QuoteReplyTopic: Was there ever a Mother-Goddess society? Posted: 15-Dec-2008 at 16:17
The dead don't live, even in Greek mythology, among the roots of the cornfield.
Oh but they do ... Aeneas and Vigil both enter the Underworld at the Aornos Cave, the Necromanteion is situated underground, and so on. There are real-world sites associated with this, that are quite literally under the ground!
Or, to quote Strabo: "The Akheron has been so named by virtue of its close relation to Haides; for, as we know, not only the temples of Demeter and Kore [Persephone] have been held in very high honor there, but also those of Haides, perhaps because of 'the contrariness of the soil,' to use the phrase of Demetrios of Skepsis. For while Triphylia brings forth good fruit, it breeds red-rust and produces rush; and therefore in this region it is often the case that instead of a large crop there is no crop at all."
The entrance to the underworld in Virgil does not take you into the roots of the cornfields. I was looking for a phrase that indicated the parts of the world of the living - the upper world if you like - that are underground. That quite evidently includes the bits you can dig up, just as it includes silver mines and the like. Living people can exist underground without being part of the underworld.
Again I have to emphasise that the 'underground' and the 'underworld' are different concepts: one is in fact scientific, observed, while the other is metaphysical, hypothesised. Just as the psychological (and practical) motives that lead people to hypothesise deities that control the earth's fertility - the living earth's fertility - and deities that control life after death are different.
The underworld is not fertile. And the dead do not live in fertile soil (the 'roots of the cornfield').
Again I have to emphasise that the 'underground' and the 'underworld' are different concepts. Just as the psychological (and practical) motives that lead people to hypothesise deities that control the earth's fertility - the living earth's fertility - and deities that control life after death are different.
In Greek mythology and in many other mythologies and systems of beliefs they are the same realm, refer to Burkert (and his reference, a Hippocratic treaty) for "the corn comes from the dead". Moreover earth's fertility and the dead were often connected in myths and rituals. Many gods (some already exemplified) had both functions.
The underworld is not fertile. And the dead do not live in fertile soil (the 'roots of the cornfield').
Mythologically the entire earth is fertile, not just a shallow layer of it.
And as a nit-pick, the dead are usually buried in the fertile soil (there's widespread legendary laitmotif of trees or plants growing from a dead body)
The entrance to the underworld in Virgil does not take you into the roots of the cornfields.
No, but it does take you under the ground and into the land of the dead.
And out of the land of the living. The idea that even the ancient Greeks thought that the underworld started an inch or less beneath the surface is faintly ridiculous.
If the underworld was simply the underground, why would it need special entrances? For that matter why would it need the Styx as a border? The underworld doesn't start until the other side of the Styx, and the 'roots of the cornfield' are most definitely on this side of the Styx: you don't need to pay Charon to get there.
The underworld is not fertile. And the dead do not live in fertile soil (the 'roots of the cornfield').
Well, according to Strabo, not fertile soil, no ... rather un-fertile soil.
The dead don't actually live in any kind of soil. Dead bodies may lie in soil, but dead bodies don't go to the underworld.
Again I have to emphasise that the 'underground' and the 'underworld' are different concepts. Just as the psychological (and practical) motives that lead people to hypothesise deities that control the earth's fertility - the living earth's fertility - and deities that control life after death are different.
In Greek mythology and in many other mythologies and systems of beliefs they are the same realm, refer to Burkert (and his reference, a Hippocratic treaty) for "the corn comes from the dead".
The corn comes from dead bodies, not the souls of the dead. Surely that at least is a distinction you can see?
Moreover earth's fertility and the dead were often connected in myths and rituals. Many gods (some already exemplified) had both functions.
And as I pointed out almost all deities had some connection with the earth. Even Aeolus lived in a cave.
Originally posted by Ovid
"Swiftly within the Aeolus’ cave he locked the North Wind..."
"Protinus Aeoliis Aquilonem claudit in antris..."
Metamorphoses I:262
Many deities in most religious systems have varying and mixed attributes, especially over time and space. Osiris is a figure with both fertiliy and underworld aspects. Poseidon controls not only the sea, but earthquakes and horses.
