God of Wine

My first post in the greek mythology series will be dedicated to the God of Wine (because we all love it so much), Dionysus.
Dionysus was also the patron deity of agriculture and theatre, and was often known as "The Liberator", promoting freeing one from one's normal self by means of madness, ecstasy or wine. His Roman parallel was Bacchus, here depicted by Caravaggio:



Dionysus was the son of Zeus and Semele, a human mistress (and the daughter of king Cadmus of Thebes).
When Hera, Zeus' wife, found out about Semele's pregnancy, she decided to befriend her to get to know the real truth and manipulate Semele. Semele indeed confided in Hera, and was fooled into asking Zeus to show himself before her in all his godliness, to prove his status.
Semele begged and begged for Zeus to do this, and when he finally did, draped in thunder and lightning, she died because humans were not meant to see the gods without disguise.
Zeus hurried to rescue Dionysus out of Semele's womb, and sewed him into his own thigh. A few months later Zeus gave birth to Dionysus on the island of Ikaria.

The stories about Dionysus are plenty, so I will just encourage you to read about them here

Apparently he loved traveling, and at one point he went to India and didn't want to leave. Much like us, hehe.

There was also a list of names deriving from Dionysus which I found quite interesting:

Dion, Deon, Deion, d'Eon
Denise (also spelled Denice, Daniesa, Denese, and Denisse)
Dennis, Denis or Denys (including the derivative surnames Denison and Dennison)
Denny
Nis (as of the Nordic surname Nissen)
Nils (Nicholas is another origin)
Dénes (Hungarian)
Bacchus (Roman)
Dionisio, Dyonisio (Filipino), Dionigi (Italian)
Διονύσιος, Διονύσης (Dionysios, Dionysis; Modern Greek)
Deniska (diminutive of Russian Denis, itself a derivative of the Greek)

NILS!!!

Imagine having one hundred eyes...

Darling readers (especially Shane and Sofie), here comes a post from a ghost. Ha ha, that was a completely spontaneous rhyme, which made a lot of sense in this context. I have been a blog ghost and for that I am sorry. I’m not going to make promises of writing every week from now on etc., but I WILL try to be a better blogger now that summer is gone and everyday life is back, which tends to include more internet time. Shanes’ philosophizing in the facebook-video made me realize and re-remember how inspiring and perspective-enhancing our communication from our different parts of the world is, and that I don’t want to be the blog-pooper (?).

Perspective heaven, it’s time to talk about Argus: my favourite Greek mythology character (credits to the Norwegian wikipedia site).

Argus Panoptes was a huge monster, with one hundred eyes covering his entire body (pan=many, optes=eyes). As we all probably know, Zeus – the king of the greek gods and the god of heaven and thunder – was a god with numerous feminine sexual acquaintances. One time Hera, who was Zeus’ very jealous wife, made Argus guard one of Zeus lovers. Zeus did of course not approve of this and Asked Hermes (the messenger of the gods and the god of trade and music) for help. Argus always used to let some eyes sleep while keeping some awake. In this way he could see all day and all night, letting nothing come past his vision. Hermes however had his silver flute, which had the power of putting things asleep instantly. He played his flute in front of Argus, and Argus’ hundred eyes fell asleep all at the same time (some versions say that Hermes put Argus to sleep with boring talk). This gave Hermes the opportunity to cut off the poor monsters' head, so that Zeus could have access to his mistress.

Later, Hera took all of Argus eyes and put them on the feathers of the peacock.

This story explains the expression “argus eyes” and well as why peacocks’ feathers have eyes on them.

Artemis, or, All about my Sister

Remember when we were going to make a series of posts about Greek mythology? I think we still should. Therefore, today's post is going to be about Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt, and also about my sister, Jil, because it was her birthday on Monday and I'd like to celebrate her, and also because if Jil were a Greek goddess, she would be Artemis.Artemis was the daughter of Zeus and Leto (a daughter of the Titans and one of Zeus' many lovers), and the twin sister of Apollo. She was all about contradiction: the goddess of the hunt, she spent her days chasing down animals and killing them, but was also considered their protector. This was a role she took seriously; for example, after Agememnon killed a stag in her sacred grove, she punished him by stalling his ships on their way to Troy and forced him to sacrifice his daughter in order that they might sail. More contradictory still, Artemis was a vehemently virgin goddess, yet was also worshiped in cities as a goddess of fertility and goddess of fertility and childbirth. Even in within the realm of the latter, she's paradoxical -- she's the protector of women in childbirth, but it's said to be her arrows that shoot them down when they die in labor.
Why is my sister like Artemis? Well, I guess she's contradictory too -- anyone interesting is. Artemis was the goddess of purity and, while hunting, she ran a lot, and Jil has recently embarked on a mission of purity that involves a lot of running. She's trying to detoxify herself in order to spend two months hiking through the New Zealand wilderness in the fall. According to pantheon.org, Artemis' "main vocation was to roam mountain forests and uncultivated land." Sounds like Jil alright.
But enough about Artemis. More about my sister. One thing you should know about my sister is that she's HILARIOUS. Cases in point:
1. Last winter, we were driving home from Lake Tahoe. My dad and I were sitting in front of the car and Jil was sitting in the back, filling out university applications. She was a little frustrated: "Fuck college!" she said. "It's not like I know my GDP or shit!"
2. A few days ago, my sister and I were in Santa Barbara visiting my grandfather. We were at the graveyard, looking at my grandmother's tombstone. My grandfather stood on the empty patch next to it and said, "Well, this is where I'm going to be buried." "Oooh!" said Jil. "Let's take before and after photos!"
3. That evening, my sister and I were hanging out at my aunt's house. I was sitting on the couch, crocheting, and she was lying on the bed with her legs up against the wall. She told me to think of a topic of conversation, and I asked what she wanted to talk about. "I don't know," she said. "Honestly, I'm only thinking about one thing right now." "What's that?" I asked. She replied: "How FUCKING tan my legs look against this wall!"
4. It's Pride week in San Francisco right now, and Jil was trying to convince me and her friend Cristina to accompany her to the dyke march this coming Saturday. "Come on, Cristina," she said. "I know my calculus. It says YOU + ME = DYKE."