Wikipedia Trail: From Callisto to Asclepius

The moon of Jupiter, Callisto, probably named for its celestial bod.

Callisto
Callisto was a nymph appearing in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. She was the daughter of Lycaon, legendary king of Arcadia. Callisto was a follower of Artemis until Zeus disguised himself to have sex with her. Artemis soon learned she was pregnant, however, and as punishment, Artemis turned her into a bear. Her son, Arcas, grew up without knowing his true parentage, but as fate would have it, he soon came face-to-face with his mother, the bear. He was poised to kill her when Zeus swept them both up into the sky, where they became the constellations Ursa Major and Ursa Minor.

Arcadia
A real place, but also a legendary place. As an ancient region, it was secluded and idyllic, home to herdsman living “unsophisticated yet happy lives.” This is why Arcadia came to refer to an idyllic paradise. Notable mythological Arcadians included Hermes, Atalanta, and Pan.

Pan
A non-Olympian Greek god of nature, shepherds and their flocks, and rustic music, which explains why he was said to live in the pastoral Arcadia. He is known for having the lower body and horns of a goat. His name became part of the modern lexicon in the word “panic,” as his shouts were said to cause mass terror. Pan is the only Greek god other than Asclepius who canonically died.

Asclepius
Asclepius was killed by Zeus for bringing a man back from the dead. A god (or demigod, depending) of healing and medicine, Asclepius was the son of Apollo and born from an ancient C-section. He became an incredibly proficient healer due to training by Chiron, surpassing both his mentor and his father (who was also a god of medicine). He was married to Epione, goddess of soothing pain, with whom he had five daughters, each representing a different facet of healing/health. Asclepius and his cult were famous for his temples, which functioned as early hospitals for those in need.

Image:
Callisto, photographed by NASA spacecraft. Web source.

wikipedia trail: from Till We Have Faces to Analytical Psychology

#nofilter

Till We Have Faces
A novel by C. S. Lewis retelling the romance of Cupid and Psyche. The story is told from the perspective of Psyche’s logically-minded sister Orual, as “an accusation against the gods.” This may be where the novel’s original title, “Bareface,” came from, in the sense of Cupid’s invisibility, Orual’s deformed face and Psyche’s beauty, and possibly from what Orual perceives to be the gods’ “bare-faced lie.”

Cupid and Psyche
One of the most shamelessly romantic Greek stories may be an allegory. In the 5th century, Martianus Capella described the story as an allegory about “the fall of the human soul.” In The Golden Ass, Psyche receives immortality “as a reward for commitment to sexual love. To Martianus, Psyche is lured into the material world by sex, and becomes vulnerable to death: “Cupid takes Psyche from Virtue and shackles her,” in other words, sexual love takes the soul away from virtue.


Hieros Gamos
Greek for “holy marriage”, Hierogamy is a ritual that is supposed to represent a marriage between and god and goddess, with humans representing the husband and wife. It’s present not just in Greek mythology, where it was used to symbolically unify Zeus and Hera, but also in Hinduism where girls may marry their deity to show devotion, the Ancient Near East where Sumerian kings and high priestesses took part in the practice, and in Tantric Buddhism, where it is part of a ritual of a male deity and female consort. Sometimes mentioned in Jungian analytical psychology.

Analytical Psychology
Originating from the ideas of Carl Jung, analytical psychology is form of non-psychology that emphasizes the “personal quest for wholeness” of the individual psyche. Symbolism, archetypes, and the unconscious are important elements of analytical psychology. The ideas in Jungian psychology aren’t legitimate psychological ideas anymore, but can be used in literary analysis, among other things.

Image: The Abduction of Psyche by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Web Source.