However, of the multiple purposes of magic and religion, controlling the fertility of the earth is one, and dealing with personal after-death survival is a different one. So earth fertility divinities have a very different role to those of underworld divinities.
The underworld is not fertile. And the dead do not live in fertile soil (the 'roots of the cornfield').
Mythologically the entire earth is fertile, not just a shallow layer of it.
Depends what you mean by 'entire earth'. And 'fertile' I suppose. I'd like to see a quote that the 'entire earth' is 'fertile' to get some idea of what you mean. Even to the ancient Greeks the idea must have been nonsense.
And as a nit-pick, the dead are usually buried in the fertile soil (there's widespread legendary laitmotif of trees or plants growing from a dead body)
I can only point out again, in some despair, that a dead body is not the living dead. The underworld is where the shades of the dead live, not their bodies. Can you really not tell the difference between a dead body and an immortal soul?
Dead bodies exist in the world of the living not the world of the dead. Nobody would have been more familiar with that than the Greeks.
One other epithet of Demeter was Anesidora which according to a gloss in Hesychius meant "she who sends up the fruits/gifts".
According to the Hippocratic treaty De Victu (though originally in Greek, this is how is known traditionally by scholarship, for text I'm using the bilingual edition Littré 1849, vol. VI, p. 659):
"c'est des morts que viennent les nourritures, les croissances et les semences"
One other epithet of Demeter was Anesidora which according to a gloss in Hesychius meant "she who sends up the fruits/gifts".
So? What has that to do with the underworld? You don't get fruits and gifts from the underworld?
Don't you think that the Greeks were perfectly familiar with the idea that, e.g., silver miners 'sent up' what they dug up?
You can go down without going into the underworld and you can go up without coming from the underworld.
The Underworld is not the Underground.
According to the Hippocratic treaty De Victu (though originally in Greek, this is how is known traditionally by scholarship, for text I'm using the bilingual edition Littré 1849, vol. VI, p. 659):
"c'est des morts que viennent les nourritures, les croissances et les semences"
Again I have to make the same point again and again and again... nourishment comes from dead bodies, not their souls. Souls live in the underworld. Dead bodies don't. Dead bodies whether they get burnt or buried contribute their elements to the nitrogen cycle and so on.
A dead body is not a soul. You find souls of the dead in the underworld. You find their bodies in cemeteries.
It really leave me agape that you can't tell the difference between a dead body and a soul.
The corn comes from dead bodies, not the souls of the dead. Surely that at least is a distinction you can see?
I can see the distinction, but you don't know the text (in the aforementioned edition the Greek text is at p. 658, the French translation at p. 659). It is not about corpses, but about the dead.
And as I pointed out almost all deities had some connection with the earth. Even Aeolus lived in a cave.
Which is their chthonic aspect.
Many deities in most religious systems have varying and mixed attributes, especially over time and space. Osiris is a figure with both fertiliy and underworld aspects. Poseidon controls not only the sea, but earthquakes and horses.
However, of the multiple purposes of magic and religion, controlling the fertility of the earth is one, and dealing with personal after-death survival is a different one. So earth fertility divinities have a very different role to those of underworld divinities.
Not really. As illustrated by several of my references, some gods had both functions (in relatively the same moment of time and place in space). The death and the (re)birth were closely related in many mythologies.
Depends what you mean by 'entire earth'. And 'fertile' I suppose. I'd like to see a quote that the 'entire earth' is 'fertile' to get some idea of what you mean. Even to the ancient Greeks the idea must have been nonsense.
I provided plenty of references for that from Jung to various scholars of comparative religion. Let's not forget this thread is about Mother-Earth, the gendered concept of fertile divine earth in entirety (not just in the garden, or in the shallow strata).
I can only point out again, in some despair, that a dead body is not the living dead. The underworld is where the shades of the dead live, not their bodies. Can you really not tell the difference between a dead body and an immortal soul?
Dead bodies exist in the world of the living not the world of the dead. Nobody would have been more familiar with that than the Greeks.
