Danae. I met you looking for something else, years ago. I watched you, I forgot you. Danae, noble lady, white soul & dark skin. You came back to knock at my door one winter evening. In a fawn mood, I chased you away with a roar. Danae. Without a hurrying that spoils, without any resentment, you made your way into the tuft of my consciousness.
Through paths known only to me, you slipped in, Danae, pure heart of butter, into my safe interior masure. I asked you to enter. You told me your story.
It is simple and terrible.
In Greek mythology, Danae, daughter of Acrisius and Eurydice, is the mother of Perseus.
His father, Acrisius, imprisons him in a tower of brass when an oracle predicts that he will be killed by his grandson. Zeus manages, however, to enter the tower in the form of a golden rain that falls on the princess. From this union is born a son, Perseus. Angry, Acrisius puts his daughter and grandson in a chest that he throws adrift.
These reach Serifos, where the king Polydectes, smitten with Danae, tries to force her to marry him. To manage to keep Perseus away, a potential threat to his marriage, he sends her to fight the Gorgon Medusa. Perseus returns, after many adventures, winner of Medusa. With the mortal head of the Gorgon, he turns the king into stone and manages to bring his mother back to Argos. She will end up walled up alive.
Virgil tells that she later went to Italy where she founded the city of Ardea. Her grandson Turnus fought with Aeneas the hand of Lavinia. Danae is also mentioned in the tragedies of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. It symbolizes the dry land on which a fertilizing rain descends from the sky. (wikipedia)
In a harsh climate of spells and malefices, little Danae is the victim of cruel injustice. Her father is the only judge and executioner. King Acrisius imprisons his daughter to protect her, or rather to protect himself. Danae’s seclusion seemed to him the safest method of contraception. For her father, it is vital that she does not have children. An oracle predicted to the king that his grandson would kill him. That’s why the only possible mother is immured in this metal tower.
But in vain. Moira laughs at the highest walls. Destiny is more powerful than the gods themselves.
The Moire, or Moira has no face: she is Destiny, the ‘part’ (moros, moïra) given to each man, the fate that has fallen to him. His decrees concern birth, marriage and death; they are inflexible. The gods who however can everything, would like to override. But they also bow and desert their dearest protégés. (Encyclopedia Universalis)
Zeus had to fall in love with the young princess. To escape the jealous eye of his legitimate wife Hera and enter this tower, Zeus turns into golden rain. Thus, he enters the tower and mates with Danae.
What must happen, certainly happens. Danae is pregnant. She gives birth to a son, Perseus. And this kid grows up without the grandfather king Acrisios knowing, who abandons his daughter and her dangerous grandson on the island Seriphos. Welcomed by King Polydectes, Danae is forced to marry the latter.
He becomes a vigorous young man, filled with hatred against his royal grandpa bastard. At the first opportunity, he wants to find Acrysios to kill him. But his tribulations are only just beginning, he will have to face other monsters.
Perseus became a man, Polydectes sees in him a threat to his marriage with Danae and sends him to fight the Medusa, a formidable sea monster that wreaks havoc on ships and their crews. Decidedly, the world is leaguing against Perseverance who does not worry about so little. He returns as the winner of the Medusa. With the head of the evil watch, he turns Polydectes into stone and brings his mother back to Argos. He then kills his grandfather for abandoning them.
The oracle had spoken the truth.
Another myth, and what a myth! A farandole of mythemes make us familiar with this story that has its roots in the societal unconscious.
This murderous kid’s name is Persée. He loves his mother, for his love he kills his (grandfather) father, doesn’t it look like another Oedipus?
Fathers jealous of their daughter who condemn them to chastity, literature is full of them. Our past is stuffed with it. It is still in use in some traditions…
The story, the great one, has a meaning. I want to put it right side out; it’s one of the functions of this site. The story, the little one, that of Danae, offers us a potpourri of myths, or rather mythemes, with rare strength and density.
But there is a more technical meaning of the term: mytheme as the combination of all the possible versions of a narrative; following Lévi-Strauss, we consider a myth as the set of its variants.
Anyway, these pieces of myth are archetypes: they contain characteristic details. Most remain quite realistic, even if they describe absurd or at least inappropriate behaviors, out of context.
All these traits allow the mythologist a perfect traceability of these elementals. Hence their name of mythemes, myth units, as they say phonemes, sound units of a language.
Locked in a tower of brass (mytheme) Danae must remain there for her entire life on the orders of her father (mytheme). What crime has she committed? Not the shadow of a single one. (mytheme) Misfortune wanted her to be struck by an oracle. (mytheme) It would have been better for her if she had been struck by lightning. (mytheme)
The paranoid king had his daughter locked up so that she wouldn’t give birth to a son. (mytheme) According to the oracle, this grandson would kill his grandfather. (mytheme) So he condemns his own daughter without trial to prison until old age, one supposes. The big bastard! (mytheme) It would have been better if he had killed her.
She is therefore immured vividly in a preventive manner, so no man can reach her. (mytheme) The brass tower serves as her chastity belt. (mytheme)
The sad story of Danae continues in the same way, with mythemes and hopeless chestnuts. These overabundant commonplaces make it exceptional, precisely. We find them in many other legends, all of which have drawn from its source.
She can thus claim precedence over these repetitions. Little known, however, her history is the foundation of Western culture, and beyond.
