Abstract
It is simply no longer acceptable to speak of the goddess Athena from the fifth generation of Olympian/Orphic Greece without reference to her mother Metis. Hesiod (1959), among others, tells us Metis appears as a reincarnation of her first-generation self in the Olympian dynasty as wife of Zeus. She was originally the cosmic egg of all creation in the Orphic Theogony, as recounted by Apollodorus (1921), and Taylor (1896), from whose mucosity, the entire genealogy of the Olympian/Orphic heaven (and theology), is spawned. However, from the moment Zeus murdered Metis as she was about to give birth to Athena their daughter, she has lapsed into the fissures of forgetfulness in philosophy, theology, mythology and early psychoanalysis. Indeed, in each field of inquiry, Athena is overwhelmingly deemed ‘unmothered’ and produced as Harrison tells us as a desperate ploy ‘from the brain of Zeus’ through his cunning intellect, for Athena to serve as his ‘mouthpiece’ (Harrison 1922, 648). This paper seeks to do more than simply restore Metis as mother to Athena. It explores the tragedy inherited by her violent removal, for mother/daughter relations, grievability and sustained disavowal of maternal divinity in dominant discourse.
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Notes
And more recent scholarship from Detienne and Vernant (1978[1974]); Kerenyi (1958) and Graves (1960), who locate Metis throughout the whole Olympian dynasty, but underplay her role in divine genesis. Detienne and Vernant provide an analysis of the adjectival métioisis and its derivatives, as cunning intelligence rather than originary wisdom. ‘From a terminological point of view métis, as a common noun, refers to a particular type of intelligence, an informed prudence; as a proper name it refers to a female deity, the daughter of the Ocean. The goddess Metis who might be considered a somewhat quaint figure … is swallowed by her husband [Zeus] … In the theogonies attributed to Orpheus, however, Metis plays a major role and is presented as a great primordial deity at the beginning of the world’ (Detienne and Vernant 1978, 9).
Oliver Kelly; Pearsall, M., Ed. (1998). Feminist Interpretations of Friedrich Nietzsche. Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania University Press, ibid. Irigaray is an obvious exception. Sara Speidel’s translation and introduction to Irigaray’s “Veiled Lips” and comprehensive notes are astute regarding daughter theft, matricide and the proliferation of masculine violence in the Greek myths. pp. 81–118.
Neumann, E. (1955). The Great Mother. New York, Pantheon Books., unpacks this territory with great acuity. See also Carl Jung, Otto Rank and Sándor Ferenczi diverged from Freud’s position on many things especially birth, infancy and parenting. As a result, they found themselves eventually excommunicated from Freud’s inner circle. See Roazen, P. (1976). Freud and his Followers. London, Penguin., for this detailed account of the birth and development of the psychoanalytic movement.
Ricoeur, P. (1984–1988). Time and Narrative. Chicago, Chicago University Press., whom Anderson (1998, 126–164,198–199) references in detail on this methodology. Anderson says Ricoeur’s work on mimesis centres on ‘configuration’ and ‘With the aid of Irigaryan miming, Ricoeur’s own account of refiguration can be turned, in a more radical direction, against his acts of configuring’ Anderson, P. S. (1998). A Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Oxford, Blackwell, p. 147.
Freud, S. (1964b). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: Vol. XXII New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis and Other Works Vol. XXII (1932–1936). London, Hogarth. Freud concedes: ‘We know nothing about it [The feminine mystery] … psychology too is unable to solve the riddle of femininity’ p.116. Some of Freud’s propositions were simply that—propositions, that have prevailed, correct or not. I also acknowledge here robust conversations with PhD candidates, investigating Freud’s position, through a feminist philosophical lens, notably, Emma Shea Davies.
Towards the ends of his life Freud reflected on his shortcomings around female sexuality and subjectivity: ‘We … from the outset drop all claims to general validity for our conclusions [on melancholia in women] …’ (SE Vol. XIV 1957, 243). See also the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Volumes: VII; XII; XIV; XIX; XXII) for his most relevant analysis of women, and their apparent proclivity for melancholia and hysteria. Irigaray responds to his limp proscriptions, in Speculum of the Other Woman (1985a), and emphasises that Freud uses ‘biological destiny’ to connote or justify women’s castration that begins in girlhood with the ‘turning away’ from the mother, and ‘In the Oedipus situation the girl’s father has become her “love-object”’ (Freud Vol XXII p. 121, 118 in Irigaray 1985a, pp. 26–33). Several female analysts have disrupted Freud’s stuttered discourse on women. See for example Julia Kristeva (1980) Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art, New York: Columbia University Press. Irigaray’s later work expands her own research trajectories whereas some of her earlier works constituted a form of critical ‘writing back’ to key thinkers. See also Sandor Ferenczi (1924) Thalassa: A Theory of Genitality. New York: Norton, 1955.
In his attempt to explain the difference between mourning and melancholia, Freud also notes that ‘The object has not perhaps actually died but has been lost as an object of love … which has given rise to … melancholia’ (M and M 1957 Vol. XIV, p. 245).
Irigaray makes an interesting comment about consumption; ‘But if she is eaten, she will no longer be there to serve your needs-desires, or to guarantee a certain representation of the place of origin, and the original bond. So, this “hunger” … is insatiable and no food will ever satisfy it’ (Irigaray Speculum p. 41).
