name it.
But I eventually came torecognize the Greek stories as
complex multi-level metaphors.
They were at once a weather map of myown psyche, my own inner world, and a
(04:01):
template for all the political and socialdynamics that I saw going on around me.
Myths are stories of archetypes in motion.
They're universal repeating patterns.
Joseph Campbell called myths, publicdreams, and dreams, private myths.
(04:22):
No, it's not the onlycollection of great stories.
The Bible contains incredibleteaching stories, but I could
never get into it because it wastaught to me as factual history.
And that just didn't make sense.
Even when I was five.
Mythology was allowed to standon his own without any dogma.
That let me observe these ancientpatterns in the stories and in modern
(04:46):
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 shewas born from the sea foam.
And that's accurate.
In fact, her name derivesfrom aphros, which means foam.
(05:08):
But that answer is woefully incomplete.
It's like a kid asking where do babiescome from and answering mommy's belly?
Sure.
It's not a lie, but it leaves outsome pretty important details.
So where did Aphrodite come from?
Well, to answer that.
(05:30):
Okay.
Really answer that.
Now we're going back tothe beginning of time.
But before we do, twothings I need to note.
First, the Greek myths arefrom an oral tradition.
They had been told and retold forcenturies before anyone wrote them down.
There is no true version.
There are only different versions told bydifferent people for different reasons.
(05:53):
This is my telling, combiningvarious versions I've heard and read
into a story that I hope is bothentertaining and illuminating, but
also true to the facts as they wererecorded in the oldest versions.
In general, I lean on Hesiod,Homor, and Apollodorus to provide
the most essential story bits.
(06:13):
Secondly, I am an American.
We're just getting used to the word gyro.
I will undoubtedly butcherthe pronunciation of a great
many beautiful Greek names.
My pronunciation choices are paleimitations of Stephen Fry from his Mythos
book because I love Stephen Fry and Iwant to be just like him when I grow up.
(06:35):
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.
(06:59):
What exactly does primordial mean, anyway?
It comes from the Latin word primordius.
It's a compounding of Primus, meaningfirst and ordiri, meaning to begin.
So primordial refers to whathas existed from the beginning.
In biology, it indicates theearliest stages of cell development.
(07:22):
In the beginning, that was only Chaos,the void, the ultimate primordial
deity, sentient nothingness.
The Greek word we've translatedas chaos meant chasm or abyss, but
this myth has made its way all theway into scientific storytelling.
(07:44):
The default state of the universe,quantum physics tells us, is entropy.
That is to say Chaos.
From Chaos the universe emergedand to Chaos it shall return.
Everything that seems so solid now,from our bodies to our buildings
to our civilizations will oneday decay, and where their shapes
(08:05):
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.
(08:28):
Not Chaos' child, but a divinitywho formed within the emptiness,
something solid, a place to standsomething orderly within the chaos.
Gaia, not yet mother earth, was notjust the mud and the clay and the
dirt, but the entire material world.
(08:51):
In fact, the words, materialand matter derived from the
Latin word for mother mater.
Gaia, whose Roman name was Terra as interra forma, terrain, and terrestrial.
And along with Gaia camea being called Tartarus.
(09:11):
Now, was Tartarus a god or a place.
Well, why not both?
This is an important thing tounderstand about Greek myth.
Everything had a spirit, a uniquesentience earth, sky, rivers, caves,
emotions, and even concepts as fundamentalas beauty or abstract as commerce.
(09:32):
Everything was animated, meaningit 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 toseparate body, mind and spirit.
But in these tales, nearlyeverything possessed all three.
(09:56):
Tartarus then was a personifiedplace, situated deep beneath Gaia.
It was a hellish realm in thefurthest reaches of the underworld.
And it would serve as a prison for theviolent monsters and human criminals.
Psychologically tartar us is where wewould exile parts of ourselves that
terrify us, that we think are dangerousand that we have to submerge in order to
(10:21):
build and maintain human civilization.
And regardless of the sound and spellingTartarus has absolutely nothing to do
with a calcified gunk on your teeth.
Also out of Chaos came the god Erebus, thedarkness, and the goddess Nyx, the night.
(10:41):
And then there was Eros, theirresistible god of love, who could
make men and gods alike, abandonedreason in pursuit of passion.
Eros, the force that pulls livingthings together to mate, and also
maybe the same magnetic force thatbinds the entire universe together.
(11:05):
It was Eros who made it possible forErebus 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 ofas the story of the development
of human consciousness at theindividual and collective level.
