Written in the Stars·Stand — Truth in Black
How much humiliation and hatred should the raped Caenis (Ancient Greek: Καινίς, romanized: Kainís) asked Poseidon (Greek: Ποσειδῶν) have harbored before she asked Poseidon (Greek: Ποσειδῶν) to transsexualize her into a man — this should also be the first transgender person in the recorded history of humans, right? In the age of power, even if a weak person transforms into a strong man, she still cannot get an ideal ending. A happy life can be a peaceful end; a miserable life does not know when it will be suddenly interrupted. Fate is all about flip-flopping and waiting for the unknown moment of crunchy break.
Sea Erotica
Pontus (Greek: Πόντος), which means “sea” in Greek, was the eldest son of Gaia (Ancient Greek: Γαῖα, romanized: Gaîa), the mother goddess of the earth, and signified the Mediterranean Sea by Hellenes. Pontus mated with his mother Gaia to give birth to Nereus (Ancient Greek: Νηρεύς, romanized: Nēreús), known as the “Old Man of the Sea,” representing the gentleness and wealth of the ocean and known for his knowledge, wisdom, prophecy, and ability to shapeshift. Pontus and his mother, Gaia, gave birth to Thaumas (Ancient Greek: Θαύμας; gen.: Θαύμαντος), meaning “Doubt” and representing the dangers of the sea.
Doris (Ancient Greek: Δωρίς/Δωρίδος) means “bounty” and was one of the 3,000 Oceanids (or Oceanides; Ancient Greek: Ὠκεανίδες, romanized: Ōkeanídes, pl. of Ὠκεανίς, Ōkeanís), daughters of the Titans Oceanus (Greek: Ὠκεανός) and Tethys (Ancient Greek: Τηθύς, romanized: Tēthýs). Doris and Nereus gave birth to 50 sea nymphs, the Nereids (or Nereides; Ancient Greek: Νηρηΐδες, romanized: Nērēḯdes), who represented beautiful and kind about the sea.
Amphitrite (Ancient Greek: Ἀμφιτρίτη, romanized: Amphitrítē) is one of the sea nymphs Nereids. Possessing deep blue eyes, she was capable of making mountainous waves. While dancing with her sisters on the island of Naxos (Greek: Νάξος) in the Aegean Sea, Amphitrite attracted Poseidon’s attention. As the king of the sea, Poseidon rules over the sea, storms, earthquakes, and war horses.
Amphitrite was trying to protect her virginity. She fled to the Atlas Mountains. Poseidon sent many sea creatures to find her. A dolphin found Amphitrite and convinced her to marry Poseidon. In return, Poseidon created the constellation Delphinus.
Like Zeus, Poseidon was sexually active, womanizing, and loved both men and women.
Amphitrite also had a brother, Nerites (Greek: Νηρίτης, romanized: Nērítēs), who was handsome. When Aphrodite was born from the sea, overwhelmed by Nerites’ radiant beauty, the goddess of sex fell in love with her first man, Nerites. But Nerites rejected the love of Aphrodite, preferring to stay in the sea with his family rather than follow the goddess to Mount Olympus. Even Aphrodite’s promise of a pair of wings did not make him change his mind. Later, Aphrodite gave the wings to her own son, Eros (Ancient Greek: Ἔρως), the god of love and desire.
Poseidon made Nerites his charioteer and a lover of his sex. The love between Poseidon and Nerites gave birth to Anteros (Ancient Greek: Ἀντέρως, romanized: Antérōs), a name that means “love returned” or “counter-love.” Anteros was a god who punished those who scorned love and rejected the advances of others. Helios (Ancient Greek: Ἥλιος, lit. ‘Sun’; Homeric Greek: Ἠέλιος), the embodiment of the sun, also fell in love with Nerites, and after a failed jealousy contest with Poseidon, Helios turned Nerites into a shellfish — The father of the god who punished those who scorn love was first severely punished.
Atrax (Ancient Greek: Ἄτραξ) was the son of the river gods Peneus (Ancient Greek: Πηνειός) and Bura (Ancient Greek: Βούρα, romanized: Boúra). One day, Atrax walked along the river with Caenis (Ancient Greek: Καινίς, romanized: Kainís), his daughter. Poseidon kidnaped Caenis and raped her. After raping Caenis, Poseidon was pleased and promised to grant Caenis a wish. Unwilling to suffer the indignity of being raped again, Caenis desired to become a male warrior, and Poseidon fulfilled her request by transforming her into a male warrior, giving him impenetrable skin, and naming him Caeneus (Ancient Greek: Καινεύς, romanized: Kaineús) — probably the earliest of the transgender people.
