Athena And Poseidon’s Battles 3,500 Years Ago

I always wondered about Greek mythology and the queer things concerning Pegasus and Athena and why Athens was so different from the other Greek city states.  And one of the saddest stories of all civilizations on earth, the total annihilation of the Minoan civilization always has haunted me.  For it didn’t vanish due to slow rot.  It vanished very suddenly and nearly totally.  Only a few clues remained behind to show us they even existed.  And one of the places with hidden clues is Athens.

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When I first saw Pegasus in all of his glory, in the midst of a violent lightning strike, I was filled with wonder.  I began to search for reasons why I saw this apparition.  At first glance, Pegasus seems to have little to do with lightning bolts.  But wait!

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Disney, in the famous ‘Fantasia’ movie, not only had a Beethoven Symphony #6 section but had Pegasus flying all over the place and…thunderstorms.  I watched the animation with fascination for it shows, to glorious music, the flying horse happily galloping and flying through growing storm clouds at the beginning of the show.

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As I grew older, I read many, many versions of Greek theology from the earliest stories that survived the Greek Dark Ages.  Tantalizing hints were everywhere yet there were few obvious clues.  Even though the concept of a ‘clue’ in a ‘maze’ is Minoan.  Slowly, over time, I began to wonder about the birth of Pegasus and how the magical horse is intertwined with Athena, the least Greek of the Greek gods.  From day one, I thought she was alien to Olympus.  While quite at home with Pegasus and….snakes.

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Below is a 4 foot tall painting I made of the birth of Pegasus back when I was about 21 years old:

The Greeks say that when Perseus slew Medusa, out of the blood that he spilled sprang Pegasus who immediately flew away.  This is funny because Athena was born pretty much the same way: via being suddenly and violently released from another’s body.  The Greeks claimed Athena guided Perseus to the Gorgons and helped him via a magical mirror and a golden sickle.  Both being rather lunar devices, by the way.

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As I contemplate the disturbing news that a massive series of immense tsunamis erupted from the collapse and explosion of the Thera volcano which explosion happened to be aimed straight at southern Greece, it occurred to me that maybe the ancients had many clues about this event buried in the tomb of religious mythologies.  And that these had a lot to do with Athena and the confusing relationship she and Pegasus have with pythons, lightning, earthquakes, Neptune and survivalism.

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Yes, to survive total catastrophe: this is the real story.  Not all Minoans were killed in the frightful destruction of their civilization.  Enough of them survived to pass on lots of information via stories and in particular, religious ceremonies which are NOT myths but rather, humans practicing magic.  For magic tends to be very, very conservative.  People dislike trying new magic.  Our brains are made most uneasy when we transgress our deepest, darkest parts where ‘magic’ and ‘religion’ resides.

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So please bear with me as we follow some clues through a very dark maze.  First, we go to Rome to see what the Romans said about the Greek religious practices, inadvertently, as they tell their own stories about their own conquest and eventual destruction of the Greek philosophical/ethical system:

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Sulla – Plutarch’s life of Sylla (Sulla): His invasion of Greece and destruction of Athens

When they had thrown down the wall, and made all level betwixt the Piraic and Sacred Gate, about midnight Sylla entered the breach, with all the terrors of trumpets and cornets sounding, with the triumphant shout and cry of an army let loose to spoil and slaughter, and scouring through the streets with swords drawn. There was no numbering the slain; the amount is to this day conjectured only from the space of ground overflowed with blood.

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For without mentioning the execution done in other quarters of the city, the blood that was shed about the marketplace spread over the whole Ceramicus within the Double-gate, and, according to most writers, passed through the gate and overflowed the suburb. Nor did the multitudes which fell thus exceed the number of those, who, out of pity and love for their country, which they believed was now finally to perish, slew themselves; the best of them, through despair of their country’s surviving, dreading themselves to survive, expecting neither humanity nor moderation in Sylla.

