Once upon a time there was a
King who had four daughters. The youngest one was the beautiful Psyche.
The girl
was so
beautiful that nobody dared to ask for her hand,
and with the time
people started
to adore her as
a goddess
for her
beauty and compared her with Aphrodite. As Aphrodite
listened that, she became angry and couldn't accept
it. So she ordered
to Eros to make Psyche fall in love with a totally ugly man to
make her feel ridiculous. So the always beautiful
god of desire Eros, for the Romans Amor or Cupidom,
went down to the
earth to find the palace of Psyche.
As he found her and saw such
a
beauty in front of him he
couldn't stop
falling in love with her,
something that was happening
to
him for
the first time, since
normally he was
the one to
decide about
desire.
So Eros wanted to win Psyche's heart without
letting her know who he really
was, and so he asked his friend Apollo. He
was sure that he would help him because,
once in the past, Apollo fall in
love with the nymph Daphne. At the same time, Apollo had a fight with
Eros and as a revenge Eros shot a iron arrow in the heart of
Daphne so that she felt nothing else than detestation. She tried to escape
of him and, as a last solution, she transformed into a laurel. Since that
Apollo wears a laurel wreath on his head.
Eros didn't want to feel the same pain again and promised
to give him support.
Eros had the following plan:
Apollo should send the father of Psyche to his Oracle in Delphi, which
would tell him that if Psyche wanted to find a lover she
should go to the
highest mountain of her area. There she would
meet her husband. But for this
Apollo needed also the help of
Zephyrs, the west wind. Once, both fall
in love with the same boy, Hyakinthos,
who was giving more preference to Apollo. Zephyrs became jealous of
Apollo and, during a discuss competition, Zephyrs steered the
discuss to Hyakinthos, hit him and killed him.
Since then he still owed Apollo an explanation, so he
accepted to help him this time.
So finally Psyche went to the highest mountain.
When she arrived there, the west wind appeared and told her to let her drop down the
mountain, that nothing would happen to her. So she did and
Zephyrs brought her to the palace of Eros. There she found
a fully equip
palace, with food, water and unbeliavable jewelry. But she
was alone and after a while she layed down on one of the
sofas and
slept. As she fall asleep Eros appeared and woke her up with loving kisses.
He told her that it was not possible to see his face,
so at daytime she would be alone and just in the night he would appear and take care
of her.
Psyche agreed without thinking too much, but quite quickly she got totally bored and she
asked Eros if he could bring some other people to give her company,
her sisters for example.
After thinking a while he agreed,
although just
for one day. In the same way, the west wind brought the three
sisters. They were really enthusiastic but they couldn't understand why
her lover didn't want to show his face and made Psyche suspicious. They
told her that probably her lover was a really ugly man and that
this was the
reason that he hided himself. However, the
following night, after Eros
fall asleep Psyche opened a candle and saw
amazed that the god of desire Eros
was lying next to her. In shock she let some wax
drop and it fall on Eros shoulder,
who woke
up and disappeared. She lost him....
Back home she told her sisters what happened and also how she
had arrived to the palace. As
a result all her sisters went to the mountain and
jumped down, but without the
west wind, and none of them survived.
Psyche roamed around and one day she came to the palace of Aphrodite.
She told her the story and Aphrodite promised to help her to find
Eros. But for this she should solve some tasks
for Aphrodite. The first
two were solved without any problems and with the help of
Apollo. The
third and important one was to step down in the underworld and to take a
basket full of beauty of the queen Persephone.
She arrived regardless the kingdom under the earth and met Persephone
who gave her immediately the basket of beauty. The only condition she
asked to Psyche was not to look inside the basket before she reached the
outside world. But as often happens in the mythological stories
Psyche couldn't wait and, even if she could see the sunshine from far, she
opened the basket and looked inside. From there on she had to live for
the rest of her life in the underworld.
This was the revenge of
Aphrodite.
Asklepios / Hestia / Iris / Helios / Hades / Pan / Priapos / Eros / Themis / The Erinyen / The Horen / Zagreus
