apollo's sister

[KJnomadic]

so who was apollo's sister?

i get my mythology all mixed up.....

i love this song. it's growing to be my favorite on scarlet's treasures. tombigbee is great and seaside is cute, indian summer has some great moments but a bit slow sometimes if i'm not in the right mood, Ruby is good, Bug a Martini hmmm..well it's like a random silly tune

but apollo's frock is starting to really stand out. it's beautiful and fierce and...orchestral?? {Insert music word here} The piano intro goes on forever...you keep waiting for the lyrics at every pause, but it's relentless (in a good way)

ok, off to browse some mythology...

[cold pressed olives]

artemis was apollo's sister.

[eresos]

artemis & apollo were twins.

he was the sun, she was the moon. there is a lot more to it, its been a while since i read my greek mythology. but i have been to Delos where the stories tell they were born...

i always loved Artemis b/c she was the night, mysterious & dark.
she was a huntress.
and she was chaste. i think that one story has a man finding her bathing and some awful fate befalls him for it.


i look it up for you to get facts straight (plus i am curious!)

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/a/artemis.html



The daughter of Leto and Zeus, and twin sister of Apollo. Artemis is the goddess of the wilderness, the hunt and wild animals, and fertility (she became a goddess of fertility and childbirth mainly in cities). She was often depicted with the crescent of the moon above her forehead and was sometimes identified with Selene (goddess of the moon). Artemis was one of the Olympians and a virgin goddess. Her main vocation was to roam mountain forests and uncultivated land with her nymphs in attendance hunting for lions, panthers, hinds and stags. Contradictory to the later, she helped in protecting and seeing to their well-being, also their safety and reproduction. She was armed with a bow and arrows which were made by Hephaestus and the Cyclopes.

In one legend, Artemis was born one day before her brother Apollo. Her mother gave birth to her on the island of Ortygia, then, almost immediately after her birth, she helped her mother to cross the straits over to Delos, where she then delivered Apollo. This was the beginning of her role as guardian of young children and patron of women in childbirth. Being a goddess of contradictions, she was the protectress of women in labor, but it was said that the arrows of Artemis brought them sudden death while giving birth. As was her brother, Apollo, Artemis was a divinity of healing, but also brought and spread diseases such as leprosy, rabies and even gout.

Being associated with chastity, Artemis at an early age (in one legend she was three years old) asked her father, the great god Zeus, to grant her eternal virginity. Also, all her companions were virgins. Artemis was very protective of her purity, and gave grave punishment to any man who attempted to dishonor her in any form. Actaeon, while out hunting, accidentally came upon Artemis and her nymphs, who bathing naked in a secluded pool. Seeing them in all their naked beauty, the stunned Actaeon stopped and gazed at them, but when Artemis saw him ogling them, she transformed him into a stag. Then, incensed with disgust, she set his own hounds upon him. They chased and killed what they thought was another stag, but it was their master. As with Orion, a giant and a great hunter, there are several legends which tell of his death, one involving Artemis. It is said that he tried to rape the virgin goddess, so killed him with her bow and arrows. Another says she conjured up a scorpion which killed Orion and his dog. Orion became a constellation in the night sky, and his dog became Sirius, the dog star. Yet another version says it was the scorpion which stung him and was transformed into the constellation with Orion, the later being Scorpio. Artemis was enraged when one of her nymphs, Callisto, allowed Zeus to seduce her, but the great god approached her in one of his guises; he came in the form of Artemis. The young nymph was unwittingly tricked, and she gave birth to Arcas, the ancestor of the Arcadians, but Artemis showed no mercy and changed her into a bear. She then shot and killed her. As Orion, she was sent up to the heavens, and became the constellation of the Great Bear (which is also known as the Plough).

Artemis was very possessive. She would show her wrath on anyone who disobeyed her wishes, especially against her sacred animals. Even the great hero Agamemnon came upon the wrath of Artemis, when he killed a stag in her sacred grove. His punishment came when his ships were becalmed, while he made his way to besiege Troy. With no winds to sail his ships he was told by the seer Calchas that the only way Artemis would bring back the winds was for him to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. Some versions say he did sacrifice Iphigenia, others that Artemis exchanged a deer in her place, and took Iphigenia to the land of the Tauri (the Crimea) as a priestess, to prepare strangers for sacrifice to Artemis.

