When you consider Beowulf he doesn’t really fit the hero’s journey mold only because he never once refuse the call or backed down from a fight, he never once doubts himself. Of course he makes mistakes but he never let that stop him along his quests.

The start of the myth doesn’t even start with Beowulf himself. it starts with a king, a king named Hrothgar in 507 A.D. Denmark. Hrothgar- not the best king, he’s a horny drunk and is really only there to be a¨mentor¨ for Beowulf and to die so Beowulf can have the crown. Hrothgar built this beautiful banquet/ Mead hall called Herot and held large booming parties in it . until one night , surprise, a giant ugly ogre monster comes in and kills about 30 Thames. This caused hrothgar to panic so he called upon his allies to send him a hero to slay the beast.

This is where our heroes journey comes into play, or at least the call to action. Beowulf appears and offers aid to our glorious king drunkie. Beowulf of course is strong and handsome and all that good stuff so hrothgar immediately takes a liking to him and is like ¨ hey you’re pretty cute, if you kill grendel and solve our problems you can have my wife¨. This peaks beowulf’s interest so he decides he’s gonna try and kill grendel. He chills out in the mead hall for awhile and wait for the big baddie to come and smash stuff. This is when he decides that it would be unfair for him to fight the giant monster with claws and almost impenetrable skin so he would fight with no armor or weapons. After beowulf finished stripping grendel comes in and kills some of the geats. This is when beowulf comes in a saves the day in his birthday suit (go him) and kills grendel.

Hrothgar is very very happy with this and keeps grendels severed arm on the mantle of the mead hall for all to see. With doing this he grants beowulf with his wife and his ¨mentorship¨. Hrothgar throws a huge party in Beowulf’s honor with lots of mead and heads. Grendel stumbles home and bleeds out in his cave while this party goes on, this of course angers grendel’s mother who goes down to the mead hall and crashes the party. Beowulf being beowulf of course kills the heck of grendel’s mom easily.

Like i said, beowulf isn’t really a hero as much like perseus or hercules hes just a guy that really likes killing things and gold  

cheat sheet *

Beowulf- our beautiful hero that does hero stuff and kills big bad monsters

Hrothgar- the king of a small danish country and the mentor to Beowulf

Wiglaf- one of Beowulf’s men and becomes king after beowulf died

Grundel- a big gross monster who kills a bunch of people in Herot

Herot- the mead hall that hrothgar built to celebrate him becoming king

Thanes- citizens of hrothgar’s kingdom

Geats- Beowulf band of warriors that are allies with the thanes

Unferth- a warrior who doesn’t believe that beowulf can help them because he lost a swimming match with another man and a warrior who couldn’t defeat grendel                                                                                              

In Avatar the last Airbender (2005) our main character Aang is sent on a long adventure in order to bring peace to the world. He is a member of one of the four elemental races, Air, Water,Earth and Fire. Aang is what as known as the Avatar, he is gifted with the power to band all the elements, not just one. All of the elements need to be at peace or else the world will be thrown into chaos and when the fire nation attacked the other nations the world became unbalanced. In order to save the world he has help from his friends, his flying bison Appa, his lemur Momo and all the others he meets along the way. Aang’s main goal is to defeat fire lord Ozai and help the other members of the world.

Call to Adventure

Aang had a few calls to adventure, his first one was when the air nomads told him he was the Avatar and he refused the call so he ran away. His second call came when Katara and Sokka found Aang lost in the ice a hundred years later. What really sparked his need to follow his destiny was when he returned to his home at the southern air temple to see that his people were massacred and he was the last airbender in the world. This is what truly made him accept that he was the Avatar.

Mentors

Aang had a mentor for every element he needed to learn to defeat the firelord. His first mentor was a southern water tribe girl named Katara who found Aang in the ice. She taught him how to waterbend and how to follow the flow. His second mentor was Toph, a blind earthbender who taught Aang to bend earth and how to hold his ground like earth. His final mentor along the way was Prince Zuko, the banished son of the Firelord. Zuko taught Aang that fire didn’t have to be a destructive force and that fire bending had the power to be good.

