Alcestis, Pelias' daughter & willing to die for her husband, is released from hades, while Orpheus, a mere poet only sees a phantom of his wife & cannot free her. This is used by Phaedrus in Plato's "The Symposium" as proof of the value the gods place on love.

Greeks used the same word for truth as they did for stone.

------Begin Robert Graves-----
Robert Graves' exposition of the "Greek Myths" pre-dates his championing of Shah.
Whilst Graves somewhat overstates his case for the matriarchal underpinnings of the myths, his notion of "iconotrophy" is an extremely valuable concept. Did the golden apple awarded to Aphrodite, by Paris, become the forbidden fruit offered to Adam, by Eve?

I haven't read the biography of Graves, but one might safely figure that "Greek Myths" may have impressed Shah that Graves's approach was in harmony with the projection of Sufi ideas at that time and place.

It would not be safe to figure *that* in the presence of
Martin Seymour-Smith; Graves' biographer holds an
extremely low opinion of Idries Shah's influence on RG.

Among other "interesting" views Seymour-Smith has publicised about his subject are that:

The dementia which Robert Graves' suffered at the end of his life was the main effect of a single dose of LSD-- given to the poet by Dr Humphrey Osmond!
This is all gossip of course; but one wonders if the "Egbert Peartree" who is hilariously portrayed on pages 241-243 of 'Darkest England' might be the thinly disguised Martin Seymour-Smith? I guess we shall never know!

-----End Robert Graves-----

Consider that the Greeks used the same word for "truth" as they did for stone...

state of 'malama'? "unless he is in a state of 'malama'.a well balanced dervish
has to appear 'normal' while trying inwardly to be 'supernormal'...."

> >...is it that Prometheus is not to be identified with Satan at all?
> >Perhaps with Lucifer (not Satan) who is also, as we all know, Jesus.
>
>
Prometheus appears to me be a kind of watered-down adversary as
> compared with the outright rebellion of Iblis, Semihaza or the
> Satan of Revelations.

Greek Mythology:
Go to http://hsu.brown.edu/~maicar/
also to http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
The Probert Encyclopaedia
http://www.probert-encyclopaedia.co.uk
http://www.spaceports.com/~mprobert


In the Nigerian myth, the Sun and Moon found that the laws of gravity - a place for everything and everything in its place - allowed accommodation and respect for all.

-------
Back Home