today's video is sponsored by Squarespace well hello everyone and welcome to my library if you're new here hello my name is chintsea and if you're not new here and you're one of my lovely regulars Hi how are you I hope you're doing splendidly so we've been on a bit of a witch with Discovery haven't we at the moment we talked about the Pendle Witch Trials a couple of weeks ago and I've been exploring quite a few witches in my spare time I'm really interested in the history of Witchcraft in general and I thought you know what let's start I mean not at the beginning because it goes back further but let's talk about probably one of the most famous quote-unquote sorceresses or witches that most people who are interested in Greek mythology and uh you know General mythology uh know of and that is Cersei or kahe will come to that in a minute now there's a lot of history around the figure of Cersei Cersei obviously exists largely as you probably know in The Odyssey and also in the argonals but we're going to be talking about Cersei in The Odyssey and talk about the history and law in our archeology of that figure within Greek mythology rather than going to the extensive history of how she metamorphosed into a figure of which and how she became associated with witchcraft and all that jazz and paganism so we will be getting to that in another video but today we're talking about the origins of Cersei herself and what archaeologists and researchers have gathered together how this figure was formulated and where exactly that she came from is she an Indo-European or is she more of a mixture of Asia mine kind of figures across the world we will see we'll explore it together so before we get into talking about Cersei let's take a quick moment to thank today's sponsor Squarespace as you know I have built all my main business websites over the past few years with Squarespace including my current lady at the library website and I love how intuitive and easy it makes website design and 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launch go to squarespace.com forward slash Lady of the library to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain thank you Squarespace for sponsoring today's video and now let's talk about Cersei so for those who may be unfamiliar with the Odyssey let me tell you about this so when Odysseus meets Cersei in book 10 of the Odyssey he is Thoroughly lost Joseph Campbell remarks that Cersei is more than a mystical creature that the hero encounters she is Odysseus's Mr Gog Who services to the hero are pivotal in the poem's progression and the hero's understanding of the dangers that await him on his venture home to Ithaca the hero is already shattered and depleted when he arrives on her Island many of his men have been lost to the Cyclops and the last dragonians the tribe of man-eating Giants and he foolishly loses more on cersei's island uh though not in such a the same violent fashion so Cersei is the daughter of Helios the Sun God and per se an oceanid whose Elemental nature combined with the Divinity of Helios grants Cersei the powers to loosen the bonds of form and steer a transformation cersei's home is a blend of both stately glory and haunting sinisters it is laced with the aura of magic and gold and her home is made of stone polished smooth on all sides a building whose construction would be worthy of the status of a Mycenaean King and that status of building is actually found nowhere else in the Odyssey Cersei exists within an ontological Niche concerned in Greek mythology she lives like a queen but she's a goddess bound to the Earth not Olympus like the other gods and though she is divine in nature as Odyssey explains she is a dread goddess of human voice meaning she's accessible to humans through language though still powerful and frighteningly unapproachable we as readers don't experience Cersei directly rather we hear all the decisions encounter with her as he relays the tale to the assembled nobility on norsecker's island Cersei lives Odysseus explains not on Olympus with the other Divine figures but on an island close to quote where the dwellings and dancing floors of early born Dorner and the rising places of the Sun now the old Greek name for Asia Minor Anatolia is derived from the word anatolai which is the word for Rising places this combined with cersei's kinship to ayetis who figures as a king of cultures in The Argonaut myths which is geographically on the eastern shore of the Black Sea strongly implies cersei's Island would reside in that location a disease explains that the island seemed to be inhabited by tamed wolves and mountain lions though it's never explicitly expressed that these creatures were once human it's just often assumed In classical reception however the captain of a diseaseship uh actually knew of Cersei and his name is yolokos and he warned Odysseus and the rest of the crew that Cersei will turn them all into swine or another wild Creature if they disturb her regardless of his warnings the men still approached cersei's house not Odysseus he hangs back with you Ilocos and Cersei lures them in by her shrill singing which performs