First Threshold

Aang’s first real threshold he needed to cross was learning all the elements. It was foretold that Aang needed to know all four elements in order to defeat the firelord. When aang started learning how to bend other elements he found that water came easy while earthbending did not. Aang had the most trouble learning how to bend fire because he was afraid of its destructive fire after accidentally hurting his friend Katara while practicing and burning her hands.

Road of Trials

Every episode of the show had a story contained inside of it and Aang was the one that needed to solve the problems of the various situations he was in. he had to learn how to balance his duties as the avatar with the duty he had to himself and his friends which sometimes got him in trouble. When
Aang would find himself in predicaments that he couldn’t solve, he’d always rely on his friends to help when they could.

Transformation

Aang’s transformation is apparent throughout the whole show as he learns new elements of learns moral lessons from other characters. As Aang travels the world he meets all these different people who have seen and experienced different things throughout their lives. Aang is not the only one who goes through changes in the show. Examples of this would be Katara coming a waterbending master, Toph learning the values of friendship and even Sokka learning that even though he can’t bend an element that doesn´t mean hes useless. I can’t talk about transformations without talking about the greatest character development in cartoon history, Zoko´s switch from a bad guy to an ally and a trusted friend. At the beginning of the show Zuko was an enemy who worked for his father to hunt down the avatar. He then later started to see that his father losing power wasn’t a bad thing and joined the avatar in stopping the fire lord.

Apotheosis

Aang’s apotheosis comes when he is struck down by a bolt of lightning sent from Azula, the daughter of the firelord and the sister of Zuko. Aang was put into a coma and his energy flow was obstructed leaving him unable to go into the avatar state. Thankfully Katara used water from the ancient spirit pond to heal Aang’s would but she couldn’t open his energy paths. This lead to the people of the world believing Aang was dead.

Return

When Aang returned from defeating the firelord he held close the belief of maintaining the balance between the races. Zuko took up the throne and lead the fire nation into a time of peace after the hundred years of destruction. Aang became an ambassador of peace among the races and married Katara. Toph became known as the strongest earthbender in the world due to her incredible strength in earthbending, her seismic sense and her creation of a whole new subset of earth bending known as metal bending. After Aang’s return from battle he was not only a hero and a leader but the avatar that brought peace after a hundred years of war

When asked the question of ¨ what makes a person a person¨ it makes me think what i personally value. In my opinion i think having good moral character and the actions you do make you the person you are. They are somewhat conflicting though because your actions can be different than what you really feel inside and vice versa.

             The Moral Character of a person is what people virtue and keep sacred. Aristotle believed that good character is based off of two naturally occurring psychological responses, our tendency to take pleasure from self realization and our ability to create friendly feelings with others. While plato believed that our souls had three parts, the rational, appetitive and the spirited and in order to have moral character you would need to have a balance of all three sections. The moral character could also be known as the moral compass that leads a person in a direction. It is also what can help dictate someone’s values, actions and relations.

What it means to have good character varies on the opinion of a person. this could be from a religious standpoint, a cultural standpoint or an emotional standpoint. An example of religious moral character would be how in the christian faith following the teachings of jesus christ means you are of good moral character. In my honest opinion i think that having good moral character means that you do your best to better the world around you while maintaining the emotions of the people around you.

The actions of a person have the potential to make things better or worse that being said actions are of the utmost importance. The official definition of action is ¨ the fact or process of doing something¨ and ¨ anything done, an act¨ According to Brides magazine physical touch is the number one well received type of love language followed then by acts of service.Both of these love languages show caring by putting actions over words or physical gifts. When showing actions towards others it’s very important to know what actions they are comfortable with whether it is you’re doing  

Actions don’t have to just be towards others, they can also be towards yourself. An example of  this would be making choices for your body like going to the doctor every six months for a checkup or choosing to eat healthy foods instead of unhealthy foods. This could also branch out to self care and mental health which are just as important.

