The Messed Up Origins of Cupid | Mythology Explained - Jon Solo

this episode is brought to you by Ray Khan what is going on my fellow mythology nerds my name is John solo and it's officially February which means Valentine's Day is right around the corner which in turn means I got to make a video about something related to it so I can capitalize on what's trending never underestimate the power of search engine optimization in the spirit of the holidays and the celebration of love and of course that glorious SEO I thought it'd be cool today we broke down the origins of the Valentine's Day mascot Cupid now for those who aren't aware Cupid is more than just a big fat baby with wings he was actually the Roman god of love and before that he was the Greek god of love known as eros and even before that he was the driving force behind the creation of new life in the universe I know that got real heavy real fast but it's all gonna make sense soon enough in addition to covering the origins of this surprisingly powerful deity we're also exploring some of the most notable myths he's featured in including a love story of his own before we do all that though I've got to give a shout out to this week's sponsor Ray Khan does this ever happen to you you're standing there jamming out to your favorite music getting a groove going when you suddenly realize you can't hear anything because you don't have headphones me too all the time that is until I found Rekha third company that prides themselves on making some of the highest quality earbuds on the market not only do they have seamless Bluetooth connectivity so they're super easy to set up they're also sweat and water-resistant they have high quality audio drivers and up to 24 hours of battery life with a charging case their newest model the e 25 s are especially great because they have more base and a nice compact design that gives you that noise isolating fit you want when you're trying to get the zone at the gym or library that's my favorite thing about them and a sick bonus is they come in a huge variety of colors so you can make sure whatever pair you get actually suits you if you want to join me and own some of the best wireless earbuds on the market just go to buy rake on Comm slash solo or click my link in the description to get 15% off your order all right solo fam now that that spectacular one-of-a-kind ad read is over it's time we dive into it before we get started make sure you shoot that like button with your bow and arrow just like Cupid would want subscribe for more content like this on a weekly basis and most importantly enjoy so like most figures in Roman mythology Cupid has an equivalent in Greek mythology and that's the god eros a fact alone is pretty easy to comprehend but what makes it a little more confusing is the eros himself almost appears to be two separate beings with two completely different origin stories those of you who've seen my episode breaking down the Greek creation myth may remember me mentioning that eros was the third primordial deity born from chaos back at the beginning of time after Gaia the earth deity in Tartarus the underworld theity he doesn't directly play a role in the events that follow his birth but he was still extremely important because he embodied the uniting powers of love and without love there would be no creation it's because of him that guy could birth the sky mountains and ocean without a partner then after gender dichotomy was introduced eros blessed the union between gaia and the sky Uranus and they went on to birth a smorgasbord of other deities now this might surprise you but that is basically all the info we have on the primordial eros after this initial period of creation his name wasn't mentioned again until his birth is Aphrodite son and there's no reference to his primordial form after that so we really don't know how the two were connected besides their names and what they preside over putting that weirdness aside though it's this next form his godly form that is the equivalent of Rome's Cupid and if so fact though is who Cupid evolved from now like I said before the god the eros his mother was the goddess of love Aphrodite and his father is believed to be one of three Olympians Hermes Zeus or Ares with Ares being the most popular option as it represents him being born from the union of love and war this parentage could also be why eros was given a weapon that had the power of spreading love his bow and arrow you may not have known this but eros actually carried two kinds of ammunition for his bow the God could choose someone with a Golden Arrow and they would be filled with uncontrollable desire for someone of his choosing where he could shoot them with a led one causing them to feel a strong dislike towards someone and avoid them at all costs as you'll soon find out when we get into the myths this leads to trouble for both gods and man as one might expect from the son of the most beautiful goddess eros was a total stud he had fine golden hair a set of stunning gold wings to match and on top of all that he was absolutely shredded broth now this is obviously a stark contrast from the big fat baby Cupid that we're all Miller well apparently those portrayals began showing up during the emergence of the Roman Empire and became even more common after the Romans conquered the Greeks and by the way st. Valentine the Christian martyr whom the holiday was named after was from the Roman Empire so if they're anything like mean we're wondering why society would go with a fat little boy as its mascot for love instead of a shredded beast like eros that's why still doesn't explain why Rome would replace him in the first place especially because it appears the only change they made between the two was their names and their physiques but some things we just aren't meant to know anyway another interesting fact is the eros is not the only one of his kind he belongs to a winged class of beings called the gyro tease eros was the most significant of them in fact most of the other ones only existed within poetry in paintings like you can see here but he did have a brother and teros who was thought of as necessary for his existence that's because ain't eros presided over requited love which basically means love returned and according to the Greeks love must be answered and ordered a prosper the two brothers were nearly identical in every way - but aunt eros carried a golden club and had plumed butterfly wings you can see the difference when I put the two statues next to each other I should also mention there was a Roman equivalent of the euro T's called the Amore's but they too were only featured in paintings as opposed to myths in speaking of myths now that we've covered the basics of who eros was and how he evolved into Cupid I say we