As most of you are aware, since almost all of you who come here are Ozzers, the Echidna is a cute-as-all-fuck weird hedgehog-like creature native to Australia. Only it doesn't do live birth; it lays eggs.
Recently I discovered the Echidna is also the name for a diety from Greek mythos, a half-woman, half-snake who begat a bunch of evil monsters that spewed into the mythos in order to have something for heroes to beat up and thus preen themselves in front of vacuous highly suggestible virgins.
Echidna's spawn included Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guards Hades, the Lernean Hydra, and the Crommyonian Sow.
So ... who keeps tapping the Echidna to make the other half of the toxic love stew that is their spawn?
Why it's Typhon, unsurprisingly known as 'the father of all monsters'.
He was no prize chicken himself, though as irony would have it he was covered in wings. Here's a redacted slice from his wiki;
Typhon was described ... as the largest and most fearsome of all creatures. His human upper half reached as high as the stars. His hands reached east and west and, instead of a human head, he had a hundred dragon heads; some however depict him as having a human head and the dragon heads being attached to his hands instead of fingers ... His bottom half was gigantic viper coils that could reach the top of his head when stretched out and made a hissing noise. His whole body was covered in wings, and fire flashed from his eyes.
I am however struggling at working out the bio-mechanics required for those two to hook up given their differing sizes and physiology. And it seems odd they don't spit out children like them with dogs, pigs, and gorgons popped on out instead. Also I suspect Typhon would be somewhat hampered in the foreplay department as he either has a hundred dragon heads or dragon headed fingers and I simply cannot see how possessing then using either is going to get the Echidna foaming at her snake hole.
Maybe she laid them as eggs and he kind of hosed them down in a giant love spray?
Apparently Zeus later imprisoned Typhon under Mount Etna, an active volcano.
I guess that means if the mountain ever fires up then it's probably Typhon and the Echidna going at it in the conjugal trailer.
The whole live birth thing is a side issue when it come to greek and roman mythology. Good examples include aphrodite and athena. Maybe the thousands of dragon heads or fingers are cut off by echidna and voila demon spawn (similar to athena) or maybe typhon jacks off into the sea and voila more demon spawn that lands near echidna (ala aphrodite).
ReplyDeleteOooo well that would make sense.
ReplyDeleteOf course normal coitus --- after a fashion --- happens too. Zeus runs around, often in animal form, schlepping anything that moves. But maybe that's a god on mortal thing?
Who emerged from someone's forehead? I know someone did.
Athena was cut out of Zeus' head. The stories of Zeus & his conquests are kinda funny and incredibly strange. Impregnating a woman through golden rain; leda & the swan.
ReplyDeleteHomer's 'Theogony' details how the deities were created in all their strangeness
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ReplyDelete(sorry, typo)
ReplyDelete"Impregnating a woman through golden rain"
So ... that's where that came from. Nice.
I do wonder though the process of how all this mad mythos was developed. I presume it was someone who had a religious experience then told others and they all thought it was the shizzle. But so much of it is utterly mad. I mean ... wasn't there a vetting process?
'So then Zeus fully gave her the golden rain...' (shakes head) 'Oh yeah'.
'Um ... and that made her pregnant?'
'Yep'
'I see...'
'Put it in the mythos!'
'Um ... even with our pre-enlightenment thinking and our lack of knowledge of physiology I'm not sure that's how it works.'
'He's Zeus! He can put a baby in anything. Anyway, I am the high priest'
'Well, that you are. I'll put it in!'
Ah, that explains it. It was a management decision...
Given that the classical myths and Greek society have foundations in the Minoan and Mycenaean socieities, I wonder if some of these myths, especially those to do with heros (think Herakles, Perseus, Bellerophon, et al), and possibly those to do with births that happened unexpectedly, were the result of local myths.. I wonder if clever women attributed the birth of new offspring to the deities, so that she didn't have to give up the child, or become a social pariah..
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how much was known by the Minoan and Mycenaean peoples about the physiology of birth, but to my mind it sounds kinda plausible. Especially given that some of these myths had been passed on in oral traditions for some generations..
Doesn't the idea of oral tradition though blow your mind. How is it that myth doesn't end up like the fag end of a game of Chinese Whispers? Countless generations telling the same tales without change or variation? I can't see how that would be. It would be like a great river I suppose. The central line of the myth exists but its banks shift over generations and stuff is added in and other stuff fades away.
ReplyDeleteNPR in the states covered Ray Bradbury's passing over a number of their shows. Interviews with his biographer and call ins from fans. It was an absolute delight to hear people praising a man that gave them a start or a pathway into the rich field of fantasy and sci-fi. Someone quoted Bradbury as saying 'We're all sons and daughters of time' and that what it is to be so lucky to be here at all and see the universe in all its glory and to write about how it makes us feel.
I like to think the storytellers of ye olde felt the same way. I guess such story folk were the equivalent of a TV in pre-leccy times and they used their tales as a means of avoiding having to grub in the mud like the rest of the 99 per cent.
I forget where I read about this theory but I love the idea that the reason incense became synonymous with ancient temples was because it was the priests covering up the pong of all the animal sacrifices provided by the plebs that they were slowly eating their way through behind the curtain...