Essays Contents
Muses
February 20, 2023
In search of an understanding of "the devil"... aka... "Satan"...
isn't it true... that... to believe in such a thing...
one must first... believe... in the scriptures?
Is this not... the origin? of this mythological character?
This character seems to first appear in God's "Garden of Eden."
He is a snake... talking... in a tree perhaps...
one of his many costumes? masks? disguises?
and yet... there was never a mention of such a character...
or any such characters... you know, "angels"...
ever being created during the seven days of creation.
I had theorized that... if the text was actually original text
and not an addition during the many hundreds of years
that scribes (some not properly trained) copied these texts...
well... I had theorized... it might actually be... God...Himself.
Was it God... leading Eve into temptation...
as we read in Jesus's prayer... "The Lord's Prayer"...
"lead us not into temptation."
And since the story itself seems mythological...
was this also inserted into a Hebrew history book?
Did someone decide to write a complete history book?
and include a few of the established myths of the age?
(the Pharisees did so love their voodoo).
Did the character of "the devil" evolve from another religion?
After all... it was the Greeks and then the Romans
who claimed to be born of a god... (pick a good one)...
(adopt one that you like, perhaps)...
and thus emperors might pontificate freely to their empires.
And... in that various menagerie of gods...
there was surely... a BAD one... or two...
and thus... we could find a "devil" character.
But... is even THAT... a contortion of these myths?
Could it be rather... that... the ideals of a culture...
the ideals of a "higher civilization" claimed by a culture...
was given a shape and form... so as to visualize this?
that other tribes in the world might agree is desirable...
and be used as a method of... conquest?
Would that be considered... "evil"?
Would that be considered... "seductive"?
Here is some historical background...
just to put a few things on this table.
The mixing of cultures... may be relevant to this subject.
From that website:
THE MOUSAI (Muses) were the goddesses of music, song and dance, and the source of inspiration to poets. They were also goddesses of knowledge, who remembered all things that had come to pass. Later the Mousai were assigned specific artistic spheres:
Kalliope (Calliope), epic poetry;
Kleio (Clio), history;
Ourania (Urania), astronomy;
Thaleia (Thalia), comedy;
Melpomene, tragedy;
Polymnia (Polyhymnia), religious hymns;
Erato, erotic poetry;
Euterpe, lyric poetry;
and Terpsikhore (Terpsichore), choral song and dance.
In ancient Greek vase painting the Mousai were depicted as beautiful young women with a variety of musical intruments. In later art each of the nine was assigned her own distinctive attribute.
MUSAE (Mousai). The Muses, according to the earliest writers, were the inspiring goddesses of song, and, according to later noticus, divinities presiding over the different kinds of poetry, and over the arts and sciences. They were originally regarded as the nymphs of inspiring wells, near which they were worshipped, and bore different names in different places, until the Thraco-Boeotian worship of the nine Muses spread from Boeotia over other parts of Greece, and ultimately became generally established.
The genealogy of the Muses is not the same in all writers. The most common notion was, that they were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, and born in Pieria, at the foot of Mount Olympus; but some call them the daughters of Uranus and Gaea, and others daughters of Pierus and a Pimpleian nymph, whom Cicero calls Antiope, or of Apollo, or of Zeus and Plusia, or of Zeus and Moneta, probably a mere translation of Mnemosyne or Mneme, whence they are called Mnemonides, or of Zeus and Minerva, or lastly of Aether and Gaea. Eupheme is called the nurse of the Muses, and at the foot of Mount Helicon her statue stood beside that of Linus.
With regard to the number of the Muses, we are informed that originally three were worshipped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, namely, Melete (meditation), Mneme (memory), and Aoede (song); and their worship and names are said to have been first introduced by Ephialtes and Otus.
