Saffron Crocus Myths & Cultic Associations

[paghat]

It may not be quite a final draft but I've gone ahead & posted at my website a preliminary version of a long essay on the Cretan, Greek, & Indic mythology of the oldest continuously cultivated flower in the world, the saffron crocus. It's divided into three pages which begin here:

with photos of the saffron crocuses in my gardens, & with pictures of numerous "saffron mothers" such as was the usual title of Dawn-goddesses.

-paghat the ratgirl

[V_coerulea]

Very nicely done. Nothing to do with the lore but with reality. We found we were able to grow saffron crocus extremely well and harvest excellent crops in southern SC. We also found out that when dried and bottled my wife had a violent reaction to uncapping the bottle. She immediately stuffed up and couldn't breathe and then began gasping for air. She had a similiar mucous membrane reaction upon eating any baked products with the saffron in it with her throat swelling almost shut. This reaction isn't common but certainly is possible. Never thought it would happen here. A possible caution you might want ot add to your list. Gary

[Zemedelec]

Very interesting, and the pics were beautiful. I took it to my circle and the HP got quite engrossed in it. zemedelec

[Janet Baraclough]

The message from [e-mail] (paghat) contains these words:

Thanks for yet another fascinating byway in your webpages.

Janet

[Salty Thumb]

[e-mail] (paghat) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

Hi Paghat,

Very nice of you to share with us. Wonderful pictures, too. However, I will nitpick, but feel free to tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about, because I quite possibly don't.

Although the essay is about Crocus, the part about Smilax is somewhat incongruous. Granted if not much is known about her mythos, in alternate interpretations it could be that she could be one of fifty sisters, but traditionally there are only 3 Erinyes - Alecto, Tisiphone and Megera (or maybe that's just Aeschylus, Robert Graves or Edith Wharton talking).

The incongruity is if the Erinyes were children of Poseidon's blood of castration, how could Smilax be an Erinnyes whose mother was Nyx?

[Mental note: Don't try to date the wrong girl or your nuts will shrivel up or get lopped off by a frisbee.]

You spell Dionysos two different ways. The usual Romanization is Dionysus according to Webster (but i thought it was Dionysius, where is that extra 'i' coming from??). But since you are talking about Greeks, the Greek spelling given by Liddell and Scott is Delta iota omicron (alternatively omega) nu upsilon sigma omicron sigma.

I'm not sure but I think Robert Graves also makes the Erinnyes antecede all Olympians, precluding a birth from Poseidon. I also can't recall reading any thing about Poseidon getting his nuts chopped off. Are you sure you don't mean Cronos? Or Cronos' dad (don't remember his name). hmm, but I don't remember hearing about Poseidon "gettin' it on" with anyone either, so he's either discreet, missing some parts or gay.

Athene is usually given to have sprung fully formed from Zeus' head, without the usually wing-wang Zeus is famous for, although it would make sense for her mom to be Metis. (Could have just been Athenian (the city) propaganda, though).

Lastly, again Liddell and Scott, Kar [or Ker] (kappa acute eta rho, feminine) = goddess of dearth, hence doom, fate, Kar [or Ker] (kappa circumflex eta rho, neuter) = contraction of KEAR (kappa epsilon alpha rho) = the heart. May not mean anything, as I don't recall a lot of Cretan in the dictionary (L&S Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon), but to me, they are two different words; could be the etymologies were similar, but I'm not qualified to say. [Kar (kappa alpha rho) = a) hair cut off, a lock of hair and b) a Carian, somebody from Caria].

I don't know about any of the non-Greek stuff.

-- ST

[Salty Thumb]

[e-mail] (Zemedelec) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

hehe, Arabic is a whole 'nuther ball game. I think the problem with transliterating Arabic is that in the written script, they don't always write the vowels (or that could be Hebrew, I don't remember). Plus there isn't the more-or-less 1-1 correspondence of sounds and letters to the Roman alphabet, compounded by a lack of standard pronounciations (I'm assuming that Arabic has all sorts of regional and national dialects that while mutually intelligible, don't sound the same to the unaccustomed ear).

[Salty Thumb]

[e-mail] (paghat) wrote in news: [e-mail]:

whew! You're just a writing machine, paghat. Thanks for the update, very interesting.

- ST