I just finished a novel called Alcestis by Katherine Beutner which brings the Olympian gods to life in a story that has them intermingling with the human world in an intimate way. Alcestis travels with Hermes into the underworld, substituting herself for her husband, who was to die instead.
The novel explores the underworld through the eyes of this maiden as she encounters the shades who have died and lie in mortal anguish, finally becoming wraiths of their former selves, pale grays and vacant eyes, wandering without direction, aimlessly and with a sense of doom, their former vibrancy gone completely.
To quell their deep pain they drink from the River Lethe, which brings them oblivion and forgetfulness until they finally succumb to nothingness.
It occurred to me as I read this that many on Earth are also rendering themselves mute. They are drinking from the River Lethe, to forget their own pain and their own Grandeur.
Hades is a state of being, not a destination. It is a choice we make: no one, no gods however so defined, forces us to drink from this river. We do this all on our own.
The novel explores the underworld through the eyes of this maiden as she encounters the shades who have died and lie in mortal anguish, finally becoming wraiths of their former selves, pale grays and vacant eyes, wandering without direction, aimlessly and with a sense of doom, their former vibrancy gone completely.
To quell their deep pain they drink from the River Lethe, which brings them oblivion and forgetfulness until they finally succumb to nothingness.
It occurred to me as I read this that many on Earth are also rendering themselves mute. They are drinking from the River Lethe, to forget their own pain and their own Grandeur.
Hades is a state of being, not a destination. It is a choice we make: no one, no gods however so defined, forces us to drink from this river. We do this all on our own.