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A Bee-Nymph, a Nature Spirit That Nurtures, Protects, and Essentially Is the Essence of Honeybees

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A Bee-Nymph, a Nature Spirit That Nurtures, Protects, and Essentially Is the Essence of Honeybees A Temple Wild Podcast Episode 3: The Melissae, Oracular Bee Nymphs https://atemplewild.com/podcast/melissae-oracular-bee-nymphs Transcript You're listening to A Temple Wild: Episode 3: The Melissae, Oracular Bee Nymphs 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's episode will be a little different; we won't be looking at any one particular myth, but instead we will be turning our attention to the Melissae, who were the Bee Nymphs of ancient Greece. And by the time you hear this, it will probably be late March, and springtime is in full swing, which is Bee season, everybody's buzzing around all the plants and flowers. But as I am writing and recording this episode, it is still quite cold here on the mountain. There is a fire burning in our wood stove, I have a hot cup of tea in my hand, and I'm bundled up against the chill that comes from the windows and walls of our not-so-well-insulated village house. But I saw my first Bee of the season just a few days ago! Which is really exciting, because as I said it's pretty cold here still. I'd opened my front door to get some kindling for the fire and there Bee was, hovering over my welcome mat, like a guest who had just knocked on the door. Bee flew over the doorstep, hovered just inside the door, and then turned around and flew off again, to who knows where. It was during the first few days of what I call the Air Season, which is a time of year for nesting, organizing, and celebrating the element of Air. The Air is a collector and gatherer of ideas, words and concepts. In my personal practice, this Season is especially a sacred time for honoring the Bee, that most industrious of gatherers, and so Bee's presence felt like a blessing of the house for the coming year. That it shows up just at the beginning of the Air season, just entered the house and then flew right out again. There are over 20,000 species of Bees that we've recorded on earth, and most of them do not conform to popular assumptions of what a Bee is. Bees can be solitary or social, stingless or deadly, and only 7 species (yes, that's only 7 out of those 20,000+) produce honey. But as a whole, they constitute the largest percentage of the Earth's flowering plant pollinators; they are absolutely vital to the Web of our world and the health of our planet. The most well-known Bee in the West is the Apis mellifera, the European Honeybee, which has been “domesticated” for over 8,000 years. As with most of Earth's creatures, Honeybees are spectacular. The Hive, in particular, is a study in order, balance, and devotion, with anywhere from 20,000 to upwards of 60,000 Bees working together at once to sustain their colony through foraging. They're organized and working as a collective, they dance their messages to their colony, and one colony can be responsible for pollinating nearly 20 million flowers per day. There is much wisdom to be gained from observing Bee, not just the common Honeybee, but also our wild and non-honey-producing Bee species, as well. For modern practitioners who want to reconnect with ancient Mediterranean ways, which is what A Temple Wild is all about, Bees are considered divine messengers, conduits for prophecy, speakers of divine truths, and a source for inspired thought and song. So today, I wanted to share with you some of the ancient Greek folklore associated with the Bee, as well as some of my favorite ceremonies and techniques for connecting with Bee. Before we start, though, I wanted to make a quick note about pronunciation. You'll notice that throughout this episode I say "MEL- iss-eye" to talk about the Bee nymphs in plural. In ancient Greek, the word is "MEL-ee-sah" for singular and "MEL-ee-seh" for plural. But in modern Greek, they say "MEL-ee-sah" for a singular Bee and "MEL-ee- ses" for plural bees. In English, I've also heard lots of different pronunciations of the word; sometimes you'll hear "mel-iss-AY" or "mel-iss-AI," "mel-ISS-ah," "mel-ISS-ess." (Melissa, the name for a person, comes from the word for honeybee.) Those are all just different pronunciations you might hear for this word. I personally use "MEL-iss-eye", I don't really know why; it just seems to roll easily off my tongue, and that seems to be the word that I prefer to use, but like I said, the actual ancient Greek way of saying plural would be "MEL- ee-seh." Divine Messengers In ancient Greek, the word