Welcome to r/GreekMythology

Hi so I’m making my sorta ish maybe I think self insert goddess, and I got two questions 1: she is the goddess of sleep, surprises, can there be multiple gods of one thing? Cause I know there is a god of sleep already 2: I need help deciding what she should be the Greek goddess of so I would like to share my story on her, can I?

So from my understanding, Greek mythology was mainly passed on orally, with different stories in different regions which also presumably changed over time.

What we have is some pieces surviving literature and of course these differ and sometimes contradict each other.

Do we know at all how representative this literature is of overall Greek mythology? Are we looking at a tiny fragment out of thousand of lost stories and variations? Or was there a decent level of consistency across regions and time? Is there anyway to gauge either way?

She’s just cool like that 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️😜😜😜

As in who is the biggest troll/asshole of the Greek gods, I feel like it would be Hermes or Apollo but idk much about the minor gods to make an informed decision.

Is he the king because he’s the most powerful, or is he the most powerful because he’s the king?

Does greek mythology have an equivalent of the dead souls returning to earth?

Again, I tried to go with less explored traits of the deity. His color scheme is based on Greek red-figure pottery. I decided to go with the older, wingless version of his caduceus. His hat is based off of a Greek’s traveler cap and accented with rooster feathers to symbolize his nature as a herald. His cloak brooch is a tortoise shell in reference to his sacred animal. His gapped teeth harken to Bugs Bunny and the mischievous nature that both characters embody.

An old drawing I made of my version of Hypnos and Thanathos...

She tells him to get naked, put on her clothes and get in the water. This works to throw Poseidon off his trail

Hello,

I thought I knew at least a little bit about Greek mythology, but after properly looking into the last month... I was very, very wrong. I know nothing.

Can anyone point me in the direction of any sort of film I can watch that is accurate? I only learnt last night that 'Hercules' was terribly incorrect.

Thank you.

Hi guys, I’ve been absolutely hooked on Stephen Fry’s Mythos series, and I’m wondering if someone could recommend me similar retellings of other stories (perhaps of Jason, Hercules, Aeneid) just looking for fun suggestions.

Both Greek and Roman myths/legends/stories/history retold are very welcome

So, just got home from my first trip to Athens. I (m50) went with my son (m27) who paid for the trip. I have wanted to go to Athens since I was about 11 and first discovered Greek myths and classical history. I was dumbfounded when I first saw the Acropolis/Parthenon, when exiting the metro, and the next day we went up and spent an amazing morning round the site. At one point we sat facing the Parthenon and I was overcome with emotion (embarrassingly). Just wondered what other people’s reactions were on their first visit.

The article is intended primarily for Game Masters who play RPG in systems inspired by Lovecraft's works, such as Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green. However, I hope that other fans of cosmic horror (and Greek mythology) will also find something for themselves here.

I invite You to read and discuss.

Since an article is quite long, I will start with the presentation of the content:

Typhon – a classic but forgotten abomination

Zeus – embodied energy

In his house underground, dead Hades waits in sleep

Apollo – beautiful, deadly light

Hermes is the gate, Hermes is the key

Typhon – a classic but forgotten abomination

Modern works drawing on Greek mythology usually make Hades (completely senseless) or Kronos (a little more) the Big Bad, but they forget about Zeus’s greatest enemy – Typhon. After defeating the titans and then the gigants, the Olympian gods had to face the main boss on the way to dominating the world – Typhon. Here is an example of its description: It was larger than the largest mountains, its head touched the stars. When he stretched out his hands, one reached the eastern ends of the world and the other reached the western ends. Instead of fingers, he had a hundred dragon heads. From the waist down he had a tangle of vipers (yay, tentacles!) and wings at his shoulders. His eyes were shooting out flames. In other versions of the myth, Typhon was a flying, hundredheaded dragon. In any case – appearance and stature worthy of the Great Old One. Typhon attacked Olympus, and all the gods except Zeus fled in panic. The supreme god took up the fight… and lost it. Only in the second duel did he manage to defeat Typhon, but not kill him – he only imprisoned him, hitting him with a mountain which is known as Etna. And volcanic activity is the result of Typhon’s anger, trying to break free.

