Zeus Direct Quotes

Now that that's settled, you're coming with me." "Never in a billion suns. Not even if Zeus showed up as a swan and tried to peck me in your direction. I wouldn't go with you even if my other option was Hades dragging me to the Underworld for an eternal threesome with Persephone.

In Plato's Symposium, Aristophanes accounts for this feeling of familiarity by claiming that the loved one was our long-lost 'other half to whose body our own had originally been joined. In the beginning, all human beings were hermaphrodites with double backs and flanks, four hands and four legs and two faces turned in opposite directions on the same head. These hermaphrodites were so powerful and their pride so overweening that Zeus was forced to cut them in two, into a male and female half – and from that day, every man and woman has yearned nostalgically but confusedly to rejoin the part from which he or she was severed.

It was told that during the wedding feast, Eris [Discordia], a daughter of Nyx, threw a golden apple into their midst, intended as a prize for the most beautiful amongst the three Goddesses at the table: Athena, Hera & Aphrodite, the daughter, wife & clandestine lover of Zeus, respectively. And Zeus wisely dodged the responsibility of making such a tough decision,directing that it should be made by Paris of Troy instead.

What’s so funny?” “You freak out when I disappear and reappear, but you expect me to stop time.” She laughed, too. “But why can’t you? You’re a god.” “Like I said, we have more responsibilities than freedoms. I doubt even Zeus could pull that one off.” From high above, a streak of light flew from the sky and struck a boulder not twenty feet from where they lay, sending sparks and smoke and a loud crack in all directions in the echoing valley. The boulder was split in half and was as black as coal. “Holy crap!” Therese cried, falling against Than. “What was that?” “Oops. My apologies,” he muttered, but it didn’t sound like he was talking to her. “I made someone angry.” “That scared me to death. Does that happen often?” “No. Never to me. But this is an exceptional time in my life.

What do you do when you are faced with several different gods each claiming the same territory? The Babylonian Marduk and the Greek Zeus was each considered master of the sky and king of gods. You might also decide, since they had quite different attributes, that one of them was merely invented by the priests. But if one, why not both? And so it was that the great idea arose, the realization that there might be a way to know the world without the god hypothesis; that there might be principles, forces, laws of nature, through which the world could be understood without attributing the fall of every sparrow to the direct intervention of Zeus.

And when Aphrodite was told about Cupid`s rapid progress, she asked Zeus whether he would take her other son, Hymen, along too, since Hymen was already twenty-one & was about to be appointed as the God of Marriage, but knew precious little about love & sex, let alone, marriage. And thus Zeus took Hymen along too on his oyster hunt. But the Nymphs did not like Hymen. They shrieked & ran in all directions at his approach. But Hymen turned out to be a worthy oyster hunter. He caught the Nymphs easily enough & after catching them, he fed them with wine which his father, the God of Wine, made. And thus drugged, he harvested their oysters painlessly. And this was how all virgin Nymphs & girls got their oysters named after him, the God of Marriage.

Gods in The Lost Hero Aeolus The Greek god of the winds. Roman form: Aeolus Aphrodite The Greek goddess of love and beauty. She was married to Hephaestus, but she loved Ares, the god of war. Roman form: Venus Apollo The Greek god of the sun, prophecy, music, and healing; the son of Zeus, and the twin of Artemis. Roman form: Apollo Ares The Greek god of war; the son of Zeus and Hera, and half brother to Athena. Roman form: Mars Artemis The Greek goddess of the hunt and the moon; the daughter of Zeus and the twin of Apollo. Roman form: Diana Boreas The Greek god of the north wind, one of the four directional anemoi (wind gods); the god of winter; father of Khione. Roman form: Aquilon Demeter The Greek goddess of agriculture, a daughter of the Titans Rhea and Kronos. Roman form: Ceres Dionysus The Greek god of wine; the son of Zeus. Roman form: Bacchus Gaea The Greek personification of Earth. Roman form: Terra Hades According to Greek mythology, ruler of the Underworld and god of the dead. Roman form: Pluto Hecate The Greek goddess of magic; the only child of the Titans Perses and Asteria. Roman form: Trivia Hephaestus The Greek god of fire and crafts and of blacksmiths; the son of Zeus and Hera, and married to Aphrodite. Roman form: Vulcan Hera The Greek goddess of marriage; Zeus’s wife and sister. Roman form: Juno Hermes The Greek god of travelers, communication, and thieves; son of Zeus. Roman form: Mercury Hypnos The Greek god of sleep; the (fatherless) son of Nyx (Night) and brother of Thanatos (Death). Roman form: Somnus Iris The Greek goddess of the rainbow, and a messenger of the gods; the daughter of Thaumas and Electra. Roman form: Iris Janus The Roman god of gates, doors, and doorways, as well as beginnings and endings. Khione The Greek goddess of snow; daughter of Boreas Notus The Greek god of the south wind, one of the four directional anemoi (wind gods). Roman form: Favonius Ouranos The Greek personification of the sky. Roman form: Uranus Pan The Greek god of the wild; the son of Hermes. Roman form: Faunus Pompona The Roman goddess of plenty Poseidon The Greek god of the sea; son of the Titans Kronos and Rhea, and brother of Zeus and Hades. Roman form: Neptune Zeus The Greek god of the sky and king of the gods. Roman form: Jupiter

