Flowchart: Alternate Process: The DESCENT
TO FROGS. . .  

 

Martha Habash:

 

“It is particularly fitting that Dionysos becomes a frog: he, like a frog in winter, is venturing underground.” [1]


Richard F. Moorton:

“Soon Dionysus and Xanthias come to the limne of the frogs. This lake, the comedy's equivalent of Acheron, is the limen of the land of the dead. As mentioned above, the nonchthonic Olympian gods do not customarily cross it, and barring exceptional cases living human beings are not permitted transit, nor shades whose bodies are unburied, or without the ferry fee. In van Gennep's terms, this lake is analogous to a neutral zone, whose relationship with the two lands is complex:

 

The neutral zones are ordinarily deserts, marshes, and most frequently virgin forests where everyone has full rights to travel and hunt. Because of the pivoting of sacredness, the territories on either side of the neutral zone are sacred in relation to whoever is in the zone, but the zone, in turn, is sacred for the inhabitants of the adjacent territories. Whoever passes from one to the other finds himself physically and magico-religiously in a special situation for a certain length of time: he wavers between two worlds.” [2]

 

 In  other words, this is a liminal zone.

 

“ . . frogs are amphibians able to live in a world above and a world below. And like living heroes who descend into Hades, frogs must return to a world above or die. 23 In other words, the frogs are fitting witnesses of passage, including vertical passage, across the limen of death. The limen between territories is a neutral zone belonging to both and to neither. Significantly, scholars are divided over whether the frogs are dead or alive, and inhabiting the underworld or the upper world.” [3]


Shakespeare Macbeth:

 

"Toad, that under cold stone

Days and nights hast thirty-one

Swelter'd venom sleeping got,

Boil thou first i' the charmed pot."

 

Alison Bailey Kennedy:

 

“Thorndike's monumental History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923) is full of such recipes; a typical one, from Michael Scott, astrologer, augur, and alchemist at the court of Frederick II, reads: "Five toads are shut up in a vessel and made to drink the juices of various herbs with vinegar as the first step in the preparation of a marvelous elixir for the purposes of transformation"  “ ([4]). [5]


David L. Miller:

 

“Finally it happens that the chorus of frogs turn out also to be young female mystes, "mystics," "initiates." They have gone the frog-way, keep the mystery (muo = "to keep one's mouth shut"), and thereby know that everything in this path, in these depths, is un-ex-pressable.”  [6]

 


Charles Paul Segal:

 

“Closely related to the theme of the community in the Frogs and its connection with the dramatic and other festivals is the subject of the Muses and mousike generally. The Frogs, the Mystae, and Dionysus, in brief, are all closely connected with the Muses, whereas Euripides (and Socrates) are hostile to mousike. The Frogs sing of their devotion to the "beautiful-lyred Muses" (228ff.) . . . ; the presence of the Mystae is indicated by the sound of flutes wafted through the air (154, 313), and they invoke the Muses in nearly all their songs.” [7]

 

 [8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muse

 


Grimm, The Three Feathers:

 

“The door opened, and he saw a great, fat toad sitting, and round about her a crowd of little toads. The fat toad asked what he wanted. He answered, I should like to have the prettiest and finest carpet in the world. Then she called a young one and said - little green waiting-maid, waiting-maid with the limping leg, little dog of the limping leg, hop hither and thither, and bring me the great box.” [9]

 


BIBLIO

 

Angela Voss, The Descent of Orpheus, Life between Lives Dialogue – Divination, Initiation or Therapy? [orphic_texts]

 

Christopher G. Brown, Empousa, Dionysus and the Mysteries: Aristophanes, Frogs 285ff, The Classical Quarterly, New Series, Vol. 41, No. 1 (1991), pp. 41-50 [Dionysus]

 

Empousa could be a form of Hekate.

 

Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, Dionysus and Siva: Parallel Patterns in Two Pairs of Myths, History of Religions, Vol. 20, No. 1/2, Twentieth Anniversary Issue (Aug. - Nov.,1980), pp. 81-111. [Dionysus]

 

   Prof. O'Flaherty uses The Frogs to make comparisons with Shiva – the shitting, pissing theme too . .

 

John F. Makowski, Bisexual Orpheus: Pederasty and Parody in Ovid, The Classical Journal, Vol. 92, No. 1 (Oct. - Nov., 1996), pp. 25-38.

 

H. Wagenvoort, The Journey of the Souls of the Dead to the Isles of the Blessed, Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 24, Fasc. 2 (1971), pp. 113-161 [22/texts]

 

somatic  - adjective:  1 - relating to the body, especially as distinct from the mind. 2- Biology relating to the soma. DERIVATIVES -     somatically adverb. ORIGIN - C18: from Greek somatikos, from soma 'body'.

 

Yidy Páez Casadiegos, Orpheus or the Soteriological Reform of the Dionysian Mysteries, American Journal of Sociological Research 2012, 2 (3), pp. 38-51

 

Feldherr, A. & James, P., ‘Making the Most of Marsyas’, Arethusa 37 (2004) 75-103).

 

K. Dover, The Chorus of Initiates in Aristophanes' Frogs, in: Enzo Degani (ed.), Aristophane. Sept Exposes, Geneva 1993.

 

Martha Habash, Dionysos' Roles in Aristophanes' "Frogs", Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 55, Fasc. 1 (2002), pp. 1-17,

 

Wade C. Stephens, Descent to the Underworld in Ovid's Metamorphoses, The Classical Journal, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Jan., 1958), pp. 177-183

 

T. G. Tucker and Jane E. Harrison, The Mysteries in the Frogs of Aristophanes, The Classical Review, Vol. 18, No. 8 (Nov., 1904), pp. 416-418

 

Charles Paul Segal, The Character and Cults of Dionysus and the Unity of the Frogs, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 65 (1961), pp. 207-242

 

The oldest allusion to an Orphic cosmogony is in Aristophanes’s The Birds 693-702. 

 

Sona Rosa Burstein, The Harrowing of Hell, Folklore, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Jun. 30, 1928), pp. 113-132. [22/texts]

 

Gary S. Bedford, Notes on Mythological Psychology: Reimagining the Historical Psyche, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Jun., 1981), pp. 231-247.


Richard F. Moorton, Jr., Rites of Passage in Aristophanes' "Frogs", The Classical Journal, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Apr. - May, 1989), pp. 308-324

 



[1] Martha Habash, Dionysos' Roles in Aristophanes' "Frogs", Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 55, Fasc. 1 (2002), pp. 1-17, In note 17.

[2] Richard F. Moorton, Jr., Rites of Passage in Aristophanes' "Frogs", The Classical Journal, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Apr. - May, 1989), p. 313.

[3] Richard F. Moorton, Jr., Rites of Passage in Aristophanes' "Frogs", The Classical Journal, Vol. 84, No. 4 (Apr. - May, 1989), p. 313.

[4] p. 337

[5] Alison Bailey Kennedy, Ecce Bufo: The Toad in Nature and in Olmec Iconography, Current Anthropology, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Jun., 1982), p. 284.

[6] David L. Miller, Hades and Dionysus: The Poetry of Soul, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Sep., 1978), p.

[7] Charles Paul Segal, The Character and Cults of Dionysus and the Unity of the Frogs, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, Vol. 65 (1961), p. 223

[8] MUSES : Greek Goddesses of Music, Poetry & the Arts | Mythology, Mousai,

http://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Mousai.html

 

[9] Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, The Three Feathers. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm063.html

Frog Kings. folktales of Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 440 about slimy suitors translated &/or edited by D. L. Ashliman. http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/frog.html