Typhon equaled the lord of heaven not only in strength, but in fertility. His wife was Echidna, about whom Hesiod wrote: „She also gave birth to another creature, invincible, huge, unlike neither men nor immortal gods, in a hollow cave – the divine violent Echidna, half a sharp-eyed young girl, with beautiful cheeks, half a huge snake, a great and powerful, spotted, cruel – in the depths of the holy land. This pair spawned many, if not most, of the monsters found in Greek mythology. Their offspring were very diverse and strange, as befits the spawn of enemies of the divine order, including:

– Ladon, the hundred-headed dragon who never slept and guarded the apples that gave immortality,

– Cerberus – we all know the dog guarding the gates of hell… but not all of us know that, according to some accounts, it had not three heads, but as many as 50, it was also covered with scales, and it had a snake for a tail… so what does this have to do with a dog?

– Scylla – this lady inherited the most from the human, beautiful part of Echidna… at least initially, but eventually, as a result of various perturbations, she turned from a beautiful nymph to something like her siblings, becoming a six-headed sea beast, so hideous, according to Homer, that even the gods could not stand sight of her – she dwelt in a cave, from where she opened her mouth to devour the crews of ships,

– Gorgons – I mean, those ladies with snake hair, not monstrous bulls. Medusa was one of them – the story that Athena turned her priestess into a monster as punishment for being raped by Poseidon is an invention of later poets,

– Lernaean Hydra – a multi-headed monster with many reptilian or human heads. In place of each severed head, two others grew, and in addition, the main head was completely immortal – therefore, after chopping off the mortal heads, Heracles had to burn the stumps and bury the immortal, still hissing head underground. Hydra’s breath was poisonous, – various other creatures, such as the Sphinx, the dog Ortus, the Nemean Lion or the Chimera.

Each of these descendants has the potential to be portrayed as an Eldritch abomination in its own right. To be precise – according to some accounts, the father of these creatures (and Echidna herself) wasn’t Typhon, but a monstrous, ancient (older than Poseidon) sea god, Phorcys. How to use Typhon? Well, Typhon clearly has the potential to be a Great Old One, imprisoned by… Nodens? Some other Elder God? Weak gods of humanity? Maybe his cult is trying to free him from Etna? What if he succeeds? What might distinguish Typhon from many other Great Old Ones? I would recommend focusing on his monster progenitor aspect – if he manages to reunite with Echidna, they will immediately start spawning various blasphemous beasts in series.

Zeus – embodied Energy

In the current pop culture, Zeus is associated primarily as a mega-fucker, who will miss no woman. I propose to combine this aspect with his main role - the ruler of lightning - and create something more eldritch.

I propose Zeus as the embodiment of energy - all energy, and therefore not only electricity (lightning), but also life energy. Its influence is so strong that its mere presence causes women to become pregnant, giving birth to "heroes" characterized by great strength, aggression and psychopathic tendencies. It has been noticed that these heroes very often get into fights with the offspring of Typhon - perhaps this means that Zeus does not impregnate women by accident, it is part of his plan to cleanse the Earth of the offspring of his archenemy... Or maybe it is a coincidence.

Hera, the "jealous wife" of Zeus, who is known for persecuting his "mistresses" and offspring, is a being sent (by who or what?) to limit the Thunderer's breeding influence. However, while in his presence, she succumbed to his influence and gave birth to Zeus' spawn.

It happened once that Zeus' excess energy caused him to produce a new creature - Athena - without impregnating a mortal woman. She is the goddess of wisdom, and in the computer age we know that information is organized energy.

