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Old 01-17-2017, 10:39 AM   #844
RonTheLogician
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Cool Introduction to Psyche, famed consort of Eros

Hey Dani,

I know you've always loved butterflies, which is probably why your grandma gave you the large, century-old painting you so love, which on naive inspection features one such critter. But what you fail to realize is that a conventional butterfly is not sitting on a woman's back. Instead, what the viewer sees is a chimera!

In particular, this is a representation of the mythical ancient Greek heroine Psyche, wife of the god Eros/Cupid, he the son of Aphrodite/Venus, the goddess of (sexual) love.

In times gone by, such as America long ago, these now-quaint myths not only provided entertaining stories and pretty images, but also a way to discuss - and even celebrate - once-tabu subjects like sex.

The legend of Psyche and Eros was left to us within a 2nd C work called Metamorphoses (or The Golden A$$), the only novel to survive whole from Latin-speaking ancient Rome. (This novel is often sexually explicit, and inspired a wonderful modern derivative erotic graphic novel by the artist Manara, also called The Golden A$$, cf. here.)

Through the ages, Psyche and Eros have been the subject of many stories, plays, paintings, statues, etc. The Wikipedia synopsis is here. This complex tale and its rich symbolism plausibly provide inspiration for many significant details of much younger stories like Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella. My favorite telling is Alison de Vere's 1994 wordless musical animated film, Psyche and Eros, illustrated here. It was shown on Britain's Channel Four, but I've no idea where to buy a copy. In recent years, a pirated copy sits here.

My personal favorite painting of a solitary Psyche is Guillaume Seignac's 1904 Le Reveil de Psyche (in English, The Awakening of Psyche), a contemporary to your own painting. Here it is:


My personal favorite painting of Psyche with Eros is William Adolphe Bouguereau's 1889 Psyche et L'Amour, shown just below. The museum owning it publishes a video discussing it here.


Let's now examine some of the story's symbolism. While both Eros and Psyche have wings, her wings are, UNlike his, not the traditional bird wings of various mythological chimeras (e.g. the sphinx), but uniquely those of the butterfly. This is because they represent the inner labia, which they so resemble, just as Eros' penetrating arrows represent the penis. (For more about female genitals and the butterfly, cf. e.g. RFSU's 2012 animated sex ed film Sex on the Map here.)

According to Freud, the couple's depiction in flight represents coitus. And long before Freud, the German euphemism voegln (in English, birding) meant coitus as well. Even the word we use for orgasm, climax, reflects ascension skyward: it comes from the Greek word for ladder.

This psychological association between flying and f*cking seems to transcend era and nationality; long before you were born, US TV was packed with National Airline ads in which pretty young female flight attendants stared into your eyes, admonishing you to "Fly me!" Find an example here. That you not miss their subliminal meaning, eventually ads would include copy like "I'm gonna fly you like you've never been flown before!" Competitors would rise to the challenge with their own salacious innuendos; Air France ads would ask: "Have you ever done it the French way?" I'm sure your elders have vivid memories of such advertising!

Perhaps the ultimate celebration of the connection between flying and f*cking was a segment of the 1979 Bob Fosse biopic All That Jazz, in which we were invited to board a plane operated by "Airotica." Watch this unforgettable musical performance here. By the time it is over, a healthy man watching this will find his "gear" secured in the upright and locked position!

Since you probably associate Psyche's hubby Eros (i.e. Cupid) with Valentine's Day, through which romantic love is celebrated, let me comment on its symbolism as well. The icon of the day is a highly stylized graphic we call a "heart" into which Cupid ejaculates his bow-launched arrows. But as any anatomist could tell you, this symbolic "heart" looks NOTHING like a real human heart, but instead like the butterfly-shaped thing below! So don't ask why Eros appears without Psyche in today's Valentine's Day artwork - she's there after all.


Given that it won't do in many places today to call the Valentine's Day symbol a c@nt, why has the euphemism of the heart been chosen for it? Observe that emotional agitation (e.g. as experienced during coitus) is accompanied by increased heart rate and blood pressure, making us aware of the existence of an organ we normally ignore - the heart. Note the close visual resemblance between the stylized heart symbol and the vulva was exploited in the trailer for a film called Heart Throbs (IAFD entry here), as illustrated here. By the way, the current Wikipedia article on the heart symbol claims it never represented what it does today before the 14th century.

Now let me digress for a paragraph and speculate about a famous euphemistic phrase refering to the mechanics of human reproduction: the birds and the bees. No definitive explanation has appeared for its origin, although you often read that the 1825 writing of Samuel Taylor Coleridge has the honor. Whatever the truth, I'd like to observe that its underlying psychology curiously reflects matters including human genital anatomy. A small bird looks somewhat like male genitals in size and shape, especially if its neck it long. And the bee, in resembling the butterfly, looks somewhat like female genitals in size and shape. And of course, both birds and bees take flight, which reprises the discussion of flight as a symbol for coitus!

Returning to the matter of Valentine's Day, this Christian saint's festival falls on the day when the pre-Christian Romans had a fertility celebration called Lupercalia, which you see portrayed early in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar. Men would run (nearly?) naked through the streets and strike women who wanted to bear children or enjoy easier deliveries with straps of animal skin, which "magic" rather obviously symbolized fertilization. (Note our word "f*cking" or the German word "ficken" are cognates of the German word "flicken", meaning "to strike.")

Spring-time fertility festivals are widespread, albeit often sublimated from their aboriginal forms, especially in places where highly sex-phobic religions like Christianity have now dominated for centuries. One example, which marginally resembles Lupercalia, still takes place in rural Hungary during Easter, where, in public, men "come" on the bodies of young women using water (or sometimes perfume), as shown in the video here. The linked video idly claims it is "more innocent than a wet teeshirt contest" - YEAH, my CUM-SWOLLEN BALLS it is, LOL! Sometimes this custom is called "Ducking Monday", as Easter Monday is the likeliest day on which it takes place; I guess that's more polite than calling it "F*cking Monday"!

Extra-vaginal ejaculation onto one's beloved is the subject of a well-known song from 1984, Pretty Mess by Vanity. As I write, you can find its official music video more or less intact here. The song lyrics are published here. Those who have trouble discerning the sexual symbolism of the visuals or the lyrics can read the explanatory song review here, evidently penned by someone who finds songs of this type culturally dirty.

Perhaps you are surprised to see Eros/Cupid portrayed as a sexually mature adult in the painting above, rather than as an infant, which representation was my own consistent experience until middle age. The ancients did not always depict Eros/Cupid as an infant with a bow and quiver. Another common form showed a young adult riding a dolphin, a rather phallic symbol itself, such as in the pair of mosaics shown below, preserved in the house of Amphitrite in what was in ancient times Bulla Regia, in today's Tunisia.



[continued in next post]

Last edited by RonTheLogician; 03-10-2017 at 12:49 PM. Reason: More about Metamorpheses; cite Heart Throbs
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