In this last paragraph, the magic herbs Medea made for him are so powerful that he could keep the bulls charmed. In the next section, Iason grabs the dragon’s teeth and plants them into the field, and warriors grow up from them: “[121] Taking then the serpent's teeth out of a brazen helmet he sowed them broadcast in the new-plowed field. The moist earth softened these seeds that were steeped in virulent poison and the teeth swelled up and took new forms.” Then Iason puts the dragon into a slumber: “[149] …Jason, successful, sprinkled on his crest Lethean juices of a magic herb, and then recited thrice the words which bring deep slumber, potent words which would becalm the storm-tossed ocean, and would stop the flow of the most rapid rivers of our earth: and slowly slumber sealed the dragon's eyes. While that great monster slept, the hero took the Golden Fleece.” This preceding paragraph may illustrate the use of opium to charm the dragon to steal the mushrooms, as it’s the dragon who guards the treasure. Next, Iason’s father Aeson is dying and Iason is sad with tears and pleads to Medea if she can give his father some of his life’s years in order that his father may life longer. Medea performed a ritual with the body of Aeson, which is described in the next section, which has all kinds of metaphoric overtones: “[251] old Aeson's worn out body—and when she had buried him in a deep slumber by her spells, as if he were a dead man, she then stretched him out upon a bed of herbs. She ordered Jason and his servants thence, and warned them not to spy upon her rites, with eyes profane. As soon as they retired, Medea, with disheveled hair and wild abandon, as a Bacchanalian, paced times three around the blazing altars, while she dipped her torches, splintered at the top, into the trenches, dark: with blood, and lit the dipt ends in the sacred altar flames. Times three she purified the ancient man with flames, and thrice with water, and three times with Sulphur —as the boiling mixture seethed and bubbled in the brazen cauldron near. And into this, acerbic juices, roots, and flowers and seeds—from vales Hemonian—and mixed elixirs, into which she cast stones of strange virtue from the Orient, and sifted sands of ebbing ocean's tide; white hoar-frost, gathered when the moon was full, the nauseating flesh and luckless wings of the uncanny screech-owl, and the entrails from a mysterious animal that changed from wolf to man, from man to wolf again; the scaly sloughing of a water-snake, the medic liver of a long-lived stag, and the hard beak and head of an old crow which was alive nine centuries before; these, and a thousand nameless things the foreign sorceress prepared and mixed, and blended all together with a branch of peaceful olive, old and dry with years.” This last section reveals a lot. A magic cauldron is used first of all. The mixture includes entrails from a wolf-man, the skin of a watersnake, head of a crow, liver of a stag, and wings of a screech owl. All of these represent metaphors for the mushroom. The shapeshifting wolfman, the bird and serpent, Lilith the screech owl, the deer with horns. Next, Aeson was given immortality!: |
“[285] Medea, when she saw this wonder took her unsheathed knife and cut the old man's throat; then, letting all his old blood out of him she filled his ancient veins with rich elixir. As he received it through his lips or wound, his beard and hair no longer white with age, turned quickly to their natural vigor, dark and lustrous; and his wasted form renewed, appeared in all the vigor of bright youth, no longer lean and sallow, for new blood coursed in his well-filled veins.—Astonished, when released from his deep sleep, and strong in youth, his memory assured him, such he was years four times ten before that day!” Next, Medea flees and reaches Athens, and we learn about the origin of the Greek speaking peoples: “She flew over Astypalaea, the city of Eurypylus, where the women of the island, of Cos, acquired horns when they abused Hercules, as he and his company departed: over Rhodes, beloved of Phoebus: and the Telchines of the city of Ialysos on Rhodes, whose eyes corrupted everything they looked on. (Evil eye / One-eyed vision) “At last, the dragon’s wings brought her to Corinth, the ancient Ephyre, and its Pirenian spring. Here, tradition says, that in earliest times, human bodies sprang from fungi, swollen by rain.” Or, in the alternative, we read, “Borne on the wings of her enchanted dragons, she arrived at Corinth, whose inhabitants, 'tis said, from many mushrooms, watered by the rain sprang into being’,” depending on which interpretation you are reading. (190) This previous myth of the original creation of man, from the early Greeks, is very revealing. Pan was a mortal god of shepherds, hunters, forests and meadows whose Roman equivalent was Faunus. Pan is a Satyr (Centaur) or nature spirit and thus represents fertility. He would spend his days playing panpipes and chasing nymphs. Pan was the son of Hermes and a number of different goddesses depending on the origin of the tale. He was usually depicted as having horns on his head, goat’s feet and a tail. Fir-trees were sacred to him, as the nymph Pitys, whom he loved, had been metamorphosed into that tree, (191) and the sacrifices offered to him consisted of cows, rams, lambs, milk, and honey. (192) Although he was one of the lesser deities of the Greek pantheon, his following was widespread as there were more than one hundred worship centers associated with Pan throughout ancient Greece. (193) (190) Ovid, Metamorphosis, Bk VII :350-403 (191) Propert. i. 18. 20 (192) Theocrit. v. 58; Anthol. Palat. ii. 630, 697, vi. 96, 239, vii. 59; http://www.theoi.com/Georgikos/Pan.html (193) Language of the Goddess, p. 177 |