Amphibious Gods

8/13/2019 Amphibious Gods

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Amphibious Gods

Water is a reference to the flow of the collective unconsciousness - that which creates

realities in which we learn through experience and emotions. Water Deities refers to

Gods and Goddesses who allegedly came from the sea of consciousness to create abiogenetic program that goes back to the beginning and is about to end. Most deities

arrived from the sky (higher frequency) ---> moving into the sea to create, then left,

usually saying they would return one day.

Amphitrite

In ancient Greek mythology, Amphitrite (not to be confused with Aphrodite) was a sea-

goddess. Under the influence of the Olympian pantheon, she became merely the

consort of Poseidon, and was further diminished by poets to a symbolic representation

of the sea. In Roman mythology, the consort of Neptune, a comparatively minor figure,

was Salacia.

Amphitrite was a daughter of Nereus and Doris - and thus a Nereid - according to

Hesiod's Theogony, but of Oceanus and Tethys and thus an Oceanid according to

Apollodorus, who actually lists her among both the Nereids and the Oceanids.

Amphitrite's offspring included seals and dolphins. By her, Poseidon had a son, Triton,

and a daughter, Rhode (if this Rhode was not actually fathered by Poseidon on Halia or

was not the daughter of Asopus as others claim). Apollodorus (3.15.4) also mentions a

daughter of Poseidon and Amphitrite named Benthesikyme. Amphitrite is not fullypersonified in the Homeric epics: "out on the open sea, in Amphitrite's breakers"

(Odyssey iii.101); she shares her Homeric epithet Halosydne ("sea-nourished") with

Thetis: in some sense the sea-nymphs are doublets.

Cybele

The mitre on the head of the goddess Cybele is striking similarity to the 'fish head' of the

God Dagon. The Great Goddess of Asia Minor is the oldest true Goddess known,

predating the Goddesses of the Sumerian and Egyptians by at least 5,000 years.

Cybele was worshipped in Rome and was also called the "Magna Mater", or the great

queen mother goddess, which evolved into Catholic Mariology.

Originally a Phrygian goddess, Cybele (sometimes given the etymology "she of the hair"

if her name is Greek, not Phrygian, but more widely considered of Luwian origin, from

Kubaba) (Roman equivalent: Magna Mater or 'Great Mother') was a manifestation of the


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Earth Mother goddess who was worshipped in Anatolia from Neolithic times. Like Gaia

or her Minoan equivalent Rhea, Cybele embodies the fertile earth, a goddess of caverns

and mountains, walls and fortresses, nature, wild animals (especially lions and bees).

Her title 'Mistress of the Animals' (potnia theron) which is also associated with the

Minoan Great Mother, alludes to her ancient Paleolithic roots. She is a life-death-rebirthdeity. Her consort, whose cult was introduced , is her son Attis.Cybele was supposed to

have been born on Mount Ida in Asia Minor; this is the source of her epithet Idaea.

Cybele's most ecstatic followers were males who ritually castrated themselves, after

which they were given womens clothing and assumed female identities, who were

referred to by contemporary commentator Kallimachos in the feminine Gallai , and who

other contemporary commetators in ancient Greece and Rome reffered to as Gallos or

Galli. Her Priestesses led the people in orgiastic ceremonies with wild music, drumming

and dancing and drink. She was associated with the mystery religion concerning her

son, Attis, who was castrated and resurrected. The dactyls were part of her retinue.Other followers of Cybele, Phrygian kurbantes or Corybantes expressed her ecstatic

and orgiastic cult in music especially drumming, clashing of shields and spears,

dancing, singing, shouts, all at night. Atalanta and Hippomenes were turned into lions by

Cybele after having sex in one of her temples.

Dagon or Atargis

Dagon was the god of the Philistines. The idol was represented in the combination of

both man and fish. The name 'Dagon' is derived from 'dag' which means 'fish'. Althoughthere was a deep affection from Dagon's worshippers to their deity, the symbol of a fish

in human form was really meant to represent fertility and the vivifying powers of nature

and reproduction. His name is a lot like 'Dogon'.

Dagon was a major northwest Semitic god, the god of grain and agriculture according to

the few sources to speak of the matter, worshipped by the early Amorites, by the people

of Ebla, by the people of Ugarit and a chief god (perhaps the chief god) of the Biblical

Philistines. His name appears in Hebrew as (in modern transcription Dagon, Tiberian

Hebrew), in Ugaritic as dgn (probably vocalized as Dagnu), and in Akkadian as Dagana,

Daguna usually rendered in English translations as Dagan.