Zeus manages to enter the tower in the form of a golden rain that falls on the princess. From this union, a son is born, Perseus. Angered, Acrisius puts his daughter and grandson in a chest that he throws into the sea. These arrive at Serifos, where the king Polydectes, smitten with Danae, tries to force her to marry him. To manage to keep Perseus away, a potential threat to his marriage, he sends her to fight Medusa the Gorgon. Perseus returns, after many adventures, winner of Medusa. Armed with the monster’s head, he changes the king into stone. Thus he manages to bring his mother back to Argos.
Danae darling of the painters, many are those whom this tale touched, many who your body touched, so many rapins painted your fallen body, your broken heart, many wild ones stripped you in the secret workshops when your untied bustier made your breasts sprout, that for a long time they palped so gently so kindly and tenderly caressed these desired treasures offered on the canvas they laid them on the sofa where they lay you in a frame they showed them in this frame where you were evolving so that we could enjoy — this attempt at your beauty, of these paintings and your skin.
Ten? Thirty? How much did they paint you? How many masters, how many disciples, how many strangers in the light of a candle, how many are all those who have known you better than sight, my Danae?
And hasn’t your name flowered the stern of tall ships, frigates racing in the South Seas, American catamarans or dugout canoes from ancient worlds?
Once was a fine frigate,
Was called “La Danaé”
Shake out the reefs in the low sails
Shake out the reefs in the heaters
On her very first trip
The frigate sank down and deep
And of all the total crew
One boatman could escape
He’s approaching a beach,
He was a fine swimmer
There he saw on the shore
A sad and tearful beauty
Beautiful like a frigate
French and fully adorned
Beauty why do you cry
Tell me why so much cry
I cry my advantage
Falling down in the sea
And what would get the one
Giving it back to you
I would give it to him
With my sincere friendship
At the first dive he made
The sailor found nothing
The hundredth dive he made
The poor thing drowned and died
For never advantage
When lost, could be found
Who are you really for having inspired so many artists and poets? What true story hides behind the fable made to soften? Your name, already, gives us a clue: Danae like Dana-ann, the Great Goddess of the Tuatha. Should we look further? Not necessarily. Let’s see if we can push the comparison.
The character of Danae would be an elegy, a prayer of eternal regrets. The Great Goddess is oppressed by her father the king, image of Zeus and of the new religion, or more exactly of the new world order imposed by the almighty Olympians — Sumerian mythology names them Archons and does not say much about it.
It is known that the Roman Senate attempted to bribe Celtic druids, to bring them to espouse the new religion made in Rome, that of Christ — whether he is Christ the Emperor or Christ Jesus.
An example of this denial is given by Merlin himself, a druid enchanter, warrior, who became by the disgrace of certain historiographer, the very first Christian bishop. Delirium. Merlin is too Gallo to be a Roman. Gandalf does not play with Mordor. This attempt at corruption, that’s what could represent the golden rain that Zeus the Father rains on his promise, who is also his daughter, if you followed me well.
Zeus is both Acrisius, father of Danae, and Zeus himself, seducer and suborner of the recluse. One thus finds oedipal incest in Perseus, and ordinary incest in Zeus-Acrisius. The fable becomes a lesson from memory. The moral is: “return to the Great Goddess, abandon this new religion that flouts the faith of our Celtic ancestors.“
By the greatest chance, which does not exist as you know, I addressed the same question in the article The Oak Bayeux. One can with great advantage compare this interpretation with a text signed by the goddess Isis, who supports the same thesis.
This martyrdom may have existed, but I doubt it. She is the central character of a fable with a message. Clever invention, it tickles the sensitive chord: Dana, Danae … Her name sounds too familiar to the ears of the time. The transition from one religion to another, from one culture to another, is a social trauma. Human life weighs very little there. The order is that of the strongest. Violence takes the place of justice. Summary executions depopulated towns and villas, large farms run by wealthy Roman citizens. The Gauls who work in the villas are called villains.
It takes time for the vivid memory of the old religion to give way to the vivid desire for the new one. Sometimes it never happens. Under the pious attire of Christianity, pre-Celtic paganism only sleeps with one eye. Engraved in the collective unconscious, this powerful cult by its magical effects is regularly re-implanted in our available brains by our — let say our Great Administrators. Entities like us, but different. They think much faster, they live much longer, they work much harder and we can see the result at once. Very different.
Their role is to watch. They watch over the grain, over the rain, over the drain, over the Maine, over the crane, over the Seine, over the lane, over the mane, over the Dane. Over my pain.
– Hey you entities, couldn’t you mind your own business? I ask my sex advice angel.
– You are my own business and some valuable goods indeed. I have to follow the stock market. It’s part of the job, sorry sir.
In the far west such cattle watchers use to be called cowboys. If they are galactic cowboys, what would we be? Cows ? Yes, but sacred cows. Or secret chaos?
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O Great Serpent Mother! You who have given birth to all that lives on earth, in the air and in the waters! Wake up from your long sleep! Come relieve the yoke that the Archons are placing on our shoulders! Your dormancy lasted 4000 years, your awakening is near. The golden age will return to Your footsteps to bloom what you touch, to beautify what you see, to shake off misfortune with the splendor of your heart, the image of your face, and the advantage of your shares! (Review)
Anna, the Blessed Virgin and Mother Goddess, has lived so long she has no age.
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