Kali

The English teacher nerd in me saw a book with seven Jules Verne novels and said, "Hey, Mark, buy this and read some great Victorian literature over the summer."  Since the cool part of me was somewhere else at the time, I went ahead and did.  I read the titles to my 5 year old and asked him which one should I read first and his response was Around the World in 80 Days.  Since I was sure that the movie version with Jackie Chan was probably not very true to the book, I started.  Let me tell you, the English teacher nerd in me is very happy with that choice.

Once Phileas Fogg got to India, the mythology nerd in me got interested.  While crossing India on elephant, Fogg runs across a procession about to make a human sacrifice, or suttee.  Seems that a rajah had died and they were about to burn his corpse and, of course, his wife.  The wife, still being alive and all, was not all that happy about it.  The idea is to appease Kali, the goddess of love and death (as described in the book).

This was interesting to me since the only thing I really know about Kali is from The Temple of Doom, and I am sure that the suttees that took place in history didn't really have people getting their hearts removed and still living while the rajah held the still beating heart.  So, I did a little searching.

Now, as a little disclaimer, I usually do not talk about religions still being practiced as mythology, but I am making another exception here (as I have done on numerous occasions).  Anyone viewing this that can shed better light on the worship of Kali because they actually worship Kali or know people who do are free to correct me in the comments section.  

Kali is known as the Dark Mother and sports four arms on each side.  Most pictures I saw of her had her wearing human heads and a belt of human arms.  

Kali was born from the eyebrow of Durga, another goddess, while Durga was fighting evil.  Kali immediately joined in the fray and got so carried away that she pretty much destroyed everything.   Shiva stopped her by laying down in front of her feet.

As fearsome as she looks, her image is highly symbolic.  She wears fifty heads as symbol of her infinite wisdom (there are fifty letters in the Sanskrit alphabet).  She wears no clothes to symbolize nature.  Her white teeth show her inner purity and her sword is the destroyer of false consciousness and the bonds that bind her followers.  She has three eyes that represent the past, present, and future.

The suttee was associated with Parvati, which by some sources I found, is an incarnation of Kali, which is why my book makes the association.  These dark sides of Kali and other deities are not worshipped as much today.  The most recent suttee was performed in 1987.  Personally, I feel that a woman should rather be burned alive than to live without her husband.  Makes sense to me.  Think I'll mention that to my wife tonight.  I'm positive she'll agree.

And I Thought I Was Bull Headed

You saw the title and thought this would be about the minotaur, right?  Wrong.  This, my friends, is about the Ophiataurus.  My son and I were reading along in The Last Olympian and good old Bessie reappeared.  Bessie was the half bull half serpent creature that the book's hero, Percy, rescued and gave to the gods for safe keeping.  They keep the creature in a big fish bowl on top of the Empire State Building (the new home of Mt. Olympus).  The fact that the creature is male was only revealed after Percy named it Bessie.

Anyway, the actual mythological reference is to Ovid's Fasti.  His mom is Gaia and when he was born, he was imprisoned by the river Styx

 (uncertain if he was trapped in it or what).  Apparently this little guy has one purpose.  Anyone who kills the creature and burns the bowels (nice alliteration there, don't you think?) will be given the power to defeat the gods.

Bessie was killed in Ovid's work by Briares, one of the hundred-handed, fifty headed giants.  Zeus, pulling a page from Gandalf, sent eagles to pick up the spilt innards before they could be burned.

So what's our lesson here?  If you want to defeat the gods AND you have access to an Ophiataurus, then have the fire ready BEFORE killing the thing and disemboweling it.  Handy life tip.

Can you believe that nobody has a picture of this swimming cow-snake on the internet?  That's why I settled for this one.  Yeah, I know this cow here is brown skinned and the real deal is black skinned, but hey, you gotta make sacrifices sometimes.

By the way, Briares uses an adamantine axe to kill it.  I think that weird because I've only seen that word used before when referring to the metal that covers Wolverine's skeleton.  I really need to check up on my periodic table, I guess.

Another Tribute to an Unknown God

Today is my 14th anniversary.  I wanted to get my wife a cool gift and consulted the traditional gift list for the 14th anniversary.  This posed a problem since the traditional gift is ivory, which is illegal to trade in.  Apparently elephants can't meet the demand and so now I'm stuck on what to give my wife...

Anyway, I looked up on GodChecker.com "anniversary."  This is what I got:

HE-BO: God of the Yellow River. 

The Yellow River (Huang He) is China's second longest river and probably the muddiest river in the world. Over a billion tonnes of silt and sediment flow through it each year, giving the Huang He its distinctive yellow color and making it a poor choice for washing your socks in. 

Although the Great DA-YU took care of the Great Flood, the Yellow River was still prone to flooding. So an enthusiastic mortal named HE-BO tied heavy rocks to his back and jumped into the water as a supreme sacrifice. 

For his pains he was granted immortality and promoted to God of the Yellow River. 

Following his example, it became the custom to throw a young virgin into the river on the anniversary of his death. This practice appears to have died out. 

Now, that was interesting and all, but it gave a deathly pall to the whole thing and wasn't quite what I was hoping for.  I don't know what I expected.  I was hoping to find some Baltic goddess that goes by the name Anniversia who has some ritual for wedding anniversaries or something.  Alas, it was not to be.

It did remind of the old joke:  Did you read the book Yellow River by I. P. Freely?

Childish, I know.  Did you really expect any different?

So You Think You Can Dance?

O.K., a little warning.  If there is anything else that you could be doing with your time, go do it.  Otherwise, watch this little video of Pan getting down.

