Hera did not like Hephaestus because he was born with malformed feet, and cast him out of Olympus soon after his birth. He fell to the earth, and was tended by nymphs. He grew up teaching himself the art of creating instruments and artefacts out of stone, wood and metal. One day, he crafted a throne and invited all the Olympians to sit on it. Everyone admired its beauty, and the comfort it offered. However, when Hera sat on it, the chair folded upon itself and trapped Hera. Hephaestus refused to free her until she apologized for casting him away. Hera had no choice but to apologize.
In Hindu mythology, Gauri, the domesticated form of Kali, embodies the goddess of the household. She domesticates Shiva and turns the hermit into a householder. Gauri often quarrels with him when she finds him paying undue attention to her handmaidens, but she lacks Hera’s vindictiveness. Hera’s jealousy is attributed to old ‘matriarchal’ traditions that were overrun by patriarchal tribes who adored Zeus.
Like Ares in Greek mythology, Kartikeya, son of Shiva, is the Hindu god of war, who leads the celestial armies of the devas in battle against the asuras.
Hera is known as Juno in Roman mythology. She holds a pomegranate in her hand, indicating her association with fertility, and rides a chariot pulled by peacocks.
In the story of how Hera finds Hephaestus disgusting because he is lame, we see a common association in Greek mythology of beauty with order, and ugliness with chaos. This eventually led to goodness being associated with light, and evil with darkness. It reflects the human fear that is amplified when confronted with ugly, disorderly and dark spaces.
Hera killed Lamia’s children on learning of her affair with Zeus. In grief, Lamia, queen of Libya, turned into a monster who ate children while they were still in the wombs of their mother.
Hephaestus
Zeus felt sorry for neglecting the very talented, and rather useful, Hephaestus and invited him to Olympus. But Hephaestus had a condition. Unloved by his mother and ignored by his father, he demanded the most beautiful goddess, Aphrodite, as his wife. Zeus had no choice but to make this happen.
The marriage was an unhappy one. Hephaestus loved engineering, but did not understand romance. Where he measured things, Aphrodite enjoyed metaphors and music. He was a brute; she loved refinement. The goddess of love preferred the passionate and dashing god of war, Ares. ‘Both are sons of Zeus, but while my husband makes weapons, it is Ares who knows how to use them in war,’ she told her companions. And so, when Hephaestus was busy in his workshop, a bored Aphrodite began inviting Ares to her bed.
Eventually, Hephaestus heard the rumours, which Aphrodite denied. Hurt and humiliated, he fashioned a special bed in secret. When the lovers lay on it, a net so fine as to be invisible fell on them, ensnaring them. There they lay for the whole world to see, Aphrodite and Ares, naked, in each other’s arms, trapped by Hephaestus’s net. As he had once shamed his mother, Hephaestus had now shamed his wife.
Hephaestus’s counterpart in Hindu mythology is Vishwakarma. And like Vishwakarma, he has a close relationship with the sun. If Vishwakarma is the architect of the devas, then Maya is the architect of the asuras. Both forge great weapons and build great cities.
Hephaestus is known as Vulcan in Roman mythology. He is shown holding a blacksmith’s hammer and depicted as bent, ugly and lame.
Like Athena he is associated with skills but is considered far inferior and unpolished.
He is closely linked to volcanic mountains, which are believed to be the workshops where he works on metal.
Aphrodite
Aphrodite was born before Olympus was established, when Uranus’s severed genitals struck the sea. But some say Zeus fathered her on the Titan goddess Dione. She made people desire each other, ignoring the rules of age, gender, social status and marriage. This made her very dangerous, especially when she wore a special girdle around her waist. For then she became irresistible and could compel even Zeus to do her bidding.
Zeus’s decision to get her married to Hephaestus was meant to tame her. But it only created more problems, for she refused to be bound by rules, preferring the company of Ares instead.
Once, the queen of Cyprus boasted that her daughter was more beautiful than Aphrodite. The enraged goddess made the daughter fall in love with her father, the king, and trick him into having sex. When the father discovered what his daughter had done, he decided to kill her, but she begged the gods to save her and she was turned into a myrrh tree. From this tree was born the child of incest, Adonis, the most handsome youth that ever lived. So beautiful was he that Aphrodite herself fell in love with him.
