Rainbow Bridge
There
is a bridge from Saturn to Uranus,
Chiron reaches
out to all who come to cross,
tread
carefully intrepid traveller
Saturn's
hold is strong.
I tried
to cross the rainbow bridge
from
past to promised future
I lost
my nerve and fell
falling,
falling fast
like a
leaden autumn leaf.
The
abyss opened her withered hands
covering
me in cloying darkness,
frantically
I tried to struggle free
but
like quicksand
I
became engulfed,
as
though wrapped in spider's web
soft,
silken and sticky
I bound
myself in deeper.
Pure
white light
pulsated
above
trying
to penetrate the abyss of my ignorance
all was
out of focus
like
peering through watery, tear-filled eyes.
I
searched desperately for Achilles the healer,
friend
of Dionysus
to
remove the arrow from my heel
so
aeons of self-deception could drop away.
Uranus (from the Greek "ouranos" [sky]) was known as Caelus to the Romans. Marcus Terentius Varro paired him with Terra (Earth) as the parents of the 1st generation of Titans, although Hesiodos had by conceived by Gaia, the Greek counterpart of Terra; Aither (the pure upper air that is breathed by the gods) may have been his father. In the Orphic hymns of the Greeks he was the son of Nyx (the night). The Roman writer Marcus Tullius Cicero claimed he was the son of Aether and Hemera (day). He was castrated by his son Saturnus, who threw his severed genitals into the sea, leading to the birth of Venus, the goddess of love. After his castration, the sky stopped covering the Earth at night but held to its place) or turned on its axis) by Atlas, the son of Aether and Gaia.
ReplyDeleteSaturnus was the Latin god of time, generation, dissolution, plenty, wealth, agriculture, periodic renewal, and liberation. He had 2 mistresses who represented different aspects of himself: Ops (meaning "wealth, abundance, resources") and Lua ("destruction, dissolution, loosening"), a goddess who received the bloody weapons of enemies destroyed in war.The time of his rule was regarded as a period when humans enjoyed the earth's bounty without labor. His festival, the Saturnalia, was a time of feasting, role reversals, free speech, gift-giving, and revelry. Varro derived his name from "satu" (sowing"), Quintus Lucilius Balbus derived it from "satis" (full, sated), since time consumes every thing.
The centaur Chiron (Greek "hand") was the son of Saturnus and his grand daughter Philyra, one of the daughters of Oceanus (his brother Aphrus was the ancestor of the Africans). Noted for his skill in music, archery, hunting, gymnastics, astrology, and prophecy, he was also the inventor of botany and pharmacy. He was the mentor to many heroes, including Dionysos, to whom he taught chants, dances, and the bacchic rites and initiations. He instructed his grandson Peleus how to capture and wed the nymph Thetis, a granddaughter of Gaia. She sought to make their son Achilles invulnerable by dipping him into the river Styx that led to the underworld, by since she held the baby by its heel that became his sole weakness. When Thetis returned to her fellow Nereids, Peleus sent his son to Chiron, who raised him on the innards of lions and wild swine and the marrow of she-wolves. During the Trojan War, he gained a reputation as a healer by treating his men's wounds with yarrow but was slain by an arrow in his heel.
Dionysos, "the god that comes, was the deity of the theater, the grape-harvest, winemaking and wine, fertility, free love, immortality, reincarnation, resurrection, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and epiphany. He was the son of Saturnus' son Jupiter, who usurped the rule of the Titans, and Semele, the daughter of Cadmus the founder of Thebes and inventor of the alphabet.