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Venus Aphrodite's avatar

I love this. A necessary reflection on how women's choices have been vilified for millennia. This immediately reminds me of a myth that Liv discussed in her podcast a while ago. A young man named Acontius loved a woman named Cydippe, so he wrote "I swear to marry Acontius" on an apple and threw it at her. She picked it up and read the words mehcanically, and by reading them, she became bound to an oath she never meant to swear. Again, woman's agency is called into question. There's so much to dissect about these myths, especially where the apple keeps showing up in similar contexts.

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cosi’s odyssey's avatar

Oh this horrible myth is ringing a bell !! There really is something going on with fruit, temptation, union, and entrapment isn’t there?

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Jo's avatar

Bob Katter, the one and only ( thank goodness). This Aussie is presently in Sorrento, looking for sirens.

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cosi’s odyssey's avatar

Oh I love Sorrento! Let me know if you have any luck spotting sirens 👀

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Richard Careaga's avatar

Norse mythology has Iðunn, the rejuvenated one, who grows some fruit in the forest outside Asgard that she brings to the gods to keep them immortal. (Don’t know which fruit, but it wouldn’t have been apples because the myth preceded the introduction of that fruit to Scandinavia.)

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SilvergirlTruth's avatar

I see Salvador Dali- first frame, right side, middle. Dali was inspired by Bosch.

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Robin Turner's avatar

As it happens I was in Dalyan, Turkey a couple of weeks ago for a kind of Thesmopoiria (since it's the 21st century, a few men were allowed in). We attended a seminar and visited what's left of the temple of Demeter at the old city of Kaunos. What I didn't knowbwfore is that the mysteries of Eleusis may have originated as an offshoot of the women's cult of Demeter and Persephone.

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Robin Turner's avatar

So for that reason I'm not so sure about the Persephone-Eve correlation - Pandora looks like a more likely candidate. The story of Demeter and Persephone is, I think , more about the mother-daughter relationship, hence perhaps the significance of Thesmopoiria as a women's festival.

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