The gods muttered among themselves and nodded. The baby might be a thief, but at least he was a respectful thief. “This is ridiculous!” Apollo cried. “Father Zeus, he stole from me. Put him in juvie! Put him on the chain gang!” Zeus suppressed a smile. He knew he had to be just, but he also couldn’t help admiring Hermes’s audacity. “Hermes, you will immediately show Apollo where you’ve hidden his cows. Then you will pay Apollo whatever price he demands for the two cows you killed.” “I’ll throw him into Tartarus!” Apollo yelled. “That’ll be my price!” Zeus shrugged. “You’ll have to work that out between yourselves. Now, off with you.” Hermes sighed. “As you wish, Father. Apollo, you drive. I’ll navigate.” Apollo picked up the cradle and flew off with Hermes. The baby god directed him to the secret cave where he’d hidden the cattle, but he took a roundabout route. He was furiously thinking about how he could avoid punishment. When Apollo saw his missing cows, he calmed down a little bit, but he was still angry with Hermes. “It’s

Weil supplants these contradictory images of God (the omnipotent willing God versus the good and loving God) with her version of Plato's dual causality. The real dilemma, for Weil, is that God is simultaneously the author of all that is and only that which is good. Her solution is to transpose Plato's dual causality of Reason and Necessity (Timaeus 48a) into two faces of God: (i) love or grace, as God the Son, the eternal self-renouncing sacrificial Lamb and (ii) necessity or gravity, as God the Father's created order of mechanical secondary causes. The distance between necessity and the Good in Plato thus becomes the distance between God the Father and God the Son in Weil, bridged by the Cross. She then offers this hermeneutical key: 'power' is always a metaphor for necessity or natural and supernatural consequences rather than a direct act of miraculous intervention. Thus, the 'power of God' (whether in wrath or deliverance) in the Bible is an existential description of secondary causes. The reality, she says, is that God is impartial (i.e., 'God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust' or 'Zeus's golden scales' ). 'Force' as we experience it is the mechanism (necessity) of the world (like gravity )—not arbitrary intervention. Beyond that, force is evil, because it is the opposite of love, which is consent.

As a case study of perceived miracles, let’s examine the belief in thunder gods within certain cultures. Throughout history, there have been many thunder gods, spread out across multiple continents and civilizations (1). In most cases, the god created thunderstorms directly through his actions, whether this meant Zeus throwing lightning bolts or the beating of a thunderbird's wings. Today, when the scientific causes of thunder are well-known, such myths seem absurd and antiquated. At the time, though, believers likely felt that thunder was a miraculous event requiring such divine explanation.

Zap them, Bolt!” Immediately the thunderbolt took off after Hera and Poseidon. “No! Not them,” Zeus called in the nick of time. “The Cronies!” That was what everyone called King Cronus’s soldiers. Not to their faces, though, because they didn’t like it one bit. The bolt screeched to a halt in midair. Then it switched directions and buzzed off toward the soldiers.

