Category Archives: Ares

A final Note on Ares

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As a man of transsexual medical status (as in female-to-male, for those tuning in for the first time and perhaps unfamiliar with either the few times I mention this publicly, or the term), it occurred to me just now another potential “Caution from Ares”:

Ares is a deity of War, which every major civilisation has benefited from, but Ares’ bloodlust is tempered by both Aphrodite’s sweetness and Athene’s wisdom. He is a deity of physical might and strength and masculinity, but He’s also been bested by a lame dwarf, and humiliated by an effete. He’s almost the Iron Butt Monkey of Hellenic myth, though certainly more as a caution than for comedy.

The primary attribute that biologists link with males, and so by extension, what laypersons link to masculinity is the hormone testosterone.

In excess, just about anything can produce a toxic effect on the human body — there have actually been cases where people have died from drinking too much water and not releasing it in one sitting (the most recent example, and possibly most famous one that I can think of was the death of a woman in a radio contest, “Hold your wee for a Nintendo Wii”). In rare cases, human bodies have naturally produced excess hormones to the point of toxicity, and TS individuals who take black market hormones without the supervision of their doctor are at risk of hormone toxicity. Too little of any one hormone or another doesn’t seem to have any ill effects, unless one is so attached to the idea of reproducing that they’d count sterility. But too much of one hormone or another can lead to certain death.

What’s interesting is that the threshold for testosterone poisoning (not just a female supremacist catch-phrase, kids) is far lower than it is for oestrogen poisoning. The nature of each hormone can essentially explain this: testosterone is an “aggressive” hormone (and I’m using “aggressive” here as a polar opposite of “passive”, with “assertive” being of neutral demeanour), and physiologically typical females produce a very small amount compared to physiologically typical males; pretty much just enough to create a sex-drive and body hair. Therefore, physiologically typical cisgender women are at a practically non-existent risk of testosterone toxicity.

Now, testosterone is an anabolic steroid, and any layman familiar enough with the oft-warned-against ill-effects of steroid abuse amongst athletes and body-builders can tell you the dangers of of too much anabolic steroid in the body. The risk with testosterone in and of itself seems especially great, linked with cardiovascular disease, and oral testosterone causes liver damage (the primary reason it’s so rarely prescribed anymore). This makes black and grey market HRT for TS men especially risky, while black/grey market HRT for trans women is considerably lower in risk.

Oestrogen is a more passive hormone. Testosterone can “cancel out” more than a certain amount of oestrogen, but oestrogen alone cannot “cancel out” testosterone, and so therefore TS women tend to take combined HRT: not only oestrogen, but also androgen suppressants; TS men, in comparison, just take testosterone. This being the nature of oestrogen, it’s very hard to produce hormone toxicity, and while I occasionally hear of TS men having an androgen OD (to varying degrees), I’ve never heard of an oestrogen OD from trans women (though, to be fair, that’s not to say it doesn’t happen, simply that I’ve not yet heard of it happening).

War is the political destruction of human life, and War is Ares’ primary domain.

Testosterone is the nectar of masculinity, and Masculinity is another of Ares’ domains.

Oestrogen is the nectar of femininity, and Femininity is one of Aphrodite’s domains.

Peace is the political preservation of human life. A common misconception of Aphrodite is as a Goddess of Peace1, and though this is not truly within Her domain, Peace is often described as a “feminine” pursuit or ideal.

War, in excess, has the potential to destroy all human life in a very short period of time. Peace, in excess, has the potential to very slowly kill human life as resources become exhausted more quickly without periodic waves of death from war creating the side-effect of population control.

Testosterone in excess within the human body can destroy life of an individual at a far greater rate, and far more quickly than oestrogen.

If that’s not basic biological chemistry reflecting ancient poetry, then some-one please explain what that is.

1: Though hitting the F3 button and searching all of Aphrodite’s pages on Theoi Project for the word “peace” produces almost nothing to suggest that this modern idea is Conformed Gnosis; on the other hand, She does have several war-related epithets, including “Αρεια [Areia]“, of Ares. It is Eirene who is the Goddess of Peace2, and I’ve also found nothing to suggest a possible ancient conflation of Eirene with Harmonia; while Peace and Harmony are similar concepts, Peace is the absence of War, while Harmony [outside of musical harmony] is the desired result of War, being an “orderly, pleasing arrangement; agreement”)
2: Though Eirene is named by Hesiod and Pindar, suggesting Boeotian reverence, the only surviving account of cult is of Attik cult.

