SIRENS, MERMAIDS & OTHER
Mermaids have been enduring symbols in myth and culture for thousands of years. Mermaids continue to have a very visible role in contemporary society in advertising, movies and our culture in general. Each year The Coney Island Mermaid Parade occurs the first Saturday after the summer solstice around the third week of June, hundreds of mermaids, Neptunes, mer-men and hundred of thousands of spectators descend upon Coney Island, New York to celebrate the beginning of Summer and the official opening of the Atlantic Ocean.
Antipholus of Syracruse:
O, train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note,
To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears.
Sing, siren, for thyself, and I will dote;
Spread o'er the silver waves thy golden hairs,
And as a bed I'll take them and there lie,
And in that glorious supposition think
He gains by death that hath such means to die;
Let Love, being light, be drowned if she sink!
SIRENS AS SYMBOLS
Sirens are a universal symbol with a multitude of traditions, myths and meanings. Sirens are hybrid creatures, half animal half woman with strong feminine identities. The two beings coexist in the same body with the prerogative of accessing the qualities of both ever being transformed, perpetually provocative and disturbing. In her book The Mermaid and the Minotaur, Dorothy Dinnerstein observes: "Myth-images of half-human beast like the mermaid and the Minotaur express an old, fundamental, very slowly clarifying communal insight: that our species' nature is internally inconsistent, that our continuities with, and our differences from, the earth's other animals are mysterious and profound; and in these continuities, and these differences, lie both a sense of strangeness on earth and the possible key to a way of feeling at home here.
Freud's concept of symbol expresses the notion that conflicts are explored in metaphors in the unconscious where censorship disguises enigma. Hybridization, ambivalence, polarity, duplicity and dualism are the qualities created by fear and the unresolved.
Carl G. Jung (1875-1961) suggests that supernatural forces springs from the fusion of two biologically different entities, opposites that embrace and explain practically everything. Jung believed symbols materialize on their own account in our dreams, the expression of which is beyond the dimensions of time and space and in the sphere of unspecified and unlimited. These symbols therefore possess a numinous character and impress themselves on the general consciousness, disturbing for those minds used to operation within the limits of logic and rationality. Nevertheless, we can suppose that primordial images, sediments of accumulated memory, collective input, have a life of their own, independent of single individuals. As children we dreamed of monsters; what matters is that they approach, threaten and we are astonished, terrified, bewitched, petrified; and we either flee or overcome them. Often the dream repeats again and again seeking integration and resolution.
Jung also observed: "A symbol always stands for something more than its obvious and immediate meaning. Symbols, moreover, are natural and spontaneous products. No genius has ever sat down with a pen or brush in hand and invented a symbol. No one can take a more or less rational thought, reached as a logical conclusion or by deliberate intent, and than give it "symbolic form". There are many symbols, however, that are not individual but collective in their nature and origin. These are chiefly religious images. The believer assumes that they are of divine origin - that they have been revealed to man. The skeptic says flatly that they have been invented. Both are wrong. It is true, as the skeptic notes, that religious symbols and concepts have for centuries been the object of careful and quite conscious elaboration. It is equally true, as the believer implies, that their origin is so far buried in the mystery of the past that they seem to have no human source. But they are in fact "collective representations," emanating from primeval dreams and creative fantasies. As such, these images are involuntary spontaneous manifestations and by no means intentional inventions." The sensual images under consideration embody profound symbolic content from our "collective unconscious" and may be some of the most significant and enduring symbolic manifestations of the human experience.
DYING TO SELF
The song of the Sirens call men to abandon themselves, to hurl into the deep, to sprout wings, to transform, to die to self and emerge into a new form with new knowledge and understanding. It is significant that Sirens are creatures of water for water has powerful symbolic value. Water is also a duality, it can sustain life, give comfort and it is a source of life and abundance. Water is the symbol we use for baptism and spiritual rebirth and renewal. It is the primordial soup, it represents purification and regeneration and it is the source from which each of us was born. Water however can also be destructive, causing inundation, drowning, annihilation and death. Sirens and mermaids embody all of these qualities and meanings and are thus symbols of both death and immortality. They call men to the unknown, to change and transformation the essential passage from one space to another, form one condition to another. They serve as escorts during times of transit, danger, transformation, uncertainty, sea voyages and missions of war. Sirens call man, urging him to abandon what he is, to become something new. Fear of Sirens is the fear of upsetting the established equilibrium, fear of the unknown, fear of transformation, fear of learning, fear of losing oneself, fear of being out of control and fear of descending into the deep (the unconscious)
THE SPIRIT OF WATER
Wells, springs, rivers and lakes were sacred places in many cultures. Sacred waters are traditionally haunted by a host of female; spirits, white ladies, mermaids, fairies or Naiades suggesting the submerged memory of a goddess. The water habitat symbolizes the fluid nature of female sexuality, and its ancient connections with water. In many of the mermaid and Siren myth the protagonist "dissolves" into the water.
We were born of the water and lived in its realm for hundreds of millions of years. Our extended transmutation from reptilian form to human form is reflected in the metaphor of the mermaid. This metaphor resonates because it connects us to our watery roots and reminds us that the story is not yet done.
NAIADES
The Naiades are nymphs who reside in bodies of fresh water. There are three main classes of water nymphs - the first being the Nereides who are from the Mediterranean Sea and the second were the Oceanides or nymphs of the oceans, while the Naiades, the third group lived in rivers, streams, brooks, springs, fountains, lakes, ponds, wells, and marshes. Naiades were also subdivided into several sub classes: Crinaeae who lived in fountains, Pegaeae who dwelled in springs, Eleionomae who were inhabitants of marshes, Potameides residents of rivers, and Limnades who lived in lakes.
Naiades were deeply connected to the body of water in which they lived. It was often thought that the waters over which Naiades presided possessed spiritual, healing, or prophetic powers. Thus the Naiades were frequently worshipped by the ancient Greeks in association with divinities who were also known for healing, fertility and growth. 34
"The genealogy of the Naiades was determined by geographic region and literary source. Naiades were either daughters of Zeus, daughters of various river gods, or simply part of the vast family of the Titan Oceanus."
Like all the nymphs, the Naiades were female symbols of the ancient world and played the part of both the seduced and the seducer. Zeus in particular seems to have enjoyed the favors of countless Naiades and other gods do not seem to have lagged far behind. The Naiades frequently fell in love with and actively pursued mortals as well. Classical literature abounds with the stories of their love affairs with both gods and men and with the tales of their resulting children."