Enki or Ea-in

Sumer where kingship first descended from heaven. EA was thought to live in the 'Apsu'

or submarine palace. Zoroaster can be seen above the amphibious gods


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Fuxi or Fu Hsi

Ancient painting of Nuwa and Fuxi

unearthed in Xinjiang.

The Chinese have maintained that their civilization was founded by amphibious beings

that had a man's head and a fish tail. The entity, named Fuxi, has been depicted as both

male or female. The date traditionally ascribed to him is 3,322BC. In Chinese

mythology, Fu Xi or Fu Hsi was the first of the mythical Three Sovereigns of ancient

China. He is a culture hero reputed to be the inventor of writing, fishing, and trapping.

Fu Xi was born on the lower-middle reaches of the Yellow River in a place called

Chengji (possibly modern Lantian, Shaanxi or Tianshui, Gansu). According to legendthe land was swept by a great flood and only Fuxi and his sister Nuwa survived. The

retired to Kunlun Mountain where they prayed for a sign from the Emperor of Heaven.

The divine being approved their union and the siblings set about procreating the human

race. Fu Xi then came to rule over his decedents although reports of his long reign vary

between sources from 115 years (2852 - 2737 BCE) to 116 years (2952-2836 BCE). He

lived for 197 years altogether and died at a place called Chen (modern Huaiyang,

Henan) where his mausoleum can still be found.

During the time of his predecessor Nuwa (who according to some sources was also his

wife and/or sister) society was matriarchal and primitive. Childbirth was seen to bemiraculous not requiring the participation of the male and children only knew their

mothers. As the reproductive process became better understood ancient Chinese

society moved towards a patriarchal system and Fu Xi assumed primary importance.

Fu Hsi taught his subjects to cook, to fish with nets, and to hunt with weapons made of

iron. He instituted marriage and offered the first open air sacrifices to heaven. A stone

tablet, dated 160 CE shows Fu Hsi with Nuwa, who was both his wife and his sister.

Traditionally, Fu Hsi is considered the originator of the I Ching (also known as the Yi

Jing or Zhou Yi), which work is attributed to his reading of the He Map (or the Yellow

River Map). By this tradition, Fu Hsi had the arrangement of the trigrams of the I Ching

revealed to him supernaturally. This arrangement precedes the compilation of the I

Ching during the Zhou dynasty. Fu Hsi is said to have discovered the arrangement in

markings on the back of a mythical dragon-horse (sometimes said to be a turtle) that

emerged from the river Luo. This discovery is also said to have been the origin of

calligraphy. Fu Hsi is also credited with the invention of the Guqin, together with

Shennong and Huang Di.


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Glaucus

Glaucus And Scylla

In Greek mythology, Glaucus ("shiny," "bright" or "bluish-green") was the name of

several different figures, including one God. These figures are sometimes referred to as

Glaukos or Glacus. Glaucus was a Greek sea-god.

According to Ovid, Glaucus began life as a mortal fisherman living in the Boeotian city of

Anthedon. He discovered by accident a magical herb which could bring the fish he

caught back to life, and decided to try eating it. The herb made him immortal, but also

caused him to grow fins instead of arms and a fish's tail instead of legs, forcing him to

dwell forever in the sea. Glaucus was initially upset by this side-effect, but Oceanus andTethys received him well and he was quickly accepted among the deities of the sea,

learning from them the art of prophecy.

Glaucus fell in love with the beautiful nymph Scylla, but she was appalled by his fish-like

features and fled onto land when he tried to approach her. He asked the witch Circe for

a potion to make Scylla fall in love with him, but Circe fell in love with him. She tried to

win his heart with her most passionate and loving words, telling him to scorn Scylla and

stay with her. But he replied that trees would grow on the ocean floor and seaweed

would grow on the highest mountain before he would stop loving Scylla. In her anger,

Circe poisoned the pool where Scylla bathed, transforming her into a terrible monsterwith twelve feet and six heads.

In Euripides' play Orestes, Glaucus was a son of Nereus and says that he assisted

Menelaus on his homeward journey with good advice. He also helped the Argonauts. It

was believed that he commonly came to the rescue of sailors in storms, having once

been one himself.

Iris

In Greek mythology, Iris was the daughter of Thaumas and the ocean nymph Electra

and one of the Oceanids (according to Hesiod), the personification of the rainbow and

messenger of the gods. As the rainbow unites Earth and heaven, Iris is the messenger

of the gods to men; in this capacity she is mentioned frequently in the Iliad, but never in

the Odyssey, where Hermes takes her place.