whilst weaving ambrosial Fabrics from her great Loom now the word is often translated as shrill and if you've read Madeline Miller's Cersei novel you will see that she plays on this a lot uh she calls it like a shrill horrific sound um that the gods can't stand and she's kind of seen as this monstrous croaking voice but it's interesting but the word that homage uses before the translation into shrill is actually Liga or Liga and this is the same word that Homer actually uses to describe the whales of the Trojan women and the playing of the demodocos which is the Harper of the fish and chord whose music actually brings Odysseus to tears therefore though we respond negatively to the term shrill and imagine it to be quite an awful sound the term can be interpreted as something which actually sounds deeply human in nature Cersei therefore welcomes Odysseus man into her home and serves them drinks and cheese and honey and barley meal however in these strong premium wine she actually drops a pinch of vile drug that transforms Odysseus's men into swine after she sways her Wee Little wand or Rod over them why Cersei turns the man into pigs Homer does not actually say in Madeline Miller's Thursday we see cersei's transformation as a form of defense against being unfortunately sexually assaulted which she has been a victim of in the past Judith Yarnell argues that cersei's drugs actually bring about what can be interpreted as a quote the primordial feminine acting according to its very own nature and making manifest the comparative inferiority of individual male being it suggests the way in which the ego Consciousness can be easily ambushed and overwhelmed in those who do not take seriously the bodily and instinctual basis of their own natures you see the ancient Soul Primal power as feminine because life originated with and was nourished by the female sex and I'm saying this in terms of ancient Greek conceptualizations of sex and gender which is why I'm using heteronormative and cisgender terms as appropriate but this is no disrespect to the nuances of these labels thanks to advanced modern science and changes in social norms and languages so please forgive the old-fashioned terminology but we cannot project contemporary terms of understandings of sex and gender onto ancient understandings of them anyway when Odysseus's men don't return and eurologos expresses his concerns Odysseus goes in search of them but he's intercepted by Hermes who gives Odysseus a herb called moli which will counteract cersei's Magic interestingly Cersei is prepared for the encounter with the hero because Hermes also came to her to warn her of Odysseus so when Odysseus drinks the wine and does not transform with after she Wades her wand uh and then holds a bronze sword over her head in a feigned threat to kill her Cersei takes his knees in her arms and surrenders to him a gesture which is actually also adopted by Priam in The Iliad when he comes to Achilles to ask for Hector's body now the difference between the two is that Cersei cannot be killed by Odysseus as Priam can with Achilles she does not tape to his knees to beg for her life but instead it's a form of power play and of attraction it is in this position that she actually invites Odysseus to her bed and he accepts because why wouldn't he he says yes to everyone now unlike most men who have intercourse with an immortal goddess Odysseus never suffers for his relations with her she never lies to him or threatens him with harm or impotence like a lot of goddesses do with Mortal men instead he and his men are restored and they live peacefully on her Island over the winter months to restore their health and get ready for their travels in some versions of the myth Odysseus lives with her for years and even fathers children with her Homer doesn't actually reference them having any children Odysseus however does actually start to forget about Ithaca and his wife Penelope until one day his men demand him to remember his homeland and Odysseus remembers an actually interestingly returns a symbolic gesture to Cersei by holding her knees and begging for her to send him Homeward now Cersei unlike Calypso does not wish for him to remain against his will and she grants his request immediately she tells Odysseus that he must seek the Council of parisius in the Underworld as he eases his fears of entering the underworld by undertaking the katabasas by the end of book 10 Cersei resumes her remote and self-sufficient status and supplies the men with gifts a black you and a ram whose blood they will need to summon the Dead Odysseus sails away and follows cersei's detailed instructions until he returns to her Island again in book 12. she welcomes them feeds them watersome and then tells Odysseus alone about all the dangers that he will encounter for the rest of his journey home including the Skiller the charybdis and The Oxen of the Sun and my dogs are playing as she gives him very detailed instructions on how to avoid falling prey to any of them however you noticed how on many Immortal uh Greek Heroes actually completely rely on the advice and guidance of women to defeat the monsters