(11:29):
As infants, we begin in theundifferentiated experience
in our mother's womb.
When we're ejected from that, we becomeaware of something that is not us.
We may differentiate darkness from light.
Eyes closed from eyes open.
We find comfort in the solidityof our mother's body, which
(11:51):
supports and nourishes us.
And thanks to Eros, we havedesire to pull us forward.
Then eventually we begin toexplore the world beyond.
Now back to the story.
All on her own Gaiagave birth to two sons.
Pontus, the sea, and Oruanos, thesky, who would become her mate.
(12:15):
We usually pronounce his name Uranus,but since I have the sense of humor
of a 14 year old, I'm going to leaveUranus 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.
(12:35):
Because if you think about it,nothing had actually happened yet.
Nothing could actually happened yet.
In fact, everything I justdescribed had to happen all at
once and it couldn't happen at allbecause time hadn't started yet.
And without time there are no happenings.
(12:55):
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 internalcoitus, Mother Earth and Father
Sky were the worlds first couple.
And their incessant lovemakingspawned lots of kids.
(13:17):
The first brood included 12gigantic powerful, beautiful
beings, six male and six female.
The Titans.
One of these 12 Titans was Mnemosyne.
She was Memory.
And with Memory, we startto be able to link events.
(13:38):
And before and afterstart to take on meaning.
This is the beginning of time.
Now with time started, the insatiableOuranos, who had nothing else
to do, impregnated Gaia again.
This time she bore the Hekatonchires.
Their description is in their name.
(14:00):
Hekaton means 100 andchire or chire means hands.
And to add to this biologicalimpossibility, the Hekatonchires.
Oh, I love saying that word.
The Hekatonchires also had 50 heads each.
If there happens to be an artistlistening, I would love it.
(14:22):
If you would draw a pictureof 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 ametaphor referring to various tribes
of about 50 people, strong anddangerous, but unorganized and barbaric.
(14:44):
But I am totally pullingthat out of my ass.
Gaia's third and final set of childrenwere the triplets, the Cyclopes.
Okay.
You probably know these guys.
Giant one eyed, monsters.
They were strong and energetic andthey were skilled builders and Smiths.
Their names were Brontes.
(15:04):
The thunder.
Steropes, the lightning,and Arges, brightness.
Together, they were the thunderstorm.
And volcanic activity with its smokeand rumbling and sparks indicated
that they were deep, underground,hard at work, forging new lightning
bolts and other such godly crafts.
Despite the differencesamong his three litters.
(15:27):
Ouranos felt equalaffection for all of them.
Absolutely none.
He despised them.
He would not allow them toemerge into the world at all.
Every time any of offspringtried to come between him and his
wife, he shoved them back insider.
There was no room for them.
Literally, between thisinseparable pair of primordials.
(15:50):
It broke Gaia's heart to see her childrenstifled this way, unable to occupy
the beautiful world she had birthed.
Also it hurt.
There was no room inside her either.
Imagine an endless pregnancythat results in 12 full grown
children inside your uterus.
Finally fed up, Gaia visited herTitanic firstborn to enlist them in an
(16:15):
uprising against the tyrannical sky.
god.
She presented her kidswith anadmamantine sickle.
A sickle in case you're unfamiliarwith ancient farming practices, is a
semicircular blade used to reap grain.
It turns out it can be usedto reap other things too.
As for adamantine, it's amythical unbreakable metal.
(16:37):
It lives on today in the clawsof the Marvel mutant, Wolverine.
Adamantium all.
The Titans were terrified at the verythought of opposing their father,
all except one Kronos, the youngestTitan hated Ouranos for what he had
done to him and to his siblings.
(16:58):
So Gaia gave Kronos the sickleand he hid himself, waiting in
ambush for the next time, the hornysky god was ready to get it on.
And soon Ouranos approached.
Draped in stars, he stretched outand lay across the earth expecting
(17:22):
another epic lovemaking sessionwith his wife when suddenly slash.
In a single motion, Kronos whipped outhis sickle and sliced off his father's
genitals, catching the severed bitswith his free hand, he then hurled them
through the air, blood trailing behindand spattering to the ground, and into the
(17:46):
storm tossed, see where blood and semenswirled in the surf, frothing and foaming.
And then something evenmore unlikely happened.
A woman rose from the foam.
And not just any woman.
Aphrodite, the smiling laughterloving goddess of love and beauty.