The myth of Semele is important here. Well, Semele, a demigoddess (daughter of Harmonia) became one of Zeus' lovers. Hera took the form of a mortal woman and persuaded Semele to test Zeus - if he really was a god, let him appear to her in his divine form. Zeus reluctantly granted Semele's wish, revealing himself as a thunderstorm. It turned out that even the demigoddess could not stand the true form of Zeus and she was burned to ashes, but her fetus - Dionysus - survived. Zeus placed the baby in his own body, where it matured. This story shows that Zeus isn't actually a muscular, bearded guy - it's just one of many forms he takes when dealing with mortals, like a bull or a golden shower.

In his house underground, dead Hades waits in sleep

According to records, Hades is the "brother" of Zeus. Sometimes he is even called "the other Zeus" to avoid saying his fearsome name. Instead of floating around the world, Hades rests deep in the bowels of the Earth. Instead of impregnating human women, the energy emanating from Hades has other effects. It gives the corpse a semblance of life. In the past, Hades' servants carried away corpses and left them around his "throne". Revenants are merely shadows of the people they were in life. Their feelings are muted, only chaotic fragments of memory swirling in their rotten brains.

The direct "management" of the underworld - if it can be called that - is handled by Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus. In life, they were half-human-half-divine hybrids, which allowed their reanimated corpses to retain slightly more consciousness. Most of the undead just wander aimlessly around the underground. However, every now and then Hades shows interest in one of them - unfortunately for him. Such animates are subjected to various grotesque experiments. They can be burned with fire, broken with a wheel... Sometimes the experiments take a more sophisticated form - for example, by trapping the creature in one place and leaving water and food just beyond its reach. Some people believe that in this way they punish the living who committed some terrible crimes and sins during their lives - but does god care about human morality? Perhaps the experiments are intended to test how much of human feelings, at least the most primitive ones, such as pain or desire, remain in animate creatures? But why?

There are also rumors that Hades kidnaps living people, especially young women (the source of the myth of Persephone). What does he do with them?

For some reason, Hades is sensitive to music, falls into a trance under its influence and is oblivious to his surroundings, to the point that he does not object even when someone tries to escape from his kingdom - of course, not every melody is effective (reference to myth of Orpheus and Eurydice).

The underworld is also a place of imprisonment for inhuman beings who, for some reason, the Olympian gods want to keep locked up - primarily the overthrown Titans, led by Kronos. It is possible that Hades' original role is to be their guardian. Interestingly, Hades made Cerberus, the spawn of Typhon, his servant.

The River Styx flows through the underground... Something more than a river. This stream of fluid is a sentient being, older than the Olympians - it was already here when Hades arrived. She is referred to as the "goddess of hatred" and emerges from beings full of aggression, which the ancients gave names such as Zelos, Nike, Bia, and Kratos. Supposedly, immersion in the waters (if they can be called waters) of the Styx made the immersed creature immune to all wounds (but at what cost?). Interestingly, there was actually a river on the Earth's surface called the Styx (now called Mavroneri, which means "Black Water" in Greek). Since ancient times, its waters have been considered dangerous, and modern science has confirmed that in the rocks of this river you can find a bacterium that produces a highly toxic substance, calicheamicin, causing DNA damage, with initial symptoms of weakness, fatigue and pain, followed by the collapse of internal organs and the nervous system. , ultimately leading to death.

How to use Hades and his kingdom in the scenario?

Maybe Hades fell asleep when the star of the Olympian gods dimmed... And now he woke up (does the revival of the Hellenic cult have something to do with it?). His servants kidnap the living and the dead to an underground kingdom, maybe the players' companion was kidnapped? Will the player be able to sneak into the underground, avoid meeting its inhabitants and free his friend? Such an expedition gives the opportunity to encounter "shadows" of famous people among the revenants (especially from Greek antiquity) - perhaps, if the characters have historical knowledge about them, they will be able to awaken their memories of human life for a moment and persuade them to help?

