Talk:Orion (mythology)

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Contents

[edit] 2004

Removed - may put some back Stirling Newberry 07:52, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Bloody death and fertility are inescapably linked connotations for the many-seeded pomegranate with its dark red juice. Is the chambered pomegranate also a surrogate for the poppy's narcotic capsule? On a Mycenaean seal (illustrated in Joseph Campbell's Occidental Mythology, figure 19) the seated Goddess of the double-headed axe (the labrys) offers three poppy pods in her right hand and supports her breast with her left. She embodies both aspects of the dual goddess, life-giving and death-dealing at once. Is that why Persephone found the pomegranate waiting, when she sojourned in the dark realm?
Orion's link with the pomegranate is sufficiently clearly demonstrated in the article. The well-established pomegranate symbolism has been strengthened at Pomegranate. I have stripped the "goddess" sidetrack from the article: Mesopotamian, Syria, Anatolia and the Aegean pretty well covers the whole area relevant for the Orion figure. --Wetman 08:27, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Enkidu, before he was entrapped and humanized through the erotic lure of a temple courtesan, offers a glimpse into the nature of primal Orion. "The whole of his body was hairy and his (uncut) locks were like a woman's or the hair of the goddess of grain. Moreover, he knew nothing of settled fields or human beings and was clothed (in skins) like a deity of flocks." Like the Titan, Enkidu was "tall in stature, towering up to the battlements over the wall," as his urban chroniclers described him. "Surely he was born in the mountains," the shepherds cried out, when they first saw him. But once Enkidu had been civilized, the animals fled from him. Now "he scattered the wolves, he chased away the lions" and the herders could lie down in peace, for Enkidu was now their watchman. The Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (we have it in a late Babylonian version) remained untranslated into Greek until modern times, and there was no direct knowledge of the Enkidu of the Gilgamesh story in the Achaean world, though pieces of tablet with fragments describing Enkidu's death have turned up at Megiddo in Canaan and at Emar on the upper Euphrates River in Syria. It wasn't a question of the figure of Enkidu influencing the myth of Orion. Both were survivals of a Neolithic Master of the Animals.

This is far too speculative, he hangs a long paragraph on one convergence, goes off for a long time on Enkidu, which should be in a link. Does not firm up the association with the neolithic hunt god, who would be Theos in any event, and therefore is probably another mythological archetype from later, imposed over the Sothic story. Stirling Newberry 07:56, 15 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The idea of "the neolithic hunt god, who would be Theos" innocently reveals a state of ignorance: imagine a neolithic hunt god with the Indo-European name Theos. "This is far too speculative" gives an authoritative impression, but it's blarney. At any rate the Orion-Enkidu parallel is presented strongly in the article, now that I've returned the italicised text, the significance of which won't be lost on the reader with some basic grounding. Other material belongs at Enkidu. When I have time and patience I shall return to retrieve essential material concerning Orion, including the actual telling of the myth, overlooked by our confident editor when he too-boldly trashed this article. --Wetman 08:27, 29 July 2005 (UTC)--Wetman 08:27, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Through his pomegranate union, the Neolithic nature of primitive Orion was consecrated to the Goddess. Once he had been brought into the civilized world, Orion was ready for his second episode: now Orion was prepared to stake a claim to Merope of Chios. He plunged into the Aegean and was soon well away from shore, when, looking back, he saw his two great hounds struggling in the waves. Turning back, he took them up, and thus he came ashore on Chios, with his great spear slung across his broad back and under each massive arm a hunting dog, the Great One and the Lesser One.
When he came ashore, Orion found that he was once again in a place called Hyrai, another bee-swarm. The two Hyrai may have functioned as two entrances to the netherworld, which would have enabled Orion to pass between Boeotia and Chios in a chthonic journey. In later Classical times, the "tomb" of Orion that was shown to visitors in Boeotia may have been the cave-entrance.
In the island of Chios, the "Merope" whom Orion sought seems to mean "honey-faced" in Greek, thus "eloquent," but surely at an earlier level her "face" was a bee-mask. Cretan bee-masked priestesses appear on Minoan seals. One of the mythographers recalled the tradition that "Merope" was the "bee-eater" in the old Minoan tongue, before the Hellenes ever came to the Aegean. The proto-Greek invaders did not bring the art of bee-keeping with them. Homer saw bees as wild, never tame, as when the Achaeans issued forth from their ship encampment "like buzzing swarms of bees that come out in relays from a hollow rock" (Iliad, book II). Bee-keeping was a Minoan craft, and the fermented honey-drink was the old Cretan intoxicant, older than wine. Long after Knossos fell, for two thousand years, the classical Greek tongue preserved "honey-intoxicated" as the phrase for "drunken."

