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Adonis

Celebrated During the Adonia

Adonis, whose name means "Lord", was a beautiful young man who had a magical birth. His mother Myrrha was impregnated by her own father 🤮 and transformed into a tree: the weeping myrrh. Nine months later, Adonis emerged from the tree.

Aphrodite fell in love with the handsome youth and gave him to Persephone to keep him safe. Persephone, however, refused to give him back. In a story that resembles the "Rape of Persephone", Zeus resolves the conflict by announcing that Adonis would live four months with Persephone, four with Aphrodite, and four wherever he chooses.

Later, Adonis is killed while hunting, but out of his dead body grows the anemone flower (stained red with his blood). While running to his aid, Aphrodite is somehow injured and her blood stains the red rose.

Thus we have a "Lord", whose mother was impregnated by a "father", and whose death involves myrrh, who then dies, but is then resurrected. The mortal, but magical Adonis becomes the god of all growing and dying life and god of vegetation.

I don't think the ancients ever phrased it this way, but it seems that Adonis may have been the god of what we would now call the "life cycle"; the cycle of birth, life, and death, which is perhaps easiest to see in plants.

Sources

📕 Bernstein, Frances, _Classical Living: Reconnecting with the Rituals of Ancient Rome_. HarperCollins, 2000. pgs. 127-128

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✍️ Last Updated: 2021-07-10

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