A jealous Ares sent a wild boar to kill Adonis, his rival. Aphrodite wept over her beloved’s corpse and caused anemone flowers to sprout in his memory. Unable to bear the separation, she travelled to the land of the dead to bring her lover back. But Persephone, queen of the dead, refused to part with Adonis as she too had fallen in love with him.
Aphrodite declared there would be no spring unless Adonis was returned to her. And so Zeus declared that Adonis would spend one half of the year in the land of the dead and the other in the land of the living, causing winter to fall in his absence and spring on his arrival.
In Hindu mythology, Kama, the god of love, is burned alive by a glance from Shiva’s third eye. Later, Shiva discovers love in the Goddess. She is called Kamakshi, one whose eyes evoke desire. She resurrects Kama, though the resurrected Kama has no body and is called Ananga. Thus is physical love distinguished from emotional love. Kama is the Hindu Eros, and his consort, Rati, is the Hindu Aphrodite, but where Kama and Rati are husband and wife, the relationship of Eros and Aphrodite is more ambiguous, with Eros often being shown as a child in Aphrodite’s arms.
The story of the lover (Adonis) dying and being resurrected mirrors the story of the disappearing and appearing daughter (Persephone). This trope was popular not only in Greece but across the Mesopotamian region as an explanation for the change in seasons and the fertility of the soil.
This story is found in many Latin works such as Metamorphosis, Fabulae and Bibliotheca.
Psyche
Psyche was so beautiful that people stopped worshipping Aphrodite and began offering prayers to her instead, unmindful of the fact that she was mortal. This enraged Aphrodite who ordered her son Eros to make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest man that lived.
Unfortunately, when Eros saw Psyche, he was so smitten by her beauty that he scratched himself with one of his arrows. He then used divine powers to secure her from her father, and take her to a secret place, far from the ire of Aphrodite. He visited her only at night, warning her that as long as she did not see him in the light, she would experience great happiness.
For Psyche, life was wonderful at night, but lonely by day, and so she begged her mysterious husband to let her family visit her. After much pleading, Eros agreed, but that was a mistake. For Psyche’s sisters became so jealous when they saw her happiness that they poisoned her mind. ‘Your husband may be a monster who will eat your children. How do you know?’ they told her.
Influenced by her sisters, one night, Psyche lit a lamp to see the face of her husband. It was anything but monstrous. In fact, it was the most handsome face she had ever seen. As she was admiring her husband, a drop of hot oil fell from her lamp on to his face. He woke up screaming and disappeared in a rage, disappointed by his wife’s lack of faith.
Consumed by guilt and sorrow, Psyche wandered the world looking for her husband. Wherever she went, she put things in order, making goddesses such as Demeter and Hera happy. But they all refused to help her, for it was forbidden for one Olympian to interfere in the affairs of another.
Finally, Psyche approached Aphrodite who treated her with contempt and set her to do four terrible tasks: sorting out a variety of grains that had been mixed together; collecting golden wool from violent sheep; fetching water from the River Styx; and securing the beauty ointment used by Persephone. Psyche succeeded each time with a little help from the gods: ants sent by Hermes
helped her separate the grain, thorny bushes of Demeter collected the wool from the violent sheep, an eagle sent by Zeus fetched the Stygian water and Persephone herself gave her the ointment of beauty, which turned out to be sleep.
In the meantime, once Eros’s wound healed, his disappointment turned into longing. He began searching for Psyche and eventually found her sleeping, covered with Persephone’s beauty ointment. He woke her up and brought her to Olympus where Zeus decreed that the two belonged together, a decision that Aphrodite had to agree to.
Eros and Psyche were thus finally reunited. Together they created a daughter, Hedone, who became the goddess of pleasure.
