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A Temple Wild Podcast A Temple Wild Podcast Episode 1: Narcissus and Echo https://atemplewild.com/podcast/narcissus-and-echo Transcript You're listening to A Temple Wild: Episode 1: Narcissus and Echo Hello and welcome to A Temple Wild, where we rediscover the myths of the ancient Greeks through the plants and landscapes that shaped them. My name is Ekstasy and today we're going to be talking about the myth of Narcissus and Echo. Most people know the myth of Narcissus, the beautiful youth who falls in love with his own reflection in a pool of water and wastes away, pining for the love he cannot touch. His tale is often shared as a warning against egoism, pride, and self-obsession, an admonition against staring too long at one’s own reflection. His name has woven itself into our everyday language: “narcissism,” “narcissist,” and “narcissistic” these are words we use to insult someone who is too in love with themselves. But few people have heard of his counterpart, the nature spirit Echo, whose own obsession with Narcissus leads to her own dissolution. I absolutely love this myth, not because Narcissus suffers for his ego or pride, but because I think there is a deeper message in this story, a message about numbness and obsession and human desire, a message that I think that most people miss. So we're going to be talking about that myth today. And of course, because this is A Temple Wild we also look to the plants and the landscapes that inform the story. So Narcissus is actually the namesake for that plant that we call Narcissus; it is a perennial bulb in the amaryllis and daffodil family with six white tepals, or what the average person would probably just call petals, around a golden corona, which is a golden center that looks like a crown. In Greece, this is the Narcissus poeticus or N. tazetta, those are the two botanical names for the two specific Narcissus plants that you'll find growing in Greece. The flower blooms in late winter and early spring, reminding us of its connection to youthfulness and that awakening of desire after the numbness of winter. It prefers damp meadows and the banks of streams and rivers, where it can lean close to watch its own reflection in the waters, just like its namesake, Narcissus. Although all parts of the flower are toxic to ingest, the Narcissus can be used in ceremony to awaken desire and bring awareness to our capacity for self-love. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about the story and then we're going to circle back around to talk about the plant and inviting it into our homes and our ceremonies. I also want to start, before we get into the myth, by placing the story. Because something that a lot of people don't realize or think about is that the myths of ancient Greece actually take place in a specific location or they come from a specific region of Greece. I think because the stories are so timeless sometimes we forget that they're actually located in the landscape of the Mediterranean. So looking to this story, Narcissus was the beautiful son of the naiad Liriope, a nymph of Phokis, which is a region in central Greece, in Sterea Ellada. And his father was the river god Kifisos, and Kifisos is a river that runs through the region of Boeotia, another region in central Greece. Narcissus himself was from the ancient city of Thespiae, which is a city from that region. And so Narcissus himself, his father was a river, his mother was a nymph, and so his story is grounded in the landscape. According to Aristophanes, Echo was a conifer nymph of Mount Kithairon in southern Boeotia, and it is possible that Narcissus fell in love with himself in a pool in her mountain grove. So looking at a map of Greece, which you can see over at atemplewild.com, you can actually place this story in the landscape of Greece. I always like to look at a map and feel where these stories are coming from, of course if you can go visit in person, that's even better. But to just have an awareness that these stories, people, and energies actually exist in the Greek landscape. Often the myths act as origin stories for different pieces of the landscape or different plants, and you could say that this is a way of explaining or describing where the Narcissus flower came from and also because Echo, obviously her voice, you can understand a little bit about her story before I even tell you, because she was a nymph and her body eventually dissolves and she becomes just an echo of her voice or other people's voices, this story acts as a way of explaining how the mountains act as an echo chamber sending back your own voice to yourself. There's definitely a physical, located, place-based experience of these stories. The figures in them are plants or pieces of the land, they are mountains, they are flowers. With that we'll turn our attention to the story itself and I hope that you enjoy. “Echo, the nymph of Cithaeron, returns thy words, which resound beneath the dark vaults of the thick foliage and in the midst of the rocks of the forest.” — Aristophanes, Women at the Thesmophoria Echo was a talkative nymph of a conifer grove on Mount Kithairon (Κιθαιρών), a mountain in central Greece. The god Zeus frequently visited her evergreen grove in order to cheat on his wife, the goddess Hera, with the nymphs of the mountain. One day, when Hera came looking for Zeus in the grove, Echo, “who never held her tongue when others spoke, who never spoke till others had begun,” distracted the goddess Hera so that Zeus could escape unnoticed (Ovid). But Hera discovered Echo’s deceit and in punishment for protecting Zeus’ adultery, Hera cursed Echo so that she could no longer speak her own thoughts, but could only repeat (or echo) the final words spoken to her by another. “Your tongue, so freely wagged at my expense, shall be of little use; your endless voice, much shorter than your tongue.” — Hera's curse, according to Ovid Some time passed, and Echo came across the beautiful youth Narcissus while he was hunting in her grove. Echo immediately fell in love with him, burning desperately for his love. But Echo, who could only repeat the final words of another, was unable to express her feelings. So instead, she lay in hiding, hoping that Narcissus would utter any word just so that she could echo it back to him. When Narcissus finally called out while looking for his friends, Echo took the chance to respond. But unable to declare her love, she only repeated the final words of each sentence he spoke. This, understandably, confused Narcissus, who looked around frantically trying to understand who mocked him. After some time of repeating his words, Echo finally took the chance to reveal herself and tried to embrace him. But Narcissus was uninterested in love and numb to the advances of anyone who wanted him, male or female. So he pushed Echo away with disdain, just as he had refused every other admirer, and turned toward a spring in the grove to drink. But one particular suitor that Narcissus had rejected was Ameinias, and Ameinias had been so devastated by Narcissus's rejection that he took his own life, calling out to the gods as he died that Narcissus should be cursed to know the pain of unrequited love. The goddess Nemesis heard Ameinias' plea, so that when Narcissus knelt to take a drink from the crystal clear pool of Echo’s grove, Narcissus had the ill fortune of falling in love with his own reflection. Consumed by desire for himself, Narcissus was unable to pull himself away. He ached and pined and burned in unrequited love for himself, ignoring his need for food or rest. Slowly, his body wasted away beside the pool, while Echo watched, heartbroken from a distance, mimicking his cries of longing for himself. “And how he kisses the deceitful fount; and how he thrusts his arms to catch the neck that’s pictured in the middle of the stream! Yet never may he wreathe his arms around that image of himself. He knows not what he there beholds, but what he sees inflames his longing, and the error that deceives allures his eyes.” — Ovid, Metamorphoses Some say Narcissus eventually fell into the pool and drowned, others say that his body disintegrated and transformed into a white flower with a golden center, the flower we now call Narcissus. Echo, devastated by his death, became nothing but a sound: her own body dissolving, her bones transforming to stone, her voice forever echoing the final words of her only love. So what are we to make of this story? Is it about the dangers of self-obsession? A testament to the devastating pain of unrequited love? Or is it something else entirely? Personally, I think this is actually a deep lesson in the need for self-awareness. It reminds us to find the middle ground between numbness and obsession. And it warns against the seduction of looking without seeing, of speaking without truth, and of loving without knowing ourselves. In Greek, Narcissus is pronounced Νάρκισσος (NAR-kee-soas), and as a word, it shares the same root as the Greek word “narcotic”- narke, which means “to numb.” And while this probably refers to the numbing nature of the plant itself, it is also symbolic of Narcissus’s own numbness to his own capacity for sexual desire.
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