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Iris is represented as a youthful virgin, with wings of gold, who hurries with the swiftness

of the wind from one end of the world to the other, into the depths of the sea and the

underworld. She is especially the messenger of Hera, and is associated with Hermes,

whose caduceus or staff she often holds.

By command of Zeus she carries in an ewer water from the Styx, with which she puts tosleep all who perjure themselves. Her attributes are the caduceus and a vase. She is

also represented as supplying the clouds with the water needed to deluge the world. Iris

is the personal messenger of Hera, queen of the gods and is Hera's go-between from

Mount Olympus to the mortal world.The word iridescence is derived in part from the

name of this goddess.

Many were the progeny of the sea; some of them we shall meet later in saga, for

example the Graeae, Gorgons, and the Harpies.

Progeny of the sea often appear grotesque or fantastic. At this point, however, we singleout only Iris [eye'ris], a beautiful descendant of Pontus and Gaia.

Iris, fleet-footed and winged, is the lovely goddess of the rainbow, the meaning of her

name. She is also (like Hermes) a messenger of the gods.

Aristotle's friend, Eudoxus, visited Egypt and returned claiming that the Egyptians had a

tradition that one of their gods, Osiris or Ra (from Ray of Light), could not walk because

his legs had grown together.

Osiris was the god of the Dead. He is a god of agriculture, for his death and resurrection

are like those of a seed, cast in to the dark Earth, motionless. New life breaks throughits husk to push its way to the surface of the earth as a green shoot. He became one of

the most important of Egyptian gods because he symbolized the triumph of life over

death.

Osiris has never been shown with the body of a fish but

this image depicts his mummified form looking like the scales of a fish.

Matsya the Fish appeared in the Satya Yuga and represents beginning of life.

The Fish Incarnation is the first incarnation of Vishnu. Lord Vishnu takes the form of a

fish in order to retrieve the Vedas from the demon Hayagriva, who stole them from Lord

Brahma. Without the Vedas, Creation of the Universe cannot take place. He slayed the

demon Hayagriva, recovered the Vedas, and also saved the pious king Satyavrata from

the deluge so that life and religion can be preserved for the next cycle of Creation.


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According to legend, the king Manu was washing his hands in a river when a little fish

swam into his hands and begged him to save it. He put it in a jar, which it soon outgrew;

he successively moved it to a tank, a river and then the ocean. The fish then warned

him that a Great Flood would occur in a week that would destroy all life. Manu therefore

built a boat which the fish towed to a mountaintop when the flood came, and thus hesurvived along with some "seeds of life" to re-establish life on earth.

Avatars

Naiad

In Greek mythology, the Naiads (from the Greek, "to flow," and, "running water") were a

type of nymph who presided over fountains, wells, springs, streams, and brooks, as river

gods embodied rivers, and some very ancient spirits inhabited the still waters of

marshes, ponds and lagoon-lakes, such as pre-Mycenaean Lerna in the Argolid. Naiads

were associated with fresh water, as the Oceanids were with saltwater and the Nereids

specifically with the Mediterranean; but because the Greeks thought of the world's

waters as all one system, which percolated in from the sea in deep cavernous spaces

within the bosom of the earth, to rise freshened in seeps and springs, there was some

overlap. Arethusa, the nymph of a spring, could make her way through subterranean

flows from the Peloponnesus, to surface on the island of Sicily. In his Dionisiaca,

(XVI.356; XXIV.123) Nonnus gave the naiads the nonce-name Hydriades ("water

ladies").

Otherwise, the essence of a naiad was bound to her spring. If a naiad's body of water

dried, she died. Though Walter Burkert points out, "When in the Iliad [xx.4-9] Zeus calls

the gods into assembly on Mount Olympus, it is not only the well-known Olympians who

come along, but also all the nymphs and all the rivers; Okeanos alone remains at his

station," (Burkert 1985), Greek hearers recognized this impossibility as the poet's

hyperbole, which proclaimed the universal power of Zeus over the ancient natural world:

"the worship of these deities," Burkert confirms, "is limited only by the fact that they are

inseparably identified with a specific locality."

They were often the object of archaic local cults, worshipped as essential to fertility andhuman life. Boys and girls at coming-of-age dedicated their childish locks to the local

naiad of the spring. In places like Lerna their waters' ritual cleansings were credited with

magical medical properties. Animals were ritually drowned there. Oracles might be sited

by ancient springs.