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At length, partly at the instance of Midias and Calliphon, two exiled men, beseeching and casting themselves at his feet, partly by the intercession of those senators who followed the camp, having had his fill of revenge, and making some honorable mention of the ancient Athenians, “I forgive,” said he, “the many for the sake of the few, the living for the dead.” He took Athens, according to his own Memoirs, on the calends of March, coinciding pretty nearly with the new moon of Anthesterion, on which day it is the Athenian usage to perform various acts in commemoration of the ruins and devastations occasioned by the deluge, that being supposed to be the time of its occurrence.

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From Lebadea and the cave of Trophonius there came favorable rumors and prophecies of victory to the Romans, of which the inhabitants of those places give a fuller account, but as Sylla himself affirms in the tenth book of his Memoirs, Quintus Titius, a man of some repute among the Romans who were engaged in mercantile business in Greece, came to him after the battle won at Chaeronea, and declared that Trophonius had foretold another fight and victory on the same place, within a short time. After him a soldier, by name Salvenius, brought an account from the god of the future issue of affairs in Italy. As to the vision, they both agreed in this, that they had seen one who in stature and in majesty was similar to Jupiter Olympius.

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First off, if the Athenian people have this peculiar festival concerning a Great Flood, it pays to look into this business.  Ogyges – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first worldwide flood of Greek mythology, called the Ogygian deluge, occurred during his reign and derives its name from him—though some sources regard it as a local flood, such as an inundation of Lake Copais, a large lake once in the center of Boeotia.^[8] Other sources see it as a flood associated with Attica.^[9] This latter view was accepted by Africanus, who says “that great and first flood occurred in Attica, when Phoroneus was king of Argos, as Acusilaus relates.”

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I will get back to the subject of Argos and how the Thera tsunami destroyed everything except for the Larissa temple which, like Athena’s throne, sits upon a tall hill that was above the flood levels.

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When this deluge has been considered global, a similarity is noticed with Noah‘s flood in the Bible. Various dates have been assigned to the event, including 9500 BCE (Plato),^[10] 2136 BCE (Varro), and 1796 BCE (Africanus).^[11]

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Africanus is a Roman from the pre-Caesar era.  His date is astonishingly close to the Thera eruption event!  I have great respect for ancient stories and the ability of people long ago, to put two and two together.  The ancient Greeks and Romans were very interested in science and hard-headed analysis despite religious fears.

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Ogyges survived the deluge but many people perished. After his death, due to the flood’s devastation, Attica was without kings for 189 years, until the time of Cecrops (Cecrops Diphyes).^[12] Africanus says, “But after Ogyges, on account of the great destruction caused by the flood, what is now called Attica remained without a king one hundred and eighty-nine years until the time of Cecrops.

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What a terrible time of chaos that must have been.  I suspect, looking at the stories and the tremendous power that Athena wielded above and far beyond all other gods, at Athens, that the priestesses who lived on that rocky outcropping kept their flame alive…barely.  And probably had a hellish time, keeping alive.  I suspect that their goddess became much more militant during this horror.  That is, the Minoan style of elegant snake wielding goddesses turned into a severe, cold hearted snake-drapped warrior who brooked no nonsense from anyone, especially fighting men.

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Below is a satellite photo of this part of Greece and I drew some arrows showing the open end of Thera where the volcano blew up and how probably the greatest of the tsunamis shot outwards from there and slammed directly and viciously into the Greek regions.  It strikes me as odd that people don’t even try thinking about this tsunami.  I see TV shows about Crete but no one notices the really sad victims in Greece!

Indeed, the INLAND Greeks who were Dorians, not Minoans, came pouring out of their aeries to attack the survivors of the tsunamis.  That is, they raided Athens, Corinth and Argos.  The forced marriages of the women there (PRIESTESSES) meant that all the stories of the Minoan history as well as religious practices would be carried over, nearly intact if battered badly by time.

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For women teach children beliefs and tell them stories and these become buried inside of the deepest, earliest developed parts of the brain and then exist there, stubbornly, for the rest of the human’s life.  Is seems to me that perhaps this tsunami struck in the spring.  The calends of March are the beginning of March, not the equinox.  I don’t know if the festival in Athens was based on the lunar cycle, this wouldn’t surprise me since Athena is very lunar in character.