Three were also recognised at Sicyon, where one of them bore the name of Polymatheia, and at Delphi, where their names were identical with those of the lowest, middle, and highest chord of the lyre, viz. Nete, Mese, and Hypate, or Cephisso, Apollonis, and Borysthenis, which names characterise them as the daughters of Apollo.
As daughters of Zeus and Plusia we find mention of four Muses, viz. Thelxinoe (the heart delighting), Aoede (song), Arche (beginning), and Melete. Some accounts, again, in which they are called daughters of Pierus, mention seven Muses, viz. Neilo, Tritone, Asopo, Heptapora, Achelois, Tipoplo, and Rhodia, and others, lastly, mention eight, which is also said to have been the number recognised at Athens.
At length, however, the number nine appears to have become established in all Greece. Homer sometimes mentions Musa only in the singular, and sometimes Musae in the plural, and once only he speaks of nine Muses, though without mentioning any of their names. Hesiod is the first that states the names of all the nine, and these nine names henceforth became established. They are Cleio, Euterpe, Thaleia, Melpomene, Terpsichore, Erato, Polymnia, Urania, and Calliope.
Plutarch states that in some places all nine were designated
by the common name Mneiae, i. e. Remembrances.
Remembrances
The Minoan civilization flourished in the Middle Bronze Age (c. 2000 - c. 1500 BCE) on the island of Crete located in the eastern Mediterranean. With their unique art and architecture, and the spread of their ideas through contact with other cultures across the Aegean, the Minoans made a significant contribution to the development of Western European civilization.
Labyrinth-like palace complexes, vivid frescoes depicting scenes such as bull-leaping and processions, fine gold jewellery, elegant stone vases, and pottery with vibrant decorations of marine life are all particular features of Minoan Crete.
The religion of the Minoans remains sketchy, but details are revealed through art, architecture, and artefacts. These include depictions of religious ceremonies and rituals such as the pouring of libations, making food offerings, processions, feasts, and sporting events like bull-leaping. Natural forces and nature in general, manifested in such artworks as a voluptuous female mother-earth goddess figure and male figure holding several animals, seem to have been revered.
Palaces contain open courtyards for mass gatherings and rooms often have wells and channels for the pouring of libations, as previously noted. As already mentioned, too, bulls are prominent in Minoan art, and their horns are an architectural feature of palace walls and a general decorative element in jewellery, frescoes, and pottery decoration. Dramatic rural sites such as hilltops and caves often show evidence of cult rituals being performed there.
Large-scale figure sculpture has not survived but there are many figurines in bronze and other materials. Early types in clay show the dress of the time with men (coloured red) wearing belted loincloths and women (coloured white) in long flowing dresses and open-fronted jackets. A leaping acrobat in ivory and the faience snake goddess already mentioned are notable works which reveal the Minoan love of capturing figures in active striking poses.
Many ancient peoples respected the bull as a symbol of strength and fertility; its size, power and potency have impressed man for many thousands of years. Bronze Age Crete, however, constitutes something of a special case; it has produced not only static representations of the bull itself, but also the highly mobile figures of the bull-leapers, young people of both sexes, apparently performing astounding acrobatical feats using a charging bull in much the same way as modern-day gymnasts might use a piece of fixed apparatus.
The palace at Knossos yielded the famous ‘bull-leap’ fresco painting; seals and signets found at several sites bear the bull’s horns motif; the image of the bull appeared on funerary furniture, and in the form of rhytons (pouring vessels).‘Bull-leapers’ were depicted in a variety of activities, and were fashioned from a wide range of materials, including bronze, ivory and terracotta.
He was originally a sculptor who seems to have also had a number of other occupations, including soldier, before he was told by the Oracle at Delphi that he was the wisest man in the world. In an effort to prove the oracle wrong, he embarked on a new career of questioning those who were said to be wise and, in doing so, proved the oracle correct: Socrates was the wisest man in the world because he did not claim to know anything of importance.
