Soul Talk

Hi all!

After almost eight months of blogging, we realised that we haven’t given Psyche the attention she deserves; we’ve talked about Eros and his common depiction in art, we even discussed his wings! For some strange reason we neglected Psyche, so today we are fixing that!

Now, in case you aren’t aware of it, in art sometimes Psyche is depicted having butterfly wings.

Love and Psyche (William Adolphe Bougerau - 1899)

Psyche (Friedrich Paul Thumann- 1893)

We were curious about it too, so we looked into it (of course!) and that was one of the turning points for our research.

In Greek, Psyche (=Ψυχή) means literally means “soul”; ancient Greeks used to call butterflies “souls” (“ψυχές”), because they believed that were the souls of the dead.

The metamorphosis of the insect to a butterfly symbolises the course of soul from its mortal state to immortality. That same symbolization is used quite often when interpreting the myth too.

Psyche (Guillaume Seignac - 1900)

Psyche (Guillaume Seignac)

Psyche, a mortal girl, overcomes death and gains immortality through Eros’s love. She starts off as naïve and childlike; she falls in love, but being unprepared for it, she makes mistakes and loses Eros’ love. So she is forced to grow and leave her old self behind, so she can make amends and claim that love again, which eventually makes her immortal. So, her old self has to die, so she can be “reborn” through divine love, pretty much like a soul (a butterfly!) that leaves the mortal state behind.

Psyche (Wilhelm Kray)

The Awakening of Psyche (Guillaume Seignac - 1904)

And here’s a little fun fact too; as I was re-reading the entry, checking for mistakes and such, this was going through my head: “Oh dear, we must be completely crazy wanting to adapt this myth!” :-p

Psyche (Nikolaos Gyzis - 1893)

But then I remembered that we are indeed a tiny bit crazy (just the right amount) and how much we enjoy a good challenge, so, all’s good! ;-)

Until next time!