Dead bodies rot in the world of the living, but in some mythologies (including the Greek one) they continue their existence in a somehow embodied form though they otherwise have a shadowy existence. In Greek mythology they are ocassionaly described as shadows, but they perform physical actions like holding the coin in their mouth to be taken by Charon, they suffer physical torments - Tantalus enduring endless hunger and thirst, Ixion on a burning wheel bitten by poisonous snakes, Sisyphus working in vain to roll a rock on a steep hill. There are also several mythical episodes involving arguably physical actions between those from the world of the living and those from the world of the dead.
So? What has that to do with the underworld? You don't get fruits and gifts from the underworld?
It has to do with an earlier erroneus claim that Demeter was not "living" in the earth, that Demeter is not chthonic.
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Are you bothering to follow this thread at all? I said Demeter DID live in the earth but not in the UNDERWORLD. And therefore she was not 'chthonic' because she is not particularly associated with the UNDERWORLD, which is what 'chthonic' MEANS. Of COURSE she is an EARTH goddess, and if you'd simply call her that it would be fine.
If you keep coming up with ridiculously erroneous versions of what I'm sayingm, there's not much point in my saying anything.
Don't you think that the Greeks were perfectly familiar with the idea that, e.g., silver miners 'sent up' what they dug up?
Living creatures can enter the underworld, sometimes go even beyond Cerberus.
But not routine run of the mill silver miners. You're avoiding the point again, since it's so obvious you were wrong.
Incidentally Hades (more accurately Pluto, I'm not sure if in the older myths the original Hades was) was also the god of mining (he was also generally a god of wealth - be it from crops, mining or whatever else "goods of the earth"). Care to guess why?
The Romans mixed up their existing god of mines with the Greek god of the underworld, maybe partly because the Greek word for 'wealth' is Plouton, and because they didn't originally have a god of the underworld themselves?
Like I pointed out, Poseidon is the god of the sea and also of earthquakes. Care to guess why?
You can go down without going into the underworld and you can go up without coming from the underworld.
The Underworld is not the Underground.
In Greek mythology yes, the underworld and the underground were part of the same realm (for us today, having access to different mythological underworlds, no, it is not). Both the gods of the dead, and the gods raising vegetation and plants from the ground were called explicitely by the Greeks 'chthonoi'.
We're discussing - or at least I am - the appropriate use of the word 'chthonic' in modern English, in which it was first recorded late in the 19th century. I think your claim that the Greeks though the uinderworld and the underground were part of the same realm is false, but even if true it misses my point, which is not how the ancient Greeks used the word, but how we should. We have a hell of a lot more religions to take into account that the Greeks did.
Again I have to make the same point again and again and again... nourishment comes from dead bodies, not their souls. Souls live in the underworld. Dead bodies don't. Dead bodies whether they get burnt or buried contribute their elements to the nitrogen cycle and so on.
You make an erroneous point (and making it again won't make it right), because neither the Greek word, nor the French one do not semantically suggest it's about bodies.
What do you mean by 'semantically' there?
Of coure 'mort' in French includes the meaning of dead body. In my Larousse the very first meaning given to 'mort' is 'cadaver, corpse, dead body'. In fact if 'mort' didn't mean a body there's be no need for the phrase 'les morts vivants'.
'La mort' (feminine) means 'Death' as an abstract concept, and canniot be plural. What we have here is 'le mort' (masculine) which primarily means a dead body; 'la morte' (feminine) similarly primarily means a dead female body.
I recommend you to read the entire text (which is about dreams, by the way). And also Walter Burkert's account on chthonic gods.
You find their bodies in cemeteries.
If the body was burnt you find ashes. If the body was buried (and not embalmed) some years ago you find bones. Well, if you look for fresh inhumations, maybe you have a chance
Somewhere else I said buried or burned. However, your response would be cleverer if you had said they also find bodies on battlefields. Of course you find bodies in cemeteries. You may also find beercans and all sorts of unmentionable objects, but you certainly find bodies.
If the underworld was simply the underground, why would it need special entrances?
Who said it was simply the underground? Its an underground otherworld, not just any old subterranean place. The underworld is a mythological abstraction of the underground; it is under the ground, but you can't merely burrow into the earth to get there. It is a realm of sacred mystery, not a mundane realm.