But there are too many Meropes in mythic fragments. One Merope married Sisyphus. Another Merope and her sister Cleothera were the orphaned daughters of Trojan Pandarus. Yet another Merope was queen to Creophontes in Messenia, until "serial killer" Polyphontes murdered him and claimed Merope and her matriarchal throne. Still another Merope, also known as Periboea, the wife of Polybus at Corinth, adopted Oedipus.

This name Merope figures in too many isolated tales for "Merope" to be an individual. Instead the "Merope" must denote a position as priestess of the Goddess. But surely Merope the "bee-eater" is unlikely to be always a bee herself. Though there is a small Mediterranean bird called the Bee-Eater, which was known under that name to Roman naturalists Pliny and Aelian, this Bee-Eater is most likely to have been a She-Bear, a representative of Artemis. The goddess was pictured primitively with a she-bear's head herself, and the bear remained sacred to Artemis into classical times. At a festival called the Brauronia, pre-pubescent girls were dressed in honey-colored yellow robes and taught to perform a bear dance. Once they had briefly served Artemis in this way, they would be ready to be married. In later times, a Syriac Book of Medicine recommends that the eye of a bear, placed in a hive, makes the bees prosper. The bear's spirit apparently watches over the hive, and this was precisely the Merope's role among the Hyrai at Chios.


Such Bronze Age Aegean cult centers guided by priestesses dedicated to the Great Goddess were deeply threatening to the Hellene invaders and warranted close patriarchal supervision. Placed in charge of this Merope and her hive on Chios was Oinopion, the "wine-man," a son of Dionysus. Some say he came from Crete, others specify Lemnos or Naxos. Wine mixed with fermented honey, as at Chios, mediated between the sacred intoxicants of the old order and the new patriarchal Olympian one, and honey mixed with wine remained a suitable libation to propitiate both levels of divinity, as Jason and the Argonauts wisely showed when they first set foot ashore in the chthonic and dangerous land of Colchis.
Under the old regime that Orion embodies, Oinopion would have been the annual consort of the Merope, but at the time level of the Orion myths, he had become as a "father" to her instead, a guardian-sponsor. Though the late poets thus called him Merope's father, Oinopion betrayed his most unfatherlike jealousy and determination to preserve his position. When the Titan came ashore, stained with pomegranate blood, ready to offer himself as a candidate for the role of consort, Oinopion set Orion a challenging contest to justify his right. Since he was so famed as a hunter, Orion had to rid the island of all its dangerous wild beasts. There was an ironic shift of roles here, for the animal-master of the Neolithic had originally been the spirit-protector of the animals, similar to the untamed Enkidu, who released them from the hunters' traps and springes. At the Neolithic level, the Master of the Animals was their protector; the hunter had to propitiate him, so that he would release the animals from his care; only then could the hunt be successful. Orion, like primal Enkidu also the "offspring of the mountains," had been at one with the wild creatures until he achieved self-consciousness. Now the "awakened" Animal Master hunted them himself. There was further irony in Oinopion's demand, if the "bee-eater" were herself a bear. And in his heart the usurping Oinopion was unwilling to be bested, to resign, though no longer to be sacrificed in the archaic way, even though Orion might successfully master the ritual contests.
Evening after evening Orion brought in pelts of bear and lion, lynx and wolf, and piled them in the Hyrian palace-hive. But it was never enough. Even though the island was rendered secure from marauding beasts, wily Oinopion always claimed that there were still rumors of a wolf or a bear heard to be roaming the island's farthest mountain districts.

In the evenings Oinopion plied Orion with his wine. Wine, the civilized gift of Dionysus, has a wild other nature, as the toxic barren ivy. Wine worked potently on the Titan's own wild and earthy nature, and one night in darkness, after the household had all gone to their chambers, Orion, inflamed by wine, took the perhaps not-unwilling Merope, there in her palace-hive. Then, overcome, he slept.