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JSTOR: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 95 (1993), pp. 197-250

So, this is an end of February festival.  And an odd one, too. One that is confused and ‘blurred’.  That is, everyone gets very drunk and then VERY SAD.  The ‘shadow’ here is the tremendous fear and loss of not just lives but an entire civilization, vanishing with very little warning, as the very seas seemed to rear up like millions of horses and then storming ashore.

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The Minoans definitely had wine.  Perhaps, they invented wine!  I  might even suggest, wine was their chief export product!  The gay lightness of nearly all Minoan art is the sort a very happy and rather drunk culture would create.  When we look at the pleased, relaxed expressions of nearly all Minoan art, we see a sunny, Dionysian world where women ran around, merrily exposing their breasts while wearing the most sexy clothing EVER.  No one, even in today’s wild excesses of exposure, dares to copy the hourglass figure with bared breasts!

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Even when I watch shows supposedly about the Minoan era, no one dares show ANY women looking ANYTHING like Minoan women!  Not only that, Helen of Troy came from the part of Greece that was destroyed by the tsunami and you can bet, she was a  Minoan lady and was bare-breasted, not wearing those matronly robes imposed by Dorian invaders! But no one shows her in either art nor movies, wearing the proper clothes.

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Dionysius, a happy god, was turned into the God of Death by the tsunami.  I wonder, were there more than the usual number of people on the Citadel in Athens celebrating the Wine festival when they turned to hear the roar of the ocean and to their horror, watched the entire city below and all their farms drown?  And then this festival, the next day, was a funeral?  I would guess this is close to the truth of Dionysius and his strange relation to the Cave of Death.

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This is even more interesting when we look at the other thing mentioned by Sylla when he destroyed Athens.  Namely, the discussions about the Trophonian prophesy.  So I looked into this matter a little:  Trophonius – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The name is etymologically derived from trepho, “to nourish”. Strabo and several inscriptions refer to him as ZeusTrephonios. Several other chthonic Zeuses with similar titles are known from the Greek world, including ZeusMeilikhios (“honeyed” or “kindly” Zeus), and Zeus Chthonios (“Zeus beneath-the-earth”).

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Similar constructions are also found in the Roman world: for example, a shrine at Lavinium in Lazio was dedicated to Aeneas under the titleIuppiter Indiges (Jupiter in-the-earth).

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In Greek mythology, Trophonius was a son of Erginus. According to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, he built Apollo’s temple at the oracle at Delphi with his brother, Agamedes. Once finished, the oracle told the brothers to do whatsoever they wished for six days and, on the seventh, their greatest wish would be granted. They did and were found dead on the seventh day. The saying “those whom the gods love die young” comes from this story.

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When I drew a cartoon about the Cave of Wealth and Death, I showed a cave with an inscription at the top and it said, ‘Wish Upon A Star.’  And yes, wishes will be granted but generally, the wish is to die.  For example, Midas was granted a wish that all he touched would be turned to gold.

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He then not only killed his beloved daughter but couldn’t eat anymore.  His wish turned into a death event for himself and all he loved.

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Alternatively, according to Pausanias they built a treasure chamber (with secret entrance only they knew about) for King Hyprieus of Boeotia. Using the secret entrance, they stole Hyprieus’ fortune. He was aware but did not know who the thief was; he laid a snare. Agamedes was trapped in it; Trophonius cut off his head so that Hyprieus would not know who the body in the snare was. He then fled into the cavern at Lebadaea, and disappeared forever.

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Whoa!  I love the Cave of Wealth and Death!  It exists in all mythologies in every possible culture on earth.  I suggest, this concept is part of our fundamental thinking.  This is why I talk about it so much: nothing changes!  We are all trapped in its matrix.

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Here is a classic example!  The cave had a secret entrance.  But it wasn’t totally secret.  People who knew could go there and get wishes…ONLY THEY DIED.  They could STEAL but they couldn’t SURVIVE.  And then everything vanishes!  Wow.

