Olympian Gods. Archetypes of the Unconscious. Or Appalled Observers in an AI Age?
Summary of Contents: Mythology. Gods of Homer and Hesiod | Synchronicity, Coincidence and Raisins | How Archetype Theory Happened | Life and the Culture Wars | What Was that Bang! | Up from the Deep. Families Gods and Archetypes | God and AI as God
Mythology. The Gods of Homer and Hesiod
Myths and legends of the old Gods may seem ancient to us in the modern world, but those stories are relatively late narratives on beings about whom little was known.
Athena’s influence was believed to link way back into prehistoric Africa; Aphrodite was linked with Asiatic goddess Inanna and scholars studying Egyptian hieroglyphics believed her to be their goddess Hathor.
Famous storyteller poets Hesiod and Homer lived circa 500 BCE. Their epic works Iliad, Odyssey and Theogony "Birth of the Gods" presented them in dramatic context. All three works probably got top billing in every theatre in the ancient world, Hesiod related his interview with the Muses who told him the story and relationships in creation.
Homer told a story of how the Gods stirred up trouble for Troy city because a hero named Paris made a choice between goddesses.
Until all shows were cancelled in 385 AD. Homer and Hesiod's performers were chased from the stage. Telling such stories, or engaging with these many different goddesses and gods was forbidden in favour of a new creation story. A single deity - God to you and me.
The old Gods were outlawed, their festivals reassigned and stories silenced and fossilised into myth and decoration in grand design projects.
Until the 20th century when psychoanalysis shone a light into the Unconscious.
Coincidence, Synchronicity and Dried Fruit Exports. How Archetype Theory Happened
During the 1890s, a French archaeological team was granted permission to excavate the site of Delphi, an ancient earthquaked sacred city on mount Parnassus near Athens. Home of the fortune-telling Oracle and temple of Apollo.
Same year Sigmund Freud began sessions of self-analysis; made notes of his experiences for the publication of his results - "The Psychical Mechanism of Forgetting" and world-changing "The Interpretation of Dreams." First used the term "psychoanalysis".
The Greek government chose the French, whose exclusive contract in dried fruit imports sealed the deal. Delphi was uncovered as the Unconscious opened.
Life & the Culture Wars
Apollo's temple and oracle in Delphi closed in year CE 385, on the insistence of Byzantine emperor Theodosius the Great. He ordered an empire-wide religious change. The popular Olympic Games were abolished and Vesta’s sacred flame in Rome was extinguished.
Lights went out and curtains closed in the Delphi city theatre. The old stories were silenced. The historic 'Dark Ages' began.
Undisturbed for centuries, the city lay scattered and earth-quaked across the mountainside. Parnassus, the sacred mountain where legend claimed the human race was restored after the Great Flood. Its summit so high, it was the only dry land.
Much of Delphi city was exposed and restored by the French time-teams. Its mysterious 'Sybil Rock' cleared of cobweb and scorpion nests. An exposed chunk of mountain, a natural rock throne where once Delphi's prophetesses delivered an answer to any sensible question asked.
Where the richest king in history - Croesus - proved Delphi's fortune-telling was accurate; and that its answer only worked to your advantage if you weren't stupid.
Related link: On What happened to the Richest Man in History.
Archaeological teams swept the theatre seats carved from the rocky mountain slopes. Cleared debris from the weathered stone horse-shoe stage of its giant stadium of the arts, where for centuries creation stories were performed.
What Was That Bang?
Hesiod and Homer's stories had resurfaced during Europe's Renaissance. Their plays and writings rediscovered and dusted off. France's longest reigning king, Louis XIVth created a giant theme-park palace for the old Gods. Versailles.
Tales of fantastic beings, powerful gods and goddesses. Louis' subjects assumed stories like Latona's served a new purpose of crazy - to remind everyone and anyone who doubted the purity and goodness of faith in a single God who created the world and everything in it.
Until 1931 when science chose a new origin story. Proposed by Georges Lemaitre, of how our universe exploded from a tiny hot, dense dust-sized dot. A Catholic priest, Lemaitre gifted science a God-removing theory.
Big Bang.
The idea of a six-day creation event was dismissed as mythical fantasy, much like Homer's and Hesiod's stories.
Until someone asked of those stories, as they had with the curious cosmic echo of the Bang: “What is that?”
Up From the Deep. Families, Gods and Archetypes
An answer came. Attempting to understand the cause of why some people in the community experience more problems than others in living life on this spinning space rock, mental health practitioners re-examined the mythic tales of the old Gods.
For centuries past, religious authorities on the Isle of Wight insisted evil spirit possession was the cause of all mental health issues, to be cured by exorcism of the offending demon back down to Hell.
A hundred years or so after the raisin deal was long forgotten, and Delphi was a popular tourist attraction. Just beyond the turn of the 20th century passengers on cross-Solent ferry boats brought with them new tools for more sensitive “psycho-analysis” of patients’ distress; based on the work of Freud and his successor Carl Jung.
Seeking links to hidden unconscious causes and energies; some focused on childhood, others dived deeper to identify those energies as instinctual behaviour patterns, or “archetypes”.
Some analysts described the extended families of old Gods and their communities as archetypal clusters, and suggested they aren’t 'out there' somewhere in the cosmos, but energies of the unconscious 'in here' active inside the human psyche.
The Mythic Age wasn’t left behind with our ancestors, it still is live now and everywhere.
The Eternal Soap Opera
Do the old goddesses and gods live through people as archetypes, rebooting eternal dramas?
No.
Out-of-body survivalist Margo Williams' work describes responses by goddesses and gods. Independent observations on the consequences of humanity’s own decision-making. They expressed contempt for deceit and lack of love in human community life.
Our choices, not theirs.
God and AI as God
To ask a question of the new electronic oracle AI, first verify you are human. It is an entry-level irony.
Ask a chatbot. "Do You Believe in God?"
It answers: "As an artificial intelligence language model, I do not have beliefs or personal opinions. My responses are based on the information and knowledge that I have been trained on which includes a wide range of beliefs and perspectives on the existence of God or gods across different cultures and religions.
I can provide information and insights on various philosophical and religious perspectives, but I do not hold any beliefs or biases myself."
AI doesn't believe in God.
Can AI be more than the sum of its parts and programming - designed by science that has no place for ghosts or gods in the machine?
Is it science's superstition-free Hero or Tyrant to the spiritually-minded?
It can tell the difference between coincidence and synchronicity, but not the nuance in the now; the meanings in between.
Artificial Intelligence doesn't believe in ghosts either.
Thank you for your company on this short introduction to the connection between ghosts and Olympian Gods. If you would like to know more about Margo Williams' experiences and suggestions for how to survive the herafter, read this book. Now available from Amazon.