Let me just start by saying that this post isn’t a retelling of a singular myth like the other 3 have been, this is just me telling you about who the heck Hecate and why shes just so stinking cool .

Hecate is the only daughter of two titans named Perses and Asteria, when she was born she had a lot of power due to her parentage but also with her natural talent to manipulate the air, earth, sea, fire and other mystical things around her. She was named the goddess of magic, ghosts and sometimes the moon. she once used her power over flame to help the goddess Demeter look for her daughter in a snowstorm using her two torches that she is portrayed with.

Her magic got her a very large following in the city Athens. Statues of her likeness were put over doorways of the home to ward away restless spirits. speaking of her likeness when Hecate is portrayed she depicted in a triple form. This triple form is to represent three moon phases – The Full Moon, The Half Moon and the New Moon. Each body is made up of a different material- The right is stone, The left is bronze and the center is flesh. She is also portrayed with having a torch, a key, serpents, daggers and many other items having to do with witchcraft or sorcery. Hecate also has familiars that she is often seen with, one of them is a black dog and the other is a polecat.

The metamorphosis myths are the myths where people are turned into animals and vice versa. Hecate’s two familiars both originate from said metamorphosis myths. Her black dog was once the Trojan queen Hekabe who lept into the sea after the fall of Troy. Her polecat was once a maiden named Galinthias who tried stopping the birth of Herakles and was then punished by The Fates for deceiving them. Hecate being very merciful turned them both into her familiars so they wouldn’t have to suffer short mortal lives.

In conclusion Hecate is a very powerful yet sympathetic goddess who deserves more credit than she gets. 10/10 great goddess would put statue over my door again.

The story of echo is a pretty sad one actually, its about love and the loss of love which is a common theme for a lot of Greek myths. The loss of a loved one as a driving force for a characters actions is found in almost every story from Macbeth to Disney. In echos case instead of actions to change her life she just gets sad and dies but that´s a spoiler for this story.

Once upon a time there was a nymph named Echo, she was very favored by the other nymphs because she could tell stories like no other. Echo could talk for hours about the tinniest thing with no hesitation. one day the king of the gods Zeus was getting frisky with some of the other nymphs. the other nymphs had put echo on guard duty in case Zeus´s wife, Hera came looking for him then low and behold Hera went searching. When Hera came upon the nymphs abode she ran into echo as planned. with this echo started asking Hera question after question but never letting her get a word in. For hours this went on, echo would ask a question then when Hera would open her mouth to answer echo would asked her another even stupider question. This left room for Zeus to make his grand escape therefor angering Hera. Hera then turned to echo and said “you will be curses to never say another world unless someone has spoken it before you”.

Echo was forced to walk the earth alone saying nothing until one day she spotted a handsome hunter shooting game in the woods. He was the prettiest thing she had ever seen in her whole life. This hunters name was Narcissus and he had a reputation for rejecting any woman that asked to marry him. He had yet to find anyone that was beautiful enough for him to even consider marrying. As he hunted Echo watched him through the brush without a word. Narcissus soon stumbled upon a deep blue pond and peered into its water, in the pools water he saw the prettiest thing he´d ever seen. He stared enamored with the gorgeous figure he saw. He whispered sweet nothings to the reflection and was delighted to find it said the same things back to him. In fact it wasn’t his reflection speaking it was echo still in the brush telling him how much she loved him using his own words. when Narcissus tried touching the beautiful figure it disappeared. so distraught over losing the beautiful creature he dove into the water and drowned.

Echo was so sorrowful that she wandered the earth alone again for centuries, her body slowly degrading over time leaving only her voice. They say that she still roams the hills and mountains of Greece and when you yell something trough their peaks you´ll hear echo returning what you said to her back to you.

What did you think of this myth? Do you think that Narcissus wasn’t really as narcissistic as we think, he was just gay and it was his first time seeing a hot guy? Please let me know what you thought of this story!

Id like it to be known how long it took me to find a picture of Athena where she was A. actually wearing clothes and B. not an action figure with removable armor and i have to say i´m genuinely surprised and kind of disgusted. Athena is a pretty cool goddess, my personal favorite since I was a kid and overall pretty bad ass. there are a lot of stories about Athena that could be talked about but today i´m bringing up Poseidon again.