While Orion lay in a stupor, Oinopion stole upon him and he put out Orion's eyes. With a shout, Oinopion called up the guards, and just as a hive of bees will cast out a giant hornet intruder, they cast Orion, blinded, down onto the seashore, where ocean and land come together.
For a long time, there the Hunter lay. When a Titan has been outwardly blinded, he may receive in compensation a gift of inner sight. So Orion needed no oracle, as some have claimed, to know that he must seek out the first light of Helios, just when his chariot rises from the easternmost rim of Oceanus, that the place to achieve this was the eastern edge of the possible world, which is also known as the land of Colchis. There the sun's first rays would restore his sight.
Meanwhile, how had Merope fared? In such mythic contests, the "prize" often favors the heroic contender, as Ariadne was to favor Theseus. Now this Merope of Chios was at the same time one of the seven Pleiades, the "sailing sisters." They were named in the old matriarchal way for their mother Pleione. Sometimes Atlas is said to be their father, and then they are called the "Atlantides." If Atlas is indeed the father of Orion too, then his daughters the Pleiades are Orion's half-sisters. No wonder then that Orion longed to cleave to this Merope, if they had indeed sprung from the same stock.
All Aegean sailors knew that the Pleiades mark out the season that is safe for venturing upon the sea. The season opens "when from the Bull, the Sun enters into the Twins at the rising of the Pleiades." Nowadays this falls in late May. The safe sailing is over "when the Sun enters the Scorpion, at the setting of the Pleiades," all according to the Roman Vitruvius, who was quoting the Greek astronomer Democritus. By a witty invention, Pindar made them the "Peleiades"- the flock of doves- but this was just a momentary trope.
But was this Merope at the same time one of the Heliades, the sisters of Phaeton and daughters of Helios, as Hyginus tells? That would have made her a doubly-fit guide to lead the sightless Orion through the seas to the house of the Sun.
Northwards from Chios Orion made his way, whether guided by his inner sight or led by the rising Merope and her sisters, once the late spring weather had safely settled. Within a day or so he came to the volcano isle of Lemnos, where Hephaistos maintains his forge. Orion descended to the underworld smithy in the island's fiery heart. Later the Lemnian cave would become famous for its mysteries, in which each initiate was united with his chthonic brother counterpart. Like them, Orion himself sought no product of Hephaistos' forge, neither armor nor cauldron nor tripod. Instead, from among the many apprentices in the cavernous smithy of Lady Hera's son, Orion took up one, Cedalion, for a guide and set the youth upon his shoulders. So together they sailed north and east, with Merope in her sailing aspect to guide them, through the narrows and the Propontis, into the wide Euxine Sea.
Far to the eastern shore, in Colchis at the uttermost end of the world, Helios, whose bright eye misses nothing on the earth nor in the sea, sleeps by night in the golden house of Aietes, until he is waked by Eos, the Dawn. There, when Dawn came lighting the east with rosy fingers, the first rays of sunlight struck Orion's face and look! his sight was restored. But at the first flush of dawn, Merope faded and failed. Thus of seven Pleiades who still guide Orion across the vault of night, only six are to be seen, if there should be even the least hint of rosy-fingered Dawn. Alexandrian poets liked to imagine that Merope hides her face in shame, for having married the mere mortal Sisyphus, king of Corinth, while all her Pleiad sisters were given to Olympic gods. But that worldly snobbery speaks more of the Hellenistic Age of Monarchies than of the age of myth.
Eos too is of the Titan lineage, and she was immediately smitten by the handsomest Titan of all. That daughter of Hyperion always has weaknesses for demi-gods with some Titan blood in their veins, and Eos longed to cast her bright thighs across his dark ones. There in the house of Helios Orion tarried all summer. Yet at each approach of Dawn, Orion paled and grew faint, his flesh growing transparent under her very touch.
Next, Orion returned to the island of Chios, burning for revenge on Oinopion. But it appears that he arrived in the winter season, when the Chians had pruned their vines to stubs. For we are told that the "wine-man" Oinopion lay secretly in an underground chamber prepared for him by Hephaistos, awaiting his annual renewal we can be sure, and Orion sought him up and down, but in vain.
Then, at the end of winter, Orion passed under the horizon to Crete. Crete was still the homeland of archaic pre-Greek goddess-centered cult.
The oldest of these aspects of the Goddess was as Mother of Mountains, who appears on Minoan seals with the demonic features of a Gorgon, accompanied by the double-axes of power and gripping divine snakes. Her terror-inspiring aspect was softened by calling her Britomartis, the "good virgin." Every element of the Classical myths that told of Britomartis served to reduce her, even literally to entrap her in nets (but only because she "wanted" to be entrapped): patriarchal writers even made her the "daughter" of Zeus, rather than his patroness when he was an infant in her cave, and they made her own tamed, "evolved" and cultured aspect, Artemis, responsible for granting Britomartis goddess status. But the ancient goddess never quite disappeared and remained on the coins of Cretan cities, as herself or as Diktynna, the goddess of Mount Dikte, Zeus' birthplace. As Diktynna, winged and now represented with a human face, she stood on her ancient mountain, and grasped an animal in each hand, in the guise of Potnia, the Mistress of animals. Later Greeks could only conceive of a mistress of animals as a huntress, but on the early seals she suckles griffons. Archaic representations of winged Artemis show that she evolved from Potnia theron, the Mistress of Animals.
There in Crete Orion had an obscure encounter with the death-dealing Scorpion, whose ascendency in the zodiac marks the downturn of the year. The scorpion is a natural symbol of death, of the darkness of night and the underworld generally. So it was perceived in Sumer, in Egypt, in the Book of Kings (12:11) and among Zoroastrians. The scorpion is a creature of the Triple Goddess too, under the death-bringing aspect of her death-and-life renewal cycle. One late mythmaker would have it that Hera (still at some level Mistress of the Animals) was incensed by a report of Apollo that related Orion's boast that he was master of all the wild creatures of the Aegean. Some myths would have Orion die of the scorpion's sting, to be brought back to life by the healer Aesclepias, who would then be struck down by Zeus' thunderbolt in retribution for his audacity.
Perhaps, though, the Scorpion simply refers to Orion's union and renewal with the Goddess. For the restored and completed Orion, earth-man of mountains from the distant Neolithic past, master of the animals, fortified with honey-drink, stained still with the Goddess's pomegranate, bursting with virile seed, now sought out Artemis herself, at Delos. Even though he was reunited in Crete with the Great Goddess, Orion fixed his resolve to conquer Artemis as her consort. And this was to be his undoing. When the Pleiades rose from the Sea of Crete at the end of winter, Orion made his way north to Delos, still accompanied by the faithful Dawn.
But Artemis, now that she has been reborn on Delos as an Olympian goddess, must strenuously reject her own old ways, the blood sacrifices and the sequence of ritually murdered consorts. Now that Olympian Artemis is twinned chastely with Apollo instead, she has no further need of consorts at all. Thus it is that, walking along the coast of Delos, the twin Olympians spy at a great distance the giant head of the swimmer, no more than a black speck in the dazzling sun-path on the sea.
"Look!" cries Apollo. "There is the false Candaeon, who has seduced your chaste priestess in the Hyperborean north." Artemis does not recognize this Boeotian nickname for Orion, and she has drawn her bow and transfixed him with three arrows before she realizes her error. So Orion is safely banished to the skies, where, indeed, perhaps he had always been.