His most famous student was Plato (l. c. 428/427-348/347 BCE) who would honor his name through the establishment of a school in Athens (Plato's Academy) and, more so, through the philosophical dialogues he wrote featuring Socrates as the central character. Whether Plato's dialogues accurately represent Socrates' teachings continues to be debated but a definitive answer is unlikely to be reached.
Plato's best known student was Aristotle of Stagira (l. 384-322 BCE) who would then tutor Alexander the Great (l. 356-323 BCE) and establish his own school. By this progression, Greek philosophy, as first developed by Socrates, was spread throughout the known world during, and after, Alexander's conquests.
Socrates' historicity has never been challenged but what, precisely, he taught is as elusive as the philophical tenets of Pythagoras or the later teachings of
Jesus in that none of these figures wrote anything themselves.
Although Socrates is generally regarded as initiating the discipline of philosophy in the West, most of what we know of him comes from Plato and, less so, from another of his students, Xenophon (l. 430-c.354 BCE). There have also been efforts made to reconstruct his philosophic vision based on the many other schools, besides Plato's, which his students founded but these are too varied to define the original teachings which inspired them.
Greece is a country in southeastern Europe, known in Greek as Hellas or Ellada, and consisting of a mainland and an archipelago of islands. Ancient Greece is the birthplace of :
Western philosophy (Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle),
literature (Homer and Hesiod),
mathematics (Pythagoras and Euclid),
history (Herodotus),
drama (Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes),
the Olympic Games, and
democracy.
The concept of an atomic universe was first posited in Greece through the work of Democritus and Leucippus. The process of today's scientific method was first introduced through the work of Thales of Miletus and those who followed him. The Latin alphabet also comes from ancient Greece, having been introduced to the region during the Phoenician colonization in the 8th century BCE, and early work in physics and engineering was pioneered by Archimedes, of the Greek colony of Syracuse, among others.
The designation Hellas derives from Hellen, the son
of Deucalion and Pyrrha who feature prominently in
Ovid's tale of the Great Flood in his Metamorphoses. The mythical Deucalion (son of the fire-bringing titan Prometheus) was the savior of the human race from the Great Flood, in the same way Noah is presented in the biblical version or Utnapishtim in the Mesopotamian one. Deucalion and Pyrrha repopulate the land once the floodwaters have receded by casting stones which become people, the first being Hellen. Contrary to popular opinion, Hellas and Ellada have nothing to do with Helen of Troy from Homer's Iliad. Ovid, however, did not coin the designation.
Thucydides writes, in Book I of his Histories:
I am inclined to think that the very name was not as yet given to the whole country, and in fact did not exist at all before the time of Hellen, the son of Deucalion; the different tribes, of which the Pelasgian was the most widely spread, gave their own names to different districts. But when Hellen and his sons became powerful in Phthiotis, their aid was invoked by other cities, and those who associated with them gradually began to be called Hellenes, though a long time elapsed before the name was prevalent over the whole country.
Of this, Homer affords the best evidence; for he, although he lived long after the Trojan War, nowhere uses this name collectively, but confines it to the followers of Achilles from Phthiotis, who were the original Hellenes; when speaking of the entire host, he calls them Danaans, or Argives, or Achaeans.
Alexander the Great
worldhistory.org/ Alexander the Great
Macedonia was one of the city-states of ancient Greece.
Alexander III of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great (l. 21 July 356 BCE – 10 or 11 June 323 BCE, r. 336-323 BCE), was the son of King Philip II of Macedon (r. 359-336 BCE) who became king upon his father's death in 336 BCE and then conquered most of the known world of his day.
He is known as 'the great' both for his military genius and his diplomatic
skills in handling the various populaces of the regions he conquered.
He is further recognized for spreading Greek culture, language, and thought
from Greece throughout Asia Minor, Egypt, and Mesopotamia to India and thus
initiating the era of the Hellenistic Period (323-31 BCE) during which four of his generals (his successors, known as the Diadochi), in between their wars for supremacy, continued his policies of integrating Greek (Hellenistic) culture
with that of the Near East.
