Unleashing the Muses: The Transformative Power of Greek Mythology for Writers and Creators
There’s much be gained from mythical immersion no matter who you are, but for writers and creatives the fruits are especially rich
As a Greek-Cypriot American whose dad grew up on the Mediterranean island country of Cyprus, I have so many wonderful childhood memories of summers overseas.
Memories of souvlaki roasting on a spit in Uncle Giorgiou’s vineyard while green grapes hung over our heads. Of swimming in the sea, arriving home with shells in our pockets, sand crunched between our feet and flip-flops, remnants of the sun spread across our skin, and an insatiable hunger for our Yiayia’s cooking.
Some of the most vivid of those recollections involved immersion into the kingdom of Greek mythology. I loved it when my Dad read to my sister and me from our shiny golden book of myths. We’d listen to these bed-time stories on our cots at the end of the day, fans whirring in the 85-degree evening heat while crickets geared up for their nightly symphony.
There’s much be gained from spending time with Greek mythology no matter who you are, but for writers and creatives especially, the experience is particularly rich.
The myths’ vivid imagery and imaginativeness mirror our teeming and textured inner landscape. Our sensory appreciation and proclivities toward nature find counterparts within them, with a loves for flowers paralleling Antheia’s and Abate’s (goddesses of gardens, flowers, swamps, and marshes).
Many a God and character experience big emotions like creatives often do. So stirred was goddess Calypso by her strong feelings for Odysseus, for instance, that she kept him prisoner on her island for ten years, pretending there were no ships available to send him home (my strong-willed cat is named after her, by the way). **Most poets and writers will not go to such behavioral extremes.
Similarly, Poseidon’s maelstrom of feeling resulted in torrential conditions for any unfortunate sailor who happened to be paddling through his tempestuous waters. Jean Bakula wrote of him:
“Pretend you are looking out at a peaceful sea, but know an angry, emotional and resentful God lives just under the surface. He could erupt in fury and pound against whatever is in his way at any time.”
Beneath his wrath breathed a deeply feeling man with no acceptable outlet for his intensity of feeling within a patriarchal society. Bakula wrote that emotional depth is “not appreciated in men’s psyches in many patriarchal cultures,” and that men are expected to “keep a stiff upper lip” or hold their feelings inside.
Here are seven qualities that archetypes from Greek mythology overlap with sensitive writers and artistic souls on.
1. Emotionality.
Feeling things deeply is one of the most salient and definitive traits of being an artistic creator. So too is Greek mythology rife with emotionality. Bakula wrote that in addition to being known for his mercurial nature, “Poseidon is also the archetype through which a psychological realm of great beauty and depth can be known.”
But when we don’t process our feelings, especially grief, they bury deep into our souls — only to surface in unhealthy ways later on.
According to Choosing Therapy:
“Our feelings, even the uncomfortable ones, provide us with information. If you ignore or push [them] away, they will manifest eventually, usually in an explosive and harmful way.”
My senior year of college, my sensitive self thought she could avoid the pain of a breakup — by ushering myself along, away from the swampy feelings, like a responsible and charismatic life coach of my own self. But
Numerous studies have found avoidance to be “the most significant factor that creates, prolongs, and intensifies trauma-reaction or PTSD symptoms.” When we evade processing, the traumas form a backlog in our hearts and minds, queuing up to be felt eventually.
“Being conscious of our emotions, including grief, is how we do the inner work of psychological growth,” wrote Daniel Siegel.
Poseidon the aforementioned sea God perhaps illustrates this most saliently:
“This repression of emotions goes underground, and does not get integrated into the man’s personality. Eventually they can no longer be ignored, and turn into rage, grief, and a primitive urge to wreak havoc on whoever caused the pain, no matter whom it is.”
2. Outsider status or a feeling of “otherness.”
As a kid I remember often feeling like an outsider in a world that seemed to heavily value hyper-extroversion, action, and doing over thoughtfulness and contemplation. I didn’t feel like I could talk with friends about why we were all here on this planet — or like I could be my weird, quirky, “out of the box” self around them. I learned to mask my more unsavory or offbeat qualities.
As Sensitive Refuge cofounder Andre Solo wrote of his own childhood as a sensitive kid:
“The other boys have little respect for the dreamy kid who prefers a walk in the forest over a football game, who writes novels instead of coming to parties. And he has no interest in vying for their approval. It costs him: he gets shoved in hallways and mocked at lunch, and gym class may as well be a firing squad. He is seen as so soft, so weak that an older girl becomes his biggest bully, laughing as she writes obscenities on his shirt with a marker.”
Greek mythology touches on outsider status with the god Dionysus. The only Olympian with a mortal mother, Dionysus was also raised on the mythical Mount Nasa far from the rest of civilization. He wandered Asia before arriving in Greece — which led his surrounding company to view him as an outsider.
Dionysus: https://greekgodsandgoddesses.net">Greekgodsandgoddesses.net noted that this was “an inherent part of his cult, which often focused on the more subversive elements of his nature.” The authors wrote that Dionsysus was often referred to as Eleutherios (Greek for “the liberator”) because his wine, music, and ecstatic dance “freed his followers from self-consciousness and the restraints of society.”