The dead don't actually live in any kind of soil. Dead bodies may lie in soil, but dead bodies don't go to the underworld.
That does very little to address the quote of Strabo. Hades was directly associated with "soil", specifically "contrary" soil.
I could point to alot of other traditions: for instance, the myths of Ireland, which associate the Aos Si or Sidhe (otherworlders, essentially a race that had 'crossed over') with a subterranean existance in passage tombs. Or the wuya kachinas of Hopi myth, who dwell beneath mountains - sometimes in an underground "Lake of the Dead" - and provide the waters for crops:
The corn comes from dead bodies, not the souls of the dead. Surely that at least is a distinction you can see?
I can see the distinction, but you don't know the text (in the aforementioned edition the Greek text is at p. 658, the French translation at p. 659). It is not about corpses, but about the dead.
Then provide the text. The bit you quoted is quite obviously talking about dead bodies. It's a poetic conceit common to many cultures to dwell on the way new life comes from dead flesh. But all that happens in the world of the living, not the world of dead souls.
I guess someone might also way a little poetic about how intellectual sophistication grows from the thoughts of people now dead - Newton standing on the shoulders of giants. But you still can't cook and eat dead souls, or use them as fertilisers.
And as I pointed out almost all deities had some connection with the earth. Even Aeolus lived in a cave.
Which is their chthonic aspect.
Then it's a useless word, whihc was my point originally. There's no significant connection between Aeolus and, say, Chiron, just because they both lived in caves. Even the fact that they are both male is probably more significant.
Mythical and religious figures are important because of the role they play in the life of believers, not because of their incidental attributes: using 'chthonic' the way you are doing meakes no more sense than talking about gods being 'bearded' or 'blond' or 'one-eyed'. What use is a classification or categorisation to which everyone belongs - from Hades to Demeter to Poseidon to Zeus to Artemis and on and on?
Many deities in most religious systems have varying and mixed attributes, especially over time and space. Osiris is a figure with both fertiliy and underworld aspects. Poseidon controls not only the sea, but earthquakes and horses.
However, of the multiple purposes of magic and religion, controlling the fertility of the earth is one, and dealing with personal after-death survival is a different one. So earth fertility divinities have a very different role to those of underworld divinities.
Not really. As illustrated by several of my references, some gods had both functions (in relatively the same moment of time and place in space). The death and the (re)birth were closely related in many mythologies.
Death and rebirth are part of the cycle of life. This is fundamental to Frazer: as the corn dies and returns so must the Corn King. The shades in Hades are not reborn: the individual is not reborn. That's why the earth, where the cycle of death and rebirth takes place, is different from the underworld where there is no rebirth.
I grant you readily, in fact I already referred to some examples, that the same nominal figure can be given a role in more than one magico-religious function: this in fact is how monotheism evolves. I'm not arguing that a god cannot be both 'of the underworld' and 'of the earth': Osiris is: Ameratsu is sun goddess, but also locks herself in a cave, and also is sometimes water-born; in addition she invented the cultivation of rice and wheat.
What I'm arguing is that if you refer to both functions as 'chthonic' then you are losing an important distinction, even if it is sometimes a distinction between different roles of the same divinity.
Depends what you mean by 'entire earth'. And 'fertile' I suppose. I'd like to see a quote that the 'entire earth' is 'fertile' to get some idea of what you mean. Even to the ancient Greeks the idea must have been nonsense.
I provided plenty of references for that from Jung to various scholars of comparative religion. Let's not forget this thread is about Mother-Earth, the gendered concept of fertile divine earth in entirety (not just in the garden, or in the shallow strata).
I know it's about mother earth - that's why I objected to the use of 'chthonic' in the first place because it brings in concepts of the underworld.
You still seem unable to distinguish between 'world' and 'earth'.
I can only point out again, in some despair, that a dead body is not the living dead. The underworld is where the shades of the dead live, not their bodies. Can you really not tell the difference between a dead body and an immortal soul?
Dead bodies exist in the world of the living not the world of the dead. Nobody would have been more familiar with that than the Greeks.