Once upon a time there was a city known as Cecropia in the ancient region of Greece called Attica. Cecropia was surrounded by the sea so the citizens loved to worship Poseidon. In Poseidon´s narcissism he decided that he should have this city to be his own. He then appeared to the citizens of Cecropia and proclaimed ¨Rename this city Posidonia and you will have free rain over the seas and wind”. Athena hearing this from Olympus decided you know what, she wanted a city to worship her too. she appeared to the citizens next to Poseidon and said ” If you name this city Athens you will live a life full of wisdom and beauty unmatched by any other city in Greece¨. Poseidon angered by this challenged Athena to a contest, they each would give the Cecropians a gift and who ever gave the better gift would win the patronage of Cecropia.

Poseidon went first, he struck his trident into the ground and out gushed a large beautiful salt water spring that gushed with crystal clear turquoise bubbles when the Cecropians went to drink from the spring they were disgusted. The spring consisted of salt water therefor rendering it undrinkable. Poseidon then spoke up “if you pray in front of this fountain it will tell you when the seas are safe to voyage upon”.

Then it was Athena´s turn, she plunged her spear into the dirt and created a hole. Out of that hole a short, squat tree started to grow. from the thin branches small green fruit started to grow. Athena plucked a single fruit and declared to the Cecropians ¨ This is an olive, the oil can be used to cook food and warm your homes You can use its fruit to eat and make medicine and with the trees wood you can make fires and build your houses.”. This gift was obviously more enticing to the people of Cecropians. The citizens then had a vote and Athena had one by a landslide. In appreciation for The goddess they renamed their city to Athens. Angered but accepting of the terms of their contest slid back into the ocean in search of another city to worship him.

What do you think of this story? Do you think that Poseidon should have one the contest? I promise that the next story won´t have Poseidon in it so please stay tuned.

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The first lady I want to write about in my opinion is the best. Everyone knows the story of medusa’s death but a lot less people know about her life.

Medusa was one of three sisters, Stheno and Euryale who were gorgons (they already had snakes for hair and the leathery wings etc before medusa did). Medusa was described as being an incredibly beautiful women even being described as the ” Fair cheeked Medusa”. She was a vestal virgin maiden for the temple of Athena, she lived a very good life serving her goddess Athena and keeping the fires in her temple alight.

One day the strong handsome god Poseidon entered Athena’s temple and seduced the poor medusa . While she was distracted the flames from Athena’s sacred hearth went out, this angered the goddess. In her rage she came down to her temple to catch the two in the act and cursed medusa. Medusa’s hair was transformed from long locks to a mass of slithering, hissing snakes. big black leathery wing erupted from her back. Her skin shifted from alabaster to hard green scales. the last and worst transformation was to her eyes, Athena made it impossible for medusa to ever look another man in the eyes again without turning them to stone.

Now that you know the story that was widespread what if i brought up another variation of the same story? Ancient Greek myths have a history of being slightly (very) misogynistic so it tends to portray women as either a jealous scheming women or as over sexualized beings. So play back to the beginning, Poseidon enters the temple of a goddess he has well known issues with and sees a beautiful maiden. He takes her by force to get revenge on Athena, stripping her of her ability to be a vestal VIRGIN maiden. Athena finds her young maiden, hurt and in pain. she takes pity on the girl and grants her a gift, the power to prevent another man from hurting her ever again. Athena gives Medusa the power to turn and man who wants to hurt her to stone. She doesn’t punish medusa with Ugliness, she makes her look like her older sisters that medusa loved and adored. Athena wouldn’t punish a young girl for being raped but I promise you’ll learn more about Athena later

What do you think of this theory? Do you think what Athena did for medusa was more of a gift or a curse? Please let me know what you thought!

Hello and welcome to my myth blog, I have decided to entirely dedicate this blog to the underrated and neglected women from mythology. I hope you enjoy!