The Gods of the Greeks

I wish I had read this book when I was in High School. It may not be ovid, or homer, but the book is great. Its simple to read and hard to put down. Praise the Muses for allowing this book to come to being.

I could not pass up the opportunity to pun seriously with the title of a book by C.W. Ceram about archaeology. For that title shows how much I value this work by C. Kerenyi, but also the work by Robert Graves entitled *The Greek Myths.* If these two works, along with Kerenyi's *The Heroes of the Greeks* are read in tandem with Nietzsche's *The Birth of Tragedy* (I prefer the Dover edition with translation by Clifton Fadiman)... then wondrous insights into the mind and soul (psyche) and the spirit (pneuma) begin to be possible.Kerenyi's "Introduction" to this volume says it all...so I would like to quote the most eloquent and insightful part: This book owes its origin to the conviction, shared by the publishers and the author, that the time has come to write a Mythology of the Greeks for ADULTS: that is to say, not only for specialists concerned with classical studies, with the history of religion, or with ethnology; still less for children, for whom in the past the classical myths were either remodelled or, at least, carefully selected so as to accord with the viewpoints of a traditional education; but simply for adults whose primary interest -- which may entail an interest in any of the branches of learning mentioned above -- is in the study of human beings. The contemporary form that this interest takes is, of course, an interest in psychology. And, as a great exponent of modern humanistic thought has admitted, it is precisely psychology that "contains within itself an interest in myth, just as all creative writing contains within itself an interest in psychology." These words were spoken by in 1936 by Thomas Mann in his lecture on "Freud and the future." Whilst paying tribute to the services rendered by the psychologist of the Unconscious, of the DEEPER LEVELS OF THE SOUL, the great writer did, in fact look beyond him into the future. He depicted with unsurpassable clarity the spiritual situation in which the author of this book, for his part, finds justification for his mythological work. Psychology's thrusting back into the childhood of the individual soul, is to quote his words, "at the same a thrusting back into the childhood of mankind -- into the primitive and the mythical. Freud himself recognised that all natural science, medicine and psychotherapy had been for him a life-long and tortuous return to his primary youthful passion for the history of man, for the origins of religion and morals. The association of the words 'psychology' and 'deeper levels' has also a chronological significance: the depths of the human soul are also 'Primordial Times', that deep 'Well of Time' in which Myth has its home and from which the original norms and forms of life are derived. For Myth is the foundation of life; it is the timeless pattern, the religious formula to which life shapes itself, inasmuch as its charac- teristics are a repr

This may be the most thorough and most readable book I've read on mythology, and I've read dozens. Currently, I'm using it as the primary source for the myth course I teach. It provides information about gods that most other basic myths neglect, often fascinating as well as significant. Get it now - it's been remaindered late in 2000 and will soon be out of print.

Never have I read a book quite like this one. This is not a book full of retelling of myths, but a book full of detailed info on the relevance of these gods to the ancient Greeks. Information on their worship, their origins prior to Olympian times, and many of the contradicting stories of their births, and how these stories relate to the times from which they came. If you love mythology, but are curious as to the more down to earth aspects of these gods, read this, and you will find yourself seeing the gods as more than just the vulgar fictions of a primitive society. Perhaps you will even begin to see them as they should be seen, as Gods.