3. Embracing beauty and the senses.
Creators have a keen eye for — and are receptive to — the beauty of our planet. I feel particularly attuned to it when traveling. I’ve done crunches lying against a smooth desert stone above cacti, while a hawk glided past overhead. I’ve run barefoot on pristine northern Caliifornia beaches, the breeze cool against my skin and the sand impeccable and undisturbed beneath my feet. The fresh green grass at many parks has beckoned me into yoga poses, stretches, and ab circuits.
Witch and priestess author Irisanya Moon writes:
“Beauty for the sake of beauty is vital, necessary, and healing. Beauty invites wonder [,] reminds us of hope and possibility [,] gives us permission to stop, rest, and restore our tired bones. When all is confusing or brittle, beauty is softness. When all is heavy and tense, beauty is release. When all seems lost, beauty can call us home.”
Moon writes that when she knows beauty, she remembers what is important. When she eliminates beauty from her life, just as when she takes away healthy foods or sleep, she gets tired more easily.
“I stop doing the things that need to be done. I need to refill on beauty. Every day. With your senses engaged, you can turn the dial to beauty,” she writes.
The goddess of beauty in Greek mythology is Aphrodite. She was said to have been born from the foam in the waters of Paphos, a city on my dad’s island of Cyprus. This was after the Titan Cronus slew his father Uranus and threw his genitals into the sea (quite evocative imagery for an origin story, huh?).
The authors of Greekgodsandgoddesses.net wrote that “Many gods believed that her beauty was such that their rivalry over her would spark a war of the gods.”
I love what Moon has to say about Aphrodite’s reminder for sensitive souls:
“[She] reminds us that in our beauty and in our ability to find and celebrate it, we are smoothed and we become resilience.”
4. Food as a sensual bonding experience.
Food is a love language in Greek culture as it is for many artistic souls. During summers in Cyprus, I remember how most kiosks along the road sold souvlaki — meat wrapped snugly in pita bread next to roasted tomatoes, freshly chopped red onions, and creamy tsatziki sauce.
None of the tavernas could compare with my Yiayia’s cooking though.My family and I would scarf giant portions of moussaka off porcelain blue plates after mornings at the beach. The juice from the meat and the eggplant would pool at the bottom. We’d sop it up using “andethero” bread, which the juice would stain a bright red-orange.
Eating is a multi-sensory experience (not to mention a unifying one), so many sensitive souls derive great satisfaction from it. Memories of almost biblical experiences with food light up my mind.
Spicy udon noodle soup at two in the morning back in college.
Bagels drowning with sun-dried tomato cream cheese from the on-campus coffeehouse.
My most adventurous eating experience took place inside a cave restaurant an hour north of Mexico City.
The Gods were known to convene, jovially and with red wine flowing, late into the night. And according to Taverna Magazine:
“Literature and iconography on Ancient Greek myth showcases that Gods and heroes were slightly more eclectic than mortals.4 In fact, food and drink in mythology largely revolves around sweet, hallucinogenic, or healing substances, most frequently in the form of liquids, or fruit.”
5. Judgment of emotionality.
Artists and creators might feel shamed at times for our depth of feeling and preference for deeper emotional processing — even though these qualities are also the source of some of our most beautiful qualities. When I have an emotionally resonant conversation, I feel so seen. Much of the bad fades away momentarily, and the world doesn’t feel so heavy.
Often these qualities are associated with femininity, and femininity is deemed weak. I even found traces of its disparagement in the lesbian community, when reading about the history of my group. I’ve heard butch and androgynous lesbian friends pride themselves for liking “strong” women (ie, more masculine-presenting and less swayed by their emotions).
In Greek mythology, unfortunately these attitudes (and sexism in general) persist. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, is a personified example of the rejection of the feminine.
“Usually preferring the company of men to women, Athena often experiences a lack of kinship with other women. The Athena woman is poised for power. Her biggest challenge is overcoming her lack of empathy, as ‘with her critical thinking and dissecting questions, an Athena woman can unintentionally and unconsciously demean another person’s subjective experience.”
*Keep in mind, this is only one interpretation of Athena. There’s a lot to admire about her, including the pivotal role she played in helping Odysseus find his way home — but at least from this passage, she reminds me of how as women we’re often taught to compete with one another and push down our emotions in order to succeed in this capitalist society.
6. Empathy.
As Dr. Tracy Cooper described highly sensitive people:
“Seeing the world through another person’s eyes is central to the experience of being a highly sensitive person (HSP). There is now a documented, replicable fMRI study showing that HSPs demonstrate stronger empathy than do others in tests involving reactions to images.”
One story that shows the deep empathy in Greek mythology is that of Harmonia and [her lover] Cadmus. After the Gods turned him into a serpent, “Harmonia, distraught by his sudden transformation, begged the gods to let her share his fate. Zeus obliged, and Harmonia was also transformed into a serpent.”
Foolish? Or the purest display of romance and empathy? That answer depends on the type of creative soul you are, I suppose.
There is much to connect with in Greek mythology for creative souls, whether you’re indulging in sensual pleasures like Dionysus or emoting like Poseidon. I’m proud to be connected to that lineage, and I hope as a creator you’ll gain something from it too.