PS: On a personal note, what with all the talk of Ares on the Intertubes this last week or so, I feel it necessary to state that I am a pacifist as a personal conviction — and by this, I mean that I refuse to fight in any war. While I acknowledge the efforts that my paternal grandfather made in his short time in the military (just before and during WWII, but unless he and my paternal grandmother were going at it like rabbits during periodic times at home, at least enough to produce two daughters and my father, who were all born in Michigan, it seems unlikely that he was stationed overseas during U$ involvement in the Second Great War), I also acknowledge my maternal grandparents’ hasty fleeing, due to war, of the home in England that they loved dearly, and my mother’s career as a nurse and brief time protesting the war in Vietnam. While I haven’t much issue with the historic presence of war, and the ecologic need for war as population control, there is a huge difference between the sustainable-tech wars of ancient times, and the resource-wasting wars of the current era. If we are to survive on this planet, we need to either re-tool war technologies to sustainability, like, yesterday, or we need to have far more periods of sustained peace to conserve resources. The latter would benefit from population control by other means, but China seems to be doing pretty well for herself, and with a population that increases at a far lower rate than this doomed experiment.

I’m going to cut off here before I start ranting any further, but to give you the “tl;dr” version: I acknowledge war as necessary for several reasons, but that does not mean I believe it is every man’s duty to go to war, nor do I believe that just because war is necessary, that war is somehow always necessary. That would be like saying “My diet includes meat, therefore I only eat meat,” which isn’t even a logical statement. I believe that periods of Peace are necessary for true Harmony, and I believe that the world is overdue for a period of peace.

PPS: Sorry no images with this post. I don’t have very many on the computer right now that I’d like to put with it, and at the time I write this, I have a small cat being very annoying at me, cos I haven’t scooped out Stinky Food for her and the other two yet, and I’m over three hours behind schedule.

Ares & Aphrodite & Adonis & The Phoenix

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Eros was out with Aphrodite, and the Goddess commented on the body of Ares as He practised His battle exercises, and pondered out loud to Her friend how exciting it would be to be in his arms and beneath Him. You see, as much as She loved and took satisfaction from doting on Her husband, Hephaistos, while the Smith of the Theoi had great arms, that was about it — he was dwarven and his spine crooked, and His face so far from conventionally attractive that His own parthenogenic mother was said to have thrown the quasimodian child from Olympos, crippling Him. Aphrodite alone saw a beauty in Him beyond the gifts He fashioned for Her, and truly loved Him, but He was merely a good husband: Reliable, well-providing, and They shared a bond almost familial. Ares, on the other hand, She suggested to Eros, would make a magnificient lover: Exciting, daring, and what She’d heard from mortal women was that what soldiers lacked in money, skills, and conversation, they made up for in bed.

Eros remarked that it was near Her birthday, and so if Ares was what She wanted….

Ares then approached the pair and poked fun at Eros’ delicate features and small arrows when compared to his own javelin. Eros’ then pulled one from His quiver and wished it an absurd weight for its metal. He handed it to Ares, saying, “This one is far heavier than it looks, try it and see.” Ares scoffed, and took the arrow, which he quickly learned surely must outweigh his own weapon in spite of being less than a third the length and a quarter its thickness. Realising He’d been tricked, his face became sour and he attempted to return it, saying, “It is too heavy, take it back.” Eros replied, “Keep it, it is a gift”, and Aphrodite smiled when Ares threw the empowered arrow to the ground in frustration, scratching His own foot with it as it landed.

The affair was conducted as any illicit affair, which for Aphrodite always remained exciting and worth every second They risked exposure — while Zeus’ affairs were no secret, as a married woman, Aphrodite was held to greater expectations of fidelity, and while She loathed the double-standard, She revelled in the excitement it created, always unsure of whether She feared or yearned for the affair to be found out.