More stuff which is too much a mixture of the story, some connections and a whole ton of speculation based on locations without ordering correctly. It's also POV style. Leaving it here and sorting through material a bit at a time.

I took out the reference to Orion being a Titan at the beginning. According to one of the birth stories listed here his father was Posiedon, so he was not a titan.

Oh, so he was "not a titan" then... Frankly, I always think editing at Wikipedia is better if one knows something about the subject. The products of American High Schools all seem to have majored in Self-Confidence... --Wetman 05:17, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Too Complicated

Leaving aside the other, above criticisms (particularly the speculation throughout the article), I think that this article is perhaps too complicated/specialized for an encyclopedia entry. It would be nice if a more succinct explanation of the myth(s) were provided. I'm not saying that the article as it stands should be deleted, but a more compact distillation of the the myth might be given in the first paragraph, before the in-depth analysis, so that the lay-person can readily find what they are looking for.--MS Also, the parenthetical statement in the first paragraph didn't make sense to me; I think it should be clarified.

The phrase in parenthesis is
"("mountain man" if the name is truly Greek)".
It gives the standard etymology of Orion, and expresses a reservation, without entering into speculation, which the current stripped-down version of the article is avoiding. The subject is inherently complicated, as there's no single "correct" Greek literary version of the Orion myth (as the article states), which would make the myth apperar "simple". The Simple English Wikipedia should be routinely consulted for simple and succinct answers. The article does need a summarizing first paragraph. --Wetman 06:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
I came here for a little info on Orion, and have noted the comments here. As has been stated elsewhere on this page, there are many different sources for the myth, which complicates things. I think that rather than explaining them as an amalgamation, it might make the article clearer and more orderly if each version had its own section, where the entire myth were stated. So if you had three sources, Smith, Jones, and Johnson, for example, you could have a heading for the Smith version of the myth, followed by a Jones heading, then ending with a Johnson heading. Lkusz
The sources, many of which are given in notes and references, are very fragmentary, sometimes just a passing remark or a phrase. The article is complicated, because no ancient "biography" of Orion exists: see the Orion references at www.theoi.com, linked in the references, and you'll see. Odysseus, by contrast, makes an easily-told narrative. It's a relief to see someone take this seriously. --Wetman 03:56, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Um...

