Thoughts on Spring & Greco-Roman Paganism
Thanks to some pumped up Christians asking my roommate, while she served them, if she believed in Christ this Easter, I pulled out my old pentagram and set aside my goth best for brunch tomorrow. That’s right, I’m crashing my roommate’s restaurant job to make all the obnoxious Church-goers uncomfortable. :)
My pentacles and pentagrams are throwbacks to days when I was incredibly reactive to the Catholic Church. Seeing one again reminded me of this song I used to sing called “The Goddess and the Weaver,” by Spiral Dance. I listened to it right around the same time I was translating Ovid for Latin in school.
If I am to embrace my Kabyle roots, I am to embrace my Etruscan-Roman roots. It is with great privilege I have access to these heritage stories since they were part of my liberal arts education, and are part of a dominant European cultural narrative.
“Read more” will take you to some of my positive feminist interpretations of Greco-Roman Springtime myths. To be clear, this is me practicing storytelling and sharing some alternative narrative to the season, not getting down with one religion over another. (Thoughts on organized religion and patriarchy shelved for now.)
Trigger warnings for abduction, sexual violence, patriarchy, institutions of privilege, spiders, survivor mentioning being triggered, women hating women, motherhood as institution.
In short, to the ancient Greeks and Romans (I will use Greek names because they are the original and more commonly known), this is a time when the goddess of Spring gets to pop out of the Underworld for a couple of months. This is considered rebirth, since Spring has to overcome the land of the dead to return to us every year. (*Ahem, that Bible steals everybody’s myths.*)
For those of you who don’t know the myth of Persephone and Hades, Persephone (Spring’s fertility goddess) was the beautiful young woman Hades (god of War and Hell) abducted and forcibly made his wife. She is tricked and trapped with him, only allowed to live her free, fruitful life under the sun when she is needed. (Because the Earth needs Spring to happen, it just does.) Her joy becomes labor, and she becomes another victim of motherhood as institution. Ugh.
This is also around the same time of year when Athena confronts Arachne. (The very myth mentioned in “The Goddess and the Weaver.”) Arachne, a simple mortal, knows all the cruel doings of the gods, and wants to expose them. Athena, however, is the goddess of weaving, and won’t have some human use these powers against her.
Athena’s intrigued, because we mortals are just playthings after all. Instead of outright punishing Arachne, Athena offers a challenge, a kind of weaver’s duel. There’s no real way that Arachne can win, because who could be a better judge than the goddess of the loom herself? And why would that goddess vote against herself? Athena adds a snarky “If you know so much, show me how the secrets of the gods.” Another impossible task.
Arachne just goes for the jugular: She weaves the painful, horrible legacy of Zeus as rapist. All of it. Unapologetically. Father God is not her hero, nor ever will be. How dare he. Arachne wants the world to know.
Athena is enflamed, and gives Arachne one chance to take it back. Arachne is too proud of her work–as artist and feminist–and refuses to obey the goddess. Athena promptly turns Arachne into a creature who must always weave: The spider. This is why in Latin-derived languages, spiders are called “arachnids.”
Athena deals with a privileged kind of sexism in the boys’ club of Heaven. You know, she had a place in the clouds and mighty immortal powers (*cough*whiteprivilege*cough*), but she was still surrounded by ugly, egregious frat parties and was hardly respected as a warrior (despite being a warrior goddess, she was still just a woman to her peers). When Arachne spoke truth to power, there should have been solidarity. Athena should have tattooed the tapestry onto Zeus’s face, not defend him.
But you wanna play that? We don’t need gods or privileged folk to help us speak truth to power. Nah, this is the season of the spider. Creeping, constant honesty.
Interestingly, it really is our season. When I came out of assault trauma in college (yikes, was Ovid triggering!), I learned about Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM). When reflecting on what it meant to honor the month of the spider in my now atheist way, I asked: What can I take away from these myths morally or practically? And boom, I suddenly made the connection that SAAM is April. April, the month that Persephone breaks free from the shackles of patriarchy and rejuvenates herself. (Surviving to thriving!) April, the time when Arachne insisted on exposing the hurt so many women faced before her, knowing she’d be punished by the system in doing so.
Yes, April, we survivors are here. I choose to understand these myths not as a history of abuse but a herstory of resistance. This season isn’t about some white boy’s pain and how his daddy saved him (Jesus on Easter), this is about folks living with trauma and finding a new leaf for themselves.
I am more likely to be triggered these days because Ive brought some experiences to surface. Hopefully this also means I am more likely to heal. Radical interpretations of trauma past (ancient and personal) helps me get there. What do you hear in these myths? What does this season provide you with?
baratheonpilled
izzy806
dailybridgerton
blakekathryn
andulkaphoto
turnnoffyourmind
jbbartram-illu