Dead bodies rot in the world of the living, but in some mythologies (including the Greek one) they continue their existence in a somehow embodied form though they otherwise have a shadowy existence.
That would make the Greeks insane. Of course the Greeks knew the difference between dead bodies and 'dead' souls. If you kill someone his body stays where it is - it doesn't go off somewhere. Even the death-obsessed Egyptians with their mummifications knew that the bodies didn't go anywhere, any more than the ornaments they packed around them never went anywhere.
You don't seem to have any idea of how people actually think.
In Greek mythology they are ocassionaly described as shadows, but they perform physical actions like holding the coin in their mouth to be taken by Charon,
You don't think the Greeks thought the actual physical coin was taken doe to the Styx do you? They were quite capable of digging up a body and observing the coin still there. Again it's much the same as tomb robbing in Egypt: the robbers knew what they were stealing hadn't gone anywhere, and so did the rest of the populaton including the priesthood - otherwise tomb-robbing wouldn't have been a crime.
Again you seem unable to feel for how people actually think.
they suffer physical torments - Tantalus enduring endless hunger and thirst, Ixion on a burning wheel bitten by poisonous snakes, Sisyphus working in vain to roll a rock on a steep hill.
Yes the Greeks believed that dead souls could suffer much the way humans do while alive. So do Christians and Muslims. Like Christians and Muslims the Greeks could still tell the difference between a dead body and a freed soul though.
There are also several mythical episodes involving arguably physical actions between those from the world of the living and those from the world of the dead.
Of course. We already talked abouit Persephone.
However you were claiming that the Greeks believed that crops grew from dead souls. Where you got the idea from that they used souls as fertilizer I have no idea.
Then provide the text. The bit you quoted is quite obviously talking about dead bodies. It's a poetic conceit common to many cultures to dwell on the way new life comes from dead flesh. But all that happens in the world of the living, not the world of dead souls.
Certainly I won't provide the text, and that is for three reasons. One is that the text is ridiculously easy to be found (you just copy from here and paste in Google!). Two is that you argued without knowing, just to maintain your view. Three is that by the time you wrote this reply I already hinted that is a text about dreams (and not about agriculture, fertilizers or whatever you unknowingly assume).
And the bit I quoted it doesn't obviously "talk about dead bodies". On the contary, for one familiar with mythologies, it talks about the wealth coming from earth which is also home of the dead.
I guess someone might also way a little poetic about how intellectual sophistication grows from the thoughts of people now dead - Newton standing on the shoulders of giants. But you still can't cook and eat dead souls, or use them as fertilisers.
The "shoulders of giants" were a syntagm used by many intellectuals along centuries and referred to the ancient Greek and Roman scholars whose knowledge was highly regarded. What Newton held was a paraphrase altered by time of Bernard of Chartres's saying (reported by John of Salisbury) "we are dwarves sitting on shoulders of giants, and that's why we can see further than the ancients". It's a metaphor not related to dead bodies in any way.
Then it's a useless word, whihc was my point originally. There's no significant connection between Aeolus and, say, Chiron, just because they both lived in caves. Even the fact that they are both male is probably more significant.
Of course it is not useless like I already proved with many enough scholarly references. If it's useless for you, then speak only for yourself!
Mythical and religious figures are important because of the role they play in the life of believers, not because of their incidental attributes: using 'chthonic' the way you are doing meakes no more sense than talking about gods being 'bearded' or 'blond' or 'one-eyed'. What use is a classification or categorisation to which everyone belongs - from Hades to Demeter to Poseidon to Zeus to Artemis and on and on?
But that's what 'chthonic' shows, the role they play in the life of the believers. In Greek religion the chthonic gods had chthonic cults. Why do you argue ad nauseam without reading the materials I provided?
Death and rebirth are part of the cycle of life. This is fundamental to Frazer: as the corn dies and returns so must the Corn King. The shades in Hades are not reborn: the individual is not reborn. That's why the earth, where the cycle of death and rebirth takes place, is different from the underworld where there is no rebirth.
