“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]
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