Transformation of Hades

Artemis for Kennebec7 (#4)

Transformation of Hades

Alas, my last digital visit to earth for some time. That is, time as you know it. It does not exist where I am. Everything is now. No watchbands to spoil my tan.

          That said, you deserve to hear what happened to Hades since the departure of Zeke and Hal, better known to classicists as Zeus and Hades. As I related last time Z is on the road in an old Volkswagen van to search for what he always took for granted—a woman who could truly love him. A woman to whom he could reciprocate that sentiment, once he really understood what love means. I hope somehow that now my father really gets it.

          Hal was dispatched in a far different manner, as befitted his violent career and condescending attitude. If you get to see Kennebec’s motion picture, Burning Memory, you can judge for yourselves the appropriateness of Hades’ departure from the scene. Perhaps you will judge my actions as highly arbitrary.  It won’t be the first time, I can assure you.

          The good news is that the rather large underground acreage that Hades had utilized for eons to inflict misery, torture and suffering has now been reclaimed and turned into a rehabilitation center for all the sad damned souls who had been imprisoned there for an immeasurable time.

          Persephone is in charge now. Now truly the Queen of the Formerly Damned! It is an amazing and touching scene to watch all those ghouls and specters and demons lining up to meet with Seph and her loving staff. They are reacquainted with their true souls, and become moved to tears of joy when they behold their natural selves, before all the Evil and Illusion became attached to them.

          Finally, for the first time since Hades stole her away when she was a child picking flowers, Seph has discovered her true service to the world. I rejoice in my sister’s happiness and growing confidence.

          While dealing with Hal during my brief visit to Hades, I finally met Richard, the previous love of many of Seph’s earthly lifetimes. A sweet man. A’softy,’ actually, married to a woman named Nathalie, an earth human who, coincidentally, was the daughter of aunt Demeter. Richard met Seph once again on earth prior to her return to Hades. She was embodied as a prostitute named Melody, suffering for AIDS. Seph and Richard had experienced many tragic romances, one even involving them in a lepers colony in Hawaii!

          I mention this particular plot thread in Burning Memory, because Richard was tricked into being captured by Hal, who hated him because Seph loved the American and not him. Hal was beginning his torture routine on Richard, when the sheriff arrived in Hades. You know by now who the sheriff was.

          I am happy to report that Richard is back on earth now with Nathalie and their two charming little children, and that aunt Demeter and uncle Poseidon have rediscovered one another again.

          I’m not sure what to make of that.

Good luck (you’ll be needing it, Gaia informs me.),

Artemis

Out of this world

04/24/2010

The Decline and Fall of Hades II

Painting by Lovis_Corinth -_children of zeus

Artemis for Kennebec7 (#3)

(The Decline and Fall of Hades)

Part Two

Before returning to the topic at hand, the ignoble fall of foul Hades, I should address an impertinent comment from one of our readers. Fotios, a Greek-Italian from Florence. Fotios claims that I must be senile if I assert that my mother’s name is Demeter (you can check my previous commentary).

          Well, dear Fotios, since you must still possess a bead of Greek blood, you might recall that in the days when the Greek gods and goddesses ruled the world, there was a great deal of confusion about husbands and wives and extended families. I was the child of Zeus and Leto, while sister Seph was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, but Zeus had at least one hundred other wives, hence the blurring of familial lines. Demeter is my aunt. I am proud to call her ‘mother,’ because of all the goddesses on Olympus, she was the kindest and most fructificative. Living many lifetimes as a human, Demeter currently exists productively in a city in South Carolina in the United States.

          One last comment, Fotios; not only do I know my mother’s name, but I know yours, as well. Your mother is Alexine, still alive in the mother country. Why haven’t you gone to see her in at least three years? She sheds tears over you.

          Now, when I was called from my chosen world to return to Earth to snap Persephone out of her melancholy, I first visited my father in San Francisco. He was calling himself Zeke, because the name Zeus had become such a joke, best known as a brand name for condoms. He was bitter, and revealed to me that he would retire to Hades where he would reunite with his brother, now known as ‘Hal.’

          After tracking Seph through several lifetimes, including one where she was hung at the Salem Witch Trials, we set off for Hades to clean up old business. In my last installment I gave you a brief description of the rat hole Hades had become.

          There was another matter that the universe wanted me to dispose of. Aliens who somewhat resembled octopi had approached Hades to use its space as a dumping ground for their slaves. From a real estate improvement aspect, Hal was prepared to seize the opportunity. The creatures with many arms would then have infiltrated your planet, where they would have ultimately engorged you.