This article is so what can go wrong with Wikipedia.

It needs to be completely replaced:

1. Brief introduction describing Orion as a Greek divine figure of a certain type.

2. Section: "Etymology". A brief and scientific statement on possible etymologies, all of which are uncertain.

3. Section: "Mythology". A summary of each classical Orion myth, with the classical source cited.

4. Section: "Modern Mythography". A brief, coherent, and objective statement of each major modern "interpretation" of the Orion figure, with the modern author cited. It should not take the position that any of these theories are fact, and should clarify which are feminist interpretations, etc.


[edit] Can someone sort this out?

I would but I know nothing about Orion, hence I came here; and found some meandering speculative essay in poor English.

I agree with the writer above.

[edit] Meanderings and speculations

The core of this article should really deal with Orion in mythology like any proper encyclopedia. The material presented is mostly speculation and opinion, which at best, should be placed under a minor sub-heading "Interpretations" and be considerably condensed. I attempted to make some minor amendments which were mostly editted out of this closely guarded article. 1) Orion as a giant. No classical author describes him as a Titan, a title reserved for the sons and grandsons of Ouranos. 2) Hyria is a town near Aulis and Tanagra. There are historical references to the settlement, including its incorporation into the Tanagran polis in 338 BC. 3) Euryale, daughter of Minos. How can one justify associating her with the Gorgon of the same name? Classical writers never did. They share a name, but then so did many characters of myth. 4) Why discard the king Hyrieus? Ovid, Hyginus and Antoninus Liberalis are all authors who source their material from older Greek texts. As for the rest, the entire page needs a major overhaul. Theranos 21:50, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Replaced

As many have noted above, the text of this article consisted of highly "speculative" (or rather made-up) divagations on Enkidu, phony etymologies, "modern" interpretations, and bogus "Neolithic myths" (n.b., a recorded myth of a preliterate society is a contradiction in terms). I attempted to whittle it down to the basic story of Orion, but there was little enough of that and nothing trustworthy. So I excised it all in favor of material based on (not copied from) two public-domain mythology encyclopedias. It would be better to go back to Apollodorus and Hyginus, but I don't have those authors available to me.RandomCritic 03:52, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Everyone has pseudo-Apollodorus' Bibliotheke and Hyginus— if Fabulae seem like a dependable and thoughtful source— available to them: they're on-line, and linked from the Wikipedia with a single click. Lazy. The two "references" are William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, (1867) and Oscar Seyffert Dictionary of Classical Antiquities, (1894). This is a bold editor indeed: why not base the article on Thomas Bulfinch?

Two versions, for the reader's comparison:

Compare the two, paragraph by paragraph, reference by reference, and see: incompetent" is a strong word: is it undeserved? --Wetman 06:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Genuine reservations

If any reader has misgivings about a phrase, that it might not be supported in literary Greek or Latin myth or relate to published commentary, please insert {{fact}} after the offending phrase. Readers editing in good faith will be unlikely to pepper the article with more than a half-dozen such citation requests at an edit, one supposes. Thank you for your patience. --Wetman 07:56, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

I see the crap has been restored. Every single sentence in this article would demand "citation requests". The problem is not primarily an absence of citation. The problem is an absence of relevance or fact. RandomCritic 13:27, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Critique, part one

Orion (Greek Ὠρίων),

The above is about the only factual statement in the whole article.

a Titan

Orion is not a Titan. This was already pointed out above.

<ref>"His name was rightly associated with [[Otus|Otos]] and [[Ephialtes]], the Aloadai." (Kerenyi, 1951, p. 201, noting ''Odyssey'' 11.310. </ref>

This is opinion, not fact; it's a pseudo-reference that does nothing to support the statement, as Otus and Ephialtes were giants, not Titans. This kind of b.s. "reference" continues through the article.

provided the archetype of the primordial hunter in Greek culture.

Archetypes belong to psychology, not mythology. And what is "primordial" about Orion? This is pseudo-scientific claptrap, windy verbiage disguising an absence of fact and advertising a fuzziness of thought.