He died of unknown causes in 323 BCE without clearly naming a successor
(or, according to some accounts, his choice of the commander Perdiccas was
ignored) and the empire he built was divided among the Diadochi.
When Alexander was young, he was taught to fight and ride by
Leonidas of Epirus, a relative of his mother Olympias, as well as to endure
hardships such as forced marches. His father, Philip, was interested in
cultivating a refined future king and so hired Lysimachus of Acarnania
to teach the boy reading, writing, and to play the lyre. This tutelage would
instill in Alexander a lifelong love of reading and music.
At the age of 13 or 14, Alexander was introduced to the Greek
philosopher Aristotle (l. 384-322 BCE) whom Philip hired as a private tutor.
He would study with Aristotle until the age of 16, and the two are said to have remained in correspondence throughout Alexander's later campaigns, although evidence of this is anecdotal.
Aristotle's influence directly bore upon Alexander's later dealings with the
people he conquered, in that Alexander never forced the culture of Greece
upon the inhabitants of the various regions but merely introduced it in the
same way Aristotle used to teach his students. The influence of Leonidas
may be seen in Alexander's lifelong resilience and physical stamina as well
as in his skill with horses. Alexander is said to have tamed the 'untamable'
Bucephalus when he was only 11 or 12 years old.
While his various tutors' influences certainly had a profound effect upon him, Alexander seemed destined for greatness from birth. He had, first of all, a father whose accomplishments laid a firm foundation for his later success.
The historian Diodorus Siculus observes:
During the twenty-four years of his reign as King of Macedonia, in which he started with the slenderest resources, Philip built his own kingdom up into the greatest power in Europe...He projected the overthrow of the Persian Empire, landed forces in Asia and was in the act of liberating the Hellenic communities when he was interrupted by Fate - in spite of which, he bequeathed a military establishment of such size and quality that his son Alexander was enabled to overthrow the Persian Empire without requiring the assistance of allies. These achievements were not the work of Fortune but of his own force of character, for this king stands out above all others for his military acumen, personal courage and intellectual brilliance.
(Book XVI.ch.1)
While it is clear that his father had a great impact on him, Alexander himself chose to see his success as ordained by divine forces. He called himself the son of Zeus, and so claimed the status of a demigod, linking his bloodline to his two favorite heroes of antiquity, Achilles and Hercules, and modeling his behavior after theirs. This belief in his divinity was instilled in him by Olympias who also told him that his was a virgin birth as she had been miraculously impregnated by Zeus himself. His birth was associated with great signs and wonders, such as a bright star gleaming over Macedonia that night and the destruction of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Plutarch writes:
Alexander was born the sixth of Hecatombaeon, which month the Macedonians call Lous, the same day that the temple of Diana at Ephesus was burnt; which Hegesias of Magnesia makes the occasion of a conceit, frigid enough to have stopped the conflagration. The temple, he says, took fire and was burnt while its mistress was absent, assisting at the birth of Alexander. And all the Eastern soothsayers who happened to be then at Ephesus, looking upon the ruin of this temple to be the forerunner of some other calamity, ran about the town, beating their faces, and crying that this day had brought forth something that would prove fatal and destructive to all Asia.
(Plutarch, Life of Alexander, I)
Alexander founded many cities bearing his name during this time to further his public image not only as a "liberator" but as a god and adopted the title Shahanshah (King of Kings) used by the rulers of the First Persian Empire. In keeping with this status, Alexander introduced the Persian custom of proskynesis to the army, forcing those who addressed him to first kneel and kiss his hand.
