I assume my readers, if any, are
bibliophiles; lovers of books. If so, I am sure you had this experience.
You end up reading a book that is badly written and has a lame ending. In
order to save someone else from getting sucked into this mess, you toss it into
the garbage rather recycling or donating it to the library. Or it ends up
being a piece of propaganda full of lies and half truths. Or it is full
of illogic and bad science. I read one of these books, recently; Walker
1983. I would have tossed it, but I was on a five hour flight. In between the
waves of nausea and disgust there were a few interesting if odd insights on
Greek mythology. This is the first in a series of blogs investigating
these possible gems in the rubbish.
"Adonis
too was castrated: gored in the groin by Aphrodite's boar-masked priest.
His severed phallus became his son the ithyphallic god
Priapus...Priapus carried a pruning knife in token of (Adonis') necessary
castration before new life could appear on earth. Castrating the god was
likened to reaping the grain which Adonis personified. His rebirth was a
sprouting from the womb of the Earth."
So, if I can translate this a bit.
The “boar-masked priest” is usually described as Aphrodite’s jealous lover, the
god of War; Ares (Nonnus, Dionysiaca 42.
1) Only one source describes Priapus the
god of lust, as the son of Adonis. Occasionally
he carries a sickle, (Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and
Mythology.) The author goes on to suggest
that other heroes are sacrificial fertility figures, like Ancaeus of Arcadia, and the Trojan Prince Anchises.
Ovid, in Metamorphosis 8.391 reports that during the Calydonian boar hunt;
“Ancaeus wielding his war-axe, and rushing madly to
his fate, exclaimed, “Witness it! See the weapons of a man excel a woman's! Ho,
make way for my achievement! Let Diana shield the brute! Despite her utmost
effort my right hand shall slaughter him!” So mighty in his boast he puffed
himself; and, lifting with both hands his double-edged axe, he stood erect, on
tiptoe fiercely bold. The savage boar caught him, and ripped his tusks through
his groin, a spot where death is sure.—Ancaeus fell; and his torn entrails and
his crimson blood stained the fair verdure of the spot with death.”
In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite the Trojan Prince Anchises fears a fate
similar to Adonis. Awakening with the
goddess in his bed, says to his lover, “ Yet by Zeus who holds the aegis I beseech you, leave me not to lead a
palsied life among men, but have pity on me; for he who lies with a deathless
goddess is no hale man afterwards.”
Apollonius
Rhodius ARGONAUTICA 2.815 “And
here his destined fate smote Idmon, son of Abas, skilled in soothsaying; but
not at all did his soothsaying save him, for necessity drew him on to death.
For in the mead of the reedy river there lay, cooling his flanks and huge belly
in the mud, a white-tusked boar, a deadly monster, whom even the nymphs of the
marsh dreaded, and no man knew it; but all alone he was feeding in the wide
fell. But the son of Abas was passing along the raised banks of the muddy
river, and the boar from some unseen lair leapt out of the reed-bed, and
charging gashed his thigh.”
Apollodorus. The Library 1.9.12
“Phylacus marveled, and perceiving that
he was an excellent soothsayer, he released him and invited him to say how his
son Iphiclus might get children…And having sacrificed two bulls and cut them in
pieces he summoned the birds; and when a vulture came, he learned from it that
once, when Phylacus was gelding rams, he laid down the knife, still bloody,
beside Iphiclus, and that when the child was frightened and ran away.”
Hesiod Theogony 176 “And Heaven (Uranus) came, bringing on night
and longing for love, and he lay about Earth spreading himself full upon her. Then the son from his ambush stretched
forth his left hand and in his right took the great long sickle with jagged
teeth, and swiftly lopped off his own father's members”
Aaron Atsma observes; “There is also a vase painting
depicting Khrysaor's son Geryon holding a shield emblazoned with the emblem of
a winged boar--a likely representation of Khrysaor considering his boar-tusked,
winged mother Medusa” Various sources
explain the name Chrysaor as meaning “golden aor”, “golden sword”, “golden
falchion” or “golden sickle”
So in summary; Adonis castrated by the tusks of
an apparent boar. A boar “ripped
his tusks through (Ancaeus’) groin.” Prince
Anchises fears a similar fate. “…the
boar from some unseen lair leapt out of the reed-bed, and charging gashed (Idmon’s)
thigh.” Iphiclus was psychologically
castrated by watching his father wield a knife while castrating rams. Uranus was castrated by a sickle. And finally Chrysaor, the Golden Sickle was
born when Perseus cut off his boarish mother’s head with a sickle.