<ref>""[[Heracles|Herakles]], if one wanted to emphasise the 'culture-hero' element in him, would become at most a hunting hero, an enemy of wild beasts, an Orion, though Orion too was something more than that." (Kerenyi 1959 p. 12).</ref>

Another spurious, irrelevant "reference".

Orion was beloved of Eos, the Dawn, and was slain by Artemis, who set him in the sky.

This is one version of the story. It does a disservice to proclaim it as _the_ version.

In modern interpretations Orion ("mountain man" if the name is truly Greek) exists on three mythic planes.

Here begins an astounding farrago of meaninglessness. "Three mythic planes"? This is mumbo-jumbo and absolutely unencyclopedic.

On the Neolithic level he is a shaman, the "master of the animals," an Aegean counterpart to Enkidu, the wild companion of Sumerian/Babylonian Gilgamesh.

Neolithic? We know nothing about the myths of the (illiterate) New Stone Age. Enkidu, however, was certainly not among them. This is nonsense.

On the Minoan level, he has been dedicated to the Great Goddess of Crete.

More nonsense. While we have Minoan-era writings, they are non-mythological and Orion is not mentioned among them.

On the Classical level, he has become a threat to the reformed and Olympian Artemis and must be destroyed.

There is finally some vague allusion to the Orion myth here, but it is opinion and not fact.

His myth survives only in fragmentary episodes and references

Not really true, but convenient for someone like Graves who likes to "recreate" myths that never existed to support his own agenda.

and its meanings were obscure to the patriarchal culture of classical Greece and need some explaining. Orion's journeys may be traced on a map.

The kind of "explaining" given in this article we do not need. It is wholesale invention.

[edit] Ancestry, origins, birth

According to Hesiod,[1] Orion was a son of Poseidon and the beautiful and awful Gorgon Euryale, in this context said to be one of the daughters of King Minos of Crete. Her name means the "wide-ranging" one, she of the "wide salt sea", eureia halys.[2].

The etymology is really irrelevant, even if valid. Note that two incommensurable etymologies are given!

Boeotians said[3] that Orion was born instead in Boeotia

A tidbit of fact

, the fertile heart of civilized Hellas, whose folk the Boeotian poet Hesiod described as farmers in the winter and sailors in the summer season.

Followed by irrelevancies

(Did the Boeotians sail but not swim, that they disputed whether Orion waded the Aegean from island to island or merely strode through the waves?).

Followed by meaninglessness

Though some said Orion sprang directly from Gaia, the Earth Mother, others make his father Gaia's grandson, the Titan Atlas, who equally has his great feet planted in the sea.

If this article is so well sourced, why do we have "some said... others make...?"

Orion's Boeotian birth took place at Hyrai

It's a small town. Why make a big fuss about it?

, an ancient place mentioned in Homer's catalogue of the ships that set forth to fetch Helen home from Troy. There a childless king "Hyreus", who had prayed to the gods for a son. Zeus, Poseidon and Hermes, visitors in disguise[4] responded by urinated on a bull's hide and burying it in the earth produced a child. He was named Orion—as if "of the urine"— after the unusual event.[5]

Anything that cites Graves is instantly risible. We do not even seem to be able to spell "Hyrieus", either the first time...

Though the tale creates a fanciful etymology for "Orion", in archaic times, no "Hyraeius"

Or the second.

dwelt at Hyrai.

In standard gravesian mode, actual myth is shoved aside for "authoritative" statements of nonsense.

Like some other archaic names of Greek cities, such as Athenai or Mycenae, Hyrai is a plural form: its name once had evoked the place of "the sisters of the beehive". According to Hesychius, the Cretan word hyron meant 'swarm of bees' or 'beehive' (Kerenyi 1976 pp42-3). Through his "beehive" birthplace Orion is linked to Potnia, the Minoan-Mycenaean "Mistress" older than Demeter—who was herself sometimes called "the pure Mother Bee". Winged, armed with toxin, creators of the fermentable honey (see mead), seemingly parthenogenetic in their immortal hive, bees functioned as emblems of other embodiments of the Great Mother: Cybele, Rhea the Earth Mother, and the archaic Artemis as honored at Ephesus. Pindar remembered that the Pythian pre-Olympic priestess of Delphi remained "the Delphic bee" long after Apollo had usurped the ancient oracle and shrine. The Homeric Hymn to Apollo acknowledges that Apollo's gift of prophecy first came to him from three bee-maidens.