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The cave of Trophonius was not discovered again until the Lebadaeans suffered a plague, and consulted the Delphic Oracle. The Pythia advised them that an unnamed hero was angry at being neglected, and that they should find his grave and offer him worship forthwith. Several unsuccessful searches followed, and the plague continued unabated until a shepherd boy followed a trail of bees into a hole in the ground. Instead of honey, he found a daimon, and Lebadaea lost its plague while gaining a popular oracle.

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In many, many myths, bees and honey are interwoven with the Cave of Wealth and Death.  Seldom is the entrance anything grand.  Mostly, it is an obscure and often, very small hole in the ground.  And only an INNOCENT child can find it.  Never, a greedy adult.

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Indeed, it is interesting that the unassuming entrance to the Lascaux cave was found by children!  This is probably the earliest recorded religious cave.  And it was most likely used to ‘see the future’.

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Pausanias, in his account of Boeotia (9.39), relates many details about the cult of Trophonius. Whoever desired to consult the oracle would live in a designated house for a period of days, bathing in the river Herkyna and living on sacrificial meat. He would then sacrifice, by day, to a series of gods, including Kronos, Apollo, Zeus the king, Hera the Charioteer, and Demeter–Europa. At night, he would a black victim into a pit sacred to Agamedes, drink from two rivers called Lethe and Mnemosyne, and then descend into a cave.

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[edit]Trophonius in the classical tradition

“To descend into the cave of Trophonios” became a proverbial way of saying “to suffer a great fright”: this saying is alluded to in Aristophanes‘s Clouds.

Several ancient philosophers, including Heraclides Ponticus, wrote commentaries on the cult of Trophonios that are now sadly lost. Trophonios has been of interest to classical scholars because the rivers of Lethe and Mnemosyne have close parallels with the Myth of Erat the end of Plato‘s Republic, with a series of Orphic funerary inscriptions on gold leaves, and with several passages about Memory and forgetting in Hesiod‘s Theogony. The Hellfire Club once constructed a “Cave of Trophonius” with obscene wall-paintings in which to conduct their revels. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche calls himself a “Trophonios” in the preface to his Daybreak, alluding to his labor in the underground of moral prejudices.

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This cave encouraged Sylla to continue besieging Athens.  He, of course, was very destructive and is not fondly remembered by Athenians.  Now, below, is another picture of the tsunami and I drew red lines showing where the ocean slammed into the landmasses.  By the way, between Athens and Corinth, is this queer hollowed out part of the mountains where the part facing Thera was scoured out, nearly totally, this being the part that took the brunt of the tsunami.

Plutarch’s Lives: Brutus

Caesar made a view and lustration of his army within his trenches, and distributed only a little corn and but five drachmas to each soldier for the sacrifice they were to make. But Brutus, either pitying this poverty, or disdaining this meanness of spirit in Caesar, first, as the custom was, made a general muster and lustration of the army in the open field, and then distributed a great number of beasts for sacrifice to every regiment, and fifty drachmas to every soldier; so that in the love of his soldiers and their readiness to fight for him Brutus had much the advantage. But at the time of lustration it is reported that an unlucky omen happened to Cassius; for his lictor, presenting him with a garland that he was to wear at sacrifice, gave it him the wrong way up.

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Further, it is said that some time before, at a certain solemn procession, a golden image of Victory, which was carried before Cassius, fell down by a slip of him that carried it. Besides this there appeared many birds of prey daily about the camp, and swarms of bees were seen in a place within the trenches, which place the soothsayers ordered to be shut out from the camp, to remove the superstition which insensibly began to infect even Cassius himself and shake him in his Epicurean philosophy, and had wholly seized and subdued the soldiers; from whence it was that Cassius was reluctant to put all to the hazard of a present battle, but advised rather to draw out the war until further time, considering that they were stronger in money and provisions, but in numbers of men and arms inferior.

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Note the bees in the trenches.  Bees don’t prefer trenches in particular, ones with people…unless they are drinking say, wine.  Wine is very attractive to bees.  The bee/wine connection is ancient since the earliest wines were probably mead made from honey.  The trench/death/bees business is very much ‘death’: wars lead to death in trenches and the dead are buried in trenches.  We see this in Haiti, for example, this week.