Artemis with her twin brother, Apollo, put to death the children of Niobe. The reason being that Niobe, a mere mortal, had boasted to Leto, the mother of the divine twins, that she had bore more children, which must make her superior to Leto. Apollo being outraged at such an insult on his mother, informed Artemis. The twin gods hunted them down and shot them with their bows and arrows; Apollo killed the male children and Artemis the girls.

Artemis was worshiped in most Greek cities but only as a secondary deity. However, to the Greeks in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) she was a prominent deity. In Ephesus, a principal city of Asia Minor, a great temple was built in her honor, which became one of the "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World". But at Ephesus she was worshiped mainly as a fertility goddess, and was identified with Cybele the mother goddess of eastern lands. The cult statues of the Ephesian Artemis differ greatly from those of mainland Greece, whereas she is depicted as a huntress with her bow and arrows. Those found at Ephesus show her in the eastern style, standing erect with numerous nodes on her chest. There have been many theories as to what they represent. Some say they are breasts, others that they are bulls testes which were sacrificed to her. Which is the true interpretation remains uncertain, but each represent fertility. There were festivals in honor of Artemis, such as the Brauronia, which was held in Brauron; and the festival of Artemis Orthia, held at Sparta, when young Spartan boys would try to steal cheeses from the altar. As they tried they would be whipped, the meaning of Orthia and the nature of the ritual whipping has been lost and there is no logical explanation or translation. Among the epithets given to Artemis are: Potnia Theron (mistress of wild animals) this title was mentioned by the great poet Homer; Kourotrophos (nurse of youth's); Locheia (helper in childbirth); Agrotera (huntress); and Cynthia (taken from her birthplace on Mount Cynthus on Delos). When young girls reached puberty they were initiated into her cult, but when they decided to marry, which Artemis was not against, they were asked to lay in front of the altar all the paraphernalia of their virginity, toys, dolls and locks of their hair, they then left the domain of the virgin goddess.

[eresos]

mythology is fascinating...more links & info


http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Artemis.html

Artemis devoted herself to the chase. She also discovered how to effect the healing of young children, and the foods which are suitable to the nature of babes. Goddess of the hunters, and watcher over streets and harbours, Artemis remained a maid, and those who have neglected this fact have been severely punished....


http://messagenet.com/myths/bios/artemis.html

The children of Zeus and Leto, she and Apollo were born on the Island of Delos. Both are associated with the bow. Apollo is said to use the curved bow and Artemis uses the silver bow. She is one of only three who are immune to the enchantments of Aphrodite (the other two are Hestia and Athene).
She is a friend to mortals, and dances through the countryside in her silver sandals giving her divine protection to the wild beasts, particularly the very young. She rides her silver chariot across the sky and shoots her arrows of silver Moonlight to the earth below.
She, like the other Olympians, has favorites among the mortals but she could not protect the fine huntsman, Skamandros, from the spear of Menelaos at the battle for Troy.
Unlike her brother Apollo, Artemis is not skilled in warcraft but she can punish and kill as the will of Zeus dictates. In The Iliad (24.603), her mother, Leto, was insulted by a woman named Niobe. Niobe boasted that she had twelve children and Leto only had two. As punishment, Apollo killed Niobe’s six sons and Artemis killed her six daughters.
In The Odyssey (15.403), Odysseus was told the story of a wonderful island, Syria, where hunger and grim old age have no dominion. When the Fates determined that the noble inhabitants of this island were at the end of their lives, Artemis and Apollo would swoop down and painlessly kill them with their silver bows.

She is sometimes confused with the Roman goddess, Diana


http://www.mythweb.com/gods/Artemis.html

ARTEMIS (AR-ti-mis; Roman name Diana) was the virgin goddess of the hunt. She helped women in childbirth but also brought sudden death with her arrows.


Artemis and her brother Apollo were the children of Zeus and Leto. In some versions of their myth, Artemis was born first and helped her mother to deliver Apollo.

Niobe, queen of Thebes, once boasted that she was better than Leto because she had many children while the goddess had but two. Artemis and Apollo avenged this insult to their mother by killing all or most of Niobe's children with their arrows. The weeping Niobe was transformed into stone, in which form she continued to weep.