Tyresia (Τειρεσίας) Tyresias is blind, it is said, but we are not really sure. We read that Tyresias was blinded by the gods because they did not want him to prophesy about 'private' matters. However, other ancient historical documents say that Tyresias was the son of a nymph who was made so by Athena as a punishment for seeing her bathing naked, but was then made a soothsayer by the goddess herself at his mother's request. Perhaps the best-known fact about Tyiresias is the one I am about to tell. One day, while walking on Mount Cillene, Tyresias came upon two snakes mating, and, annoyed by the scene, killed the female (according to one version, he merely separated them by striking first the female and then the male). At the same time, Tyresias was transformed from a man into a woman. He lived in this state for seven years, experiencing all the pleasures a woman can experience. After this period he was confronted with the same scene as the serpents. This time he killed the male serpent and instantly became a man again. One day, Zeus and Hera were divided by an argument: whether in love the man or the woman felt more pleasure. Unable to reach an agreement, with Zeus claiming it was the woman and Hera claiming it was the man, they decided to summon Tyresias, who was considered the only one who could settle the dispute as he was both man and woman. When questioned by the gods, he replied that pleasure is made up of ten parts: a man feels only one and a woman nine, so a woman feels nine times as much pleasure as a man. The goddess Hera, furious that Tyresias had revealed such a secret, made him blind, but Zeus, to compensate for the damage done, gave him the power to foresee the future and the gift of life for seven generations: the Greek gods cannot undo what other gods have done or decided. So Tyresias' blindness is actually the condition for him to fulfil his role as soothsayer. Sight comes into play directly, as a violation of a code of conduct enunciated by Callimachus (the laws of Cronus state that whoever sees an immortal against his will will pay a high price for that sight).

Everyone wants to date me,” Lo assures Gigi, tossing a glare in Missy’s direction, who just laughs at him. “Just ask Ares how much puss—” “Lo . . .” Zeus warns. “What’s puss?” Gigi harps. “Puss is another word for cats,” Ares jumps in, taking Gigi from Lo and setting her up on one of his shoulders, holding her there with his arm. Sorry, Lo mouths to me. I smile, telling him it’s fine. “Uncle Lo’s getting a kitty?” Gigi’s face lights up. “That’s the only puss he’ll be getting,” Missy quips in a low voice. I snigger.

Blindness is another classic castration symbol, according to Freud, and the template for the “blind prophet” goes back to the ancients, including the mythological backstory of Freud’s favorite tragedy Oedipus the King. That story is in some sense just as relevant to the tragic life of Robertson as it is to that of Freud, but in a very different way. Oedipus’s self-blinding when he realizes his own guilt links him to the blind seer Tiresias, who announces the king’s guilt at the end of the tragedy. Audiences would have known the mythological backstory of the seer and his blindness, just as they knew that of Oedipus. In his younger days, Tiresias had come upon two entwined snakes in the forest and touched them with his staff; upon doing so, he was transformed into a woman. After living as a woman for seven years, Tiresias encountered the snakes again, touched them, and was turned back into a man. Summoned to Mount Olympus to report on his experience, he revealed to Hera, in front of her husband Zeus, that (based on his extensive experience) women get much more enjoyment from sex than men do. Hera blinded him in punishment for revealing this secret, and Zeus gave him prophetic foresight in recompense. Tiresias thus reveals an ancient symbolic association between these two ideas, prophecy and sexual/gender liminality or boundary-crossing.20 The symbolism of the Sphinx, the guardian whose riddle Oedipus had to answer to become King (and thus to marry his mother), is also relevant here. Sphinxes are symbolic guardians of time,21 and not accidentally, sphinx is closely related to the word sphincter: a guardian (literally a “strangler”) designed to mainly admit the passage of things in one direction but sometimes capable of admitting other things traveling in reverse. As I hinted earlier, suggesting that the normal order of causality can be transgressed arouses similar hostile reactions from skeptical guardians of Enlightenment science that the prospect of a phallus—the ultimate “causal arrow”—moving the wrong way through a sphincter arouses in gatekeepers of patriarchal “Christian” morals. In a sense, Oedipus and Tiresias were permutations of the same basic possibility—transgression of some kind of sexual boundary, punished by symbolic castration but also (at least in Tiresias’s case) compensated with foresight. Transgressive enjoyment, which “impossibly” connects the future to the past, is thus what turns precognition into a psychoanalytic problem. As with Tiresias, the point of Oedipus’s story is not merely that he “traveled the wrong way through time” by marrying his mother and killing his father; it is that he committed these crimes and enjoyed them, and only belatedly discovered what it was that he had been enjoying. His guilt was not over his actions but over his enjoyment. Our ignorance as to our enjoyment (that is, our blindness to it) allows both the past and future to affect our lives in uncanny and seemingly “impossible” ways like the kinds of coincidences and twists of fate that seem to have characterized Robertson’s life.

turned my face to the sky. “If you want to punish me, Father, be my guest, but have the courage to hurt me directly, not my mortal companion. BE A MAN!” To my surprise, the skies remained silent. Lightning did not vaporize me. Perhaps Zeus was too taken aback to react, but I knew he would never overlook such an insult. To Tartarus with him. I had work to do.