When a mythic king is credited with marrying a naiad and founding a city, Robert Graves

offers a sociopolitical reading: the new arriving Hellenes justify their presence by taking


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to wife the naiad of the spring, so, in the back-story of the myth of Aristaeus, Hypseus, a

king of the Lapiths wed Chlidanope, a naiad, who bore him Cyrene. In parallels among

the Immortals, the loves and rapes of Zeus, according to Graves' readings, record the

supplanting of ancient local cults by Olympian ones (Graves 1955, passim). Aristaeus

had more than ordinary mortal experience with the naiads: when his bees died in

Thessaly, he went to consult the naiads. His aunt Arethusa invited him below the water'ssurface, where he was washed with water from a perpetual spring and given advice. A

less well-connected mortal might have drowned, being sent as a messenger in this way

to gain the advice and favor of the naiads for his people.

Naiads could be dangerous: Hylas of the Argo's crew was lost when he was taken by

naiads fascinated by his beauty (illustration, above right). The naiads were also known

to exhibit jealous tendencies. Theocritus' story of naiad jealousy was that of a shepherd,

Daphnis, who was the lover of Nomia; Daphnis had on several occasions been

unfaithful to Nomia and as revenge she permanently blinded him. Salmacis forced the

god Hermaphroditus into a carnal embrace and, when he sought to get away, fused withhim.

The Naiads were either daughters of Zeus or various Oceanids, but a genealogy for

such ancient, ageless creatures is easily overstated. The water nymph associated with

particular springs was known all through Europe in places with no direct connection with

Greece, surviving in the Celtic wells of northwest Europe that have been rededicated to

Saints, and in the medieval Melusine.

Nereids

In Greek mythology, the Nereids (neer'-ee-eds) are sea nymphs, the fifty daughters of

Nereus and Doris. They often accompany Poseidon and are always friendly and helpful

towards sailors fighting perilous storms. They are particularly associated with the

Aegean Sea, where they dwelt with their father in the depths within a silvery cave. The

most notable of them is Thetis, wife of Peleus and mother of Achilles; Amphitrite, wife of

Poseidon; and Galatea, love of the Cyclops Polyphemus. In classical art they are

frequently depicted riding an assortment of sea creatures - dolphins, sea monsters, and

hippocampi.

Nereus

Nereus was an ancient sea god with prophetic powers and the ability to change his

shape. Nereus mated with one of the Oceanids (Doris) and became the father of fifty

daughters called Nereids [nee're-idz]; three of these are important: Thetis, Galatea and


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Amphitrite. Nereids are beautiful and often, but not always, depicted as mermaids; and

usually they can shange their shape. He was known for his truthfulness and virtue.

Nereus, in Greek Mythology, was the eldest son of Pontus and Gaia, the Sea and the

Earth, a Titan who (with Doris) fathered the Nereids, with whom Nereus lived in the

Aegean Sea. In the Iliad the Old Man of the Sea is the father of Nereids, though Nereusis not directly named. He was one of the manifestations of the Old Man of the Sea,

never more so than when he was described, like Proteus, as a shapeshifter with the

power of prophecy, who would aid heroes such as Heracles who managed to catch him

even as he changed shapes. Nereus and Proteus ("first") seem to be two manifestations

of the god of the sea who was supplanted by Poseidon when Zeus overthrew Cronus.

The earliest poet to link Nereus with the labours of Heracles was Pherekydes, according

to a scholion on Apollonius of Rhodes.

During the course of the fifth century BCE, Nereus was gradually replaced by Triton,

who does not appear in Homer, in the imagery of the struggle between Heracles and thesea-god who had to be restrained in order to deliver his information that was employed

by the vase-painters, independent of any literary testimony.

Nommo

The Nommo are ancestral spirits (sometimes referred to as deities) worshipped by the

Dogon tribe of Mali, Africa. The word Nommos is derived from a Dogon word meaning,

'to make one drink'. The Nommos are usually described as amphibious, hermaphroditic,

fish-like creatures.

Folk art depictions of the Nommos show creatures with humanoid upper torsos,

legs/feet, and a fish-like lower torso and tail. The Nommos are also referred to as

Masters of the Water, the Monitors, and "the Teachers. Nommo can be a proper name

of an individual, or can refer to the group of spirits as a whole.

Dogon mythology states that Nommo was the first living creature created by the sky god

Amma. Shortly after his creation, Nommo underwent a transformation and multiplied

into four pairs of twins. One of the twins rebelled against the universal order created by

Amma.

To restore order to his creation, Amma sacrificed another of the Nommo progeny, whose

body was dismembered and scattered throughout the world. This dispersal of body

parts is seen by the Dogon as the source for the proliferation of Binu shrines throughout

the Dogons' traditional territory; wherever a body part fell, a shrine was erected.

