14 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2021
    1. Psyche

      Psyche was an extremely beautiful mortal woman, often compared to Aphrodite. Aphrodite was jealous so sent her son Eros (Cupid) to make Psyche fall in love with a vile person. But Cupid fell in love with Psyche himself. However, nobody approached Psyche for her hand. She ended up jumping off a rock spire, but Zephyrus, the Greek god of the west wind, took her to Eros' palace. She is visited by him in the dark and gets pregnant. When she finally lights a lamp to see his identity, she sees how beautiful he is. She wounds herself on his arrows, spills hot oil and wakes him up. He runs away, and she is left on a river bank. Pan finds her and sees the signs of passion on her. After all kinds of drama, they are eventually reunited and married.

    2. Wolf's-bane

      Also known as aconitum or the 'queen of poisons', a genus of 250 flowering plants, blue-purple in colour. Aconitum comes from the Greek for dart or javelin, because the tips of arrows could be laced with the poison and then shot at wolves. There is some speculation that both Socrates and Alexander the Greek were killed by aconitum.

    3. Lethe

      One of the five rivers of the underworld of Hades, also known as the river of unmindfulness. Everyone who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness. The word literally means 'oblivion', and is related to the Greek for 'truth' (aletheia) which means 'unforgetfulness'. So there is some kind of connection between Lethe and concealing the truth. At the same time, if the shades in Hades didn't drink from Lethe (and thereby have their memories erased), they would never have the chance to be reincarnated.