When Apollo noticed that Artemis was spending a great deal of time hunting with the giant Orion, he decided to put an end to the relationship. He challenged Artemis to prove her skill at archery by shooting at an object floating far out at sea. Her shot was perfect. The target turned out to be the head of Orion. Artemis is generally depicted as a young woman clad in buckskins, carrying a bow and a quiver of arrows. She is often accompanied by wild creatures such as a stag or she-bear.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artemis

She was the virgin moon goddess of the hunt, wild animals, healing, wilderness, chastity, and paradoxically childbirth (she was worshipped as a fertility/childbirth goddess mostly in cities), since she assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin...

[KJnomadic]

thanks! in fact i had just found that same passage that put above...i can definitely see how tori would identify with artemis...she's always talking about being a huntress and a mother lion and she seems to like bows and arrows in songs

i just looked up the shekhina too... an early judaic feminise counterpart to god...why haven't i heard of her before?? seems important! oh yeah, it's because of the watered down religion we all get taught...

so what's the ninefold?

[eresos]

i read on a tori board (not sure which) that the ninefold are connected to the shekhina somehow...

awesome questions, btw!! i love to think about this stuff

[eresos]

http://www.yessaid.com/forum/archive...php/t-248.html

must've been here.

[cold pressed olives]

does it interest anybody here that tori played snippets of this song as an intro to doughnut song on the DDI tour?

"you told me last night, you were a sun now..."

[eresos]

cpo, you bring up awesome points!!

i just read on another board about similar lyrics in apollo & another pele song...
darn it...so tired forgot! but i was looking for insights on tombigbee...nada found, but interesting about the sun...

i always took it as someone boasting they were the center of someone else's universe, like they broke up and he found a new devoted lover...

it is interesting to look at it from this angle as well...being that apollo (sun) & artemis (moon/satellite)

[KJnomadic]

wow...that's an interesting tidbit about doughnut song...she must have been playing with this song for a long time

so, from the link above, it says that the ninefold are a set of 9 laws...

does apollo have a famous frock? or artemis? and do they have a specific connection with a laurel wreath, or is she just using that in the way one would speak of an olive branch, etc.?

[eresos]

i believe there is a definate connection with apollo & laurel wreaths...i think he turned his love (possibly daphne?) into one or something...another tale i must look up.

dougnuts song connection is more and more intriguing to me...whoo hoo!!

[eresos]

IMPRINTED ON OLYMPIC medals is a sprig of laurel because, since antiquity, laurel has been associated with victory. It began, though, not with the Olympics, but with another Panhellenic festival, the Pythian Games. Sacred to Apollo, the Pythian Games were almost as important to the Greeks as the Olympics....

...Thus Apollo was doomed to pursue Daphne and Daphne was doomed to flee from his advances. But Daphne wasn't a goddess and had little chance against Apollo. In the end, when it looked as though Apollo would have his hateful way with her, she begged to be saved and was -- by being turned into a laurel tree. From that day forth Apollo wore a wreath made from the leaves of his beloved.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/libr.../aa080100a.htm

Will no one lay the laurel wreath
As silence drowns the screams."

Apollo wore a laurel wreath in memory of Daphne.

"Of Apollo's many loves, one of the best known was Daphne, who fled his embraces and was turned into his tree, the laurel. From that time on, Apollo wore a laurel wreath. Laurel wreaths became the prize awarded in athletic and musical competitions."

- Apollo

"In ancient times the laurel wreath was sacred to Apollo, the Greek god of poetry and music. The term laureate is derived from the Latin word laurea ("laurel"). In Great Britain, the poet laureate is named by the sovereign as a member of the royal household and charged with the preparation of suitable verses for court and state occasions."

- Poet Laureate

"The ancients believed that laurel communicated the spirit of prophecy and poetry. Hence the custom of crowning the pythoness and poets, and of putting laurel leaves under one's pillow to acquire inspiration."

- Brewer Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

http://www.songsouponsea.com/Promenade/Court2F1.html

[realred]

I posted this in the main forum, but maybe it's worth saying here. I am reading 'The Woman with the Alabaster Jar'. Tori has read this book, it's listed in the yessaid.com books section. It is about Mary M, but in it there is discussion of the mythology of the sun Gods. The love interests/counterparts of the sun gods were referred to as 'bride' or 'sister'. Both Inanna (CALS) and Ashare (MMF) are mentioned in this section. Since Tori wrote all those songs, including Apollo's Frock around 1995-96, I'm sure she was in this mindset. So I believe that the 'sister' referred to in Apollo is not Artemis, but is Apollo's love interest---'bride' or 'sister'. Makes sense if you tie in the laurel wreath mythology as well.