But you miss the point, it's not the death and the rebirth of the same thing, of the same entity. Some die, some others get born. Hades also is a protector of agriculture (some scholars even argued that Hades is behind the 'chthonic Zeus' invoked by farmers for their crops).
What I'm arguing is that if you refer to both functions as 'chthonic' then you are losing an important distinction, even if it is sometimes a distinction between different roles of the same divinity.
I already refuted that, 'chthonic' does not address this distinction. Even if you need one word, nothing really stops to use 'agrarian' and 'funeral' (or whatever other synonyms).
You'll never prove your points by repeating them.
I know it's about mother earth - that's why I objected to the use of 'chthonic' in the first place because it brings in concepts of the underworld.
Underworld which is in the earth. I already justified by choice of meaning. You have no justification whatsoever but your own preferences and stubborness (not to call it otherwise).
That would make the Greeks insane. Of course the Greeks knew the difference between dead bodies and 'dead' souls. If you kill someone his body stays where it is - it doesn't go off somewhere. Even the death-obsessed Egyptians with their mummifications knew that the bodies didn't go anywhere, any more than the ornaments they packed around them never went anywhere.
You are barking at the wrong tree. I haven't denied such a difference, I was discussing the nature of the dead in the underworld.
You don't seem to have any idea of how people actually think
I guess I know better than you ... , after all you fail repeatedly in figuring out what I think and keep accusing me in every reply of things I don't believe in or say.
You don't think the Greeks thought the actual physical coin was taken doe to the Styx do you? They were quite capable of digging up a body and observing the coin still there. Again it's much the same as tomb robbing in Egypt: the robbers knew what they were stealing hadn't gone anywhere, and so did the rest of the populaton including the priesthood - otherwise tomb-robbing wouldn't have been a crime.
Again you seem unable to feel for how people actually think.
Oh noes, it was a shadowy coin in a shadowy mouth. Again, I guess I'm much more able than you.
Yes the Greeks believed that dead souls could suffer much the way humans do while alive. So do Christians and Muslims. Like Christians and Muslims the Greeks could still tell the difference between a dead body and a freed soul though.
You don't reply to my text. Do shadows push rocks? Do they need water to drink (Tantalus was standing in a pool of water, not in a pool of shadowy water)?
Of course. We already talked abouit Persephone.
I also talked about Hermes, about which you unknowingly claimed he's not connected with the underworld. Aeneas, Odysseus, Hercules, Orpheus, there are so many ....
However you were claiming that the Greeks believed that crops grew from dead souls. Where you got the idea from that they used souls as fertilizer I have no idea.
I'm not claiming such a thing. Again, you don't seem to have any idea of how people actually think.
What I said was that underground and the underworld are a part of the same realm. From the same realm the crops grew, in the same realm the underworld was. This realm was 'chthonic', it was the interior of the earth.
Meaning:1. Dwelling in or under the earth. 2. Related to the underworld of ancient gods and spirits who tend to be evil.
In Play: You can find many places in conversations for the literal sense of today's Good Word: "Since my workshop is in the basement, I remain in close contact with several little chthonic creatures that co-inhabit my house." Its metaphorical undertones require a bit more subtlety: "Mickey is an affable enough fellow but I sense a chthonic layer in his humor that makes me uneasy."
If the underworld was simply the underground, why would it need special entrances?
Who said it was simply the underground? Its an underground otherworld, not just any old subterranean place. The underworld is a mythological abstraction of the underground;
No it isn't. It's the place dead souls go to. Even in Greek mythology it has mountains and sky and birds flying around (pecking livers if nothing else). Some people locate it under the earth some people don't, but 'under the earth' is NOT part of the meaning of 'underworld'. 'World' does not mean 'earth' and 'under' doesn't always mean the same thing either - check undercoat, underclass, underprivileged, underwritten, undersold.
it is under the ground, but you can't merely burrow into the earth to get there. It is a realm of sacred mystery, not a mundane realm.
That's true. And that's one reason it is totally different from the earth.
The dead don't actually live in any kind of soil. Dead bodies may lie in soil, but dead bodies don't go to the underworld.
That does very little to address the quote of Strabo. Hades was directly associated with "soil", specifically "contrary" soil.
