Of muses and moons
Muse: to be absorbed
in your own thoughts.
I spend a fair amount of time in my garden absorbed in my
own thoughts. I often think that weeding
is a type of meditation, I will spend hours weeding away, thinking about all
sorts of things or sometimes just focusing on the weeds and the garden,
enjoying having that space to just be and do.
Of course once I start to think about things like the word
muse, I then generally have to look into what that is a bit deeper. So I starting musing about muses.
A muse can be a poet, a source of inspiration and also it is
the name of a band from Devon (whom I rather like).
There are also a various number of muses, quite often nine,
who were the daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus.
These nine are (depending on what source you look at):
Calliope - Epic Poetry
Clio - History
Erato - Lyric/Erotic Poetry
Clio - History
Erato - Lyric/Erotic Poetry
Euterpe – Music (specifically flutes!)
Melpomene - Tragedy
Polyhymnia – Choral/sacred Poetry
Terpsichore - Dance
Thalia – Comedy and pastoral poetry
Melpomene - Tragedy
Polyhymnia – Choral/sacred Poetry
Terpsichore - Dance
Thalia – Comedy and pastoral poetry
Urania -
Astronomy
At some point I will return to Thalia, she interests me. The nine muses is also central to the plot of Xanadu (1980) a film starring Olivia Newton John. If you have never seen this film and fancy a dose of real 1980s fun then you must watch it. It is almost as good as the 1965 classic Three Hats for Lisa starring Joe Brown and Una Stubbs amongst others. (seriously, everyone should watch Three Hats for Lisa).
So, back to the
muses, I said there were various numbers of these. There were apparently three original Muses, Aoidē ("song" or "tune"), Meletē ("practice" or "occasion"),
and Mnēmē ("memory").
Bearing in mind
we are talking mythology and ancient at that, things are a bit muddled and do
not stay the same as we pass through time, so three became four: Thelxinoē,
Aoedē, Arche, and Meletē (no one seems to know what Thelxinoē did but
one of the moons of Jupiter is named after her aka Jupiter
XL.)
These four then became nine as mentioned above. Except when they became ten as Plato declared
that the poet Sappho was the 10th muse.
This actually brings the total to 11.
Those of us who gain most of our myth knowledge through watching films
know that there is also Serendipity, the muse who left heaven to become an
artist in her own right. She is played
by Salma Hayek in the 1999 film Dogma (Kevin Smith). Again, an excellent film that contains the
wonderfulness that is Alan Rickman in one of his finest roles.
So what has this to do with my garden.
Well ,its all a bit serendipitous really (see what I did there?) I spend my time in my garden often lost
thought, miles away in my head thinking through my day, planning ahead about
this and that and often just clearly away with the fairies. Part of why I garden is to create a space to think. My thoughts turn and twist and I end up
having to resolve questions that I ask myself and through this all I now know that
Jupiter has many moons.
Your mind works in mysterious ways! Maybe we could adopt Thelxinoe as the muse of gardening?
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