(18:10):
Aphrodite, whose namemeans she of the sea foam.
Or just foam lady, if you don'twant to be precious about it.
It's ironic.
Isn't it?
That something so beautiful couldbe born from such an ugly act,
such violence and bloodshed.
(18:32):
But that's the way of it.
Now, do you see what I mean?
She was born from the sea foamis just flat out insufficient
and give short shrift to thisbatshit crazy origin story.
Now with love in the world and theTitans able to live independent lives.
The order of things was about to change.
(18:55):
And the world was about tobecome a lot more interesting.
And that's exactly the story I'lltell in the next episode of Mythic.
That's it for this episode of Mythic.
Thanks so much for listening to discoveradditional episodes, information,
and a host of other resources.
Visit mythic podcast.com.
(19:17):
That's also where you can find a linkto join the online community, where
we can discuss all things Mythic.
And I'm on Twitter at myths pod that's MY T H P O D until next time, journey on
Welcome to Mythic, a podcastwhere 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 preppingfor a PhD program in mythological studies.
(00:29):
I've been obsessed with mythology since Iwas a little kid, but in the wake of the
COVID outbreak, I had to close my bodywork practice and my income dried up to
nothing and grad school was off the table.
The question became, what's another way toengage with other nerds who love mythology
(00:49):
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 someof what I know and learn.
What others think about this stuff
Now, where to start?
Yeah.
The beginning of timeis just too far back.
(01:11):
Let's start with thebeginning of my obsession.
Wonder Woman.
That's way more fun, anyway.
If you've seen the movie, you know thatWonder Woman, also known as Princess
Diana of Themyscira, is an Amazon.
Amazons were an all femaletribe from Greek mythology.
Whether they were historically real is amatter of some debate, but based on the
(01:34):
evidence I've read, I believe they were.
The movie says that Diana was thedaughter of Zeus, but that is a damn lie.
Wonder Woman was sculpted from clay byher mother and given life by Aphrodite.
She didn't have a dad.
That was kind of her thing.
She grew up to possess, and Iquote: the wisdom of Athena, the
(01:55):
strength of Hercules, the speed ofMercury, and the beauty of Aphrodite.
Now I was five yearsold when I learned this.
Now, today, I know that it'sstill a pretty big departure
from classical mythology.
According to which the queen of theAmazons is the daughter of Aries.
The god of war, Ares, was the guy inthe movie with the bad mustache that
(02:15):
Diana blew a hole in his chest with herunexplained magic lightening powers.
But that's not the point.
The point is that as a kid, I hadto know who these characters were.
I was five and reading at the "seespot run" level, not so much the
level of the "daughter of Hippolytawho relinquished her immortality."
(02:36):
But the fates smiled upon me.
The very next year, Clash of theTitans was released in theaters.
Not only did it instill in mea lifelong irrational fear of
scorpions, it also introduced me tothe larger world of Greek mythology.
Zeus and the Olympians, the heroPerseus, Pegasus, the winged horse,
(02:56):
and Medusa, who was really justminding her own business when Perseus
came and chopped her head off.
But that's another storyfor another episode.
Even though the movie wasn't totallytrue to the myths, it captured their
essence and their astounding sexism,and it remixed them into a fantastic
(03:18):
movie that I love to this day.
They tried to remake it in 2010 andwell, Hey, Sam Worthington is hot.
So there's that.
Anyway, as my reading improved, I soughtout D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths,
Edith Hamilton's Mythology, and anythingelse that mentioned gods and heroes.
(03:39):
I loved these stories, butthere was something else.
They seemed familiar somehow.
It would take decades to name it.
But I eventually came torecognize the Greek stories as
complex multi-level metaphors.
They were at once a weather map of myown psyche, my own inner world, and a
(04:01):
template for all the political and socialdynamics that I saw going on around me.
Myths are stories of archetypes in motion.
They're universal repeating patterns.
Joseph Campbell called myths, publicdreams, and dreams, private myths.
(04:22):
No, it's not the onlycollection of great stories.
The Bible contains incredibleteaching stories, but I could
never get into it because it wastaught to me as factual history.
And that just didn't make sense.
Even when I was five.
Mythology was allowed to standon his own without any dogma.
That let me observe these ancientpatterns in the stories and in modern
(04:46):
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 shewas born from the sea foam.
And that's accurate.
In fact, her name derivesfrom aphros, which means foam.
(05:08):
But that answer is woefully incomplete.
It's like a kid asking where do babiescome from and answering mommy's belly?