After becoming a warrior, Caeneus traveled through Thessaly (Greek: Θεσσαλία, romanized: Thessalía; ancient Thessalian: Πετθαλία, Petthalía) and later participated in a hunt for the Calydonian Boar. A centaur (Ancient Greek: κένταυρος, romanized: kéntauros; Latin: centaurus) named Latreus, who knew the transgender story of Caeneus, mocked Caeneus, believing that he did not possess the martial arts of a man. Enraged, Caeneus punched Latreus in the side. Since Caeneus had impenetrable skin, the centaur’s return blow left him unscathed. In retaliation, Latreus piled pine tree trunks (some say fir trees) and rocks upon him, pinning him down. Caeneus fell into Tartarus, and in the Underworld, he was restored to his original female form by the Fates. Another beautiful legend is that Caeneus turned into a gold-winged bird and flew away from the pile of trees — It seems that the sex change did not equip Caenis with the ability to protect herself. In the age of the gods, the underdog is always just an interlude in the story, some beautiful, some sad. As in life, one has to hit the rocks. What we can do is hope that fate will favor us, and maybe we can drift to a lonely island where the golden-winged bird cries.
Fiery Lover
Don’t crush, go rape! Life doesn’t have that much time for drama! If you love her, go for it. Big deal, go to jail. You don’t even dare to go to jail, and how dare you say you love her?
— Internet Fallacy
It does not matter who said it. It does matter who believes it. Love is humanity. Love is born out of emotion, and intercourse is due to love. Coitus is wildness given by nature; it is sex because of sex and violence born out of sex. Athena was born to Zeus and Metis (Ancient Greek: Μῆτις, romanized: Mêtis). Metis was also one of the 3,000 Oceanids. Her name means “Wisdom,” “Skill,” or “Craft”. Metis helped Zeus to obtain the crown of the king of the gods. But because a god predicted that the offspring born to Metis would have the power to overthrow Zeus, Zeus swallowed the pregnant Metis.
Athena was then born in the head of Zeus. Zeus asked Hephaestus (Greek: Ἥφαιστος, translit. Hḗphaistos), the god of craftsmen and fire, to help. Hephaestus was the son of Zeus and Hera, so he and Athena were half-siblings. Hephaestus split his father’s head with a sharp axe, so Athena was born from Zeus’ head.
Hephaestus was ugly, but his aesthetics were at a high level. He won Aphrodite as his wife by a trick. Athena was born as an adult like Aphrodite. Athena was known as the “with gleaming eyes” maiden, so how could she escape Hephaestus’ affection?
One time, Athena asked the god of craftsmen and fire to make her a weapon, Hephaestus, in keeping with the principle of “don’t crush, go rape!” attempted to rape Athena, but Athena gets out of the way, and the rape is unsuccessful. His semen lands on Athena’s thigh. Disgusted, Athena wiped off the semen with a piece of wool (ἔριον; erion) and flung it to the earth (χθών; chthôn). Gaia, the earth mother, was fertilized and became pregnant, giving birth to Erichthonius (Ancient Greek: Ἐριχθόνιος, romanized: Erikhthónios), a name meaning “troubles born from the earth.”
As the goddess of virginity, Athena had to raise Erichthonius in secret. To build the Acropolis, Athena was going to the Pallene to fetch a mountain made of limestone. She put the baby in a box and gave it to the three daughters of the Athenian king, Cecrops (Ancient Greek: Κέκροψ, Kékrops; gen.: Κέκροπος): the first daughter, Herse (Ancient Greek: Ἕρση), whose name means “dew”. The second daughter, Pandrosus (Ancient Greek: Πάνδροσος), whose name means “all dew” or “all bedewed”. The third daughter, Aglaurus (Ancient Greek: Ἄγλαυρος), meaning “dewfall”, was sometimes called Agraulus (Ancient Greek: Ἄγραυλος), meaning “rustic one”.
Athena warns the three girls never to open the box to look inside. Pandrosus obeyed, but Herse and Aglaurus, overcome with curiosity, opened the box, and the sisters were horrified by what they saw inside: they saw a snake wrapped around a baby. But maybe it was too much of a rush to see, maybe it was a half-human, half-snake baby. They went mad and jumped off the Acropolis. Shrines were constructed for Herse and Aglauros on the Acropolis.
Pandrosus complied with the warning, representing obedience to the gods. So, dedicated to her, the Athenians built a sanctuary on the north side of the Acropolis. According to an old Attic law, whenever a cow was to Athena, it was necessary to sacrifice a ewe to Pandrosos.
In honor of Athena and Aphrodite, the night festival of Arrephoria took place during the month of Skiraphorion at the height of the Greek summer. Arrhephoria, the word is derived from the Greek term Ἀρρηφόρια, which is composed of ἄρρητος, “unspoken, not to be divulged,” and φέρω, “I carry.” This feast was also called Hersiphoria.
