From: João Simões Lopes Filho
Message: 5136
Date: 2000-12-21
----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Odegard <markodegard@...>
To: <cybalist@egroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2000 9:46 PM
Subject: [tied] Heralkes.
> How does the Anna Russell line go about Siegfried? Very strong, very
> handsome .... very stupid. The same can be said about Herk. And it is
> not unfair to say Wagner's Siegfried is a very late Germanic reflex of
> Herakles.
>
> As has been said, he is a blend, the Heinz 57 of Greek myth. His
> ten/twelve labors do correspond to the Zodiac (confer with Robert
> Graves' views). Graves wrote more than 50 years ago, and his views
> were based on scholarship that dates back 100 years (had he know of
> the Child of the Waters, his thoughts on Theseus and Minos, and his
> absolute spazz-out over Vergil's Aristeus would have been written
> quite differently; he'd'a pro'ly added Lip-less Achilles to the mix).
>
> Graves (and to some degree, Gimbutas) saw Herakles as the divine king
> married to the [representative of the] goddess Hera/Big Momma. In
> places where the goddess/priestess was gonna get raped and
> killed unless she had a big beefy war-leader as consort, said consort
> stuck around for a few years, especially if he was very good at war.
> I'm suggesting the merger of raw patriarchialism and raw
> matriarchalism (whatever your definitions of the terms) was a marriage
> of political necessity: official religion adjusted itself to these
> facts.
>
> The stories of Herakles do portray him as something of an oaf. One
> wonders if the skald/poet was having fun. But, the big dumb loveable
> natural-leader of a hunk-lunk is a archetype of human literature.
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