In the latter part of the 1940's, French anthropologists Marcel Griaule and Germaine


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Dieterlen (who had been working with the Dogon since 1931) were the recipients of

additional, secret mythologies, concerning the Nommo. The Dogon reportedly related to

Griaule and Dieterlen a belief that the Nommos were inhabitants of a world circling the

star Sirius (see the main article on the Dogon for a discussion of their astronomical

knowledge).

The Nommos descended from the sky in a vessel accompanied by fire and thunder.

After arriving, the Nommos created a reservoir of water and subsequently dove into the

water. The Dogon legends state that the Nommos required a watery environment in

which to live.

According to the myth related to Griaule and Dieterlen: "The Nommo divided his body

among men to feed them; that is why it is also said that as the universe "had drunk of

his body," the Nommo also made men drink. He gave all his life principles to human

beings." The Nommo was crucified on a tree, but was resurrected and returned to his

home world. Dogon legend has it that he will return in the future to revisit the Earth in ahuman form.

The Nommos bear some physical resemblance to several other mythological beings: the

Oannes (Babylon), the Enki (Sumeria), Fuxi (China), Dagon (Philistine), and Nereus

(Greece), to name a few. It is also interesting to note the motifs common to the story of

Nommo with the story of Osiris (dismemberment and the erection of temples at the final

resting places of their respective body parts). There are also numerous parallels

between the story of Nommo and the traditions of Jesus: both were crucified, both

instructed followers to 'drink of my body', and both were associated with the fish

In the 1970's a book by Robert Temple titled The Sirius Mystery popularized thetraditions of the Dogon concerning Sirius and the Nommos. In The Sirius Mystery,

Temple came to the conclusion that the Dogon's knowledge of astronomy and non-

visible cosmic phenomenon could only be explained if said knowledge was imparted

upon them by an extraterrestrial race that had visited the Dogon at some point in the

past and given them information concerning the cosmos. Temple related this race to the

legend of the Nommos and contended that the Nommos were extraterrestrial inhabitants

of the Sirius star system who had traveled to earth at some point in the distant past and

had imparted knowledge about the Sirius star system as well as our own solar system

upon the Dogon tribes.

Some anthropologists studying the Dogon (notably Walter van Beek) found no evidence

that they had any historical advanced knowledge of Sirius. Van Beek postulated that

Griaule engaged in such leading and forceful questioning of his Dogon sources that new

myths were created in the process by confabulation.

Carl Sagan has noted that the first reported association of the Dogon with the

knowledge of Sirius as a binary star was in the 1940's, giving the Dogon ample


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opportunity to gain cosmological knowledge about Sirius and the solar system from

more scientifically advanced, terrestrial societies whom they had come in contact with. It

has also been pointed out that binary star systems like Sirius are theorized to have a

very narrow or non-existent Goldilocks Zone, and thus a high improbability of containing

a planet capable of sustaining life (particularly life as dependant on water as the

Nommos were reported to be).

It should also be noted that by the 1940's when Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlen

recorded the Nommo legends, the Dogon had already come into contact with Islam and

Christianity, which could have influenced some of their earlier Nommo traditions, notably

those that are similar to Christian traditions concerning Jesus.

Oannes

The Repulsive or Repellent Ones, a demon, the fish-men who the Babylonians said

brought them civilization. The first and most famous was called Oannes or Oe, who was

thought to have come from a 'great egg'. This one during the day stayed on the surface

among people, but for all the night he had to go into the sea. He, with other similar

beings called Annedotus, is the creator of the Babylonian civilization (Berosso). Later

Oannes will become the Fish-God for the Philistines.

Oceanids

In Greek and Roman mythology, the Oceanids were the three thousand daughters of the

Titans Oceanus and Tethys. One of these many daughters was also said to have been

the wife of the god Poseidon, typically named as Amphitrite. Each of these nymphs was

the patron of a particular spring, river, ocean, lake, pond, pasture, flower or cloud.

Oceanus and Tethys also had 3000 sons, the river-gods (Potamoi). Whereas most

sources limit the term Oceanids or Oceaniades to the daughters, others include both the

sons and daughters under this term.