A Mythological Newsworthy Question

Here it is between the 2nd and 3rd period of the third game in the Carolina Hurricanes and I'm needing something to get my mind off the fact that my Canes are down 2 points.  So, I do what any hockey fan would do and that is surf the net for mythology.  

The Arkansas Democrat Gazette had a little quiz on obscure knowledge. You can get the whole thing here, but I was only interested in this question:

7. In Greek mythology, Eos was goddess of the dawn. By what name was she known in Roman mythology?

I got five questions right, I'm ashamed to say, but I did get the mythology question.   Not sure of the answer?  Just check the comment section to make sure you're right.  I'll give you a hint - it is the name of my dog (yeah, I know...I need help).

Oh, and GO CANES!!!!!!!!

The Last Olympian

I haven't been able to write much lately, and for that I apologize.  The newest book int he Percy Jackson series has come out and it is entitled The Last Olympian.  It will take me several days to finish since I am reading it with my son.  If you have not read this series, even if you have no children to read it to, you should definitely do so.

As the name suggests, there is a nasty fate possible for the gods.  In fact, the titans are back and looking to cause problems.  Going only on that, I'm asking you (and no, you do NOT have to be a reader of this series to answer) to pick - if you were writing a story about the gods vs. titans, if only one Olympian could survive, who would you pick?

My scenario would have Zeus out of the fight early on - come on, they would all go after him first, right?  I thinking maybe Hermes as the final survivor.  His trickery, wily ways, and out and out speed to help him survive.

Well?  What about you?  Who would you pick?

Google

Just a break from the traditional mythology blog entry today for something neat.  Google did a Doodle for Google contest.  Kids from all around the U.S. drew a logo for Google to use.  The winners get a bunch of stuff.  The winners are chosen by our votes.  So, if you are interested in seeing what the kids drew, go here - http://www.google.com/doodle4google/index.html

Voting ends on May 18th, so hurry!

Oh, and the link to mythology?  I was about to do some searching for the next Treasure of Britain when I found this.  See, it is the whole circle of life thing.

Xena and other Trouble Makers

In the early 2000s, an astronomer named Mike Brown found a new planet orbiting further out than Pluto.  It was all a big buzz and it a moment of jest, he named it Xena.  In fact, he did not only find one, but three fairly close together (tiome wise, not distance).  One has already been talked about on this blog (Makemake).  Since then, I've heard another side of Mike Brown from fellow blog friend Laurele.  It appears that he takes great pleasure in being the one who "killed Pluto."  Since I love Pluto, I'll not delve into his cute little story about how his daughter helped name them.

Anyway, back to the story at hand, Xena began to stir up a lot of trouble.  Xena was a little smaller than Pluto and the question became, "how small can a planet be?"  Several theories came up and people argued this way and that and some came up with planet definitions that included Charon (Pluto's moon), Ceres, and even our own moon.  Others tried to find an even path, while others went so far as to say that Mercury was in danger of losing its planet status.  The end result, as you know is to ban Pluto and all the other planet-like objects out there from being planets.  This has caused a lot of debate and hard feelings.  They also named these smaller planet-like objects dwarf planets, which has also caused quite a stir.  They then named Xena, and all other dwarf planets beyond Pluto, Plutoids, which, as you can guess, has caused all types of problems.

So, what do you officially name a dwarf planet that has caused so many issues?  Yep, Eris.  Xena is now named after the goddess of discord herself.  Eris is the one, according to some stories, that started the whole Trojan War by throwing that golden apple at the wedding reception causing Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite to argue over who was the most fairest.

The planet - err - dwarf planet, has these characteristics:

• It is 96.7 times farther away from the sun than Earth is.
• One Eris year = 557 Earth years
• It doesn't orbit in the same plane as the other planets.  Instead it warps at a weird angle.
• It has one moon named Dysnomia.  Dysnomia is the daughter of Eris in Greek mythology.  To further connect this moon to the planet, the name means "lawlessness," and was picked for the double reference to Lucy Lawless, who played Xena in the TV series.

One more stop in space, and we are done in our space theme.  The last stop is the best, though.

The Horn of What??????

O.K, this next treasure of Britain just sounds weird -

The Horn of Bran Galed, the Niggard (Korn Bran Galed o'r Gogledd) - First of all, the Horn of Bran just sounds like some fiber diet plan from the Celtic age.  Next, well, the word niggard has not had too much of an enjoyable time in modern day, considering what it sounds like.  In fact, a teacher in North Carolina got in trouble several years back for teaching it.  For those of you who are unaware, the word niggard means stingy.  It has no connection to the modern day racial slang.  It is Old English in origin.  

The teacher mentioned earlier had to promise to never teach the word again because it was so close to the racial slur.  She also had to attend sensitivity training, write a letter of apology to the parents of her students, and have a letter of reprimand put in her personnel file.  The school counselors were brought into the classroom to help the students deal with a traumatic event.  There are only three other times I have ever heard the word used.  It was used by a politician several years ago (I forget for which U.S. state) who said that we should not be niggardly with our tax cuts.  He was not elected.  It is also used in Macbeth and in Beowulf.

Back to the treasure.  Whatever drink you wish for, it is in there.  You want ale?  Got it.  You want wine?  Got it.  Heck, it even has Tab, which is pretty hard to get nowadays.

Hercules even had the horn for a little while.  According to some authors, Hercules took the horn from the head of a centaur.  The wife of the centaur soaked a shirt in her husband's blood and gave it Hercules.  When he put it on, he was burned to death (more like acid burn, not fire).  I've heard this story before, but it was always Hercule's wife who gave him the shirt, being under the impression that the blood would keep him faithful to her while he was away in battle.

Either way, the message is clear - centaur blood = bad     Warn your kids!

And now that I have successfully warned you of the dangers of such, I'll see you later!

Sunday Funnies