look into some stories featuring the Greek god of love so before we start this section I just want to reiterate that while eros evolved into Cupid after the Roman Empire emerged for all intents and purposes they're the same beings same parents same powers same Mets for the sake of clarity and continuity I'm going to be using all Greek names when I tell this story like eros Aphrodite and Apollo but to be clear each of these tales existed in both Greek and Roman cultures so those names are all interchangeable now one thing I didn't talk about much in that last section is that both gods and mortals feared eros and there were three reasons for that one because he had the power to make any of them fall madly in love by simply shooting them with a golden arrow - and possibly worse than that he could make the person they were in love with despised them in return by shooting them with a lead arrow and three he was kind of Vishal - head so if you gave him a reason to do either of those things he would in fact this exact scenario happened to Apollo the god of the Sun after he taunted eros about being the better archer in response eros shot Apollo with a golden arrow in the nymph he was now madly in love with Daphne with eight led one in the end Daphne became so desperate to escape Apollo's advances she prayed to her father the river god penis no I said penis to save her and he turned her into a laurel witch fun fact was known by the greeks as Apollo sacred tree imagine the heartbreak that Apollo went through when this happened and he wasn't the only one who arrows messed with either there was Hades Dionysus and you know how Seuss had roughly 10 billion affairs while eros his handiwork was responsible for a lot of those now when most of the stories the eros is featured in his role is limited to just being a side character whose high jinks at the plot in motion but there is one myth where he's got a leading role and appropriately it's a romance that shows how love and determination can overcome any obstacle this story was collected from a second-century novel called the Golden Ass which is a detail I just had to include it opens by introducing us to immortal princess named psyche who was so unbelievably beautiful the people started to worship her as if she were a goddess equal to the one and only Aphrodite do you remember how Aphrodite was born from the seafoam that gathered around Uranus's dismembered members well people actually thought psyche was born in the same way except from the earth instead of the ocean not only then Aphrodite's formerly loyal followers started to abandon her temples and altars in favor of psyche and this infuriated the goddess of love to get back at psyche for her insolence Aphrodite ordered her son eros to make the girl fall in love with the most detestable human being on the planet but while staring at the princess eros injured himself with a Golden Arrow and instead he fell madly in love right then and there meanwhile psyche was still being followed around by the masses but curiously the girl did not have a single suitor it seemed that most of her followers for content admiring her from a distance as if she were a piece of fine art hoping to gain some insight on why no man wanted to be with her psyches father sought advice from an Oracle who told them that psyche was destined to marry a horrible monster who even Zeus himself was afraid of and that she had to be brought to a cliff in the mountains so she can meet him well heavenly words are not to be disobeyed so even though the king was horrified by this prophecy he knew he had nervous to God's wishes he and the rest of psyches family and admirers have squirted her to the mountainside and then left her there to meet her fate at first the girl was terrified but soon enough she was gently picked up by Zephyrus the spirit of the west winds and brought to a magnificent palace that contained more riches than any mortal could imagine while she was there she was waited on hand and foot by invisible maidens and every night she would get it on with her supposedly monstrous husband who also cloaked himself with invisibility as you can probably guess this mysterious invisible husband of hers was eros but he didn't want her to know his identity just yet because he didn't think that a relationship between a god and mortal could last not only that but if his mother found out he had shacked up with a girl she had a personal vendetta against he would probably end up grounded for like at least a few weeks while surprisingly psyche found herself enjoying her husband's company even without her knowing who he was but after a while the isolation started getting to her head so she asked him if she could meet with her two older sisters who at this point don't even know that she's still alive at first her husband said no but after seeing how upset this made her he felt bad and gave in she said she can meet her sisters under the circumstances that she ignored all the negative things they would say about him and wouldn't try to discover his true identity she agreed to those terms and the next day the spirit of the west winds brought her sisters over now despite psyche treating them with nothing but love and respect during their visit and gifting them the most beautiful jewels they had ever seen her sisters couldn't help a complaint on their way back home and while I don't usually do this for mythology I'm gonna show you guys a direct quote from their conversation because I find it truly hilarious my life's a hell to begin with I have a husband older than my father he's Balder than an onion as well and he hasn't the virility of an infant and he keeps our house barricaded with bards and chains I have to put up with a husband crippled and bent with rheumatism so that he can succumb to my charms only once in a blue moon I spent almost all day rubbing his fingers which are twisted and hard as Flint and burning these soft hands of mine on reeking poultices filthy bandages and smelly plasters I'm a slaving nursing attendant not a dutiful wife in summary if they hate their lives so like any good sisters would they let their jealousy get the best of them and they decide to sabotage poor psyche during their next visit they convinced her that her husband just had to be a hideous monster who was planning on killing her because why else would he his face and that she had to kill him first against her better judgment psyche listen to them too she managed to sneak a lamp a knife into her bedroom and after another night of touching Bunz she held the lamp over her sleeping husband's face and was stunned to see what had to be the most beautiful man in existence her relief didn't last long though a drop of hot oil fell on eros causing him to wake up and realize what psyche was just doing feeling