Oceanus

Oceanus was believed to be the world-ocean in classical antiquity, which the ancient

Romans and Greeks considered to be an enormous river encircling the world. Strictly

speaking, Okeanos was the ocean-stream at the Equator in which floated the habitable

hemisphere (oikoumene). In Greek mythology, this world-ocean was personified as a

Titan, a son of Uranus and Gaia. In Hellenistic and Roman mosaics, this Titan was often


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depicted as having the upper body of a muscular man with a long beard and horns, and

the lower torso of a serpent (cf. Typhon). On a fragmentary archaic vessel (British

Museum 1971.11-1.1) of ca 580 BCE, among the gods arriving at the wedding of Peleus

and the sea-nymph Thetis, is a fish-tailed Oceanus, with a fish in one hand and a

serpent in the other, gifts of bounty and prophecy. In Roman mosaics he might carry a

steering-oar and cradle a ship.

Some scholars believe that Oceanus originally represented all bodies of salt water,

including the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, the two largest bodies known

to the ancient Greeks. However, as geography became more accurate, Oceanus came

to represent the stranger, more unknown waters of the Atlantic Ocean (also called the

"Ocean Sea"), while the newcomer of a later generation, Poseidon, ruled over the

Mediterranean.

Oceanus' consort is his sister Tethys, and from their union came the ocean nymphs,

also known as the three-thousand Oceanids, and all the rivers of the world, fountains,and lakes. From Cronus, of the race of Titans, the Olympian gods have their birth, and

Hera mentions twice in Iliad book xiv her intended journey "to the ends of the generous

earth on a visit to Okeanos, whence the gods have risen, and Tethys our mother who

brought me up kindly in their own house." In most variations of the war between the

Titans and the Olympians, or Titanomachy, Oceanus, along with Prometheus and

Themis, did not take the side of his fellow Titans against the Olympians, but instead

withdrew from the conflict. In most variations of this myth, Oceanus also refused to side

with Cronus in the latter's revolt against their father, Uranus.

Olokun

Olokun is experienced in male and female personifications, depending on what region

and of West Africa He/She is worshipped. Olokun is personified in several human

characteristics; patience, endurance, sternness, observation, meditation, appreciation

for history, future visions, and royalty personified. Its characteristics are found and

displayed in the depths of the Ocean. Its name means Owner (Olo) of Oceans (Okun).

Olokun is considered the patron orisa of the descendants of Africans that were carried

away during the Maafa, or what is sometimes referred to as the Transatlantic SlaveTrade or Middle Passage. Olokun works closely with Oya (Deity of Sudden Change)and

Egungun (Collective Ancestral Spirits) to herald the way for those that pass to

ancestorship, as it plays a critical role in Death (Iku), Life and the transition of human

beings and spirits between these two existences.

Olokun also signifies unfathomable wisdom. That is, the instinct that there is something

worth knowing, perhaps more than can ever be learned, especially the spiritual sciences


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that most people spend a lifetime pondering. Olokun also governs material wealth,

psychic abilities, dreaming, meditation, mental health and water-based healing.

Olokun is one of many Orisa known to help women that desire children. Olokun also is

worshipped by those that seek political and social ascension, which is why heads of

state, royalty, entrepreneurs and socialites often turn to Olokun to not only protect theirreputations, but propel them further among the ranks of their peers.

Phorcys

In Greek mythology, Phorcys, or Phorkys was one of the names of the "Old One of the

Sea", the primeval sea god, who, according to Hesiod, was the son of Pontus and Gaia.

According to the Orphic hymns Phorcys, Cronos and Rhea were the eldest offspring of

Oceanus and Tethys (Kerenyi p 42). Other names for the Old Man are Nereus and

Proteus (Kerenyi pp 42-43). His wife was Ceto and together they had many children, all

hideous monsters (except for the Hesperides) collectively known as the Phorcydes. The

Gorgons and Scylla were four of his beautiful children, but they were turned into

monsters. In ancient mosaics he was depicted as a fish-tailed merman with crab-claw

fore-legs and red.

Ceto with Pontus and a lion attacking the Titans

in the Titanomachy from the Pergamon Zeus Altar,

Pontus

In Greek mythology, Pontus (or Pontos, "sea") was an ancient, pre-Olympian sea-god,

son of Gaia and Aether, the Earth and the Air. Hesiod (Theogony, line 116) says that

Gaia brought forth Pontos out of herself, without coupling. For Hesiod, Pontos seems

little more than a personification of Sea. With Gaia, he was the father of the Old Man of

the Sea, Nereus and Thaumas (the awe-striking "wonder" of the Sea), of the Sea's

dangerous aspects, Phorcys and his sister-consort Ceto, and of the "Strong Goddess"

Eurybia. With Thalassa, whose own name simply means "Sea" but in a pre-Greek root,

he was the father of the Telchines. Compare the sea-Titan Oceanus, who was more

vividly realized than Pontus among the Hellenes.

