Circe

How many of us would be granted pardon if our true hearts were known?

Circe Offering The Cup to Odysseus by John William Waterhouse

He is a nice man. Really? Would he be a nice man if the good people are not poised to kill him the moment he reveals himself to be not a nice man? It is what Socrates pondered with the Ring of Gyges story. A shepherd named Gyges finds a ring that can turn him invisible meaning it is time to seduce the Queen, kill the King, and take over the kingdom.

Justice is not a trait for those not strong enough to impose their will. The moment man has power, he shows whether or not he is enslaved to his appetites. Whether or not that smile is a hyena mak which says stand still while I figure out how best to bite you.

The immortal Greek gods are like this in history and in Madeline Miller’s novel Circe. Since they are like us but can never die, they are like Spinoza’s average man, forever looking to maximize power and limit pain. The idea of pain is so foreign to the Greek gods that the torture of the Titan Prometheus at the hands of a Fury is seen as an entertainment event. Tickets! Get your tickets here! Front-row for a Titan-Torture courtesy of a woman with serpents for hair, a scorpion tail, and eyes that drip blood.

Circe is the daughter of the sun God Helios and the nymph Perses. Now Helios and Circe are Titans, which are the old Greek gods that lost the war against Zeus and the new Olympian gods. Helios is allowed to remain free because no one is really sure would win in a 1v1 between him and Zeus, mano a mano. They are like two active volcanoes whose meetings are active contemplations on whether or not now is a good time to erupt.

The Greek gods are sick fucks who thrive off the energy of mortals. They need our prayers, our supplications, the more we beg the stronger they become…All their plans are centuries-long Byzantine-Labyrinthian ploys to make sure they are worshipped the most. War is good. Famine is great. Monsters are fantastic because they create both universal pain and worship whenever a Demi-god slays the beast. Thank you for saving us from the monster you created. Name some poor sap your champion, abandon him till they are near death and insanity, and come back to collect your ROI on praise.

Time twists these deities. Circe’s father has a herd of the most beautiful cows you have ever seen, they are cow-gods. They are said to be immortal. How did Helios make such a breed?

“He fucks them, of course. That’s how he makes new ones. He turns into a bull and sires their calves, then cooks the ones that get old. That’s why everyone thinks they are immortal.”

Circe
Madeline Miller

Some things you just don’t want the truth to. What gets Circe exiled to the island of Aiaia is the discovery that she is a pharmakis—a witch. A new type of magic that deals with true intentions and will. With the proper spell, a witch can bend the world to her authentic desires and none of the gods know what the limit of this new power is. Circe is able to turn a foolish fisherman named Glaucos into a God, and the nymph Scylla into the legendary monster. Also, it seems that mortals are capable of using this will-magic. Zeus is scared so off to Aiaia Circe goes until the whole Olympian/Titan power balance can be sorted.

I was not surprised by the portrait of myself: the proud witch undone before the hero’s sword, kneeling and begging for mercy. Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.

Circe
Madeline Miller
Circe

Of course, Circe is first encountered by the reader of Greek mythology as part of Odysseus and his Odyssey. He and his men land on the island where after some sword & swine negotiating, they spend multiple months on Aiaia. Circe and Odysseus become lovers. It isn’t even the only witch Odysseus will sleep with on the way home. Another witch…Calypso…seven years trapped instead of several months…the free release of Circe is nowhere to be found.

But here we have an interesting dilemma, the age-old battle of the sexes. What does Miller think of the traditional more masculine interpretation of Odysseus? That he is a wily trickster, a deserving champion of Athena, a man who scaled Plato’s ladder on the way back to his true love Penelope, and his true home Ithaca.

Or will Miller turn him into an ass? Some new feminine era re-write in which men have gotten the whole story wrong and it was actually the ingenuity of the fairer sex which is responsible for these legends. What Miller does in this novel is oh-so-clever.

The genius and active nature of Odysseus is not denied. I have a friend who is a bit of a mystic and a surfer. He met a big-time surf celebrity in a hotel in Hawaii and promised to grab his phone from his room while his wife ran interference. He sauntered off to his room…the whole operation took ten minutes but the way he tells the story…I made him wait, made him wait ten minutes like I was the star followed by a smirk that says I am the star.

This brief mortal Odysseus, a flash of fire in the raging furnace of the universe. He drew everyone in using mortal and deity alike in his pursuit of glory. I’ll take any motherfuckers money if he’s dumb enough to give it to me sheeeit…The Great Greek Kings Agamemnon and Menelaus. The mightiest warriors Achilles and Ajax. The prophecy of the blind sage Tiresias. The love and ire of the very Gods! Athena, Poseidon, Helios, Hermes…

Achilles swings his spear, Agamemnon jingles his coin pouch, and the army man chops with his axe. It is Odysseus’s gift to speak the honeyed words that make Achilles swing that spear, knows where that coin should be spent and where that axe blow should fall on the battlefield. Great as this personal self may be, it is just a personal self and they must all eventually be scattered. His is the glory of the Übermensch and the only difference between Odysseus and the immortal gods is duration.

There is nothing so beautiful as to play the man well and properly, no knowledge so hard to acquire as the knowledge of how to live life well and naturally; and the most barbarous of our maladies is to despise our being.

Michel de Montaigne
Of Experience

This is the knowledge that Circe possesses. The knowledge of how to live life well. She spent her Goddess lifetime being battered like a tennis ball drowning in the Personal Glory-Ocean of Helios and Odysseus. She is tired of being thrown the same lifebuoy over and over again by beings who claim to be on solid ground and show nothing but conditional love. She finally says no thank you. She uses her magic to transform herself into a mortal and spends the rest of her mortal lifetime traveling and raising a family with Odysseus and Penelope’s son Telemachus.

It will be alright Telemachus says to Circe.

He does not mean that it does not hurt. He does not mean that we are not frightened. Only that: we are here. This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet. This is what it means to be alive.

Circe
Madeline Miller