betrayed and heartbroken he had been in her there in the palace and said she was on her own from now on naturally this crushed psyche who immediately tried to drown herself in a river but the river didn't want to be blamed for killing eros his lover and spit her out back on the shore psyche decided that if she couldn't kill herself she had to take action a different way first she went to each of her sisters told them the arrows caught her looking at his face kicked her out and wanted one of them instead one at a time each sister believing the west winds would be there to carry them to his castle jumped off the cliff that Saiki had been picked up that and they died on the rocks below a fair punishment if you ask me then psyche wandered from Temple to Temple looking for eros but to no avail she even stopped at the temples of Hera and Demeter to ask for help but the goddesses said as much as they wanted to Aphrodite was after psyche and they couldn't betray her then psyche got word from armies that Aphrodite was gonna reward anyone who had information on her whereabouts with seven kisses on the lips and one with Tom no that's not a joke so she figured it'd be best for her to just turn herself in she almost immediately regretted this decision though because Aphrodite took it upon herself to torture psyche and treat her as a slave this was all under the guise of psyche winning Aphrodite's approval so the goddess would bless the union between her and eros even though she never planned on doing that so what follows are the four labors of psyche and like most Labour's that we read about in Greek mythology they were all designed to be both humiliating and impossible first Aphrodite beats the [ __ ] out of psyche rips our clothing pulls out her hair the whole nine yards then she tells her to sort this massive pile of wheat barley chickpeas lentils and other plans into smaller individual piles by nightfall psyche knew right away that she would never be able to do this so she just gave up immediately but lucky for her a nearby colony of ants heard her cries and took it upon themselves to sort everything much to Aphrodite's frustration sidebar is it just me or does that remind anyone else the Cinderella stories where she had to do that exact task for her stepmother and then her animal friends helped her methinks there might be a connection there now the next morning Aphrodite told Saiki to retrieve a tuft of golden fleece from the Sheep who grazed outside it sounds easy enough but the sheep were huge and very aggressive so Saiki would no doubt be killed in the process wanting to end her life on her own terms she was just gonna toss herself off a cliff instead but the river below told her not to and then gave her some useful advice it said to wait until the afternoon when the sheep have calmed down then harvest their golden fleece from the nearby foliage suckee does just that and is then given another task to retrieve a jug of cold waters from a nearby rivers highest point where there were falling rocks and deadly snakes to no surprise when she got there Saiki was frozen with fear but Zeus saw her struggle and sent his sacred bird the eagle to take the jug and fill it for her now the fourth and final laborer is where psyche finally meets her match she sent to the underworld to retrieve a dose of Persephone's beauty so Aphrodite can use it to get ready for the deities theatre again not a joke it might surprise you to learn that psyche actually gets the goods no problem but she makes the mistake of opening its container hoping to gain some of the benefits for herself what she found was that the Box didn't contain beauty at all but instead to sleep of Hades in this rendered her both unconscious and alone in the heart of the underworld worry not though because it's at this point that eros has finally recovered from the injury the hot oil caused when it spilled on him and he's decided he can no longer stand being away from his true love he travels to the underworld fine psyche in this comatose state and wakes her up by putting the sleep back in the box and pricking her with an arrow then he flies up to Olympus to meet with Zeus and ask for his forgiveness for all the trouble he's caused and to bless his marriage with psyche my favorite part of the story comes next despite all of the shenanigans the eros has pulled over the years Zeus till forgives him because he sees the potential in wetting him - a great woman and the maturity that might take place once he's put in these shackles of marriage it's certainly not the most flattering way of putting it but I do think it's reflective of the archetypal journey that most men make even to this day when they meet a girl they really like and decide it's time to finally grow up and become a responsible human being that can provide for her and keep her safe in the spirit of his decision Zeus orders Aphrodite to leave the couple alone then he summons psyche to Olympus where she drinks a cup of Ambrose is granted immortality and becomes goddess of the soul she had eros then go on to have a beautiful wedding that all of the Immortals attended and Bertha daughter of their own Peter knee the personification of sensual pleasure not exactly what I would want my daughter to be the personification of but who knows with how incestuous the Greek gods were that might have been a bonus for them anyway on that note we're gonna bring this episode to a close so tell me so Lapham what are your thoughts on the greco-roman god of love let me know in the comments down below I'm going with you with that make sure you drop a like if you haven't already and subscribe to have more mythological content delivered to your sub box on a regular basis as always if you want to follow me on Twitter Facebook or Instagram to stay updated on messed up origins news or just smother me in compliments the handles are right in front of you and links are down below and don't forget to follow Gunther too he came in here specifically for me to remind you that isn't that right until next time solo fam thank you so much for stopping by I love each and every one of you and I'll be seeing you very soon my name is John solo and remember John shot first [Music]

Channel: Jon Solo

Views: 900,657

Keywords: messed up origins, messed up origins cupid, cupid and psyche, eros and psyche, messed up origins eros, mythology explained, jon solo, jon solo mythology, disney explained, messed up origins jon solo, cupid and psyche story, cupid personality, cupid origins, where did cupid come from, messed up origins philoctetes, messed up origins aphrodite, messed up origins hermes, jon solo cupid, messed up origins ares, god of love, messed up origins krampus, fables explained

Id: LS0e2Ifxo9Y

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 13 2020