Poseidon Greek god of the seas


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Proteus

'Proteus' was an ancient sea-god and the herdsman of Poseidon's seals. Like the other

sea-gods he had the gift of prophecy and the ability to change his shape at will. He usedto rest in caves to 'shelter from the heat of the Sirius. He was a son of Neptune and

subject to thesea god Poseidon, and his dwelling place was either the island of Pharos,

near the mouth of the Nile River, or the island of Carpathus, between Crete and Rhodes.

He knew all things--past, present, and future--but would not share his knowledge unless

compelled by a captur who could restrain the God--no matter what forms he might

assume.

Scylla

Scylla is one of the two sea monsters in Greek mythology (the other being Charybdis)

which lives on one side of a narrow channel of water. The two sides of the strait are

within an arrow's range of each other, so close that sailors attempting to avoid

Charybdis will pass too close to Scylla and vice versa. The phrase between Scylla and

Charybdis has come to mean being in a state where one is between two dangers and

moving away from one will cause you to be in danger from the other.

Traditionally the aforementioned strait has been associated with the Strait of Messina

between Italy and Sicily but more recently this theory has been challenged and the

alternative location of Cape Skilla in north west Greece suggested.

Scylla has the face and torso of a woman, but from her flanks grow six long necks

equipped with dog heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp teeth. Her body

consisted of twelve canine legs and a fish's tail. She was one of the children of Phorcys

and either Hecate, Crataeis, Lamia or Ceto (where Scylla would also be known as one

of the Phorcydes).

In Greek mythology, Ceto, or Keto (Greek: "sea monster") was a hideous aquatic

monster, a daughter of Gaia and Pontus. The asteroid (65489) Ceto is named after her,

and its satellite (65489) Ceto I Phorcys after her husband. She was the personification

of the dangers of the sea, unknown terrors and bizarre creatures. Eventually, the word

"ceto" became simple shorthand for any sea monster. It is still used in this way -

cetacean is a derivation. Her husband was Phorcys and they had many children,

collectively known as the Phorcydes or Phorcydides. In Greek art Ceto was drawn as a

serpentine fish. Ceto also gave name to the constellation Cetus.

In Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus is given advice by Circe to sail closer to Scylla, for


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Charybdis could drown his whole ship. Odysseus then successfully navigates his ship

past Scylla and Charybdis, but Scylla manages to catch six of his men, devouring them

alive.As retold by Thomas Bulfinch, Scylla was originally a beautiful nymph.

She scorned her many suitors and chose to live among the Nereids instead, until one

day Glaucus saw and fell in love with her. Glaucus was a mortal fisherman who hadpreviously been transformed by chewing a plant, gaining the form of a fish from his waist

down. When Glaucus declared his love to Scylla she fled, taking him for a monster.

Glaucus sought the help of Circe, hoping that this witch could make Scylla to love him

with her herbs, but Circe fell in love with Glaucus herself and asked him to forget Scylla.

Glaucus rejected her request, declaring that his love for Scylla was eternal.Circe was

enraged by Glaucus' refusal, and turned her anger on the girl whom he loved.

She went and poisoned the water which Scylla used to bathe with her magical herbs.

When Scylla waded into the water, the submerged half of her body was transformed intoa combination of fish joined with six ferocious dogs' heads sprouting from around her

waist.

The dogs attacked and devoured anyone who came near, beyond her ability to control,

and Scylla fled to the shore of the strait to live there alone.It is said that by the time

Aeneas' fleet came through the strait after the fall of Troy, Scylla had been changed into

a dangerous rock outcropping which still stands there to this day. Scylla and Charybdis

are believed to have been the entities from which the term, "Between a rock and a hard

place" (ie: a difficult place) originated.

Sedna

In Inuit mythology, Sedna is a sea goddess and master of the animals, especially

mammals such as seals, of the ocean. She lives in Adlivun, the Inuit underworld. Sedna

is also known as Arnakuagsak or Arnarquagssaq (Greenland) and Nerrivik or Nuliajuk

(Alaskan). According to myth, Sedna was the daughter of the creator-god Anguta and

his wife. She is said to have been so huge and hungry that she ate everything in her

parents' home, and even gnawed off one of her father's arms as he slept. According to

some versions of the myth, she took a dog for her husband. Anguta was so angry thathe threw her over the side of his canoe. She clung to its sides, whereupon he chopped

her fingers off one by one until she let go. She sank to the underworld, becoming the

queen of the monsters of the deep, and her huge fingers became the seals, sea-lions

and whales hunted by the Inuit.