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Now that we have wandered all over the place and getting nowhere, let’s return to the Athena/Pegasus/Python/storm business and the scars of memory of a tremendous tragedy 3,500 years ago, a catastrophe that changed all Mediterranean religions to the core:

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Erichthonius of Athens – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to Apollodorus, Athena visited the smith-god Hephaestus to request some weapons, but Hephaestus was so overcome by desire that he tried to seduce her in his workshop. Determined to maintain her virginity, Athena fled, pursued by Hephaestus. Despite Hephaestus’ lameness, he caught Athena and tried to rape her, but she fought him off. During the struggle, his semen fell on her thigh, and Athena, in disgust, wiped it away with a scrap of wool. She cast the wool on the ground, impregnating Gaia (“Earth”). Gaia gave birth to a son. She brought the infant boy to Athena, who named him Erichthonius, from chthon “earth”, and placed him in a small box.

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Here comes into the room, Pandora’s box only I would suggest this is an older version than the one we are usually familiar with.  Note that Athena has a problem with a VOLCANO god.  And is nearly destroyed by his enthusiasm.  Now, the baby born this queer way (like Krishna, for example, as well as many other ‘heroes’) is then put in a box that is like a coffin.

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Athena gave the box to the three daughters of Cecrops, the king of Athens (Herse,Pandrosus and Aglaurus), and warned them never to open it. Overcome with curiosity, Aglaurus and Herse opened the box, which contained the infant and future-king, Erichthonius (“troubles born from the earth”). The sisters were terrified by what they saw in the box: either a snake coiled around an infant, or an infant that was half-man and half-serpent. They went insane and threw themselves off the Acropolis. Other accounts state that they were killed by the snake.

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In many myths, snakes are very much attached to earthquakes.  Serpents=earthquakes. Snakes live in the ground.  And when the ground heaves and rocks, the snakes all come out. Earthquakes flush them all out, very fast, just as floods do this, too.

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Snakes are flood/earthquake icons.  So, this new king of Athens is a trouble from the earth!  I can see the Acropolis shaking like a leaf as the volcano erupted just below the horizon.  Athens gets plenty of quakes over the century, but not the size of the ones that happened when Thera blew itself to smithereens.

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That was at least a 9.2+ mag event.  The entire Eastern Mediterranean basin probably heaved and rocked and walking was like being drunk. And this was no 20 second event, either.  This probably went on and on for 10-20 minutes.  How many priestesses fell off the sheer cliffs during this event?

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An alternative version of the story is that Athena left the box with the daughters of Cecrops while she went to fetch a mountain from Pallene to use in the Acropolis. While she was away, Aglaurus and Herse opened the box. A crow saw them open the box, and flew away to tell Athena, who fell into a rage and dropped the mountain she was carrying (now Mt. Lykabettos). As in the first version, Herse and Aglaurus went insane and threw themselves to their deaths off a cliff.

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The only other hill to survive this tsunami/quake was this wolf-mountain one can see from Athena’s shrine.  Note that this virgin is running around, dropping mountains in a rage. Not a blushing virgin, this girl!  Also, the crow is the bird of death.  Very Wotan-like.  And Wotan is a lightning bolt thrower…like Athena and Pegasus.  Anyway, why would the priestesses throw themselves off a cliff if Athena pops a mountain nearby, missing them entirely?

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History of Ancient Delphi

The legend speaks for Delphi, the most important shrine of Greece, that it was the center of the world, because it was in this place that the two eagles met, when Zeus let them free, one from the east and the other from the west. The oracle at first belonged to the goddess of earth Gaia and it was after Apollo slew her child, the serpent Python, that it became his shrine. Another legend tell us that Apollo transformed into a dolphin and guided a Cretan ship at the place, ordering the sailors to build there his shrine (the Greek word for dolphin is delphis, from which the shrine took its name – Delphi).

