What is the deal with Greek Gods?
I have just started reading up on Greek Gods and their origins and have come to a startling realization… most of the more memorable gods were born from the act of incest. What is the deal here? Zeus for starters was born from the union between Cronos and his sister Rhea, whom were both Titans born from Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus (Gaia’s son and husband/Father of the Sky.) Don’t you see the pattern? It seems to me that most of the well known gods and Titan’s were born due to a desire (which was huge thousands of years ago) to have sex, rape or marry a persons own sister and in some cases their own mother. It started with Gaia and Uranus, Cronos and Rhea, Zeus and Hera, so on and so forth.
What was the reason behind this insatiable desire to take ones own sister? It could not be just for reproduction, that seems to arbitrary a reason but then again we are dealing with immortal beings who follow laws that we mortals can not comprehend.
From my understanding, many of the legends throughout Greek history and literature such as the cyclops, the two head or even three headed beings are nothing more then creatures born from incest back in the ancient times. Yet this still does not explain why Greek writers portrayed their gods as being incest mad deities.
Can anyone explain?
I need a serious answer here, preferably from someone whom has read and studied Greek mythology and not just played the game God of War and watched Clash of the Titans, and thought “ooooh that is how it happened! Who would have thought that is how Zeus was.”
Serious answers for serious people please.
Note: Gods and Mortals must have been in the same gene pool since Perseus and Alexander were born from such a union.
To erisian trubble:
I don’t dispute that our culture is different from Greek, but it is a universal thing in our world that we shared the same desire thousands of years ago to marry our own siblings. Britain had it just as Greece did.
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- When did greek mythology started? what year did it begin. before jesus or after jesus?
- So anyone know anything about the greek goddess Gaia/Gaea other than her childeren and being mother of earth?
- Do you know that Mother Earth has been continuously worshipped by humankind longer than any other deity?
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Greek Gods would kick the Christian God’s ar*se! They are way cooler and have super cool powers. Kinda like The Avengers or Justice League
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I’m shocked you’d be so surprised. Have you read the Bible lately?
Um, what do you think Adam and Eve’s children did?
Who else would they do the dirty with?
answer: small gene pool. Humans weren’t in the same league so the gods turned to each other.
Ever read about Adam and Eve and their kids? Or Noah’s small family gene pool? Or Lot and his daughters?
During the time that these myths originated, incest was common among families of power….it was the one sure way to be 100% certain that power stayed “in the family”. Well into the Ptolemaic period, (Greek rule of Egypt) Sibling marriages were common in the Pharonic dynasties. Cleopatra, for example, was married to her brother (10 years her junior) as a child. The taboo against sibling procreation was not strong, neither was the taboo against infanticide, so any negative side effects were generally remedied via exposure (also the source of many of the Heroes of Greek Myth.)
If you want to really understand a culture’s mythology, you have to do more than read a “bunch of stories”. You need to open your mind to the possibility that their culture was (is) vastly different from your own and see how the myths were symbols of societal truths.
It’s in all religions and cultures, dear. Egyptians were especially fond of it, ha ha. You just have to do your research because incest is everywhere, unfortunately.
In many ancient matriarchal cultures, a man’s heir was not the son of his wife (after all, it was only the word of the mother that it was his child, and fidelity was not a given in matriarchies), but his sister’s son, with whom he shared an undeniable link of blood. In a patriarchal culture, the man’s wife’s son was his heir. The Greek myths come from a period when a matriarchal culture was being replaced by a patriarchal one – so it shows a combination pattern where the man would marry his sister so the son would be his no matter which way you looked at it. Zeus in particular had children by at least two of his sisters, Hera and Demeter, and also fathered children by a number of mortals and goddesses, mostly representing the takeover of local areas by the invading culture. You also have to realize that the gods and goddesses were not regarded as actual living entities, but as representations of natural forces – thus the sky god Zeus sent rain to fertilize the earth goddess Demeter and produce the goddess of fruit and crops, Persephone, who in turn married her uncle, Hades, Lord of the Underworld, to represent the cycle of the seasons as crops withered and died and then returned with the rains. It’s all symbolic.
the greek gods are based off of some truth. angels came down from heaven and mated with mortal women, creating the Nephilim (halfman, halfangel). the nephilim and these angels were very evil, and did many similar things to what you descibe. this can be found in the bible, discussed in the Book of Genesis, Book of Jude, Book of Enoch, Book of Jubilees, and Book of the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs to name the most direct references.