Hades insofar as etymology is relevant, comes from 'unseen', 'invisible'. The 'underworld' is the hidden, unseen world. (Because we quite literally cannot see it.)
I could point to alot of other traditions: for instance, the myths of Ireland, which associate the Aos Si or Sidhe (otherworlders, essentially a race that had 'crossed over') with a subterranean existance in passage tombs. Or the wuya kachinas of Hopi myth, who dwell beneath mountains - sometimes in an underground "Lake of the Dead" - and provide the waters for crops:
There are many others, worldwide.
There's no more point in doing that than in my pointing to traditions like the 'Isles of the Blessed' or the 'Pure Land' or the Egyptians seeing the underworld as across the western desert. Or indeed Christianity and Islam.
Certainly some people believe the underworld lies beneath the world of the living, which is then associated with the surface of the earth and its tillable, mineable or just habitable understructure. Other people believe it doesn't.
My point is that if 'chthonic' is used both to mean 'associated with the earth' and 'associated with the underworld' it is a confusing usage that masks an important distinction. A word that can refer to both Satan and Demeter is pretty useless from the point of view of religious study, particularly taxonomy.
Meaning:1. Dwelling in or under the earth. 2. Related to the underworld of ancient gods and spirits who tend to be evil.
You make exactly my point for me. That is EXACTLY what I have been saying all along and you steadfastly denied. The word is used to refer to beings dwelling in or under the earth AND to beings reklated to the underworld and evil spirits.
That is what I am complaining about. It's very irritating that you don't even read what I write. But once and for all
'CHTHONIC' IS USED IN TWO SENSES - TO REFER TO BEINGS RELATED TO THE EARTH AND TO BEINGS RELATED TO THE UNDERWORLD AND EVIL - 'DARK POWERS'. THIS IS BAD AND CONFUSING.
Now unless you can come up with something that relates to that point, instead of chasing all around the houses making me reiterate the same point again and again I give up.
No point in talking to someone who doesn't listen.
My point is that if 'chthonic' is used both to mean 'associated with the earth' and 'associated with the underworld' it is a confusing usage that masks an important distinction. A word that can refer to both Satan and Demeter is pretty useless from the point of view of religious study, particularly taxonomy.
But Satan isn't really chthonic - the Christian Hell isn't underground, it's just a debased (and therefore lower) existance. The gods that gave rise to the Christian concept of Satan may have been chthonic, but they're not really taxonomically incompatible with Demeter and the rest.
You make exactly my point for me. That is EXACTLY what I have been saying all along and you steadfastly denied. The word is used to refer to beings dwelling in or under the earth AND to beings reklated to the underworld and evil spirits.
That is what I am complaining about. It's very irritating that you don't even read what I write. But once and for all
'CHTHONIC' IS USED IN TWO SENSES - TO REFER TO BEINGS RELATED TO THE EARTH AND TO BEINGS RELATED TO THE UNDERWORLD AND EVIL - 'DARK POWERS'. THIS IS BAD AND CONFUSING.
Now unless you can come up with something that relates to that point, instead of chasing all around the houses making me reiterate the same point again and again I give up.
No point in talking to someone who doesn't listen.
Chthonic is used in two senses only by this dictionary (which is not making the point that the underworld in those ancient mythologies was under the earth), not by the scholars or dictionaries quoted before (which held either 'underworld' or 'under the earth').
Moreover, you denied all along that this word can mean 'under the earth', you said it fails to distinguish, you said it is confusing and all this started with an idiotic criticism from your side which claimed "chthonic does not pertain to the earth".
Are you bothering to follow this thread at all? I said Demeter DID live in the earth but not in the UNDERWORLD. And therefore she was not 'chthonic' because she is not particularly associated with the UNDERWORLD, which is what 'chthonic' MEANS. Of COURSE she is an EARTH goddess, and if you'd simply call her that it would be fine.
If you keep coming up with ridiculously erroneous versions of what I'm sayingm, there's not much point in my saying anything.
I was about to miss this reply of yours because for some reason you decided to edit my post and not to reply to it. Whatever ...