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Absolutely no one loved dolphins more than the Minoans.  Note that the Greeks admit that this shrine is also Minoan.  And Apollo slaying snakes?  Isn’t that odd.  The sun/killing snakes is the opposite of the lunar/snake Athena business. I will note here that Athena did NOT grace the entrance to the biggest shrine to her majesty in Athens: Apollo stood guard there.  As if he had to guard her because she was the Python/Lightning/Earthquake—wearing Medusa’s head and with Pegasus in her hair…

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Python (mythology) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The version related by Hyginus^[5] holds that when Zeus lay with the goddess Leto, and she was to deliver Artemis and Apollo, Hera sent Python to pursue her throughout the lands, so that she could not deliver wherever the sun shone. Thus when Apollo the infant was grown he pursued the python, making his way straight for Mount Parnassus where the serpent dwelled, and chased it to the oracle of Gaia at Delphi,; there he dared to penetrate the sacred precinct and kill her with his arrows beside the rock cleft where the priestess sat on her tripod.

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Pegasus, who is also a major constellation in the sky and is associated with Pisces in the Zodiac, lives on Mt. Parnassus and he struck the rocks there and created a rushing fountain of water.  The water/lightning/earthquake aspects connected to Pegasus as well as Athena is very interesting.  Apollo seems to be inserted into many a tale explaining how he gained power over these darker forces.  And note, of course, the earthquake serpent lives with Pegasus and the Muses.  That is, all the arts and sciences are connected to these darker forces.

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Now, onto another facet of this fascinating business.  The Pelagasians are the Athenians and like all things of Athens, this is all very queer and quite different from the Doric tribes.

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Pelasgians – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Much like all other aspects of the “Pelasgians”, their ethnonym (Pelasgoi) is of extremely uncertain provenance and etymology. Michel Sakellariou collects fifteen different etymologies proposed for it by philologists and linguists during the last 200 years, though he admits that “most…are fanciful”.^[5]

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^{And so this word is mysterious!  And why is that?  How about the collapse of the Minoan civilization meant its language was wiped out, too, over time?  So the words remain behind, just like the jutting out rocks of the Greek landscape that survived the Flood?}

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An ancient etymology, dismissed by modern understanding of linguistics, links pelasgos to pelargos“stork” and postulates that the Pelasgians were migrants like storks, possibly from Egypt, where they nest.^[6] Aristophanes deals effectively with this etymology in his comedy the Birds. One of the laws of “the storks” in the satirical cloud-cuckoo-land, playing upon the Athenian belief that they were originally Pelasgians, is that grown-up storks must support their parents by migrating elsewhere and conducting warfare.^[7]

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The ancient Greek word for sea, pelagos, comes from the same root, *plāk-, as the Doric word plagos, “side” (which is flat), appearing in *pelag-skoi. Ernest Klein therefore simply interprets the same reconstructed form as “the sea men”, where the sea is the flat.^[12]korny^[9] derives Pelasgoi from *pelag-skoi (Flachlandbewohner, or “flatland-inhabitants”); specifically, Bewohner der thessalischen Ebene (“Inhabitants of the Thessalian plain”). The Indo-European root is *plāk-, “flat.”^[10] Pokorny details a previous derivation, which appears in English at least as early as William Gladstone‘s Studies on Homer and the Homeric Age, 1858.^[11] If the Pelasgians were not Indo-Europeans, the name in this derivation must have been assigned by the Hellenes.

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The Minoan empire was the very first seafaring empire on earth.  And this is quite an achievement!  It was no small matter.  The Minoans were not poor, either, they had something of tremendous value and I would suggest,  it was the mysteries of winemaking.  The lands they colonized, even today, are wine producing areas.  I would suggest, many of their ports were chosen precisely because they were good wine growing areas.   And EASY TRANSPORT.

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That is, it is much more profitable to transport wine via ship.  The wine containers were made of clay and thus, very heavy when filled with liquid.  Luckily, the climate for wine is blessed in the Mediterranean basin and the vines like mountain terraces, too!  This is why the landlubber Dorians began to venture about on ships and were probably taught about all of this by the survivors of the tsunamis.  The below map shows where the ‘Pelagoi’ lived: nearly all in obvious Minoan communities including Troy.

