Let myth be a living thing for you

A couple days ago I mentioned the lovely story of how Orpheus used his song to heal a group of wounded and frenzied Nymphs whose land had been blighted by pollution.

It’s one of my favorite stories and it’s because of such stories that he is considered one of the most venerable figures within our tradition. However, because of the context in which I was citing it and considerations of space I was only able to present the dénouement, even though the rest of the story is quite fascinating.

You see the spirits that Orpheus and his Argonaut companions encountered were the Nymphs of the West, the land of the Sun’s nocturnal descent. And the pollution came from the slaying of the great serpent that guarded their tree of golden fruit.

Picking up right where I left off, Apollonios Rhodios writes:

Orpheus sobbed as he prayed and the Nymphai who had gathered near forgot their grief and took pity on the suffering men. They wrought a miracle. First, grass sprung up from the ground, then long shoots appeared above the grass, and in a moment three saplings, tall, straight and in full leaf, were growing there. Hespere became a poplar; Erytheis an elm; Aigle a sacred willow. Yet they were still themselves; the trees could not conceal their former shapes–that was the greatest wonder of all. And now the Argonauts heard Aigle in her gentle voice tell them what they wished to know, “You have indeed been fortunate for there was a man here yesterday, an evil man, who killed the watching snake, stole our golden apples, and is gone. To us he brought unspeakable sorrow; to you release from suffering. He was a savage brute, hideous to look at; a cruel man, with glaring eyes and scowling face. He wore the skin of an enormous lion and carried a great club of olive-wood and the bow and arrows with which he shot our monster here. It appeared that he, like you, had come on foot and was parched with thirst. For he rushed about the place in search of water; but with no success, till he found the rock that you see over there near to the Tritonian lagoon. Then it occurred to him, or he was prompted by a god, to tap the base of the rock. He struck it with his foot, water gushed out, and he fell on his hands and chest and drank greedily from the cleft till, with his head down like a beast in the fields, he had filled his mighty paunch. Do thou likewise.” (Argonautika 4. 1390 ff)

Part of what I love about Apollonios’ treatment of this myth (and one of the reasons why I generally prefer Hellenistic to Classical Greek poetry) is that it places the focus peripheral to what would conventionally be considered the action, as his contemporary Kallimachos also does in the Hekale. The great heroic deed is done and Herakles lumbers off to his next adventure and that’d be it as far as most people are concerned. But that wasn’t it for the Hesperides: no, it’s just the start of the story of their life without Ladon, who had been both their protector and companion. How differently they must have seen this “monster,” daily interacting with and depending on him. To them it is Herakles who is the villain! For with Ladon’s death their land has been deprived of its source of supernatural vitality. As you may recall when the Argonauts first met them the Nymphs were in the process of dissolving into dust and dry earth and it was only Orpheus’ song that brought them back to some semblance of their selves. What will they do once the sails of the Argo have vanished beyond the horizon?

That is the fundamental question of local-focus polytheism and why I think you’re only doing recon right if you’re doing it regionally specific. People who only have a Bullfinch-level knowledge of Greek myth and religion tend to view it all as trapped in amber or happening simultaneously. Or they have a rough sense of chronology (Age of Titans, Age of Gods, Age of Heroes, Classical Greece) but no sense of the interrelatedness of events. Consider the Tantalids or the Royal House of Thebes – action begets reaction begets a whole tidal wave of violence and misery. Twelve generations later they’re still working out the ancestral guilt of one man’s impetuous crime. But often the part people play in these bloody dramas is just a portion of their story, the prologue that sets the supporting character up for their personal spotlight. Or so it seems to those who have a brush with them later on, elsewhere.

Aitia. That’s what heroes leave behind as they pass through people’s lives and into distant lands. Foundation myths. Every action, no matter how small, becomes imbued with meaning and mythic grandeur. And from that seed, that brush with the divine grow the traditions of a land. The citizens of Agyrium pointed out to visitors the footprints and hoof tracks in their rocky soil left by Herakles as he lead the cattle of Geryon through Sicily. Parthenope on the coast of Italy was so named from the Siren that washed ashore there after the three sisters were defeated by Odysseus. The Daunians wore only black clothing because they were descended from the Trojan captives who torched the ships of Diomedes and his companions so that they would have to build a settlement there and accept the women as their brides. History and myth blurred together and infused every part of our ancestors’ lives – and it should be the same with us.

Do you know the flowers that grow in your bioregion and why? Would you recognize a Nymph if you met one – or know the song to sing to heal her wrath? What will you be passing on to the generation that comes after ours?