Melissa (plural: Melissae) means Honeybee, and is also used to mean a Bee-nymph, a nature spirit that nurtures, protects, and essentially is the essence of Honeybees. These Melissae can be found in many of the same places as other nymphs (mountains, forests, and meadows) but especially near shaded, freshwater springs. Some say that the ancient Greeks believed Honeybees to be asexual and born from the corpses of bulls offered in sacrifice (bulls being a sacred symbol of fertility). To the ancient Greeks, Honeybees were simultaneously a symbol of chaste purity as well as regeneration, and their swarms were sometimes likened to a gathering, or dispersing, of souls. For this reason, the term Melissae was also used to describe chaste priestesses who were dedicated to goddesses responsible for agricultural cycles and the mysteries of life and death. Specifically, Demeter's Eleusinian priestesses were sometimes called Melissae, and her daughter, the goddess Persephone, was sometimes referred to as "The Honeyed One" and addressed with various other epithets beginning with "Meli-" (meli being the Greek word for honey) to imply her youth, beauty, purity, and, of course, springtime. As the Queen of the Underworld, Persephone was allowed to cross from the land of the living to the land of the dead and back again only with the changing of the seasons, linking her intimately, like the Bee, with the cycles of nature and the birth-death circle. As for the chaste goddess Artemis: she was a protectress of newborns and patron of midwives, who usher new souls into the world. So it is not surprising that her priestesses at Ephesus were also called Melissae. Dwelling as they often do in rock clefts, caves, and tree-hollows, Bees are easily associated with the Underworld. Passing through narrow crevices that symbolize gateways, the Melissae act as mediaries or messengers between the realms, able to share the wisdom of the Earth with mortals. Bees were also once called "Birds of the Muses" (another reference to Bees as messengers, as Birds were associated with omens and the delivery of divine knowledge) and they are often a source of divine inspiration, prophecy, and song. For this reason, the Melissae also came to be associated with the Olympic gods of prophecy: Hermes and Apollo. In the Homeric Hymns, we hear Apollo say that he was actually taught the art of prophecy by three Melissae dwelling in the caves of Mount Parnassos near Delphi: There are certain holy ones, sisters born — three virgins gifted with wings: their heads are besprinkled with white meal, and they dwell under a ridge of Parnassus. These are teachers of divination apart from me, the art which I practised while yet a boy following herds, though my father paid no heed to it. From their home they fly now here, now there, feeding on honey-comb and bringing all things to pass. And when they are inspired through eating yellow honey, they are willing to speak truth; but if they be deprived of the gods' sweet food, then they speak falsely, as they swarm in and out together. — The Homeric Hymns English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White I love the message to be inferred from that passage; it seems to contain both a blessing and a warning. Honey is a precious gift, the consumption of which inspires truth-telling, wisdom, and calm order. But all beekeepers know that there must be moderation when harvesting from the Hive: if you take too much Honey, the Bees will not survive the winter. We are reminded of the Bees’ centrality to existence, "bringing all things to pass," and we're warned that if we deprive the Melissae of their golden food, we could instead inspire a swarming chaos. Much like the Bees themselves, Honey is a conduit for divine blessing, inspiration, and truth. The Melissae are credited with nurturing Zeus and Dionysos with honey in their infancy, a way of showing the Earth's blessing of the new Olympian gods. And the Muses, who in their earliest form were probably nymphs of freshwater springs, are also said to bestow honey upon the lips of gifted philosophers, poets, and singers. Some stories say that those mortals lucky enough to be Muse-blessed, such as Plato, Homer, and Sappho, were actually fed honey by Bees as infants, much like the gods. Honey-water and mead were probably some of the very first offerings made to the ancestors, and there is a strong case to be made that Ambrosia itself, that notorious food of the gods, was in fact golden honey. The Delphic Bee It's also interesting to note that one of the three original Melissae who taught Apollo the art of prophecy was called Daphne.
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