– Feral Boy

Nice to see your comment at The Crowded Handbasket. I’m actually not blogging there much. I’m still at Songs of Unforgetting.

Visit me there instead.

I like the concept of the archetypes being an aid to communicating with the Gods, although I do think that we are talking to Persons - whether they are manifestations of something else is not that important to me, since if they are then that’s apparently how the something else wants to communicate with us.

– Feral Boy

More importantly, to whom is the meaning obvious? All of us have different perspectives when it comes to symbols. If an image can be interpreted in only one way, it is a sign. Part of the definition of a symbol is its ambiguity. Thus the swastika is the Nationalist Party to some — and also stands for the sun (the interpretation given to its representation in art from 40,000+ BCE). A pomegranate means vulva to you — to a Hebrew, it may be “… a symbol for righteousness, because it is said to have 613 seeds which corresponds with the 613 mitzvot or commandments of the Torah.” (found in Wikipedia, I have not verified that). “Pomegranate” is also the source of the word “grenade”, because the shrapnel produced by a grenade is evocative of the its many seeds — yet another association, with death instead of life, or sex.

In short, there can be almost as many meanings for a symbol as there are beings to contemplate it. And thanks for invoking Freud, E.P. He encouraged deeper contemplation of symbols, even though his own perspective turned out to be rather limited in the end.

– Feral Boy

p.s. I don’t necessarily believe the Gods can be reduced to symbols or archetypes of the consciousness. But I DO think that the archetypes are the interface that we use to communicate with them. It is MUCH easier to talk with another Person, than to “life, the universe, and everything.”

Um… Hades is a God. They can’t be reduced to archetypes or symbols for human psychology, any more than people can.

the pomegranate is what??seed/sperm in the womb/vulva. That is obvious

Um, again… not to me, it’s not. Nor to my wife, who has been reading this thread (and who is an authentic woman - I promise ).

I do not believe that all mythology is self-referential, nor that the world is a symbol of human sexuality, nor for that matter that the Divine can necessarily be reduced down to a single entity, whether that be God or Goddess.

Sometimes a pomegranate is just a pomegranate.

But who or what is Hades?

Another aspect of self? The shadow? The animus? or the male aspect? or is this myth about rape? In actual rape myths there is a different kind of transformation that occurs (and this is true when men are transformed as well)

When the nymph (Daphene?) turned into a tree to escape rape that myth said what rape /unwanted advances do/does to women not that a woman became a tree. The myths about changing/ transforming into something other than human are about what the actions of others do to the soul of the acted upon.

All myth concerns the self acted upon and the elemental reactions - sometimes there are two different entities but when we talk about the UNDERWORLD we are always talking about different aspects of the self, not different entities –subconscious as opposed to consciousness - inner as opposed to outer.

The sacred marriage is what ? - the pomegranate is what??seed/sperm in the womb/vulva. That is obvious - what is more important is what this symbolizes to the INDIVIDUAL. What do we humans do the pomegranate — We EAT it. and become nourished by it. Drink of my body eat of my blood — what does the woman do every month.? What is the Source of all Life?? God — Then who is God? Who nourishes life with her vulva’s blood? Where does that life come from? Now you are talking about the sacred mystery which is what or who is God.