It’s a celebration of love today and what better way to celebrate than to remember the famous love story of Eros (=Love) and Psyche (=Soul). According to the myth, the love of these two young people overcomes all obstacles from gods and people, is tested, is in danger, but in the end triumphs and gives birth to Pleasure.
The myth is as follows:
Psyche was a princess, mortal but a “goddess”! A bunch of guys were chasing her. She had many fans and followers because of her beauty.
As soon as Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, heard she had such a great rival, she went crazy! She ordered her son Eros to make Psyche fall in love with a trivial, and ugly mortal.
But as soon as Eros saw Psyche he fell in love with her. Eros himself was a victim of Eros! He didn’t know what to do.In order to save himself from his mother’s rage but also to be with Psyche … he asked her parents to take Psyche to the top of a mountain because according to the oracle she would meet her fiancé there. Her parents obeyed.
Zephyrus transported her to a mysterious and deserted palace, where during the day servants made all her wishes come true while at night an unknown suitor appeared.
He set only one condition for her: “Never try to discover who I am”.
. “I would rather die a hundred times than lose the supreme joy of our being together” Psyche said tenderly. “For I love and adore you-whoever you are-as much as my life, and I cherish you more than Eros himself”.
Shortly afterwards, Psyche asked the “ghost” suitor to bring to the palace her sisters who she missed and longed to see. So he made it happen.
The sisters were dying of jealousy because of Psyche’s happy life. But they were also curious to find out who her mysterious lover was. Psyche wasn’t curious at all. Don’t they say love is blind? It was enough for her to have a good time with her “ghost-lover”. But her curiosity was aroused after her sisters convinced her that her lover was a monster and she should slaughter it!
So the next night Psyche went to the “monster” while he was sleeping and lit up the room with her lamp. She was shocked! All this time she had been sleeping with the God of Love and she hadn’t known! She began to tremble and a drop of oil fell and burned her winged lover on his shoulder.Eros woke and feeling angry and betrayed flew away.
Psyche could not digest the fact that she had lost her lover. She started wandering and looking around for Eros unitl she fell into the hands of Aphrodite, who in the meantime had imprisoned her son because he fhad fallen in love with Psyche.
Aphrodite in the role of an evil, -very evil!- mother-in-law assigned to the girl a series of dangerous missions. Poor Psyche carried them out like a new Hercules. She separated mixed seeds of all kinds; she collected the golden wool of wild sheep; she brought water from the lake of Styga….The girl succeeded with the help of animals and elements of nature until Aphrodite finally asked her to travel to the underworld and ask Persephone fora box of her divine cosmetics.
Psyche somehow went and returned safely, but as soon as she saw the light of the living world again, she turned her attention to the box. “Why not take just a drop of the cosmetics that the goddesses uses, to become beautiful for my beloved?” she thought and she opened the box.
She immediately fell into a deep sleep.
Eros could no longer bear to see his beloved suffer. Besides, she had proved her love for him.After enduring his mother’s madness, she would endure anything for him! Escaping from his mom he woke Psyche with an arrow, then travelled to Zeus to ask him to make her immortal (he didn’t want to be a widower in the future!).
At the banquet of the gods the marriage of Eros and the Psyche was performed, and after this their child Idoni (=Pleasure) was born.
And that is the root cause of all our “suffering”for love today !
Click here to watch on youtube the The myth of Cupid and Psyche-TED-ed