Their influence over the regions they controlled created what historians refer to as the Hellenistic Period in which Greek thought and culture became entwined with that of the indigenous populace. According to Diodorus Siculus, one of the stipulations of Alexander's will was the creation of a unified empire between former enemies. People of the Near East were to be encouraged to marry with those of Europe and those of Europe to do likewise; in so doing, a new Hellenistic culture would be embraced by all. Although the Diadochi failed in the peaceful fulfillment of his wishes, through the Hellenization of their empires they contributed to Alexander's dream of cultural unity; even if such unity could never be fully realized.
FEAR is a weapon of... warcraft.
Fear can cause surrender.
It just makes sense that all the tribes of the earth
would have at least ONE very fearful godlike character.
Evil is criminalities.
Evil is savagry and violence.
Evil is that thing that shrouds peace, beauty, and truth.
Evil... real evil... finds joy in destroying beauty and innocence.
Evil... blames the victim for being a victim.
I have a theory.
I believe that there is only one God.
There is only God.
The only real Spirit there is... is God's.
That spirit looks very much like... love.
God put it into the world... like the rain and the wind.
Life... portrays love in all its ways.
The rest is... voodoo... superstition... ghosts... goblins...
something only imagined... but none have ever seen.
Prophecies are always subject to interpretation.
Prophecies can be fulfilled by anyone...
staged and performed... and a new prophet declared.
Best to keep such things at arms length...
and be suspicious of any drama unfolding.
Most prophecies could have been fulfilled milleniums ago.
I believe that the priests in the scriptures...
and the words of the prophets...
were always remarking about how the Israelites
had bought into voodoo and superstition...
chasing after someone else's religion.
Doctrines that were formed... just ignored these warnings...
and kept up their deep need to integrate ghosts and goblins
into their worships and beliefs.
Superstition... sometimes looks like a drug...
with its spooky adrenaline-provoking thoughts...
and its magical powers... and magical beings...
that fascinate our imaginations...
like... a muse... or a concept... to study.
I guess... I prefer to stay... in a world I can see.
God created a real world... a physical world.
Genesis does not say that God created heaven and hell.
Genesis says that God created a beautiful garden...
and living things to live IN that beautiful garden.
Not enough for ya?
The drawback to life in a world of physical matter is...
life must make way... for new life.
We are all given limits... to our time here.
To live in this world of physical realities...
we need to have rules... and standards...
and... respect for other living things...
and to try to claim immortality... is... pure... vanity...
no matter how beautiful...
no matter how wonderful...
no matter how perfect... that we hope we are.
Our time will come... to pass on and away.
We ought then to live our lives in deep gratitude
for the joys and experiences we have known.
We ought to live this great gift of life... wonderfully.
We ought to feel free... and good... and happy.
We ought to leave something wonderful behind...
for those who will come after us.
Those who do not respect their lives... or other's lives...
are like the zig zagging of tree limbs...
the warping of the graceful and gentle...
the thwarting of the naturally good order of life here.
Evil... the "devil"... is a destroyer of joy and truth.
But... as far as a living personage... or being... or thing...
my theory is... it is a tool used by evil people
to create fear and surrender to otherwise gentle people.
Evil delights to hear the misery of children...
or has no care at all about such things.
That kind of a character... that evil character...
is just a form of human insanity.
We give it psychological names...
but it is a sickness... and a blindness...
maybe even a deep fear.
People who choose to do evil things... inhuman things...
really have no respect for their own humanity.
They block out... any understanding of it.
The problem is... evil people gradually cross all boundaries.
Eventually... their zig zagging... evolves into inhumanity.
And... just like an errant sheep...
that wants to explore that green valley of pleasure it sees...
we should help it stop... hold it back from that path...
because it will end in destruction...
of its own life... and the life of others.
I believe the evils we see now... will someday... evaporate like a mist.
It is just unnatural for intelligent creatures
to choose a path of self-destruction.
We moreso... look for those things that make us noble and beautiful.
Those who thwart that natural path...
are something of... a devil.
Alexander the Great
worldhistory.org/ Alexander the Great
Macedonia was one of the city-states of ancient Greece.
