Myths and legends

Today (according to tradition) is St. Swithin's day which is a day named after the Saxon Bishop of Winchester UK. There's a poem that goes with the holiday basically saying that if it rains on St. Swithin's day it's going to rain for 40 days afterwards. (I guess people were really into floods back then.) Anyway, even if they're not so nice, I do like some myths and legends and I thought today was just as good a day as any to write about one of my favorite myths. The myth that I really like that my mum read to me as a child is the story of Cupid and Psyche. The story goes something like this:

Psyche was a beautiful woman who was the youngest of 3 daughters and her name was Psyche. Psyche was so beautiful that people stopped worshiping Venus, the goddess of love. Jealous, Venus asked  her son Cupid to hit Psyche with one of his arrows and make her fall in love with a  monster. When he went down to Earth to carry out his Mother's wishes and he saw Psyche, he dropped one of his arrows which hit him instead of Psyche. Instead of making her fall in love with a monster Cupid made it so that no man wanted to marry Psyche. Her parents went to visit an oracle to see what they could do to help Psyche. The oracle told them that Psyche had to marry a monster and that they had to take her up to a high mountain and leave her for the monster. (Why her parents actually followed these instructions I still don't understand)

Anyway, Psyche's parents left their daughter at the top of a mountain and there she was picked up by the wind which took her to a palace and that night Cupid came to her and without telling her who he was, he proceeded to tell her he loved her and she could have anything she wanted on the condition that she never try to see his face. Everything was just dandy until one of Psyche's sister came to visit and persuaded Psyche to wait until this mysterious being was asleep and then try and see his face with a candle. Psyche did this and upon realizing that her new live-in boyfriend was Cupid, she gasped and some of her candle's wax hit Cupid waking him up. Cupid, (being the rather temperamental type) got rather ticked off with Psyche for disobeying him. He went back up to Mount Olympus vowing never to see Psyche again. Devastated Psyche searched for Cupid and finally broke down and went to Venus asking for help. Venus made Psyche complete a bunch of really nasty tasks which I won't go into for the sake of time. However, the last task she asked Psyche to complete was to take a box to capture the beauty of the Queen of the Underworld to take back to Venus. Psyche is told not to open the box before she gets to Venus again. Of course Psyche does open said box and promptly falls down asleep. Cupid, finally coming to his senses stops his mother from tormenting Psyche further and makes Psyche a goddess and drum roll please... they live happily ever after. (Yay!)

The word psyche that we use today literally means " the human soul, mind, or spirit" and to me the message of Psyche's story (apart from avoiding angry goddesses and opening boxes when told not to) is that the heart and the mind are happiest when they're united in loving someone.