the Minors

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A few descriptions of a few minor Greek Gods and Goddesses, and a few personal experiences.

Since everyone is familiar with the Olympians, I'm sure, I thought I would go into more detail about the minor Greek Gods and Goddesses. There are so many of them.

There are different categories for the Gods, such as nautre, sky, underworld, wind, and so on.

I think I'm going to start with the Winds.

There is originally one Wind "God", named Aelous. His title is the Keeper of the Winds. Since the Winds were often conceived of as horse-shaped spirits, Aelous was titled Hippotades, "the reiner of horses," from the Greek hippos ("horse") and taden ("reined in tightly").

The Anemoi were the Gods of the cardinal directions, or the four directional winds. Boreas the North-Wind, Zephryos the West-Wind, Notos the South-Wind, and Euros the East-Wind. They were closely connected with the seasons: Boreas was the cold breath of winter, Zephyros the god of spring breezes, and Notos the god of summer rain-storms.

There were also lesser beings associated with breezes, but can easily be recognized as Greek nature spirits. These are called the Aurae. They were named as daughters of Oceanus or the north-wind Boreas. Most were actually located not in the physical fields, but the fields of Elysium.

The Harpies were the spirits of sudden, sharp gusts of wind. They were known as the hounds of Zeus and were despatched by Him to snatch away people and things from the Earth. Sudden, mysterious dissappearances were often attributed to the Harpies. The Harpies were once sent by Zeus to plague King Phineus of Thrake as punishment for revealing the secrets of the Gods. Whenever a plate of food was set before him, the Harpies would swoop down and snatch it away, leaving no scraps left behind.

I had my own personal experience with the Harpies, actually. I went to go get my lunch out of my car while at school, and out of no where, a gust had appeared and knocked me over. Of course this scared me, but I got up on my feet and brushed it off. The gust came back, with it a hiss that came past my ears, but didn't knock me completely over.
Right after that, I mumbled, "Zeus, what the hell?"

There are other lesser, but well known deities that rule over their higher domain, the Sky. Iris, Eos, Atlas, can be examples. Atlas isn't really a lesser God, but I'm going to explain Him anyway.

Iris is the Goddess of the Rainbow, but She's also a messenger Goddess for the Olympians. In myth she appears only as an errand-running messenger and was usually described as a virgin Goddess. She doesn't really have her own stories of myth, but she's well known.

Eos is originally the Goddess of the Dawn. Not the chapstick. She's described as the "rosey fingered Goddess", Her brother is Helios, the Sun God, and Selene, the Moon Goddess. Eos had an unquenchable desire for handsome young men, some say as the result of a curse laid upon her by Aphrodite. She was sometimes described "riding in a golden chariot drawn by winged horses", at other times she appeared with her own pair of wings.

Atlas is different from the lesser Gods. I feel like I needed to put this in here (it's fun to learn different things, anyway). Altas is a Titan, who came before the Olympians; the second generation of Titans. He led the rebellion against Zeus after Zeus overthrew Kronos. His punishment was to bear the weight of the world against His shoulders (literally). Not fun.

Part two will come soon.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Added to on Aug 20, 2014
Part of the The Path of the Shaman Library.

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