Maybe the players are part of an archaeological expedition to explore the newly discovered, yet unexplored ruins of an ancient Greek civilization... It turns out that those ruins are the entrance to the kingdom of Hades. Was the expedition leader unaware? Or maybe he deliberately led his companions to this spooky place? Maybe he is a follower of Hades, providing him with fresh bodies... Or maybe he wants to slip through and free the shadow of a loved one or dive into the Styx, and the companions are to distract Cerberus and other abominations? If players go to the underground kingdom, it is worth getting acquainted with musical magic, the legacy of Orpheus (and the interesting beliefs of the Orphic cult, which differ significantly from mainstream Greek mythology).

Hades may be connected to ghouls. They don't necessarily have to be his followers or subjects - maybe they pay tribute to him from some of the corpses? Maybe they are just aware of its existence? On the other hand, they may constitute a false lead - player characters familiar with the Mythos may assume that the corpses disappearing from the cemetery are definitely the work of ghouls, when this time they are innocent.

Apollo – beautiful, deadly light

Apollo is the most beautiful of the gods. He is a solar deity, called Phoibos 'The Shining One'. He is also a deity who brings epidemics using arrows from his bow. Interestingly, he was probably originally the god of violent death - the Greeks derived his name from ἀπόλλυμι (apóllymi) "I destroy, I kill" (the association with the biblical destructive Angel of the Abbyss - Appolyon/Abaddon from the Apocalypse is appropriate).

So, we have a beautiful, luminous figure, bringing with it disease and destruction. My first thought? Radioactivity. There is a myth in which the satyr Marsyas challenges Apollo to a musical duel. When Marsyas loses, Apollo skins him - could this be a reflection of the skin peeling off the body as a result of radiation sickness? Ultimately, Apollo is the spawn of Zeus - but his energy manifests itself in a different way.

But Apollo also patronizes other domains - art (especially music) and oracles. Perhaps part of how his energy manifests itself to mortal senses is through vibrations that create beautiful, trance inducing music? It may be tempting - to establish contact with Apollo, but only a little, to experience a creative revelation but avoid destruction... But whoever once looks at the beautiful light of Apollo and hears his music, cannot give up further contact with such magnificence...

Let's say - strange events occur in the city. Artists begin to create amazing works, while the predictions of local fortune tellers begin to come true. But each of the people affected by this miraculous inspiration is found dead after some time, with traces of radiation sickness...

Or maybe the characters decide that they need to momentarily summon a fragment of Apollo's power to gain the knowledge they need to complete the scenario? An avatar of Apollo can be summoned by playing music with vibrations similar to his own (as the unfortunate Marsyas discovered) or by inhaling the fumes of a special, intoxicating substance (as the deity's chief priestess, Pythia, did). Will the characters find the willpower to content themselves with obtaining the scraps of necessary knowledge and break off contact with the Shining One before it burns them out?

According to legends, the son of Apollo was Orpheus, the precursor of the Orphic sect, whose esoteric beliefs differed significantly from the "mainstream" we know from most studies of Greek mythology. One of its followers was Pythagoras (who was not only an outstanding mathematician, but also the founder of a religious group that believed that mathematics was the key to unlocking the secrets of the universe - here we have a typically Lovecraftian mixture of science and mysticism).

An actually existing object related to the cult of Apollo is the Omphalos, an ancient artifact in the shape of a semi-circular stone, which was considered the navel of the world by the ancient Greeks. It was the stone that Kronos swallowed (and then vomited) instead of Zeus. Later, Apollo buried the dragon Python he had killed under it, and Omphalos became the most important place in the Delphic sanctuary and was considered an object enabling direct contact with the gods. Although the sanctuary itself was destroyed, Omfalos survived and is now in the museum at Delphi (but, of course, it can be loaned to a museum located at the site of the action).

Hermes is the gate, Hermes is the key

Hermes is known as the messenger of the gods, which easily leads us to the Mask of Nyarlathotep, especially since Hermes is also a trickster, fond of playing practical jokes (and patronizing thieves and fraudsters), which may lead to further associations with the Crawling Chaos. But his role as a messenger was greatly expanded by believers and philosophers.