Sure.
It's not a lie, but it leaves outsome pretty important details.
So where did Aphrodite come from?
Well, to answer that.
(05:30):
Okay.
Really answer that.
Now we're going back tothe beginning of time.
But before we do, twothings I need to note.
First, the Greek myths arefrom an oral tradition.
They had been told and retold forcenturies before anyone wrote them down.
There is no true version.
There are only different versions told bydifferent people for different reasons.
(05:53):
This is my telling, combiningvarious versions I've heard and read
into a story that I hope is bothentertaining and illuminating, but
also true to the facts as they wererecorded in the oldest versions.
In general, I lean on Hesiod,Homor, and Apollodorus to provide
the most essential story bits.
(06:13):
Secondly, I am an American.
We're just getting used to the word gyro.
I will undoubtedly butcherthe pronunciation of a great
many beautiful Greek names.
My pronunciation choices are paleimitations of Stephen Fry from his Mythos
book because I love Stephen Fry and Iwant to be just like him when I grow up.
(06:35):
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.
(06:59):
What exactly does primordial mean, anyway?
It comes from the Latin word primordius.
It's a compounding of Primus, meaningfirst and ordiri, meaning to begin.
So primordial refers to whathas existed from the beginning.
In biology, it indicates theearliest stages of cell development.
(07:22):
In the beginning, that was only Chaos,the void, the ultimate primordial
deity, sentient nothingness.
The Greek word we've translatedas chaos meant chasm or abyss, but
this myth has made its way all theway into scientific storytelling.
(07:44):
The default state of the universe,quantum physics tells us, is entropy.
That is to say Chaos.
From Chaos the universe emergedand to Chaos it shall return.
Everything that seems so solid now,from our bodies to our buildings
to our civilizations will oneday decay, and where their shapes
(08:05):
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.
(08:28):
Not Chaos' child, but a divinitywho formed within the emptiness,
something solid, a place to standsomething orderly within the chaos.
Gaia, not yet mother earth, was notjust the mud and the clay and the
dirt, but the entire material world.
(08:51):
In fact, the words, materialand matter derived from the
Latin word for mother mater.
Gaia, whose Roman name was Terra as interra forma, terrain, and terrestrial.
And along with Gaia camea being called Tartarus.
(09:11):
Now, was Tartarus a god or a place.
Well, why not both?
This is an important thing tounderstand about Greek myth.
Everything had a spirit, a uniquesentience earth, sky, rivers, caves,
emotions, and even concepts as fundamentalas beauty or abstract as commerce.
(09:32):
Everything was animated, meaningit 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 toseparate body, mind and spirit.
But in these tales, nearlyeverything possessed all three.
(09:56):
Tartarus then was a personifiedplace, situated deep beneath Gaia.
It was a hellish realm in thefurthest reaches of the underworld.
And it would serve as a prison for theviolent monsters and human criminals.
Psychologically tartar us is where wewould exile parts of ourselves that
terrify us, that we think are dangerousand that we have to submerge in order to
(10:21):
build and maintain human civilization.
And regardless of the sound and spellingTartarus has absolutely nothing to do
with a calcified gunk on your teeth.
Also out of Chaos came the god Erebus, thedarkness, and the goddess Nyx, the night.
(10:41):
And then there was Eros, theirresistible god of love, who could
make men and gods alike, abandonedreason in pursuit of passion.
Eros, the force that pulls livingthings together to mate, and also
maybe the same magnetic force thatbinds the entire universe together.
(11:05):
It was Eros who made it possible forErebus 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 ofas the story of the development
of human consciousness at theindividual and collective level.
(11:29):
As infants, we begin in theundifferentiated experience
in our mother's womb.
When we're ejected from that, we becomeaware of something that is not us.
We may differentiate darkness from light.
Eyes closed from eyes open.
We find comfort in the solidityof our mother's body, which
(11:51):
supports and nourishes us.
And thanks to Eros, we havedesire to pull us forward.
Then eventually we begin toexplore the world beyond.
Now back to the story.
All on her own Gaiagave birth to two sons.
Pontus, the sea, and Oruanos, thesky, who would become her mate.
(12:15):
We usually pronounce his name Uranus,but since I have the sense of humor
of a 14 year old, I'm going to leaveUranus 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.
(12:35):
Because if you think about it,nothing had actually happened yet.
Nothing could actually happened yet.
In fact, everything I justdescribed had to happen all at
once and it couldn't happen at allbecause time hadn't started yet.
