There's a lot I don't really get in he first 4 chapters, before we get to Odysseus, but I do feel like I'm learning more about the mythological system, and more of the social context.
The odyssey, as a metaphor, is interesting. I find that I dislike problem solving if it's more than a few steps but sometimes things are complicated and "the gods" are not cooperating.
In ancient Greek times, a narrative was created to explain all the unexplainables. In my times, there is much more knowledge, but we still don't understand the human heart so well, and what remains from mythology is what is at the basis of our humanity.
Odysseus is persecuted by the gods. In Christianity, Jesus is persecuted not by divinity but by humans, and this might be the beginning of the divine/mundane split that is one of the great mistakes of spirituality: the idea that spirituality is somehow above ordinary life, when it's ordinary life where it happens.
Talked with a guy yesterday who was reading the book to help his daughter with her high school homework.
I looked up Leucothea. She appears as a gannet, and helps Odysseus. When Zeus is sending him terrible weather, Odysseus says, "Only destruction yawns before me." Destruction as a yawn is interesting, it points to the way the Greeks saw bad fate as capricious.
I do believe that hubris is a stumbling block for humanity, but I don't think circumstances are capricious, I think we just need to understand them or accept that we don't know. Life is so complicated that it cannot be controlled or completely understood. We know more now than we did then. Even so the ancient Greeks knew things we could benefit from.
Even today with all our knowledge, folk wisdom exists. We know for sure that colds are caused by a virus, but people persist in the notion that it's from going outside with wet hair. Now wet hair on a cold day might stress your immune system, and make you susceptible to the virus, but it does not cause the cold.
The odyssey, as a metaphor, is interesting. I find that I dislike problem solving if it's more than a few steps but sometimes things are complicated and "the gods" are not cooperating.
In ancient Greek times, a narrative was created to explain all the unexplainables. In my times, there is much more knowledge, but we still don't understand the human heart so well, and what remains from mythology is what is at the basis of our humanity.
Odysseus is persecuted by the gods. In Christianity, Jesus is persecuted not by divinity but by humans, and this might be the beginning of the divine/mundane split that is one of the great mistakes of spirituality: the idea that spirituality is somehow above ordinary life, when it's ordinary life where it happens.
Talked with a guy yesterday who was reading the book to help his daughter with her high school homework.
I looked up Leucothea. She appears as a gannet, and helps Odysseus. When Zeus is sending him terrible weather, Odysseus says, "Only destruction yawns before me." Destruction as a yawn is interesting, it points to the way the Greeks saw bad fate as capricious.
I do believe that hubris is a stumbling block for humanity, but I don't think circumstances are capricious, I think we just need to understand them or accept that we don't know. Life is so complicated that it cannot be controlled or completely understood. We know more now than we did then. Even so the ancient Greeks knew things we could benefit from.
Even today with all our knowledge, folk wisdom exists. We know for sure that colds are caused by a virus, but people persist in the notion that it's from going outside with wet hair. Now wet hair on a cold day might stress your immune system, and make you susceptible to the virus, but it does not cause the cold.
What humans are is narrative junkies, and the Odyssey was the second book, so it's interesting. I saw the name Hermione.
I showed my son the cover of my edition of the Odyssey, translated by Walter Shewring, with Polyphemus being blinded by Odysseus. My son recognized Polyphemus.
End quote: "In Egypt, more than in other lands, the bounteous earth yields a wealth of drugs, healthful and baneful side by side; and every man there is a physician; the rest of the world has no such skill, for these are all of the family of Paeon."
I showed my son the cover of my edition of the Odyssey, translated by Walter Shewring, with Polyphemus being blinded by Odysseus. My son recognized Polyphemus.
End quote: "In Egypt, more than in other lands, the bounteous earth yields a wealth of drugs, healthful and baneful side by side; and every man there is a physician; the rest of the world has no such skill, for these are all of the family of Paeon."
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