First of all, he became the patron of all kinds of travel and transport - even to the afterlife, as a psychopomp escorting souls to Hades. He is the patron of all roads and intersections.

Secondly - the messenger is a transmitter of knowledge. He was credited with the invention of numbers and letters. In later centuries, Hermes Trismegistos (Hermes the Thrice Great) was created by combining Hermes with Egyptian and Judeo-Christian beliefs. The term "Hermetic" comes from him, and it also became the center of the occult belief system called Hermeticism (note, contrary to what priests and preachers say - "occult" does not mean "Satanic"). Hermes Trismegistos was said to be an archetypal sage and magician, he was credited with authoring 36,529 books containing all the knowledge and wisdom of the ancient world - primarily the so-called Tabula Smaragdina and the Corpus Hermeticum treatises. Hermeticism combined astronomy/astrology, alchemy, medicine and psychology - that is, it was a mishmash of mystical superstitions and (proto)science - more or less like magic in Mythos (though, of course, the real possibilities of the Hermetists were much more modest). Interestingly, many Hermetic concepts, which at first glance sound like esoteric gibberish, have in a sense been revived in modern science. The Hermetists believed that matter was composed of four elements - fire, water, earth and air (sometimes a fifth "element" was added - will/soul/mind - symbolized by a pentagram). This meant that by changing the proportion of an element in a given substance, one material could be transformed into another - hence the search for a way to transmute lead into gold. As science developed, this concept was rejected as a pipe dream, treating the possibility of transmutation as a pipe dream... Until it turned out that yes, all matter consists of the same elements - electrons, neutrons and protons - so changing their configuration allows you to change the essence of the material. And modern chemists managed to transform it into gold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation although such a procedure is unprofitable from an economic point of view (energy consumption significantly exceeds the value of the gold produced... but for a being with unlimited, from a human point of view, energy sources?). Concept of the four elements was somehow revived in the form of 4 elements (earth = solid state, water = liquid, air = gas, fire = plasma). Another Hermetic concept was "As above, so below." It sounds like mystical gibberish about the unity of man with the heavens, or sympathetic magic... But the development of science has led to the conclusion that in fact the microcosm is often an amazing reflection of the macrocosm - the structure of the atom resembles the structure of the solar system.

So, we have a being that, on the one hand, is omnipresent, embodies movement both in our world and between planes of existence, one could say that it is a key and a gate. At the same time, it is also a source of secret knowledge, which at first glance is philosophical, superstitious gibberish, but turns out to contain bits of science that go beyond the understanding of the people who possess it. Who else but Yog Sothoth? Well, possibly Hastur, patron of wizards and interstellar travel.

According to Greek mythology, Hermes was the father of Pan, a strange creature. The Pans had the body and face of a man, was all hairy, had goat legs, a tail, a beard and horns. Doesn't this description remind you of Yog-Sothot's most famous spawn, Willubur Whateley? Of course, Willbur's lower half wasn't exactly goatish. The Pan's scream aroused incredible, irresistible fear among people and animals (hence the word "panic). Pan used to play the syrinx - "the Pan's flute". One day, Pan fell in love with the nymph Syrinks. And she's not in it. Pan chased her and almost caught her, but Syrinks turned into a river reed. At that moment, the wind blew and a beautiful sound came from the reed blades. The Pan plucked the reeds and made an instrument from them, which he called a syringa. A lovely story... What is the Mythical message of this legend? What if Pan was the spawn of Yog-Sothoth, and one of the incredible powers he inherited from his daddy was to make sounds that terrified earthly beings into maddening terror? And what if it was possible to construct a musical instrument that imitated this effect... and preferably made from the bones of a human woman who had previously been reduced to terror?

There is another interesting story related to Pan, told by Plutarch. According to him, Pan lived for 9,720 years. During the reign of the Roman Emperor Tiberius, sailors passing by the Echinad Islands heard a voice that ordered the helmsman named Thamus, after reaching land, to announce, according to this interpretation: "The Great Pan is dead." The sailors hesitated for a long time, and finally, reaching land near Palodes, they announced the death of the god. At these words, there were complaints and terrible groans from all sides.