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Sirens

Thetis

In Greek mythology, silver-footed Thetis is a sea nymph, one of the fifty Nereids,

daughters of "the ancient one of the seas," Nereus, and Doris (Hesiod, Theogony), a

grand-daughter of Tethys. While most extant material about Thetis concerns her role as

mother of Achilles, and while she is largely a creature of poetic fancy rather than cult

worship in the historical period, with one exception, a few fragmentary hints and

references suggest an older layer of the tradition, in which the sea-goddess Thetis

played a far more central role in the religious practices and imagination of certain

Greeks. The pre-modern etymology of her name, from tithemi, "to set up, establish",

suggests the perception among Classical Greeks of an early political role. Walter

Burkert considers her name a transformed doublet of Tethys.

Quintus of Smyrna, recalling this passage, does write that Thetis once released Zeus

from chains; but there is no other reference to this rebellion among the Olympians, and

some readers, like M.M. Willcock, have understood the episode as an ad hoc invention

of Homer's to support Achilles' request that his mother intervene with Zeus. Laura

Slatkin explores the apparent contradiction, in that the immediate presentation of Thetis

in the Iliad is as a helpless minor goddess overcome by grief and lamenting to her

Nereid sisters, and links the goddess's present and past through her grief. She draws

comparisons with Thetis' role in another work of the epic Cycle concerning Troy, the lost

Aethiopis, which presents a strikingly similar relationship that of the divine Dawn, Eos,

with her slain son Memnon; she supplements the parallels with images from therepertory of archaic vase-painters, where Eros and Thetis flank the symmetrical

opposed heroes. Thetis does not need to appeal to Zeus for immortality for her son, but

snatches him away to the White Island Leuke in the Black Sea, an alternate Elysium

where he has transcended death, and where an Achilles cult lingered into historic times.

Triton

Triton is a mythological Greek god, the messenger of the deep. He is the son ofPoseidon, god of the sea, and Amphitrite, goddess of the sea. He is usually represented

as a merman, having the upper body of a human and the tail of a fish.

Like his father, he carried a trident. However, Triton's special attribute was a twisted

conch shell, on which he blew like a trumpet to calm or raise the waves. Its sound was

so terrible, that when loudly blown, it put the giants to flight, who imagined it to be the

roar of a mighty wild beast (Hyginus, Poet. astronom. ii. 23). According to Hesiod's


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Theogony, Triton dwelt with his parents in a golden palace in the depths of the sea. The

story of the Argonauts places his home on the coast of Libya. When the Argo was

driven ashore on the Lesser Syrtes, the crew carried the vessel to Lake Tritonis, whence

Triton, the local deity, guided them across to the Mediterranean (Apollonius Rhodius iv.

1552).

Triton was the father of Pallas and foster parent to the goddess Athena. Pallas was killed

by Athena during a fight between the two goddesses. Triton is also sometimes cited as

the father of Scylla by Lamia. Triton also appeared in Roman myths and epics. In the

Aeneid, Misenus, the trumpeter of Aeneas, challenged Triton to a contest of trumpeting.

The god flung him into the sea for his arrogance.

Over time, Triton's name and image came to be associated with a class of merman-like

creatures, the Tritons, which could be male or female, and usually formed the escort of

marine divinities. Ordinary Tritons were described in detail by the geographer Pausanias

(ix. 21). A variety of Triton, the Centauro-Triton or Ichthyocentaur ("Fish-centaur"), wasdescribed as having the forefeet of a horse in addition to the human body and the fish

tail. It is probable that the idea of Triton owes its origin to the Phoenician fish-deities.

Among the things named after Triton include Triton, the largest moon of the planet

Neptune. This name is symbolic, as Neptune is the Roman name for Triton's father.

Triton is also associated in industry with tough, hard wearing machines such as Ford's

Triton Engines and Mitsubishi's Triton pickup trucks.

The six-sided or hexagram star is revered as a religious symbolby the Hebrews who call it the Seal of Solomon, and the Hindus

who call it the Mark of Vishnu, a god-man who was half-man, half-fish.

Yamaja

In Yoruba mythology, Yemoja is a mother goddess; patron deity of women, especially

pregnant women; and the Ogun river (the waters of which are said to cure infertility). Her

parents are Oduduwa and Obatala. She had one son, Orungan, who raped her

successfully one time and attempted a second time; she exploded instead, and fifteen

Orishas came forth from her. They include Ogun, Olokun, Shopona and Shango.Yemoja

is also venerated in Vodun. Among the Umbandists, Yemoja is a goddess of the ocean

and patron deity of the survivors of shipwrecks. In Santeria, Yemoja is the equivalent of

Our Lady of Regla.


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