Eros

The knowledge presented contains information for those who want clarification on the God of Love known as Eros.

The Eros Ritual above involves communion with the mysterious god of love and union of the mind.

EROS

Eros is the boy-like God of Love in Greek conception whose use of the arrow endowed any individual with love. The god Eros is known as Zepar in the Goetia; another aspect of his is Zephyrus, the God of the western wind, who in the mythology is represented as the father of Eros with Iris.¹² As is commonly known, Eros represented the erotic principle. He is often represented as a boy with wings who smites people into being love-afflicted with his arrows. Antiquity, of course, occasionally represented this lustful aspect in poems, literature and mythology, mostly in the Roman form of Cupid, since textual references to Eros usually have a mystical quality. The other genealogy of Eros makes him the son of Ares and Aphrodite.³ Yet Plutarch pointed out that Eros is not really about lust, but the principle that achieves spiritual and physical union through sexuality as a function:

The Dialogue on Love, Plutarch²

ἀλλ᾿ ὅμως τὸ μέγα τοῦτο καὶ θαυμαστὸν Ἀφροδίτης μὲν ἔργον Ἔρωτος δὲ πάρεργόν ἐστιν Ἀφροδίτῃ συμπαρόντος· μὴ συμπαρόντος δὲ κομιδῇ τὸ γινόμενον ἄζηλον ἀπολείπεται καὶ ἄτιμον κἄφιλον. ἀνέραστος γὰρ ὁμιλία καθάπερ πεῖνα καὶ δίψα πλησμονὴν ἔχουσα πέρας εἰς οὐδὲν ἐξικνεῖται καλόν· ἀλλ᾿ ἡ θεὸς Ἔρωτι τὸν κόρον ἀφαιροῦσα τῆς ἡδονῆς φιλότητα ποιεῖ καὶ σύγκρασιν

And yet this great and wondrous thing is, to be sure, the work of Aphrodite and only a by-work of Eros, when Aphrodite is accomplied by him. If he is not present, what comes about leaves altogether a murky residue, without honor, and without affection.

For intercourse without Eros, like hunger and thirst whose end is mere satiety, reaches nothing noble. But the Goddess, by removing the surfeit from pleasure through Eros, turns it into affection and a true mingling (union).

This principle is affirmed several times in this writing, which is decorated with other specific examples. He was considered to be the child or page of Aphrodite who enforced all her decrees, but he frequently came up with his own schemes. A witty story⁴ involves Eros complaining to his mother that he was stung by a hive of bees when trying to wrest honey from them, protesting that such small animals can cause such pain. Aphrodite replies that Eros does not know how similar he is to them, since love is eminently cruel. The effects of his arrows were not always immediate and could be after the fact, as long as the wound was open or poisoned. In the Metamorphoses, Eros is the primary agent of Aphrodite's tragedy⁵; he kisses his mother sweetly while one of his bows juts downwards, piercing her breast and causing her to fall in love with Adonis. In the Dionsyiaca,⁶ Eros caused Dionysus to fall deeply in love with Aura, sending him on a rampage across the earth. He was also the ultimate cause of one of the darkest Greek tragedies, the love of the Colchian princess and sorceress Medea for the argonaut Jason.⁷

The absence of Eros devastates Psyche, making her look from place to place wandering the entire planet dejectedly, before coming to the Temple of Demeter, who tells her she must be brave and pass the trials of Aphrodite. Aphrodite, still in contempt of the girl's beauty and further angered by nursing the heartbreak of her son, imposes four strict and borderline impossible-by-design tasks on her, which the young girl is able to complete, save the last. On this occasion, the great goddess tasks her with retrieving a box of Persephone's beauty. The underworld deity provides her with the object; Psyche, loudly exclaiming she will do anything to win Eros' love, looks into the box Persephone gives her, putting her into an eternal sleep. The boy god, finally realizing her love for him in his descent, revives her by closing the box, and tells her to complete the infernal task. She does so and achieves apotheosis, becoming a goddess on the whim of Zeus who wins the consent of Aphrodite, and so Psyche is united with Eros forever. In alternative primordial myths dating from Greek antiquity, Eros was held to have been created as a basic principle of existence after several others:

The Birds, Aristophanes: ⁹

At the beginning there was only Chaos, Night, dark Erebus, and deep Tartarus. Earth, the air and heaven had no existence. Firstly, blackwinged Night laid a germless egg in the bosom of the infinite deeps of Erebus, and from this, after the revolution of long ages, sprang the graceful Eros with his glittering golden wings, swift as the whirlwinds of the tempest. He mated in deep Tartarus with dark Chaos, winged like himself, and thus hatched forth our race, which was the first to see the light.

