"The worshippers of Attis abstained from eating the flesh of swine. This appears to indicate that the pig was regarded as an embodiment of Attis. And the legend that Attis was killed by a boar points in the same direction." (The Golden Bough, 546)

Announcements at the start: We are to read chapter 16 of The Metamorphoses in tandem with chapter four in Eliade, which deals with eschatology. Which is to say, the end of the world. Our world is going to be brought to an end. On a related note, Group presentations begin on November 23.

In The Golden Bough Frazer gives particular emphasis to the connection to the entities of Attis, Osiris and Adonis, all of whom are periodically slain and brought back to life through ritual. It is an intriguing coincidence(if you believe in those sorts of things) that one of the Hebrew names for God is Adonai. Can this have anything to do with the ancient cults devoted to Adonis, populated by ecstatic women, that really freaked out ancient Biblical patriarchs?

We also discussed the stories of Hercules and the shirt of Nessus(no, it is not in the Disney movie) and the story of Pygmalion, surviving to the present through George Bernard Shaw, My Fair Lady and Vertigo, among other things. One of the things that most excited me today was a book pulled up entitled The Effect: From Ovid to Hitchcock, by Victor L Stoichita. As a fan of Hitchcock and Ovid, this intrigues me greatly. Thank you Rio!

We have also been advised to look up the poem "the Lament of Tammuz", which stands along with the story of Venus and Adonis as an archetype of divine love. I began to wonder if it is possible for mortal beings to achieve divine love. I don't know. If it is it's something that you'd run the risk of coming undone by.