Then Aphrodite learned of Her carrying of twins, at a time when clearly She would be unable to pass Them off as Her husband’s. As She fretted over this with the Kharietes, Hephaistos overheard, and devised a humiliation for the pair. Being not only a master craftsman, but also inventor, He was finished with His trap long before Aphrodite even began to show, and even managed the assistance of Apollon. When Aphrodite met with Ares in one of the magnificent rooms of Her palace built by Hephaistos, when the weight of their bodies combined (so as not to accidentally ensnare Kypris on her own) shiofted to the centre of the bed, a heavy net fell upon Them, and Apollon illuminated the room so that the outer wall was transparent, and all of Olympos could see Them in such a precarious state.

Aphrodite and Ares endured stares and pointed fingers and even laughter, and so when Ares and Aphrodite were finally freed, Ares flew into a rage, and took it out on Eros, for passing Him the arrow that made Him look a fool. In a panic to cease the beatings, Eros offered Ares and Kypris a compromise: He would convince Hera to grant Aphrodite a divorce, which would free the pair up to be together. Hera was receptive to this offer, but only if Aphrodite could find Hephaistos a suitable wife, so She arranged Hephaistos to be wed to Aglaia.

But Aphrodite is a fickle woman, and so after the birth of the twins, Phobos and Deimos, She bore Ares a daughter, Harmonia, conceived post-divorce, and soon grew weary of the soldier’s schedule, and took other lovers. Ares didn’t notice at first, then denied it when He did notice, until….

A young woman named Symrnah had offended Aphrodite for failure to honour the Goddess in Her due measure. in retaliation, She cursed the girl with a lust for her own father, driving the girl, in shame, to rape her father as he slept. He awoke and threatened Smyrnah, so she fled, and Eros took pity on the poor girl, and transformed her into a myrrh shrub, so that in death, she’d have no choice but to honour the goddess through the resin the bush produced.

One day out, when a priestess was harvesting myrrh resin, she cut into Smyrnah’s bush, and an infant began to push its head through the wound of the bark. Aphrodite came to see what was going on, and immediately claimed the child when She saw Him and then saw His future face, and saw He was destined to be quite lovely. To protect the child from Ares, She made an arrangement with Persephone, but as He grew up lovely, Persephone refused to give Him up to Aphrodite when She came to claim Him. Apollon offered to take in the youth as the women quarrelled, eventually taking the matter to Zeus, who suggested that a third of the year, the boy could live with Persephone, and for a third, He could live with Aphrodite, and the final portion of the year was for the youth Himself to decide.

Aphrodite chose to avoid the criticisms of Her affair with Ares by declining to marry Him after She and Hephaistos had their own dissolved; it just seemed easier, even though there was an assumption of exclusivity, what with the children and all. Still, Ares was jealous, so She and Persephone realised that Zeus only said “a third of the year”, He didn’t specify that it needed to be one-hundred-twenty days all in a row, so She made all attempts to arrange Adonis’ days with Her while Ares was away.

Still, word quickly came around to Ares that His beloved Aphrodite wasn’t keeping fidelity toward him; and to His own horror, He learned that this other man was a beautiful, effeminate youth who was said to be passed back-and-forth between Kypris and Kore like an accessory, and when not with them, would “lay as a woman” with Apollon, or so they said. Clearly, something would have to be done.

One day, when Aphrodite and Adonis were out in Her garden, Ares transformed Himself into a massive wild boar and charged the youth at full speed, goring vital organs and then tossing the boy into the air before turning around and taking off back to where He came from.

As Aphrodite wailed, tears poured from Her lovely face, and then Zephyros carried them as anemone poppy seeds on His breath, spreading and germinating the flower, creating a trail leading all to the torn body of the dying Adonis. When Ares came in His own form, Aphrodite recognised His eyes in the boar, and would not let Him touch Her. Persephone offered to take Him to the underworld, where His body remained lifeless while roses sprang up in the middle of the lettuce patch from the blood where the beauteous Adonis had died.

The following year, the Phoenix was due for renewal, and so began collecting myrrh resin for its egg. As it coaxed the beads of gum from the shrubberies, eventually it came upon Smyrnah’s bush, and dug its claws deep into the bark, which soon pulled out the long golden hairs of Aphrodite’s beloved youth, who soon after pulled himself from the wound in the wood, for it was the deep love bestowed upon Him in life that renewed Him, love deeper than that which Aphrodite gave to Ares, for Ares was known to be immortal, so He didn’t need it.