          Some of you may have heard of my magic bow with the enchanted silver arrows that Zeus gave me when he was still young and all-powerful. Well, I still have them.  I took care of the octopus creatures and then Persephone and I dealt with Hal and Zeke. Zeke we allowed to wander off in search of love, a journey with which, of course, my soft-hearted Seph identified.  At least Daddy was finally showing respect for women.

          How I handled Uncle Hades was a different matter, but you will have to see Kennebec’s planned motion picture to see what transpired. I told Kennebec that I would have to approve the actress playing my role. Thus far, they’ve been unable to attach Angelina Jolie. They said she’s booked through 2014. I’m going to have to have a little chat with that girl. Don’t count on there being a 2014.

I shall return,

Artemis

Out of this world

04/20/2010

The Decline and Fall of Hades

Artemis for Kennebec7 (#2)

(The Decline and Fall of Hades)

Part 1

I am back to speak to you once again due to the whining of sister Persephone who has been off and on your planet more times than you can count due to her numerous earthly experimentations with love and death. She has feelings for you mortals, having been one on many occasions since she escaped Hades and renounced her queenship of that moldy and tenebrous domain.

Persephone, ‘Goddess of Innocence and Queen of the Underworld.’ How’s that for an oxymoron? No wonder the girl has always been so confused.

In case you’ve forgotten the story, or never heard of it, educational standards resting in the pits as they are, Persephone was a twelve--year old lass who didn’t even have a real name yet. Our mother was Demeter, responsible goddess that she was, who taught humans how to take seeds and grow food. ‘High concept,’ that was, back in the day.

My uncle Hades, meanwhile, had been shunted to his Kingdom beneath the earth by his brother Zeus. Imaginatively, Hades named his kingdom after himself. Something was amiss, Hades realized. The light bulb flashed above his head. Brother Zeus was up there in the world of light with maidens and all sorts of animals he could screw, while Hades waited in the dark for dead people to be brought to him.

Hapless Hades, lonely in the Underworld, rather ugly by the standard of Greek gods, saturnine and mean-spirited, got off for a while by lifting weights. Large stones. But that got old rather quickly. He bitched to Zeus. He wanted a wife. Dear Dad, the big Z, he had about a hundred of them, not all of them human.

No goddess wanted to marry Hades, so the King of the Underworld resolved to take a girl by force. He fancied Seph. No matter that he was Persephone’s uncle and she was a daughter of Zeus. He went to Big Daddy and Zeus said, Why not?

Seph, meanwhile, unwitting fawn that she was, was merrily engaged in picking flowers on the island of Sicily with her chums, the Oceanids, when a chariot driven by her uncle burst through the earth, and he snatched her.

Most of this, by the way, is in Burning Memory, the movie script Kennebec Entertainment is hoping to make into a film. They implore me not to tell too much, and spoil the surprises they have in store in this story, which is already well known ‘mythology,’ although I guarantee to you that Persephone suffered many a real heartache on earth due to the trauma induced by that reprobate husband/uncle, the Rapist. He thought Seph might stop bawling, tearing her hair out, rending her garments, if he officially made her Queen of the Damned. Mr. Sensitivity.

Well let me tell you the back story…or the anti-climax, whatever you prefer.

Years after the Greek Gods faded from the scene, they did not cease to exist. Christianity and Islam came in, for better or for worth. I’m not going to address that sore subject today. However, Hades was immortal, or almost, and the hellhole still kept operating. Daddy Z, in fact, had an office in San Francisco, which served as a sort of Amnesty center for confused gods like Apollo. I stayed out of it, playing in my own universe, only occasionally visiting earth. Seph fell in and out of love with a number of mortals, always looking for that real thing that poets claim is extant. (Let’s hear it for Eros! He’s actually an obese child these days.)

Zeus, now operating as ‘Zeke’ closed his office for lack of business and retreated to Hades, where my uncle was calling himself ‘Hal.’ What a rat trap Hades had become.

Let me use Kennebec’s description of Hal because it’s pretty close to the real thing: An unfiltered cigarette dangling from his lips, Hal, a sharp-faced man with long white hair tied in a ponytail and a naturally shifty smile on his face, drinks beers with two elderly men, who are among the living dead. They sit in a sleazy tavern with folding chairs and stained Formica tables. The sparse clientele consists of strange-looking rural men (Think ‘Deliverance’) mostly intoxicated and over sixty-five. A TV in the background shows a female mud-wrestling event.

That’s what had become of Hades in the modern age. However Hades remained dangerous despite his good-ole-boy guise. When Zeke rejoined him, Hal saw an opportunity to rejuvenate his realm.

This is not what the Universe intended. Not for today. I gathered up Persephone, immersed in her earthly doldrums, and set out for Hades (Both of them). To make things right once and for all. And that event shall be a story for another day.

Artemis

Out of this World

04/16/2010