The night festival would imitate the behavior of Herse and Aglaurus. The Administrator of Athens chose two young girls from the noble families of Athens, and the two girls would live in their homes on the Acropolis for a year in the service of Athena. At the end of their service, they would have an initiation ceremony on Arrephoria Night, which marked the next stage of their lives.
Pausanias (Greek: Παυσανίας; c. 110 — c. 180) was a Greek geographer and traveler who lived during the Roman era in the second century AD and was the author of the ten-volume Greek Journal (Περιήγησις). According to his records, Haland summarized:
For a certain time the Arrephoroi have their living from the Goddess: and when the festival comes round they have to perform certain ceremonies during the night. They carry on their heads what Athena’s priestess gives them to carry, and neither she who gives it nor they who carry it know what it is she gives them. In the city not far from Aphrodite-in-the-Gardens is an enclosed place with a natural entrance to an underground descent; this is where the virgin girls go down. They leave down there what they were carrying, and take another thing and bring it back covered up. They are then sent away, and other virgin girls are brought to the Acropolis instead of them.
— Haland, “The Ritual Year of Athena,” 260.
Truth in Black
Phocis (Greek: Φωκίδα; Ancient Greek: Φωκίς) was located in the center of ancient Greece and included the famous Delphi (Greek: Δελφοί). The Phocians were mainly pastoralists. Its king, Coronaeus (Ancient Greek: Κορωναῖος), gave birth to a daughter, Corone (Ancient Greek: Κορώνη, romanized: Korṓnē). While the king was taking his daughter for a walk along the seashore, Poseidon took a fancy to Corone. The sea king leaped out of the water and tried to rape her. Corone ran while crying out to humans and gods desperately. Athena hears her cries for help, “the virgin goddess feels pity for a virgin” (Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.569–88), and turns Corone into a crow. Corone means crow in Greek.
Corone, who had turned into a crow, saw Herse and Aglaurus open the box and jump off the Acropolis. She hurriedly flew to tell Athena. Athena, who had heard the bad news, became furious and threw down the mountain she was carrying, which became what is now known as Mount Lykavittos (Greek: Λυκαβηττός), the summit of which is the highest point in the center of Athens. The divine virgin also hated messengers bringing ill news, as did some foolish monarchs, and she cursed Corone never to never be able to fly over the Acropolis again.
In Persian, the name of Khwarazm (Old Persian: Hwârazmiya; Persian: خوارزم, Xwârazm or Xârazm) combined xor (خور ‘the sun’) and zam (زم ‘earth, land’), designating “the land from which the sun rises.” In the Amu Darya delta region of western Central Asia, the Khwarezmid Empire was founded in the 11th century and destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century. It ever became “the most powerful and aggressively expansionist empire in the Persian lands.”
The king of the Khwarezmid Empire detested all bad news, and whenever the Khwarazm army went on a campaign, if the messenger delivered the good news, then he was rewarded; if news of a loss arrived, the king fed the messenger delivering the bad news to the tigers — so that the king could live the dream of a beautiful Khorezm.
The Khwarezmia Messenger is supposed to be the eastern version of the Athena Messenger. In China, people believe that seeing a magpie when you go out in the morning brings good luck, and seeing a crow brings bad luck. In the story of Corone, who turns into a crow, she covers her whiteness with black feathers, meaning her chastity is cloaked, representing the truth in black — but neither Athena nor the king of the Khwarazm only wants to believe what they want to believe.
People are good at covering up truths they don’t like with all sorts of lies. Although the truth is always there, it is not visible to the people who are blind in their minds.
Ānanda (Pali and Sanskrit: आनन्द; 5th–4th century BCE) was the primary attendant of the Buddha and one of his ten principal disciples. He’s known as “The One Who Knows Best.”
Fools are not only blind in their eyes but in their minds and do not think about the karmic consequences of their past lives. Neither do they know about causality nor the fundamentals of things. They are tired of studying the Buddhist doctrine of cognizing the world and do not review their past lives to see if they had no merit to bring them the blessings of the present life, and they resent heaven and earth and blame the saints. People are more blind in their minds than their eyes, but that’s all there is.
— Ānanda
Truth is naked and honest before the human eye, but the human mind wears a blindfold.
Arno Will, December 19, 2023, revised May 21, 2024
Ideas and Myths·Awakening
Ideas and Myths·Purpose For Man
Ideas and Myths·Written in the Stars
Written in the Stars·Predestined Fate
Written in the Stars·Destinies
Written in the Stars·Stand
Stand — Thunderbolt
Stand — Eternal Spring
Stand — Truth in Black
Stand — Feast of Human Flesh
Stand — Wonder Wheel
Stand — Blood Sword
Written in the Stars·Curses
Ideas and Myths·Liberation