Ibid. P. 23.
‘Her supplications, her cries of “Father,” and her virgin life, the commanders in their eagerness for war reckoned naught. Her father, after a prayer, bade his ministers lay hold of her as, enwrapped in her robes, she lay fallen forward, and with stout heart to raise her, as it were a kid, high above the altar; and with the guard upon her lovely mouth, the bit’s strong and stifling might, to stay a cry that had been a curse on his house’p. 23.
This murderous inheritance provides context into the ontology of matricide and turn from maternal sensory ontology to the victory of thought. In Moses and Monotheism, Freud cites the case of Orestes as the turning point from matriarchal to intellectual patriarchal succession: ‘The matriarchal order was succeeded by the patriarchal one – which, of course involved a revolution in the juridical conditions that had so far prevailed. An echo of this revolution seems still to be audible in the Oresteia of Aeschylus [in which Athena’s casting vote sealed the fate of Clytemnestra’s murder]. But this turning from the mother to the father points in addition to a victory of intellectuality over sensuality … Human beings found themselves obliged in general to recognise “intellectual [geistige]” forces – forces, that is, which cannot be grasped by the senses’ (SE XXIII, 1964a, 113–114). The irony is of course that Zeus had no wisdom (only cunning) until he swallowed Metis, the personification of wisdom and intelligence. See also Hawke 2018. ibid.
As critiques of the works of Mary Daly (1985) and Karen L. King (2003), for example, demonstrate.
See also Johnston, J. (in Trompf et al, 2019) who cites such examples in the case of attributing Mary Magdalene as an authoritative figure and whose fate is not dissimilar to the fate of Metis. Johnston argues that despite the appearance of Mary Magdalene in the Gospels of Philip, Pistis Sophia and the Gospel of Mary, critiques of those gospels often query the validity of Mary Magdalene in Christ’s ministry. Johnston also takes Paul McKechnie (1996) to task over his ‘dismissive’ view of feminist theology as ‘lacking in historical accuracy’. In G. W Trompf, G. K. Mikkelsen and J. Johnston, Ed. (2019). The Gnostic World. Routledge World Series. New York, Routledge. But the question remains how can what has been so systematically derided ever gain credence in the biased tomes of patriarchal law and religion, as Irigaray and others have already fully explored.
See also Rosemary Radford Reuther (2005) Goddesses and the Divine Feminine, University of California Press, Berkeley; Carol P. Christ (2003) She who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World, Palgrave as examples of more recent texts, also at times, harshly reviewed by masculinist philosophy and theology.
Anderson, P. S. (1998). A Feminist Philosophy of Religion. Oxford, Blackwell. p. 115. This is not to say that Freud or Lacan are necessarily wrong in all their suppositions. It is to say that they were blind-sided by their own agency. Freud referenced Greek myths and tragedies (not mysteries) as informants in much of his writing particularly the works of Sophocles (Oedipus) and Aeschylus (Oresteia)
Taylor in his lengthy Additional Notes pp. 165–205 of the Hymns says: ‘But Hesiod venerates many of the divine natures in silence, and does not in short name the first. For that what is posterior to the first proceeds from something else, is evident from the verse, “Chaos of all things was the first produced”. For it is perfectly impossible that it could have been produced without a cause; but he does not say what that is which gave subsistence to Chaos. He is silent indeed with respect to both the fathers [that is to say The First Cause] of intelligibles, the exempt, and the co-ordinate; for they are perfectly ineffable’ (p. 184). I go into greater detail of this aspect of the mysteries as different to the hymns, in Hawke (2018), although my reading is limited by the translations of others. But Taylor’s lack of attribution to fifth-generation Metis is somewhat baffling. For all his wonderous translations from the Ancient Greek, he too seems to have deemed this mother unnecessary or perhaps secret. Similarly, Jane Ellen Harrison (1922) finds the absence of the original Metis (First Cause) baffling in Hesiod’s account but suggests: ‘Hesiod knows of Night and Chaos, and the birth of Eros, but he does not know, or does not care to tell, of one characteristic Orphic element, the cosmic egg’ (p. 626), so we turn to him for later generations only and even there his account is brief.
Mead, G. R. S. (1965). Orpheus. London, The Theosophical Publishing Society. In which he explains some of the reasons for ‘veiling’ of certain deities in the first and second generations of the Orphic Pantheon
And I would add here that the term Oedipus complex to explain fear of fathers being deposed by sons and fear of castration in sons, is too recent an attribution for something that began in the first few generations of Olympus through Zeus, Cronus and Uranus. Cronus, as myth tells us, spliced his father’s testicles and threw them into the ocean – and then to offset future upset from offspring, he simply consumed them.
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Taylor, T. (MDCCCXCVI (1896)). The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus. Charing Cross, London, Bertram Dobell. See also Hawke 2018 for a thorough discussion on the genealogy of the heavens in Orphic and Olympian cosmology and mysteries via Thomas Taylor 1896 [1792]; WKC Guthrie 1952 and GRS Mead 1965 [1896], including a genealogy table in the appendix, p. 72 from “The Exile of Greek Metis: Recovering a Maternal Divine Ontology” in Poligrafi No. 23 pp. 41–76.
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Hawke, S.M. The Missing Hymn of Metis: an Origin of Loss. SOPHIA 59, 69–81 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-020-00769-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-020-00769-6