Helen Morales > Quotes

“Ancient astrology was rather different from the modern
horoscope. Its more learned practitioners enjoyed intellectual respectability, and there was a substantial overlap between astrology and philosophy. People would consult astrologers on anything, from the time and manner in which they were going to die to who was likely to win in the chariot-races that afternoon.
The chronology of the origins and development of astrology are impossible to establish, and were debated even in the ancient world. Suffice it to say here that the Western tradition was one of many traditions: Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern. It was Ptolemy, the Hellenistic geographer and astrologer, who first laid the technical foundations of Western astrology in his Tetrabiblos
(‘Four Books’). But the rise in the prominence of astrology was closely tied to the Roman imperial regime. It greatly benefited emperors to have their sovereignty ‘written in the stars’.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“Psychoanalysis and Greek mythology are two sides of the same medallion. To put it differently: without classical mythology, there would be no psychoanalysis. If that seems like too bold a statement, this chapter aims to show that it is not. It will look at the dynamic relationship forged between psychoanalysis and classical myth, and the impacts, positive and negative, that each has made upon the other.
There are numerous psychoanalytic theorists, but Freud necessarily takes centre stage. Like many in 19th-century Germany, Freud was passionate about ancient
Greece and its myths. He was both an analyst of the psyche, or mind (using Greek myth) and of Greek myth (using the psyche). As a result, he initiated a radical new method of enquiry, psychoanalysis, and wrote a momentous chapter in the history of classical mythology.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“The women of Juarez, and women across the world, do not want to have to take revenge, any more than Procne and Philomela did. What they want is to be able to rely on the modern gods -- the police, the courts, and the media -- for justice.”
― Helen Morales, Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths

“What makes someone mythic is not whether or not he lived, or lived well, but whether or not he was larger than life. Mythic heroes were – and are – outrageous and outstanding. They are phenomenal. They distil some collective ideal or fantasy. That’s why we can speak of ‘the myth of John Lennon’, but not ‘the myth of John Major’. And it’s also why Theseus made it and Lycurgus didn’t.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“If ‘myth’ is a slippery term, so is ‘classical’. It is common shorthand for ‘ancient Greek and Roman’. But this shorthand has a history, and a bias.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“It was important for a Roman of this period to get his Greek
mythology right. Being able to identify who was who and what was what was a sign that the viewer was a person of culture and status.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“Responding to myth often means wearing
blinkers. Myth is a complex game of production and reception that involves selecting some parts of a narrative and suppressing others. As we shall see later on, this process of communication is not always easily controlled.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“New Age spirituality purports to promote change – its mantra is ‘transformation’ – but, in reality, it endorses the status quo. It preaches changing oneself to accept the world as it is. New Agers are too busy with their affirmations and introspections to do anything like take direct action. Indeed, in some books the advice to unleash one’s inner goddess turns out to be little more
than to bring back the old ‘domestic goddess’. Using myth as one’s personal charter is nothing new (as we saw in Chapter 3), but when Alexander the Great chose Achilles, the psychopathic hero of Homer’s Iliad, to revere and emulate, he did so with action in mind. Alexander used classical myth as his ‘life coach’ and changed the world. New Agers use classical myth to ensure that
the spirit is soothed, the horoscope reassuring, and the house clean, but the world stays the same.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“Scholars have produced as many
definitions of myth as there are myths themselves. This book
will discuss various definitions of myth as it goes along, but it is interested in myth as a process as much as a thing.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“It is part of Elvis’s enduring fascination to so many that his life story is always more than that; it is also a take (celebratory, critical, twisted) upon the American dream. To think about Elvis is to think about America: its history and its values.”
― Helen Morales, Pilgrimage to Dollywood: A Country Music Road Trip through Tennessee

“The Wizard of Oz, a master narrative of the questing journey, not only tells us that there will be disenchantment with the object of the quest, disenchantment perhaps built into any relationship that is based on idealization, but also stresses that what the seeker is really looking for is to be found in herself. Indeed, it is a cliché of the pilgrimage that it fundamentally involves the universal quest for the self.”
― Helen Morales, Pilgrimage to Dollywood: A Country Music Road Trip through Tennessee

“Reading myth as crystallizing historical fact was a common
approach in the 19th and early 20th centuries. But it is an
approach to myth that is fraught with problems. It ignores or
takes insufficient account of how mythic narratives are exploited for political purposes.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“Classical mythology has been so influential upon Western culture that everyone who is alive to the art,culture,politics, and languages of today encounters it.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“Ancient astrology, and, to some degree,
its modern descendant, are compelling mixtures of science (or pseudo-science) and classical myth.
Jung interpreted astrology as the psychology of antiquity.
The stars and planets, he suggested, are ‘archetypal images’: manifestations of the collective unconscious. Jung’s student, Erich Neumann, developed his ideas on archetypes, especially in relation to the archetype of the nurturing Goddess. His ideas were influential upon those who later promoted goddess worship, a central element in most (though not all) New Age practice. New Agers believe that the energy of the cosmos flows from one single source (monism), and that what we call ‘god’
or ‘goddess’ is a principle identified with the cosmos. New Age philosophy has embraced the idea that goddess worship originated in prehistoric times, when, broadly speaking, matriarchal society preceded the patriarchal order, and people worshipped the ‘Great Goddess’.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“However, I have also argued for allegory’s positive effects. It is a process that typically takes control away from the author of a narrative and gives it to the reader. It is the reader who decides whether to interpret writing on a literal or a symbolic level. In giving greater control to the reader, allegory allows for imaginative and reflective analyses of mythology, and for its ideological purposes to be criticized, as well as affirmed.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“the reason musicians like Elvis mean so much to us is that their music becomes the soundtrack to our lives. ‘Blue Moon’ was playing at my first school dance. When I hear it I remember the feeling of sweaty anticipation I felt that night. Rock ’n’ roll wasn’t something you listened to. It was something you danced to. It’s about first kisses, first crushes, the creation of memories.” I”
― Helen Morales, Pilgrimage to Dollywood: A Country Music Road Trip through Tennessee

“This book aims to capture, and explore, the outrageousness,
inventiveness, and sheer fun that characterize classical mythology.
But it is also born of the conviction that myth matters. It mattered for the ancient Greeks and Romans, and it matters for us in understanding who we are: our selves, our liberties, and our lies.”
― Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short Introduction

“Poverty is only ennobling, it is implied, if one has escaped it.”
― Helen Morales, Pilgrimage to Dollywood: A Country Music Road Trip through Tennessee

“The diet industry is built upon an ideology of racial, as well as gender, prejudice.20”
― Helen Morales, Antigone Rising: The Subversive Power of the Ancient Myths

“without Dolly Parton there would have been no Taylor Swift.”
― Helen Morales, Pilgrimage to Dollywood: A Country Music Road Trip through Tennessee

“The Dixie Chicks are another obvious absence, and it is hard not to suspect that they are being ostracized from the museum because of lead singer Natalie Maines’s criticism of George W. Bush for America’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, which provoked a storm of controversy.”
― Helen Morales, Pilgrimage to Dollywood: A Country Music Road Trip through Tennessee

“Dolly is both Cinderella and her fairy godmother, and she has no need for a Prince Charming.”
― Helen Morales, Pilgrimage to Dollywood: A Country Music Road Trip through Tennessee