Why Do People Turn Into Flowers in Greek Mythology?
Philosophy of turning into a flower
You may have noticed how deep relation people who garden have with their plants. It is an enjoyable activity where you see the reward of your efforts in the form of colorful flowers. And the scientific world explains this feeling by saying that there is a deep relation between humans and plants. Therefore, having such a relation with plants positively affects our physical and mental health. People living in the ancient times must have realized this, so they made up stories about plants and compared the life cycle of plants to that of humans.
In this way, Greek mythology expresses that human life, with its beauty and suffering, is part of the larger cycle of nature and should be seen as equal to other living things, such as plants.
Spring flowers are brightly colored, but they only stay that way for a short time. Therefore, it reminds people of the beauty and promise of youth and the tragedy of young lives cut short. For example, in Greek mythology, it tells the story of a young hunter, Narcissus, who was so beautiful that he fell in love with his own reflected image in a lake. Unable to stop watching himself, he eventually withered at that point and gave his name to a pale, white and yellow flower, Narcissus.
Similarly, after the beautiful Adonis, lover of the goddess Aphrodite, died in a boar hunting accident, the goddess gave her blood to the red anemone. Anemone Coronaria takes its name from its fragile stem that blows in the wind.
Hyacinth flower reminds us of Hyacinth , the beautiful boy who was killed while training with the disc. Hyacinth flowers were born where the blood of Hyacinth flowed, and with the tears of Apollo, the hyacinth flower took its present-day spotted colors.
Sexuality and Flowers in Greek Mythology
The beauty of young women is also associated with spring flowers.
Violets and roses appear in love poems together with Aphrodite, the god of love and beauty. Since flowers are associated with beauty and attractiveness, in Greek mythology, picking flowers was associated with a young woman exploring sexuality. For example, Europa, an Eastern Mediterranean princess, was picking flowers just before she was kidnapped by the god Zeus.
Demeter’s daughter Persephone was collecting lily, daffodil and violet flowers before she was kidnapped by Hades. While spring flowers represented sexual attraction, the fruit that came in summer and autumn represented the completion of sexuality.
When Persephone entered the underworld, she accepted the pomegranate that Hades gave her, and this choice sealed her fate to stay in the underworld for a part of each year. In ancient Greece, pomegranate represents early deaths because it has bright and red juice.
In this story, Persephone is offered a pomegranate and this is the reason why she accepts this gift. And indeed, while Persephone is underground, she is symbolically dead, and her symbolic death brings winter to the earth.
Nature is in constant change. In this way, metamorphosis integrates the sufferer with the eternal and stable cycle of nature, providing relief from painful experiences, while reminding the transformation through stories. Greek mythology suggests that human suffering, although painful, will end no matter what because it is part of the larger, eternal cycle of nature.
Today, these stories can teach us to see our own fate and painful experiences within the larger context of the ever-changing yet cyclical natural world. The characters of Greek mythology constantly test the relations between humans, gods, and nature.
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