Monday, October 27, 2008

The Trident: Sea God: The Medium of Life

The aspect of the god Poseidon as a medium for life, or its creation, is not one that we see in ancient times. At lest not explicitly. In ancient myth Poseidon is a father of a multitude of children, just like Zeus is, which implies an aspect of "creator" to those of us who pay attention to myth as a medium for the passing on of divine wisdom. As a creator, Poseidon's role is much more clear to us than it was to the ancients.

The sea, we know today, was the home to primordial life on Earth. All of the elements of the Earth itself, including the waters of the oceans and gasses of the atmosphere, mix and mingle to create elements conducive to life. All that is needed is a spark, and that is provided handily by the Sky God.

Our mythos, however, tells us that the primordial sea was called Pontus, son of Ge, and that another son of Ge, Ouranos, was the first explicit Sky God, though I suppose one could claim that Erebus (the darkness of the primal unformed world) could be seen as the first and most primal Sky God.

Here, then, the aspect of the Sea God, who we call Poseidon, as a medium for the creation of life must most accurately be called Pontus (or if we follow the idea of naming Gods by name and aspect, Poseidon Pontus.) I, however, tend to always refer to the Gods by their Olympian Names. (Olympian here refers to the Olympian Age)

Thus, Poseidon is the name I use.

In our modern world, however, we can relate the sea as symbol to something very near to ourselves, and that is the water of the womb. Human beings are birthed from a womb full of fluid that one can imagine is similar in many ways to what that primordial sea must have been like. Imagine, if you will, the ocean itself as the womb, the amniotic fluid that nurtures and protects life as it is being formed from the very elements of the universe. A universe very much like our own right now, but an Earth so vastly different that we can hardly imagine it.

Imagine, a God, the God who sees and protects that which is forming in the primal sea and allows it to flourish, grow, and evolve into something grand, and here you have him, Poseidon, the medium for the creation of life.

No comments: