Hello again, friends! It’s Monday, so you know what that means: time to dig out some ancient myths. This week, I’m going to talk about Pygmalion, and how he brought his RealDoll to life.
So, let’s get started!
Today’s story is one that you are probably quite familiar with, considering that it’s the source of a popular idiom that means “to overreach.” So, yeah, we’re going to talk about Icarus, and how he would have been fine if he’d just, you know, listened to some very good advice.
You may be aware of the myth of Tantalus, or at least the punishment he received in Ancient Greek Hell. But what you might not know is what he was being punished for. So buckle in, folks, as Tantalus does quite possibly the dumbest thing he could possibly do.
So, there are a handful of Greek myths where Zeus turns himself into an animal to get with some lady. This is one of them
So we start out with this Phoenician princess named Europa. Now Europa is super, super gorgeous, and one day she attracts the notice of Zeus while she’s chilling on a beach somwhere. Since Zeus’s main defining feature is a chronic inability to keep it in his pants, he decides that he really needs to bone down with her.
Zeus then comes up with a cunning plan. A cunning plan that involves turning himself into a white bull.
He then goes and hangs out in Europa’s dad’s herd for a while, and then just kinda waits. Eventually, Europa comes by and sees the Zeus-bull, and then thinks it might be a good idea to ride it. Not, you know, sexually, but like you’d ride a horse.
So she jumps on the bull’s back, and the bull carries her off to Crete, where he reveals himself as Zeus. He then sets about seducing her. I use the term seduce very, very loosely here, because Zeus isn’t really known for taking no for an answer. Either way, Europa has three kids by him: Minos, whose wife would go on to fuck her own bull; Rhadamanthys, who becomes a judge in the underworld, and the warrior Sarpedon.
Zeus then leaves her with three gifts: a super-rad javelin, a bronze bodyguard, and a dog. Europa would eventually go on to marry the Cretan king Asterius, who adopted her three demigod kids as his own. So things ended up pretty well for her, which is a nice change of pace from how most of Zeus’s flings go.
Side note, I find Zeus turning into a bull to seduce Minos’s mom pretty funny, considering what Minos’s own wife would eventually do.
Gather ’round, children, and let me tell you about the time Theseus and Pirithous came up with Greek mythology’s worst idea.
This week, we’re heading back to Greece, for a story that most people have probably heard in one form or another.
(Content warning; this post contains discussion of sexual assault.)
So, Medusa. Most people know the basics of her story: lady with snakes for hair, turned men to stone with a glance. Which, you know, goals.
What’s interesting about Medusa is that her origin is different depending on which version you hear. In the original, Medusa and her sisters Stheno and Euryale were always monsters: specifically, gorgons.
The Roman poet Ovid, however, changed things up a little bit. So, because that version is more interesting to me (if also kinda infuriating), that’s the one I’m going to be talking about today.
I’ve heard of people not getting along with their in-laws, but never quite to this extreme.
This week, we’re going to go back to Greece and a tale that has some familiar elements if you’ve been reading these posts for a while.
Katethulu's Cave Of Mysteries 