Greek mythology

Greek Mythology is the polytheistic myths and legends beliefs of the ancient Greeks. Ancient Greeks often relied on myths and legends to explain their natural world, such as the change of seasons. Largely inspiring Etruscan and Roman mythology, Greek legends and symbolism remain popular in culture today.

Primary Gods and Legends

In Greek mythology, there are many other demi-gods and heros, but the most well known gods are the immortals who sit upon the thrones of Mt. Olympus. The Olympian gods represent a specific natural element or energy force. They are the following:

• Zeus: The god of the heavens, or as later mythology would determine, the God of the Gods (Roman Name is Jupiter)

• Posiedon: The god of the seas, who would challenge Athena for the title of patron of Athens (Roman Name is Neptune)

• Hades: The god of the underworld, whom oversaw the sould of the mortally deceased (Roman Name is Pluto)

• Hera: The goddess of marriage, who served as Zeus' primary and exceedingly jelous wife (Roman Name is Juno)

• Demeter: The goddess of the harvest, whose daughter was the delicate Persephone (Roman Name is Ceres)

• Hestia: The goddess of the hearth, who tends Mt. Olympus' sacred fire (Roman name is Vesta)

• Hephaestus: The god of blacksmiths and craftsmen, who forged lightning bolts for Zeus (Roman Name is Vulcan)

• Athena: The goddess of wisdom, who became the patroness of Athens (Roman Name is Minerva)

• Artemis: The goddess of hunting and wilderness, who was the twin sister of Apollo (Roman Name is Diana)

• Apollo: The god of music and light, who was the twin brother of Artemis (Roman Name is Apollo)

• Ares: The god of war, who was quite reckless in his sides and choices in battle (Roman Name is Mars)

• Aphrodite: The goddess of love, who rose from the botton of the sea (Roman Name is Venus)

• Hermes: The god of theives and trickery, who also served as a messenger of the Gods (Roman Name is Mercury)

• Dionysus: The god of winemaking and festival, who also has been metaphorically compared to Jesus Christ (Roman Name is Bacchus)

• Persephone: The goddess-daughter of Demeter, who also served as the queen of the underworld (Roman Name is Proserpina)

There are various other deities, which include the Titans (Cronus, Prometheus, and Epimetheus) and demi-gods (Pan, Orion, and Minos). The heros of Greek myth and legend are also quite known, with Heracles, Odysseus, Perseus, Theseus, and Achilles.

Anthropomorphism and Kama-Manas

In polytheistic tradition, Greek mythology gives human qualities to the gods and and demi-gods. Unlike the monotheistic belief of God as an omniscient and omnipresent being, the gods are seen as living in a body that is vengeful, cruel, and even sadistical. It has become commonly believed that the reason for the anthropomorphism of the gods is to give them the full spectrum of the human experience. This is a result of the Manas of the gods being welded to the Kama, as the higher intelligence is seen to inhabit the lower physical bodies. As Alvin Boyd Kuhn remarks:

"The dark night of the soul," no less than the Götterdämmerung, was, in the

ancient mind, just the condition of the soul's embodiment in physical forms. Taylor reasons that Minerva (the rational faculty, as Goddess of Wisdom) was by her attachment to body given wholly "to the dangerous employment and abandons the proper characteristics of her nature for the destructive revels of desire." All this is the dialectic statement of the main theme of ancient theology - the incarnation of the godlike intellect and divine soul in the darksome conditions

of animal bodies.

Importance of Mythology

Similarly it is that during those periods of spiritual dryness we can, if we

have so trained ourselves, commune with God through various forms of Art, for Art fundamentally is a revelation of the Divine Nature, it reveals what Plato called the Idea or the Archetype. The ancient Greeks were particularly sensitive to this aspect of Art. If they looked at a statue of Apollo, the sun-god, it was not merely to them a statue of some handsome youth, but there radiated from the statue a mysterious influence, so that they came to feel the influence of God. Similarly with the goddess Minerva; they felt, when there was an adequately beautiful image in a temple, that somehow as they offered their adoration to it, the image was like a wonderful window through which they looked into the Divine

Nature.