and actually survive you know we have ariadne and Theseus Madea and Jason it seems like behind every great Immortal hero is a woman who told him what to do to succeed so where does Cersei actually come from in terms of Greek mythology is quite interesting because there is a lot of iconographic details in home is epic concerning Cersei which connects her to Mediterranean traditions of goddesses worship particularly Anatolia however obviously because there's actually no firm existence of both Homer as an author and the origins of the Odyssey all associations are largely speculative but they're interesting nevertheless so let's start with her name Cersei or technically kerke spelled like this uh likely comes from the word kirkhos which means falcon or hawk or sometimes Circle now the neoplatonists placed emphasis on her name relating to Circle but as you should all know from following my channel just because an ancient man said so doesn't mean that they were right if we look at the word Circle that Homer uses in the poem he actually uses the word goklos except for the one time when he uses the word kirkhos it would seem that cersei's name therefore was actually more relevant to Hawks and circles especially considering her brother's name ayetes which derives from the word ayetos meaning eagle and the name of her Island Aiea may be based on the west Semitic word for the word Hawk air if you could hear the doggies playing in the background they're having a way of a time now birds have been long associated with divinity not just in Greek mythology but across Europe and Asia Minor and throughout religions to this very day birds have long been considered symbolic of the human soul and the spirit of life we see this a lot in Greek associations between birds and gods and goddesses Hera's peacocks aphroditees doves Athena's Al Zeus transforming as an eagle Etc interestingly Hawks like vultures are flesh-eating birds of prey that exist in prehistoric art as Omens of death around 950 BCE the neo-hittites use the hawk and the Buzzard to represent the goddess kababa and the phrygians who resided around West Central and Southern Anatolia Circa 750 BCE Associated the hawk with their primary God as kaibili and the lydians who lived shortly after them Associated the hawk with their mermanadian dynasty of Kings because Geiger's who founded the dynasty believed that his family had a special relationship with the goddess kaibili now kobeally is often referred to as the mother of gods and she was the sister to the Ephesian Artemis who is the familiar figure as I'm sure you're all aware of the ionian Greeks the sight of the Temple of Artemis of Ephesus is actually the mouth of the river of Kester and that was excavated by the British between 1906 and 1907. during the excavation they found numerous small figures of hooked beaked Birds which they identified to be Hawks the leader of the Expedition DG Hogarth concluded that the bird figures were placed there intentionally and likely as offerings dedicated to the goddess also at the site was an ivory statue of a Corey or a young Priestess carrying a hawk Atop A Long pole on her head it has since been dated to the mid or early 7th Century due to the presence of coins that were found within it meaning that the Ephesian Artemis was strongly associated with Hawks circus 650 BCE and likely earlier during Homer's time though Homer never connects Cersei with Hawks or any flesh-eating birds for that matter apollonius rhodius tells us of a strange Cemetery in the plain of Cersei where the Argonauts pass by on their way to weietta's Palace now in the cemetery it's said that the bodies of the men were actually hanging from the willow trees and presumably their bodies were being picked up clean by flesh-eating Birds an image was actually hark's bag to the vulture goddess of Catal huyuk a goddess indigenous to Asia Minor Saka 7250 to 6250 BCE this incredibly ancient vulture goddess was believed to control the gates of death and rebirth in one mural that was excavated around the 1960s by James mellard in a Neolithic city in South Central Anatolia we see that goddess herself depicted as a vulture with human legs whilst the bodies of the deceased are left out for their flesh to be picked away at Vultures before their bones can be buried that in my opinion is pretty badass so okay what about the tame Wolves and the mountain lions of cersei's Island well in another settlement excavated by Mallard in the Mounds of catalhuyuk and hakila several Stone and clay sculptures depict the goddess with a leopard or Mountain cats and she is known as the lady of the beasts the oldest statuettes details an impressive female figure giving birth while Seated on a throne flanked by Felines and there's another sculpture from hakila that shows a woman fondling very playfully with a baby leopard the leopard was regarded as the most fearsome creature in the forests of South Central Anatolia and was also the hunting rival for the locals for like deer and all that jazz so this juxtaposition with the most feared animal with symbols of fertility seems to demonstrate the goddess's power over life and death