Ares & Narkissos

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Perhaps some will find it odd, but in my reading (some tales for the first time, some for the first time in a very long time) for yesterday’s post, I noted some similarity to the nature of Ares’ mythos and my beloved Narkissos. Now, I make no secret of the fact of my reverence of Narkissos as a holy daimon, and feel His mythos alone are sufficient evidence that, even though without any evidence of ancient cult, this was likely His status in His native Thespiai.

…but I digress.

The most famous of Ares’ mythos, His adulterous affair with Aphrodite, is quite naturally suited to a cautionary tale against letting one’s ego run wild, while Narkissos’ is so deeply associated with the idea that one not even be familiar with the myth to have an idea what it must be about, so long as one has even a passing familiarity with what the English word “narcissism” means in casual every-day use.

The differences to each myth are important to consider, as they are clearly two stories with different intended audiences and so different nuances of morality lesson, but both carry an underlying theme of the dangers of letting one’s ego take control of one’s affections, and thus better judgement.

In “The Story of Narkissos”, we have a young man so consumed with the idea that no-one is good enough for His own affections that He’s cursed to stare Himself into a flower by deities closely bound to Eros; in some versions, He is portrayed as literally rejecting the Gods of Love, creating a hubristic bend to His own self-absorption.

Then we have the affair of Ares and Aphrodite.

I’m tempted to regard the story as the odd Roman influence in Hellenic mythology (as the pattern is usually in reverse), as both Venus and Mars are regarded as the patron and matron deities of Rome and a mythological narrative is an easy way to explain this. Unfortunately for my hypothesis, all I really have are my own suspicions, as the most basic elements of the myth pre-date any serious Roman influence by about five-hundred years, as best as we can tell, anyway. Still, interesting idea, and clearly a potential reason for the myth’s lasting popularity, if not at all a reason for the myth’s origin.

Regardless of the underlying origin of the myth, there are elements that clearly serve as a cautionary tale against unbridled ego and lust, and potentially against “class-climbing”.

Aphrodite is a married woman, and while infidelity in men has been accepted for millennia, not so much for women (in spite of all evidence to the contrary that women are just as much predisposed to it, if not actually possessing of a higher biological interest in multiple partners than men have), so their affair is conducted in secret — right from the beginning, this is something that is clearly not designed to be a story giving people the go-ahead to sleep around as a married woman or with married women, since even the theoi are given to a belief that it’s wrong1. At some point, Hephaistos decides to trap the problematic lovers, humiliating them for going behind His back and making Him look a fool.

Now, some of this is negated by the possible divorce of Aphrodite and Hephaistos; this is alluded to in Homer (in later naming Hephaistos’ wife as the Kharis Aglaia, Who bore Him the younger generation of Kharietes), and other poets describe it more explicitly — but then later Ares is the victim of Ahrodite’s infidelity with Adonis, giving Ares an irony of fate. Unfortunately for Adonis, His fate is to be far more tragic than Ares’, as Ares’ boar form gored the youth — but perhaps not-so-unfortunate, as Aphrodite’s love for Adonis renewed Him, finally making it clear to Ares His folly of ego, assuming that He could somehow be “enough” for Aphrodite’s affections.

In both stories, there is a variation of self-absorption that seals each fate: Narkissos staring Himself into a flower, Ares’ repeated humiliation — and each time, at the hands of men who can certainly be characterised as “weaker” (Hephaistos, the cripple, and Adonis, the effete). While certainly there are obvious differences in each story, they each share a common theme of “keep your ego in check”.

1: Of course, that’s not to say that women in Hellenic mythos are never allowed to own their own sexuality; from Athene resisting the advances of Hephaistos and raising His and Gaia’s jizz-spawn as Her own, to Demeter’s single motherhood, to Artemis cursing peeping toms watching her bathe, to Selene enchanting Her favourite twink to eternal youth and sleep so that She could lay with him. The difference for Aphrodite is that She’s married, and so fidelity is expected, as is being open to Her husband’s desires; if, like Demeter and Selene, She was unmarried, She could presumably bed and molest ALL THE MENS to Her liking. Which, yeah, compared to how Zeus’ mythos has him sticking his dick in everything, and as everything, is a total double standard and totally unfair, and Hera’s attempts at retribution hardly seem to get through to Him, but that’s not really the point of the mythos, now is it? No it’s not.