Athens wasn’t the only Minoan shrine to survive the tsunamis.  There was another one in what became Sparta.  All of this part of ancient Greece wasn’t Spartan, the ports facing Athens were very liberal and utterly different from the harsh Dorian conquering hoards.  So let’s look at Argos, at Thebes:

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Argos – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The region of Argos is known as the Argolis, Argolid, or Argeia. The inhabitants of Argos were known as Ἀργεῖοι or Argīvī in Latin, rendered Argives in English. The name might be of pre-Greek (“Pelasgian”) derivation; the name of its acropolis, Larissa, certainly is. Aitiology derives it from a mythological founder, Argos son of Zeus and Niobe (see also Danaus). If the name is Indo-European, it may be related to the adjective argós (αργóσ, “shimmering” or “quick”), from a root arg- (PIE *arǵ-, hence also argyros, silver), with a meaning “shining brightly” or similar. [edit]

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Another very ancient name that survived the scouring of the Eastern Mediterranean tsunamis!  Memories of Crete are kept alive in Thebes, too.  Jason killing the Minotaur, for example.

Larissa (mythology) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Greek mythology, Larissa (Λάρισσα) was a local nymph from Thessaly. She was described by Pausanias as a daughter of Pelasgus. However, Hellanicus states that the sons of Poseidon and Larissa were Achaios, Phthios, and Pelasgus. Strabo (Geographika, xiv) calls her a daughter of Piasus, a Pelasgian prince.

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Larissa is involved with Poseidon?  HAHAHA.  Poseidon is an interesting god.  He is associated with horses and horse sacrifices are made to him.  Why would an ocean god be connected to horses who live on plains?  Why is Dionysius connected with dolphins which have nothing to do with wine but are creatures of the ocean who love to follow ships?

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Poseidon – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In Greek mythology, Poseidon (Greek: Ποσειδῶν; Latin: Neptūnus) was the god of the sea and, as “Earth-Shaker,” of earthquakes.

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Why is the earthquake god a sea god?  Yet we see a close association over and over again of coastal regions being hit by earthquakes and then a tsunami roars in.  I’m certain our smart ancestors figured this out and worried greatly about this.  As we all should.

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Poseidon was a major civic god of several cities: in Athens, he was second only to Athena in importance, while in Corinth and many cities of Magna Graecia he was the chief god of the polis. In his benign aspect, Poseidon was seen as creating new islands and offering calm seas. When offended or ignored, he supposedly struck the ground with his trident and caused chaotic springs, earthquakes, drownings and shipwrecks. Sailors prayed to Poseidon for a safe voyage, sometimes drowning horses as a sacrifice.

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No one has any idea why this sea/tsunami god is also involved in horses.  But then, horses are connected to thunderstorms.  And I suppose this, too, is based on natural observations as horses on the plains are prone to being hit by lightning bolts.

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Athena became the patron goddess of the city of Athens after a competition with Poseidon. Yet Poseidon remained a numinous presence on the Acropolis in the form of his surrogate, Erechtheus. At the dissolution festival at the end of the year in the Athenian calendar, the Skira, the priests of Athena and the priest of Poseidon would process under canopies to Eleusis.^[8] They agreed that each would give the Athenians one gift and the Athenians would choose whichever gift they preferred.

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Poseidon struck the ground with his trident and a spring sprang up; the water was salty and not very useful,^[9]whereas Athena offered them an olive tree. The Athenians (or their king, Cecrops) accepted the olive tree and along with it Athena as their patron, for the olive tree brought wood, oil and food. After the fight, infuriated at his loss, Poseidon sent a monstrous flood to the Attic Plain, to punish the Athenians for not choosing him. The depression made by Poseidon’s trident and filled with salt water was surrounded by the northern hall of the Erechtheum, remaining open to the air. “In cult, Poseidon was identified with Erechtheus,” Walter Burkert noted.^[10] “the myth turns this into a temporal-causal sequence: in his anger at losing, Poseidon led his son Eumolpus against Athens and killed Erectheus.”