the lady of the Beast superseded the vulture goddess over time as religious imaginations evolved but the Mistress of animals was widespread across the Mediterranean and the ancient near East so it's likely that there were numerous locations for such a female figure and the feline however the strongest image we have of a figure that seems to foreshadow Cersei comes to us from Babylonia Circa 2300 BCE now she's a nude winged goddess who stands on the haunches of two reclining lions and flanked by owls and we've actually discussed this figure before in my video on the sirens as many believe that she's an early interpretation of the harpy due to her Talon feet but there's nothing fearsome about this figure and why it's a lie and well the lion was a very popular creature amongst the Minoans and the Mycenaeans as demonstrated by their famed cretan seal which depicts a bare breasted goddess standing Atop A stylized Peak with paired lionesses raising themselves beneath her the goddess with her tamed beasts was a traditional symbol for many different goddesses throughout Greek tradition but our mind usually immediately goes to Artemis after whom I'm named May I add hence why she's actually the figure at the end of every video the earlier Artemis that's associated with taming animals is actually known as Artemis parthenos and that was associated with being actually a married more than she was virginal and her image of being the chaste virginal Huntress was actually developed much later and it would seem that it was actually the Epic poets that formulated this image of her rather than religious and worshipers and we see this more unvirginal Artemis figure actually represented in Cersei so what about the wee Little Pigs why did she turn them into pigs rather than I don't know goats or sheep which are other things that used to be sacrificed well you know the reputation of pigs as greedy dirty creatures uh goes back a long way so most people assume that Cersei transforming the sailors uh into them made perfect sense in terms of depicting a powerful woman stripping men of all dignity and honor but it's not how the Ancients used to see pigs at all pigs are incredibly Greek in terms of ancient symbolism they were Demeter's animal and occupied important roles within rituals that celebrated her such as the illusion mystery and the thesmophoria these rituals go back long before any written record however whilst we don't know much about them because there's no written records many terracotta figurines of pigs and women in headdressers have been found in The corsarian Grotto that predates the worship of the god Apollo at the sanctuary these ancient figurines are believed to be associated with the thessmophoria festival which honored Demeter during the sowing of the new crops in October the festival aimed to promote fertility both for the field and for the women who performed the festival which lasted three days and two nights this was the only time that these women were actually given a chance to leave home and live apart from their partners and children for a few days and it's actually pretty gross so prepare yourselves you see the women would carry the rotting carcasses of suckling pigs which they'd throw into their deaths into caves or Ravines several months before so you can imagine that these remains were absolutely rancid by the time October came around and then they mixed the carcasses with seeds before placing them at the altar disgusting the ellucian Mysteries also had pigs as the star of the show now this Festival took place in September and on the third day of the ceremonies the hierophant of Demeter who had proceeded along the sacred way of debit from alessius to Athens was called down to the Sea they took with them young pigs which they washed and then sacrificed because because the blood of the pig was believed to be the purest blood of them all and thus had the power to cleanse and rid the initiate soul of hatred and evil thus making it the finest gift to be offered to the gods of the underworld thus the Greeks of Homer's time would not have Associated pigs with uncleanliness as we do today which interestingly enough was actually an invention of Judaism even apollonius rhodius spoke of the pig having purifying powers and when Jason and Madea go to Cersei after murdering absentus they sacrifice a pig and cleanse themselves in its blood lovely so as we can see from all of this Cersei is a composite figure of many different elements of terrifying but admirable deities across Asia Minor far more than she is of any Indo-European figure and as I said earlier there's much more to be said about Cersei particularly regarding her Evolution into discussions of Witchcraft and sorcery but I think I'll leave this video here today because there was a lot of dense information in this one so thank you so much for watching today's video thank you so much to my patreons for making this channel possible and also for my sponsor Squarespace today if you enjoyed this video please consider liking and sharing or even subscribing and I will see you very soon for another video and remember books save lives so keep reading