Totally irrelevant pseudo-etymologies that have nothing to do with Orion.

The article continues in this vein for some while, but need I go on? It is crap from beginning to end, based on pseudo-scholarship. It's like writing an astronomy article based on Velikovsky. At least my 19th-century encyclopedists had respect for their material, and did not attempt to force false meanings on it.

It gets better, though...

[edit] Primordial Orion

The Titan Orion...

Not a Titan
Thought-free. Son of the Titan Atlas. Titan of a Titan lineage. If not a titan, then what? Hero? [[]Gigante]]? Perhaps, though, there is actually no focused picture in this interjection at all. --Wetman 22:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

...then, literally "mountain-man," (compare orogeny) embodies some primeval aspects of untouched nature.

"Embodies some primeval aspects" -- this is verbiage futilely going in search of meaning. This kind of bloviation occurs throughout.
Obtuse. "Master of the Animals" is one primeval aspect of a primordial hunter. If one can't tell that Orion is an example of "untouched nature", then his successive "acculturation" in a series of encounters will naturally seem incoherent to the reader. --Wetman 22:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Readers may find a useful parallel of Orion in the valiant Enkidu, the opposite/brother and rival-made-friend and helper of Gilgamesh. Like Orion Enkidu was "tall in stature, towering up to the battlements over the wall," as his urban chroniclers described him. "Surely he was born in the mountains," the shepherds cried out, when they first saw him. There is no suggestion of a direct transmission from the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (we have it in a late Babylonian version) which remained untranslated into Greek until modern times, and there was no direct knowledge of the Enkidu of the Gilgamesh story in the Achaean world, though pieces of tablet with fragments describing Enkidu's death have turned up at Megiddo in Canaan and at Emar on the upper Euphrates River in Syria, areas on the edges of the Mycenaean world.

Enkidu is interesting, but there is no reason for long divagations about Enkidu in an article on Orion any more than there is a reason for introducing a long discussion of Britney Spears. Both are equally relevant.
Unlettered. Walter Burkert, The Orientalizing Revolution: Near Eastern Influence on Greek Culture in the Archaic Age (Harvard University Press) 1992 might take the bloom off perfect ignorance in this area. --Wetman 22:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

It wasn't a question of the figure of Enkidu influencing the myth of Orion. Both were survivals of a Neolithic Master of the Animals, surviving from the Neolithic hunt as the Ice Age waned. The Mother Goddess created Enkidu, just as Gaia gave rise to Orion.

This is of course b.s. There is no such thing as (known) Neolithic myth, and any attempt to "reconstruct" such a thing can be no more than deliberate fraud.
"Deliberate fraud" is a pretty stiff personal accusation up at my end of the trailer park. Without descending to such personal attacks, let me inform my sarcastic correspondent that the "Neolithic Master of the Animals" is a familiar figure to the rest of us, as is the Great Hunt of the late Ice age. Even Joseph Campbell would help lift the fog here: I recommend The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology.--Wetman 22:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Edits made in good faith are edits. Cumulative editing provides good articles. Creating an unreferenced parallel article out of one's opinions mixed with half-remembered Greek mythology from seventh grade is a too-familiar tactic: compare the vandal attacking Poseidon in just this same way. --Wetman 22:21, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orion and Side

Orion's first episode, represented as a "marriage," associates him with Side

This is the extent of the factual element in this entire section

, quite literally the "pomegranate", in a consecration to that aspect of "The Goddess" of the pre-Indo-European peoples of the Aegean and the Fertile Crescent who later evolved into Hera. The union appears purely mystical, a civilizing rite for Orion the representative of Nature:

Absurd speculation.
(Unaware that side is "pomegranate". Unaware of the pomegranate in the hand of Hera in the Arvive Heraion. A little reading would take the edges off this misplaced self-confidence.--Wetman 22:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

we hear of no offspring; we know of no named place where Orion presided as Side's consort. The Boeotians simply used the word side as the name for the pomegranate. Other Greek dialects call the pomegranate rhoa; its possible connection with the name of the Earth Goddess Rhea, a name inexplicable in Greek, proved suggestive for the mythographer Karl Kerenyi, who suggested that the consonance might ultimately derive from a deeper, pre-Indo-European language layer.