Amongst the many tales found in the Sanskrit epic Mahabharata there are the stories of Damayanti who seeks her beloved Nala who, having lost all his fortune, has abandoned her in shame, and of Savitri who brings back her husband Satyavan from the land of the dead. In these stories, as in the story of Psyche, the protagonist is a woman, and her quest is to restore lost love.
The story of Eros and Psyche is found in artworks dating back to the fourth century BCE indicating that the story is very old, though the detailed literary version comes much later, from the Latin work The Golden Ass, circa the second century CE, where Eros is referred to as Cupid, and Aphrodite as Venus.
This tale is seen as an allegory of the relationship between the human spirit (psyche) and love (eros) and has inspired scholars for centuries, including Freud. From Psyche comes the field of psychology.
Echo and Narcissus
Hera did not like that her husband continued to chase goddesses and nymphs after his marriage to her. But Zeus could not restrain himself.
Zeus sent the nymph Echo to distract Hera with long conversations. When Hera realized she was being tricked, she cursed Echo that she would only be able to repeat the last few words that someone spoke to her. Thus cursed, Echo could find no suitor and hid in caves from where she could only repeat the final words shouted into the cave. Echo was in love with Narcissus, but he could not love this girl who only repeated words and could not hold a conversation.
Narcissus was a rather vain youth, so proud of his beauty that he rejected all his lovers, not just Echo. Nemesis, the goddess of divine retribution, caused him to fall in love with his own reflection. And so the young man spent all day and all night looking at his reflection in a pond, until he transformed into a flower.
In Hindu mythology, the mirror is seen not just as a symbol of vanity but also as a symbol of wisdom. Shakti shows the mirror to Shiva so that he can know himself better by reflecting on his reflected image.
Leto
Once, Zeus was smitten by two Titan sisters, daughters of Coeus and Phoebe: Asteria and Leto.
Asteria resisted Zeus’s advances. She flew away taking the form of a quail and plunged into the Aegean Sea where she became the floating island Delos that moved with the currents, and was difficult for sailors to locate.
Zeus then turned his attention to Leto who was more compliant. However, when news of Leto’s pregnancy reached Hera, she was furious. She invoked a monster, the Python, to chase and eat Leto, and made Gaia promise that Leto would not get shelter anywhere on earth.
Pursued by the Python, a pregnant Leto ran around the earth, then jumped into the sea and swam from island to island looking for a sanctuary. Finally, she found shelter on the floating island of Delos, her own sister. There she gave birth to twins: a boy, Apollo, who was radiant as the sun, and a girl, Artemis, who was as serene as the moon.
The children had barely been born when the Python reached Delos and attacked Leto. To her surprise, the newborns raised bows, shot arrows, and killed the monster.
The children were so protective of their mother that when a queen called Niobe made fun of Leto for bearing only two children, they raised their bows and killed all fourteen of Niobe’s children, seven boys and seven girls.
Shiva’s son Kartikeya fights and kills Taraka-asura a few days after his birth, much like Apollo who vanquishes the Python.
Like Apollo and Artemis, the Hindu epic Mahabharata refers to many twin brother– sister pairs such as Kripa–Kripi or Hidimba–Hidimbi, but none are gods.
In Greek mythology, the sun is male and the moon is female. But in Hindu mythology, both the sun and the moon are male.
Leto was probably an ancient Cretan goddess later attached to the Olympian gods. She is also associated with Lycia, in Asia Minor, where the local peasants stopped her from drinking water from a pond, and she turned them into frogs, forever doomed to wallow in muddy water.
Apollo is both the cause of disease and the cure of disease. Artemis is both the guardian of animals and the patron goddess of hunters. Thus the two Olympians embody opposite qualities.
Apollo
Though dashingly handsome, Apollo was unfortunate in love. The women and men he loved did not return his affections. They ran from him, turned into trees and plants, perhaps fearing his love, which was very orderly, making the world very controlled, and life rather predictable.
He fell in love with the Aetolian princess Marpessa but she chose to marry a mortal man, for she knew gods were fickle and eventually lost interest in their mortal lovers.