And so, a prominent running joke in Antiquity was that Eros was in fact one of the oldest and most terrifying of the Gods, or in Plutarch's words, 'the most grim' (δεινότατον θέων), despite his sweet, boyish appearance:

Dialogues of the Gods, Lucian: ¹⁰

Eros:

Even if I have done something wrong, Zeus, please forgive me, for I'm only a child, and still without sense.

Zeus:

You a child, you Eros, who are far older than Iapetus! Just because you have no beard or grey hairs, do you really think you should be considered a babe in arms, you old villain?

His powers were so total that even the Gods could fall victim to his cunning juvenile wiles, and even the frozen heart of Hades was made to melt by his arrows. The limitations of Eros only extended to the virgin goddesses - Athena, Hestia, and Artemis - who could repel his powers as oath-sworn.

Phaedra, Seneca the Younger: ¹¹

He [Eros] smites maids' breasts with unknown heat, and bids the very Gods leave heaven and dwell on earth in borrowed forms.

The Dialogue on Love, Plutarch: ²

For in sowing a sweet harvest in the desire of a man's heart, as Melanippides puts it, he (sc. Eros) mingles what is most pleasant with what is finest.

In Thespiae, the city state hosted the festivities of Eros known as the Eroditia, which is known from Athenaeus' plays and Pausanias' travels through Greece.¹³¹⁴ The Eroditia featured musical and gymnastic contests, the reconciliation of married couples in an auspicious manner, worship of Eros in the sacred gymnasium, horse and chariot races, and more. The gymnastic portion even had the Greek martial arts of pankratium featured. The festival's roots are often linked to the myth of Narcissus who was punished by Eros for spurning someone with cruelty,¹⁵ and whose death led the people of Thespiae to establish the worship of Eros as a form of atonement. The Eroditia was held every five years and it was treated with great ceremony across Greece, being famous as a particularly jovial day. It was typical for Spartans to sacrifice to Eros before battle in order to affirm their comradeshi, and similar stories are told about the warriors of Crete.¹⁴ Charmus of Kolyttus also erected an altar to Eros in Athens, which became one of the major sites of his worship.¹³¹⁴

Most objects involving Eros found from the ancient world are intaglios (gems), rings and other kinds of worn materials.¹⁶ Naturally, he was very much associated with love magic and charms of genuine affection. Occasionally, he was shown on flasks, such as a Hellenistic Egyptian representation of Eros with a lotus flower.¹⁷ Researchers, writing on magical gems, noted a whole group of stones where Eros or Psyche are tied, kneeling, or otherwise bound, and explicitly connects them to love-binding magic (καταδέσεις) known from the Greek Magical Papyri.¹⁸¹⁹ An extremly common convention is objects, floor coverings and even statues of a large frequency showing Eros riding a lion wielding a whip, but sometimes a dolphin, a deer, Aegipan or other animals, often amidst a starry sky.²⁰²¹

SYMBOLISM OF EROS

Eros was typically in large scale represented as a pubescent young boy with wings, often with arms outstretched, unlike Cupid, his Roman counterpart, who was more often represented as a putto amorino in toddler-like form. The pubescent appearance of this God is meant to signify the erotic drive beginning to merge with the mental faculty in the soul (Psyche), and the rapid changes in the body at this age occurring as a result of transition from the child to adult state. It is also the age when magic becomes operable, and when an individual truly starts to be able to interpret glimpses of divine things and to love others outside one's family. Stylistic representations of Eros in statues tend to portray his facial features inbetween those of Ares and Aphrodite, with a certain solemnity. Occasionally, more like Cupid, he is represented as an infant, or being tended to by Aphrodite, particularly on coins, amulets and statuettes. The symbolism of Eros as appearing to be an innocent child is a hint to the innocent result of reproduction.