Dubious etymologies
Karl Kerenyi is a writer on mythology whose very name is unfamiliar apparently. --Wetman 22:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
For the layman who comes here, Karl Kerenyi's name may indeed be unfamiliar. It is the point of Wikipedia, isn't it, as it is of any encyclopedia, to assume that the reader of an entry knows nothing on the subject? If that is the case, it would be helpful to the layman (such as myself) to let us know that Kerenyi is, in the circles of mythologists, a well-known writer on mythology. Lkusz

The wild pomegranate did not grow natively in the Aegean area in Neolithic times. It originated in the Iranian east and came to the Aegean world along the same cultural pathways that brought The Goddess whom the Anatolians worshipped as Cybele and the Mesopotamias as Ishtar. The myth of Persephone, the dark goddess of the Underworld also prominently features the pomegranate.

Irrelevant details.
Not to the reader. Enough of this time-wasting.--Wetman 22:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

Several "pomegranate" places called Side existed in the Greek world, though not in Boeotia. One stood in the Peloponnese, north of Cape Malea. Another Side, daughter of Taurus, gave her name to a place in Pamphylia, a country only marginally Greek during classical times and now part of modern Turkey. Still another Side committed suicide at her mother's tomb, to escape advances made by her father. She became transmuted to a pomegranate tree and he to a kite, emblem of a robber in the Greek mind. Because of the legendary connection, kites allegedly never land in pomegranate trees.

And on, and on in the same vein. None of this belongs in this article. It's not merely questing for a citation; it's gotten lost and is in the wrong neighborhood. Oddly enough, the miniscule story of Side is never given in this whole section!

I could continue, but that's enough for now. It is appalling that this article is on Wikipedia at all.RandomCritic 14:02, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh but please do continue. Most enlightening. --Wetman 22:27, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This is appalling and is a clear candidate for deletion

As someone said above, this article shows everything that can go wrong with Wikipedia (but thankfully rarely does)

A straightforward piece of reference for readers is all that is required from an encylopedia - an intelligent structure, summarising the main points in good, simple English. It is NOT a forum for spouting your own incomprehensible personal pseudo-theories. Please understand that.

This article should be deleted. And I think there is a strong case from preventing whichever idiot keeps re-posting this dreadful verbiage up here from posting elswhere on Wikipedia. Whoever you are, if you can't even begin to see how bad this article is then I'm sorry but you really shouldn't be here.

For a start, it is minimal courtesy to sign your posts. Articles are not deleted from Wikipedia because someone just doesb't like them. Any "personal pseudo-theories" should be flagged [citation needed]. Articles in Wikipedia are not flattering mirrors of one's own incompetence. They are informative and sourced. --Wetman 21:57, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm seeing a lot of rhetoric, but nothing that deals with the central problem that this article is full of illogical, unscholarly associations with irrelevant matters that have nothing to do with the central subject of the article: the mythological Orion. The farrago about "Ice Age mythologies" is only the most obviously nonsensical of these digressions. But even nonsense theories can be fairly covered in a Wikipedia article -- in a subsection which gives them no more prominence than they are due and clearly states that they are disputed. This article, however, in a clearly NPOV move, states these opinions as if they are fact. Worst of all, there is no clear and straightforward statement of what the myths about Orion are. This article is neither accurate nor well-sourced; if we are dependent for our mythology on Graves, Campbell, and Kerenyi/Jung, we are in bad shape. Maybe some classicists rather than "mythologists" could be consulted. RandomCritic 05:51, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Graves is remarkably useful, if his data are distinguished from his personal theories. He makes this simple, by relating the myths, in Pausanias' voice, separately from his interpretations. Beyond that, RC clearly atates the neutral approach, although I would not start with "Show me why this article should not be deleted!"; although Kerenyi and Campbell's views should of course be explained. (I have not checked on practice here.) Septentrionalis 14:58, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed compromise

Set forth the mythological data first, and then explain the modern interpretations (which do not agree perfectly with each other in any case) sepqarately. When there is consensus, this should be noted; where there is not, neither Kerenyi nor Burkert should be given Wikipedia's voice. Stating where the explanation is Graves, where Nilsson, where Farrell, is more useful to the reader in any case. Where the moderns do achieve consensus, say so. What do the two of you think? Septentrionalis 15:11, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] For the chop: Primordial Orion

At the moment, this appears to be WP:OR, since no one is sourced as originating the idea that Enkidu and Orion are somehow linked. Does the idea come from a reliable scholarly source? If not, the whole section just has to go.

DanB†DanD 17:41, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

Isn't it Kerenyi? (I'm sure someone has said it; it's not OR = unattributable.) But do take it out; it shouldn't be asserted in Wikipedia's voice as consensus. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:26, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
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