And without time there are no happenings.
(12:55):
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 internalcoitus, Mother Earth and Father
Sky were the worlds first couple.
And their incessant lovemakingspawned lots of kids.
(13:17):
The first brood included 12gigantic powerful, beautiful
beings, six male and six female.
The Titans.
One of these 12 Titans was Mnemosyne.
She was Memory.
And with Memory, we startto be able to link events.
(13:38):
And before and afterstart to take on meaning.
This is the beginning of time.
Now with time started, the insatiableOuranos, who had nothing else
to do, impregnated Gaia again.
This time she bore the Hekatonchires.
Their description is in their name.
(14:00):
Hekaton means 100 andchire or chire means hands.
And to add to this biologicalimpossibility, the Hekatonchires.
Oh, I love saying that word.
The Hekatonchires also had 50 heads each.
If there happens to be an artistlistening, I would love it.
(14:22):
If you would draw a pictureof 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 ametaphor referring to various tribes
of about 50 people, strong anddangerous, but unorganized and barbaric.
(14:44):
But I am totally pullingthat out of my ass.
Gaia's third and final set of childrenwere the triplets, the Cyclopes.
Okay.
You probably know these guys.
Giant one eyed, monsters.
They were strong and energetic andthey were skilled builders and Smiths.
Their names were Brontes.
(15:04):
The thunder.
Steropes, the lightning,and Arges, brightness.
Together, they were the thunderstorm.
And volcanic activity with its smokeand rumbling and sparks indicated
that they were deep, underground,hard at work, forging new lightning
bolts and other such godly crafts.
Despite the differencesamong his three litters.
(15:27):
Ouranos felt equalaffection for all of them.
Absolutely none.
He despised them.
He would not allow them toemerge into the world at all.
Every time any of offspringtried to come between him and his
wife, he shoved them back insider.
There was no room for them.
Literally, between thisinseparable pair of primordials.
(15:50):
It broke Gaia's heart to see her childrenstifled this way, unable to occupy
the beautiful world she had birthed.
Also it hurt.
There was no room inside her either.
Imagine an endless pregnancythat results in 12 full grown
children inside your uterus.
Finally fed up, Gaia visited herTitanic firstborn to enlist them in an
(16:15):
uprising against the tyrannical sky.
god.
She presented her kidswith anadmamantine sickle.
A sickle in case you're unfamiliarwith ancient farming practices, is a
semicircular blade used to reap grain.
It turns out it can be usedto reap other things too.
As for adamantine, it's amythical unbreakable metal.
(16:37):
It lives on today in the clawsof the Marvel mutant, Wolverine.
Adamantium all.
The Titans were terrified at the verythought of opposing their father,
all except one Kronos, the youngestTitan hated Ouranos for what he had
done to him and to his siblings.
(16:58):
So Gaia gave Kronos the sickleand he hid himself, waiting in
ambush for the next time, the hornysky god was ready to get it on.
And soon Ouranos approached.
Draped in stars, he stretched outand lay across the earth expecting
(17:22):
another epic lovemaking sessionwith his wife when suddenly slash.
In a single motion, Kronos whipped outhis sickle and sliced off his father's
genitals, catching the severed bitswith his free hand, he then hurled them
through the air, blood trailing behindand spattering to the ground, and into the
(17:46):
storm tossed, see where blood and semenswirled in the surf, frothing and foaming.
And then something evenmore unlikely happened.
A woman rose from the foam.
And not just any woman.
Aphrodite, the smiling laughterloving goddess of love and beauty.
(18:10):
Aphrodite, whose namemeans she of the sea foam.
Or just foam lady, if you don'twant to be precious about it.
It's ironic.
Isn't it?
That something so beautiful couldbe born from such an ugly act,
such violence and bloodshed.
(18:32):
But that's the way of it.
Now, do you see what I mean?
She was born from the sea foamis just flat out insufficient
and give short shrift to thisbatshit crazy origin story.
Now with love in the world and theTitans able to live independent lives.
The order of things was about to change.
(18:55):
And the world was about tobecome a lot more interesting.
And that's exactly the story I'lltell in the next episode of Mythic.
That's it for this episode of Mythic.
Thanks so much for listening to discoveradditional episodes, information,
and a host of other resources.
Visit mythic podcast.com.
(19:17):
That's also where you can find a linkto join the online community, where
we can discuss all things Mythic.
And I'm on Twitter at myths pod that's MY T H P O D until next time, journey on
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.