He burned with love for Daphne but she wanted to remain a virgin. To avoid the god’s persistent attentions, she asked her father—the river god Peneus—to turn her into a laurel bush. As a sign of his eternal love for her, Apollo declared that he would always wear a laurel wreath on his head.
Apollo then fell in love with Sibyl and she agreed to be with him if he gifted her with a long life, one with as many years as there are grains of sand on the beach. Apollo made this possible but then Sibyl changed her mind and spurned him. Annoyed, he informed her that while she had been blessed with a long life, she had not been granted the gift of everlasting youth. In fact, she would spend most of her very long life bent and wrinkled and stooping over a stick, barely able to walk.
Apollo offered the Trojan princess Cassandra the gift of prophecy by kissing her on the lips. But she did not kiss him back. So the god said that while she would foretell the future, no one would believe her.
He fell in love with Coronis, daughter of Phlegyas, king of the Lapiths, and even fathered a child on her, but she in turn fell in love with a mortal man called Ischys. A white crow, left by Apollo to watch over Coronis, informed him about this. The god was so angry that the crow had not gouged out Ischys’s eyes that he cursed the bird, which is why crows are now black, not white. Apollo then asked Artemis to kill Coronis. But when the princess’s lifeless body was placed on the funeral pyre, Apollo heard the sound of their child come from within Coronis’s womb—it was still alive. Apollo pulled him out, named him Asclepius, and gave him to the centaur Chiron to raise. Asclepius would grow up to be the god of medicine and surgery. He would save so many people from death that it would alarm Hades, and cause Zeus to strike him down with a thunderbolt.
Apollo deeply loved the Spartan prince Hyacinth who returned his affections, but sadly their relationship made the wind god Zephyrus jealous, for he loved Hyacinth too. One day, when Apollo and Hyacinth were playing with a discus, Zephyrus caused the wind to blow such that the discus turned and struck Hyacinth on his head, crushing his skull and killing him. As he breathed his last, his blood fell on the ground and turned into a flower that Apollo named hyacinth in his memory.
Apollo fell in love with a lad called Cyparissus who had a pet deer. One day, while he was out hunting, Cyparissus accidentally killed his pet deer and was inconsolable in his grief. Feeling sorry for the boy, Apollo turned him into the cypress tree whose drooping branches are forever mourning the pet deer.
In Hindu mythology, Surya’s son Revanta is often identified with Apollo. He is also identified with Artemis, for he is depicted as a handsome youth hunting on a horse, making him the god of chase.
Plants, in Greek mythology, are often human who have transformed in their attempt to escape the unwelcome affections of a god, or death before the ful
filment of love.
From the unhappy loves of Apollo come many plants, from the laurel to the hyacinth to the cypress. Likewise, in Hindu mythology, trysts with love create life on earth. The Brihad-aranyaka Upanishad refers to the story of Prajapati chasing Shatarupa who takes various female forms to evade him while he assumes corresponding male forms, from ant to elephant, thus giving rise to all species of beings.
Apollo is depicted as a beardless attractive youth. While associated with sunlit clarity, order, knowledge, health and beauty, the best of what the Greek world had to offer, he was also feared for causing plagues. Apollo is also considered a god of the arts and the leader of the Muses, and is often shown carrying a lyre that was given to him by Hermes. He is also the patron of Delphi, the seat of the oracles.
Echo’s curse is sometimes attributed to Hera, not Apollo. She realized Echo distracted her with conversations so that Zeus could pursue his affairs, and so cursed her.
Artemis
Where her brother Apollo was unhappy in love, Artemis did not yearn for it. She enjoyed the chase, the hunt, with her female companions, all of whom took a vow of celibacy.
Artemis fiercely guarded her virginity and that of her companions. When the young hunter Actaeon tried to look upon her naked body while she was bathing, she turned him into a stag, who was chased, hunted and killed by his own hunting dogs. Sipriotes, who accidentally stumbled upon the goddess as she bathed, was turned into a girl. When Orion tried to seduce one of Artemis’s followers, and then turned his charms on Artemis herself, boasting that he was a better hunter than the goddess and would hunt down all the animals on earth, she got a scorpion to sting both him and his hunting dog to death.