Yes I'm following the thread quite closely. But you don't and you also don't seem to have a good memory. But no worries, scripta manent:
Originally posted by gcle2003
I don't see any reason to say Demeter 'lives' under the earth. In that case, how does snatching Persephone away to live under the earth make any difference to Demeter? In all the versions I've seen, Demeter lives on the earth or on Olympus.
Perhaps in Grahamian "lives on the earth" should be read as "lives in the earth" ...
But not routine run of the mill silver miners. You're avoiding the point again, since it's so obvious you were wrong.
I already asked half-jokingly if should I write to you only simple SOV sentences but this time I am dead serious: do you have the ability to read and understand a simple text? My text was formed from two sentences (I can't prove it now, because you edited it). The first sentence was a digression, showing that living creatures can inhabit the sub-terranean world, even travel to the underworld. However, the second sentence addressed your point, it was about mining. If the first sentence was uninteresting why didn't you move directly to the second one? And if you can't follow my posts why do you even bother to reply (for other reason than disrupting the discussion)?
The Romans mixed up their existing god of mines with the Greek god of the underworld, maybe partly because the Greek word for 'wealth' is Plouton, and because they didn't originally have a god of the underworld themselves?
Leaving your speculations aside (but as you noticed Plouton was a Greek name of Hades!), the fact is that a god of the underworld was also the god of mining. Which should answer many questions about those miners ...
Like I pointed out, Poseidon is the god of the sea and also of earthquakes. Care to guess why?
Similarity between waves and earthquakes. What are the similarities between mining and dying?
We're discussing - or at least I am - the appropriate use of the word 'chthonic' in modern English, in which it was first recorded late in the 19th century. I think your claim that the Greeks though the uinderworld and the underground were part of the same realm is false, but even if true it misses my point, which is not how the ancient Greeks used the word, but how we should. We have a hell of a lot more religions to take into account that the Greeks did.
But is very important how the ancient Greeks used the word, because this is how we understand their 'chthonic' gods and cults, and this is how the modern word was born. From scholars studying Greek mythology, Greek religion. They eventually expanded it to other religions and mythologies because they found it useful, operative, helpful in creating a narrative and understanding (there are a lot of materials about 'chthonic' dimension in religion). For how we should use the words I provided a load of definitions from scholars and dictionaries. You provided some yourself. Almost all referred to Greek mythology and absolutely none denied the earth relation (on the contrary, some of them affirmed it explicitely).
What do you mean by 'semantically' there?
Of coure 'mort' in French includes the meaning of dead body. In my Larousse the very first meaning given to 'mort' is 'cadaver, corpse, dead body'. In fact if 'mort' didn't mean a body there's be no need for the phrase 'les morts vivants'.
'La mort' (feminine) means 'Death' as an abstract concept, and canniot be plural. What we have here is 'le mort' (masculine) which primarily means a dead body; 'la morte' (feminine) similarly primarily means a dead female body.
I mean the text (in Greek and in French) does not enforce nor suggest we should read 'dead body'. And you're wrong, 'dead body' is not the primary meaning of 'mort' (in your link the first meaning is 'personne qui a cessé de vivre'). 'Fête des morts' is a celebration of the dead or of the dead bodies? And let's not forget our text is not about fertilizers in agriculture, but about the wealth of the earth (which in Greek mythology is also the home of the dead) and the influence the dead have (like I said, it is a text about dreams).
In the Greek text there's an active participle. In text you'll find the aorist, in dictionaries you should look for "apothnesko" which means basically "to die" (Liddell-Scott: to die, to die off, to die away, to be dying). Long story short: the English word should be 'dead'.
However, your response would be cleverer if you had said they also find bodies on battlefields.
Considering what I know of you, I certainly don't want to be called 'clever', but 'blind' or 'silly'. Only then I'll know I'm on the right track
Hades insofar as etymology is relevant, comes from 'unseen', 'invisible'. The 'underworld' is the hidden, unseen world. (Because we quite literally cannot see it.)
Hidden under the ground.
If Hades is connected with aides, then let's note that in Greek aidoia are the genitals (the hidden parts, for both men and women) and aidomai is "to be ashamed" (probably covering the meaning "to hide")
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