Saturday Goddess Blogging

Eurynome


Eurynome is a Goddess whose worship appears to date back to neolithic, Pelagian Greece. She was sometimes pictured as a mermaid and was often associated with the Ocean.

Amy Sophia Marashinsky says that, "Eurynome dances into your life to tell you [that] it is time for ecstasy. How can you give yourelf [to] ecstasy, that deeply nourishing, intensely joyful place? One way is by healing the wounded parts of yourself. Your wounded parts take up emotional space within you. Once, healed, the space [that] they previously occupied becomes available for ecstasy. . . . Another road to ecstasy is to open to it. To give yourself permission to call it in, feel it, and revel in it. [T]he conscious decision to court, seduce, and entice ecstasy ensures [that] it will come. Eurynome says that when you make the decision to dance with ecstasy, all life challenges you with the opportunities to facilitate that dance."

Robert Graves told this story about how Eurynome, whom he saw as descended from earlier lunar Goddesses, created the world: "In the beginning, Eurynome, the Goddess of All Things, rose naked from Chaos, but found nothing substantial for her feet to rest upon, and therefore divided the sea from the sky, dancing lonely upon its waves. She danced towards the south, and the wind set in motion behind her seemed something new and apart with which to begin a work of creation. Wheeling about, she caught hold of this north wind, rubbed it between her hands, and behold! the great serpent Ophion. Eurynome danced to warm herself, wildly and more wildly, until Ophion, grown lustful, coiled about those divine limbs and was moved to couple with her. Now, the North Wind, who is also called Boreas, fertilizes; which is why mares often turn their hind-quarters to the wind and breed foals without aid of a stallion. So Eurynome was likewise got with child.

Next, she assumed the form of a dove, brooding on the waves and, in due process of time, laid the Universal Egg. At her bidding, Ophion coiled seven times about this egg, until it hatched and split in two. out tumbled all things that exist, her children: sun, moon, planets, stars, the earth with its mountains and rivers, its trees, herbs, and living creatures.

Eurynome and Ophion made their home upon Mount Olympus, where he vexed her by claiming to be the author of the Universe. Forthwith she bruised his head with her heel, kicked out his teeth, and banished him to the dark caves below the earth.

Next, the goddess created the seven planetary powers, setting a Titaness and a Titan over each. Theia and Hyperion for the Sun; Phoebe and Atlas for the Moon; Dione and Crius for the planet Mars; Metis and Coeus for the planet Mercury; Themis and Eurynmedon for the planet Jupiter; Tethys and Oceanus for Venus; Rhea and Cronus for the planet Saturn. But the first man was Pelasgus, ancestor of the Pelasgians; he sprang from the soil of Arcadia, followed by certain others, whom he taught to make huts and feed upon acorns and sew pig-skin tunics such as poor folk still wear in Euboea and Phocis."

"The Pelasgian Creation Myth," from Robert Graves' The Greek Myths, v.I, p. 27: Penguin Books, England, 1955.

So invite Eurynome to dance and don't be surprised at what ecstasy creates. But don't imagine that you did it all alone -- at least if you like your teeth.

Artwork: Eurynome Creates the Cosmos by Elsie Russell.