Let me add that, according to some followers of the ancient Orphic cult, Pan was the creator of the earth, which he separated from the sea, and the individual elements of the Universe were equivalents of parts of Pan's body. Have they confused Pan, the offspring of Yog-Sothoth, with his father, who is "all in all"?

And of course, since we are talking about the Pan, we cannot fail to mention the book "The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen, one of the precursors of cosmic horror, highly appreciated by Lovecraft.

This article is just part of the full brochure containing Lovecraftian inspirations from the real life beliefs, history and science. Brochure is available for free here: https://adeptus7.itch.io/lovecraftian-inspirations-from-real-life-and-beliefs

Ok hear me out, so i have seen people say Hades x Persephone is just modern people make brainless ships about anything but that just isnt true like sure she was kidnaped but nowhere in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter does it say nor does she say that she was raped but people will just shrug that off and say "iT wAs oBViuS" but no because if it was it would tell us either way and second when Minthe says she will win Hades Persephone dosnt let her live because if she did hates being with Hades she would let her be with Hades but no she straight up kills her and don't tell me just because she cheated on Hades with Adonis does it mean she hates Hades

People talk to much about the twelve gods, but not to much about the others.

Of course, for one story a random river god, or a Okeanid nymph have, a olympian has 100 more, but is not about this i am talking about. What i am talking about is how people just take the 12 gods as representing the entire godhood.

Like, "all the gods are pricks", even trough a lot of gods like Atlas and the river Asopos (just to name a few) also falled victim to the 12 Olympians, let say, more unfair actions. People like to say mortals suffered in the hand of the "gods". But they are just taking the more cruel stories of some of the Olympians and saying all the gods are like that. What about Gaia that feeds all mortals everyday? Or Helios that shines upon manking? Or Nyx that protects us from the fears we have of the dark? Or the rivers that gives us water? Or the Nereids that save people from drowing?

Basically, nature gods are the most underrated deities of greek mythology. If people stopped focusing to much only in 80% of the olympians, they could see more beauty in the myths and the real world itself.

I have seen the Staff Of Aesculapius in someeee places, just not as much the Caduceus 🤣🤣

Sorry to bother everyone but i have some difficulties to find a reliable source for the description of the god hades in the epic, tragedy and commedy of acient Greece. I know 1 of is epithet is the invisible but damn! I can find what he does and to whom but not a description of who the god is, i know i can use statues and mosaics but i need a text to reference from to make the citations. Can someone please help me? Ps. English is not my first language so please have patience with me.

For the sake of the question, lets say that everyone who tries to stop you from leaving where to allow you.

Firstly, you begin in Tartarus where you cross the river of Phlegethon into the fields of sorrow, which lead into the Asphodel Meadows. Then you reach Cerberus where you are now standing by the river of Acheron, which Charon pilots you across. You have now left hades and is standing in north-western Greece.

If I'm missing something or wrote the wrong order, I would appreciate the help a lot!

From what I've gathered, the greek gods were mostly sculptured with small penises to show their intellectual superiority. Big penis are a signal of "a lustful, unrestrained and unintelligent man", and were mostly carved on Priapus and Satyrs.

But then, how did they unify this image of the gods with all the stories of rape? They explicitly state that it was rape, so how can a rapist god be above being lustful and unrestrained?

A few sources in case you're interested: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-ancient-greek-sculptures-small-penises https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_penis_size https://colorfulifesite.wordpress.com/2016/06/11/why-do-classical-greek-sculptures-have-small-penises-translated-from-spanish/

Edit: grammar & sources

i mean if she was born, wouldnt she be a baby (as Dionysus was given to hermes to raise?) then how could a baby help one in labor?

i was just wondering why is 12 is this much of an important number? like hestia stepping down for dionysus so the olimpians wouldnt be 13, why 12 labours of herakles and ect?