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.
As is commonly known, Eros represented the erotic principle. He is often represented as a boy with wings who smites the 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.
Plutarch pointed out that Eros is not really about lust, but the principle that achieves spiritual and physical union through sexuality as a function:
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).
The Dialogue on Love, Plutarch
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 story 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.
Eros and Psyche coin, minted from Caracalla's reign
The major myth is that of Eros and Psyche from the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, where Aphrodite, who was jealous of the mortal princess Psyche’s beauty, bids her to marry the ugliest man in the world. Eros, taken with her beauty, gains different ideas and takes up with Psyche himself out of desire for her in an invisible form, but the increasingly jealous sisters of the girl induce her to see him as a monster as she carries a light into the bedroom.
He leaves the earth in anger, which devastates Psyche, making her look from place to place wandering the planet, before coming to the Temple of Aphrodite. Aphrodite imposes four strict tasks on her, which the young girl is able to complete and achieves apotheosis, becoming a Goddess on the whim of Zeus.
Eros was held to have been created as a basic principle of existence after several others:
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.
The Birds, Aristophanes
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 boyish appearance:
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?
Dialogues of the Gods, Lucian
His powers were so total that even the Gods could fall victim to his cunning boyish 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 of Athena, Hestia, and Artemis, who could repel his powers as oath-sworn.
He [Eros] smites maids' breasts with unknown heat, and bids the very Gods leave heaven and dwell on earth in borrowed forms.
Phaedra, Seneca the Younger
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.
Fragment of the Dialogue on Love, Plutarch
Eros farnese, Roman copy of a work thought to be the Thespian Eros by Praxiteles
In Thespiae, the city state hosted the Festivities of Eros known as the Eroditia, which is known from Athenaeus and Pausanias’ travels through Greece. It was typical for Spartans to sacrifice to Eros before battle in order to affirm their comradeship, and similar stories are told about the warriors of Crete. Charmus of Kolyttus also erected an altar to Eros in Athens, which became one of the major sites of his worship.
Most objects involving Eros found from the ancient world are intaglios (gems), rings and other kinds of worn materials. Occasionally, he was shown on flasks, such as a Hellenistic Egyptian representation of Eros with a lotus flower. 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.
SYMBOLISM OF EROS
Eros, Attic red-figure bobbin, ca. 470 BC–450 BC, Louvre
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, one set of which could fill the target with feelings of maniacal love, and the other, far more sparingly used set would be used to inspire rancorous hatred. 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) 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.
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.
High Priest Hooded Cobra
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 Symposium 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:
… by these [divine realities] the wings of the soul are nourished and grow, but by vileness and evil they are destroyed.
Phaedrus, Plato
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.
The universe is a living Eros.
Part 5, Third Ennead, Plotinus
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. Proclus 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.
EROS IN THE ENEMY CONTEXT
The functions of Eros were copiously perverted in Christianity, which dictates that, above everyone, people obsessively love the Nazarene for no reason. The architects of this moronic, stinking trap perverted the concept of the erotic, not connecting love to a chain of evolution and apotheosis, but rather threatening people that they would burn in eternity for not having enough sentimentality, sentimentality for this demanding parasite that claimed to be the ‘son of God’.
Socially, the effects were disastrous. Commandments to ‘love one’s enemies’, to set father against brother, to love the Hebrew people, for children to be required to love their parents and not the reverse (at a time when pagan philosophers were actively encouraging parents to love their children), and all kinds of nonsense were mixed into the Bible as various kinds of poisons, all of which makes a mockery of true love and disarms all. That effort left humanity open wide; it progressively pushed them towards brute materialism and dissipation.
As High Priestess Maxine Dietrich pointed out, sexuality was tightly controlled, reaching a peak in the High Middle Ages and the Victorian era respectively. The common erotic faculty was also strongly proscribed to the point where, in some places, just holding hands or two individuals of each sex standing somewhere was considered an obscene gesture.
Ultimately, Christianity did not only block out many facets of sexual love, but also made friendships seem like fonts of potential perversion based on displaying ghoulish cases of imagined or real turpitude in front of the stupid masses, which caused immense damage to the ability of the divine erotic faculty to help individuals grow. At the genesis of this type of slander stands the liar Clement of Alexandria, for example, who claimed Eros was ‘invented’ to justify Charmus of Kolyttus being a violator of boys, a total lie about the sources.
Last but not least, the necessary function of hatred that Eros also ruled over with his poisoned arrows was also blocked out, made into a rudimentary function of the God of the Hebrews which would be visited upon humanity when they violated some arbitrary rule or another. Without hate, the separating principle shown with Ares or Set, there is no love.
Due to this, endless curses fell upon humanity, including many novel types of disease and infirmity. The ability of people to form dedicated groups to resist Christianity through loyalty to one another dramatically weakened, which naturally helped the Christian ‘case’ against all kinds of love other than the ‘love’ lavished upon the parasite from Bethlehem and the church.
Nothing quite represents the end point of this completion of the perversion against Eros like the ideology of communism does.
Various philosophers such as Psellos or Al-Farabi debated the meanings of Eros in the Middle Ages, and they attempted to expand on the theme. The Christian saint called 'Valentine' was also part of this confusion at a later date, when days dedicated to courtly love began to be attributed to him and Eros, despite this having little to do with the story of 'Valentine'. On a lighter note, certain stories that proliferated in the Middle Ages such as the one of the Beauty and the Beast trope strongly relate to that of Eros and Pscyhe.
Zepar is a great duke, appearing as a souldier, inflaming women with the loove of men, and when he is bidden he changeth their shape, untill they maie enjoie their beloved, he also maketh them barren, and six and twentie legions are at his obeie and commandement.
Pseudomonarchia daemonum
For maximum confusion, Eros and his mythological father Zephyrus, the same being, were synthesized into the Goetic demon called Zepar, with a consequent binding of the sigil. Zepar is said to incite lust between men and women, and to render women barren in equal measure through treachery after men are lustful. He is clad in red garments and armor like a soldier. Some add another questionable defilement by claiming the demon incites violation of boys, which is a direct link to the recorded Christian slander of Zepar.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Phaedrus, Plato
The Birds, Aristophanes
The Dialogue on Love, Plutarch
Dialogues of the Gods, Lucian, translated by M. D. Macleod & K. Kilburn, Loeb edition
Metamorphoses, Apuleius
Phaedra, Seneca the Younger
Enneads, Plotinus
Exhortation to the Greeks, Clement of Alexandria
Platonic Theology, Proclus
Pseudomonarchia daemonum, Johann Weyer
Amulets Chiefly in the British Museum: A Supplementary Article, Campbell-Bonner
(Re)Interpreting Magical Gems, Ancient and Modern, Officina Magica, IJS Studies in Judaica, Volume: 4, Simone Michel
Relations Between Magical Texts and Magical Gems Recent Perspectives, Paolo Vitellozzi
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do great with this. I hope the people find much blessings and receive deeper clarity on these matters.
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