Like my previous few postings this autumn, the current one responds to the most recent topic on the Myths and Mythology module I am currently teaching at Roehampton. I have posted previously on myth and community and on myth and gender, always in relation to an autistic 'lens'.
This current posting relates to the most recent session, which was on myth and gods. I'm going to continues with reference to an autistic lens but only briefly for now. I'm going to set out some initial ideas and then build on these in later postings. At least that's the plan - and if the plan changes, for example, in response to something that comes up in class that stirs me into blogging about it (compare the previous posting!), I'll set out why...
We discussed in class how ancient gods are entities that modern people often try too hard to make sense of, in part because these deities are so much a part of 'Western' culture. However, as we discussed, ancient gods are strange. They were strange to the ancients who venerated and mythologised them. They are stranger than modern scholarship often allows.
In upcoming postings I plan to look into this strangeness in relation to the two female personages - goddesses? personifications? women? - that Herakles (himself 'god' and 'hero') encounters at a curious place - a parting of the roads.
It is an encounter that - including because of its strangeness, and because of the strangeness of its gods - can resonate with being autistic. More to come on this point... For now, including to give a few scholarly perspectives, here are three instances where strangeness *is* part of the study of ancient gods.
1. A book by S.C. Humphreys whose title, The Strangeness of Gods, was inspired by an anthropological study of religion by Pascal Boyer which emphasises, according to Humphreys, that "what we call 'religion' is always an engagement with the unknown and extraordinary". Note that the cover image for this book - one of the three images that heads this posting - evokes such strangeness via a depiction of Herakles on a red-figure cup now in the Gregorian Etruscan Museum, Vatical city. Like when he reaches the crossroads, Herakles is here in another strange place, a bowl, which looks to be carrying him across the sea (unless the bowl happens 'just' to be painted with sea creatures and waves)...
2. The series Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World which is concerned with figures that are 'part of our culture' but 'has another aim too, to explore their strangeness'. I wrote this in 2017 ahead of the publication of several new volumes in the series, starting with Hermes by Arlene Allan. I'm currently, four years on , rewriting the foreword for the next volume due out. The familiarity vs strangeness point is one that I intend to keep in.
3. Thirdly, the chapter 'Analyzing Greek Gods' from Robert Parker's On Greek Religion which, in posing the question 'what is a Greek god?', includes a discussion of an image - now in the Staatliche Museum in Munich - of one of the major gods, indeed of a god so major that he can count as 'god' or even 'God', namely Zeus. As we discussed in class, Zeus is often depicted looking like an adult man, just one holding something extraordinary, the thunderbolt. But this is Zeus as a huge serpent - Zeus Meilichios - a Zeus who is strange (as Zeus always in fact is...).
More soon...
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