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According to Homer, Athena would enter the Erectheus house each year, and this is where Poseidon would receive her (sexually?) and bring peace to Athens (no more floods!).  The epic flood in this myth sounds an awful lot like a real flood event.  And if so, could be a historic moment rather than an imaginary one!

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It is interesting that this magical bedroom place is the only place in Athens with women holding up the porch roof.  Obviously, this is all about magic and much of the knowledge of this magic is now lost for good, leaving only the myth background but none of the real actions and words used to keep the memory of distant terrors at bay.

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Photos From Greece 95-96

And this is a copy of the immense statue that used to be in Athena’s main temple in Athens.  And note the snake behind her shield!  How odd is that?  Is she controlling the snake or is she part of the snake’s earthquake powers?  Note she is draped with snakes:

She wears a magic robe that is lined with them.  And she carried the head of Medusa which is the mother of Pegasus, on her breast.  She killed Medusa using a hero who is also quite un-Dorian and very Pelagasian:

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Perseus – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Perseus was the son of Danaë who, by her very name, was the archetype and eponymous ancestor of all the Danaans.^[1] She was the only child of Acrisius, King of Argos.

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Athena is right around the corner from Argos as we see from the maps above.  Argos is where Larissa’s temples are.

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Disappointed by his lack of luck in having a son, Acrisius consulted the oracle at Delphi, who warned him that he would one day be killed by his daughter’s son. Danaë was childless and to keep her so, he imprisoned her in a bronze chamber open to the sky in the courtyard of his palace:^[2] This mytheme is also connected to Ares, Oenopion, Eurystheus, etc. Zeus came to her in the form of a shower of gold, and impregnated her. Soon after was born their child Perseus— “Perseus Eurymedon,^[3] for his mother gave him this name as well” (Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica IV).

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Fearful for his future but unwilling to provoke the wrath of the gods by killing Zeus’s offspring and his own daughter, Acrisius cast the two into the sea in a wooden chest.^[4] Danaë’s fearful prayer made while afloat in the darkness has been expressed by the poet Simonides of Ceos. Mother and child washed ashore on the island ofSeriphos, where they were taken in by the fisherman Dictys, who raised the boy to manhood. The brother of Dictys was Polydectes, the king of the island.

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Here is yet another box that should not be opened!  Not to mention, gold being showered in a bronze labyrinth.

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After some time, Polydectes fell in love with Danaë and desired to remove Perseus from the island. He therefore hatched a plot to send him away in disgrace.  Polydectes announced a large and prosperous banquet^{[note 2]} wherein each guest would be expected to bring him a horse, that he might woo Hippodamia, “tamer of horses”.The fisherman’s protegé had no horse but promised instead to bring him some other gift. Polydectes held Perseus to his rash promise. He immediately demanded the head of Medusa, one of the Gorgons, whose very expression turns people to stone. The Medusa was horse-like in archaic representations,^[5] the terrible filly of a mare—Demeter, the Mother herself—who was in her mare nature when Poseidon assumed stallion form and covered her.  ….According to the iconography of the vase-painters, the gods Hermes, Athena, and Hades came to his rescue. Hermes gave him his adamantine curved sword,^{[note 3]} while Athena gave him her highly-polished bronze shield, and Hades gave his helmet of invisibility. … In the cave he came upon the sleeping Gorgons. By viewing Medusa’s reflection in his polished shield, he could safely approach and cut off her head; from her neck sprangPegasus and Chrysaor. The other two Gorgons pursued Perseus, but under his helmet of invisibility he escaped.

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Again, all the business about horses!  With gods and goddesses becoming horses, having sex as horses, then strange monsters being born and killed…Perseus is also a constellation as is all the figures in his long mythological tale…including the Evil Eye star of Medusa.  Maybe some day I will figure out why all these horses go galloping all over these stories.  There has to be some strong reason for this.

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But then, all of this comes out of the darker parts of our minds.  An always fascinating place to visit but not stay too long there…it is dangerous.

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