He always carried a bow and two sets of arrows,⁵ one set of which made from gold which could fill the target with feelings of maniacal love, and the other, far more sparingly used set made of lead that would be used to inspire rancorous hatred. Euripides, alternatively, portrays the arrows as causing endless happiness or perpetual ruin for the person so struck.²² Thus, it could be said that Eros was not only a God of Love, but a God of Hate as well. The bow and arrows of course represent the incumbent ability to operate magic, yet they represent many things in turn. An unadroitly and unaptly fired bow will just land anywhere, possibly leading to disaster, including mentally-speaking. The shape of the bow is reminiscent of the shape of the lungs and larynx too, and the bow can take on a heart shape as well. The word Eros means 'desire', which could be equated with any sort of desire, not only of a romantic, carnal or erotic nuance. Metaphysically, Eros was considered to be between the states of Ponos (plentitude) and Penia (poverty)²³ because of this symbolism of desire as a potential act lying between the acquired and the needed, as a result these two beings were also sometimes considered to be his parents. As a Daemon, Eros is considered to help humanity towards the divine.

All desire in nature is a manifestation of Eros, including evolution and the biological drives that cause animals to propagate, yet it also had the meaning of creation in the sense that it is love that compels us to create anything meaningful, lasting and ultimately desirable.

On Eros, High Priest Zevios Metathronos²⁴

In Ancient Greek, the "eros" means love, but it also means "when the minds come in contact". [...] All of this, came from the mistranslation of two words, one being "Eromenos", which means "The one who goes toward" and "Erastes" which means "The one on whom another is moving toward". From the root word "Er", we also have the word for "Ermes" that deals with the mind and the connection of the mind.

The word for 'discourse' or 'dialogue' (Erotos) also related to him, because the erotic principle strongly related to communication, conveying a union of minds rather than beings set against each other. Extending this to the mental faculty, he could be symbolic of the desire to know and the emphasis of knowledge which is a nuance of the word 'eros' that is totally lost on modern people. One of the forgotten meanings of the term erotic was to demonstrate the urge towards growth of the mind in order to achieve higher union with the soul. >This is the meaning of the Symposium²³ and Phaedrus of Plato, which established the concept of Eros (Ἔρως) as far more than mere romantic desire. He is portrayed as a cosmologically significant force that mediates between the human and divine realms, his teleological function being to drive all souls toward immortality and the vision of true Beauty. Souls gain or lose their wings depending on their exposure to divine beauty and truth:

Phaedrus, Plato²⁵

… by these [divine realities] the wings of the soul are nourished and grow, but by vileness and evil they are destroyed.

The hidden message of Eros is also a contemplative one, to desire ultimate beauty in order to reacquaint oneself with the ideal divine source. However, because the arrows of Eros can hit anyone, the deception of any physically beautiful appearance often goes awry and leads to unexpected consequences.

Part 5, Third Ennead, Plotinus²⁶

The universe is a living Eros.

For Platonists, Eros is also held to be the heartbeat of the universe as this binding mechanism, and much of the romantic symbolism of the heart is related to this. Being where others are tied, the Middle Chakra relates to beings outside oneself. It is through the access of the 'heart of the head' (ida and pingala), as well as the activation of three Highest Chakras, where true love and compassion overflows; one achieves inner union by uniting the higher and lower realms. Eros is elevated to a cosmic principle that holds the entire universe together, as elaborated by Emperor Julian.²⁷ Proclus²⁸ held that love is binder of the universe that creates increasing harmony and unity. As one scholar summarizes his view, "love is a power of reality that is not restricted to particular occurrences but transcends them all." It is through this force that one is able to access the Gods from the remote material realm and, in Plotinus' account, is the primary reason the soul wishes to incarnate away from matter, which makes it a precious symbol.

The Major Arcana card of Eros is, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Lovers. In the most typical type of reading, the Lovers typically represents a great relationship forming, the blossoming of one's sexual life or the incoming of a soulmate. Sometimes, it has the platonic dimension of finding a good friend. On a more subtle and pressing level its presence indicates to the querent that two people learning something together or forming any kind of partnership in certain situations can be better than one, as it is known from studies that two people who put their minds towards something can often learn twice as fast as one alone. However, in line with Eros, the card of the two lovers can indicate the more abstract achievement of inner union being in sight and the pursuit of this involving difficulties. The heavenly messenger being placed between the earth and the divine sun is an indication of the daemonic nature of Eros.