Expert: Irulan Serena - 7/15/2006

Question
Hi.  I am a therapist and I am co facilitating a workshop in January on the place of Eros in healing work.  I work greatly through myth enactment and I am trying to locate a story which describes Eros.  I know all about Psyche and Eros but is there any other reference to Eros - his origins, how he became the God of union and love?  I can find nothing and am wondering if you have any expertise that might guide me?

Thank you. Mairs  

Answer
Hello Mairs,


There are three opposing mythologies of the origin of Eros. ...

1  OLDEST OF THE GODS:  Throughout Plato's Symposium, various speakers narrate mythical accounts of Eros.  The opening speaker, Phaedrus (light-bringer), the “Father of Logic," introduces Eros as the first god according to the story in Hesiod.  In this view, Earth and Eros are born of the whirling (“dynos”) chaos.  Eros is not a personification, but a cosmological force or ordering principle (“kosmos” meaning “order”).   According to this view, Eros is a primordial cosmological mechanism.

2  YOUNGEST OF THE GODS:    The myth of Eros as the youngest god depicted in traditional Greek mythology appears in Pausanius’ speech.     Pausanius states that Eros is the youngest god, son of Aphrodite.  There are differing accounts, however, of the nature of Aphrodite’s birth corresponding to the two different types of love:  Uranian (heavenly) and Pandemic (earthly).  According to the Uranian account, Aphrodite is born of the castration of Uranus.   

3  SON OF POVERTY AND RESOURCE:   Diotima the Delphic Priestess of Mantinea, gives an different mythical description of Eros and his parentage.  In contrast to the views of Eros as both the oldest and youngest god, according to Diotima, Eros is the child of Resource (Poros) and Poverty (Penia).  Because Eros’ mother is impoverished, she sleeps with Resource and conceives Eros on the night of Aphrodite’s feast day.  The result is a young man who is ever in search of objects but unable to maintain them.  Like his mother, Eros is ever yearning, restless and impatient, yet he possesses the charms and know-how of his father.  Because of his relentless conniving to possess what he does not have and his inability to maintain it, Eros is said to be a daimon.  Daimon, in the Greek, means something like an intermediary or spirit, a messenger between gods and humankind.

           In this exposition, Diotima also establishes that Eros is like a philosopher because he continuously seeks to find what he lacks.  One cannot desire what one already possesses.     A philosopher desires wisdom because he recognizes that he lacks it.  The gods, on the other hand, do not seek wisdom as they already possess it.

Regards,

Irulan