"I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe, remarked he; "but I have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them,--a recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old as Paracelsus."
Lethe: a river in Hades. The dead who were about to be reincarnated were supposed to drink of it to forget their past lives.
Nepenthe: a drug thought by the ancient Greeks to banish pain and sorrow and produce forgetfulness.
Paracelsus: a pseudonym. A man who wandered from country to country practicing magic, alchemy, and astrology. Though he occupied the chair of physic and surgery at Basel, he was denounced as a quack. He is sometimes called the father of modern chemistry.
Where is the common ground? Both Lethe and Nepenthe were used to 'forget' or banish sorrow and pain. If you were Paracelsus for instance who was declared evil, he could be compared to something that lived in Hades, or would want to get rid of his suffering by taking nepenthe. They all lead back to evil. Nepenthe could also be considered not only a drug but magical or part of alchemy.
Lethe: a river in Hades. The dead who were about to be reincarnated were supposed to drink of it to forget their past lives.
Nepenthe: a drug thought by the ancient Greeks to banish pain and sorrow and produce forgetfulness.
Paracelsus: a pseudonym. A man who wandered from country to country practicing magic, alchemy, and astrology. Though he occupied the chair of physic and surgery at Basel, he was denounced as a quack. He is sometimes called the father of modern chemistry.
Where is the common ground? Both Lethe and Nepenthe were used to 'forget' or banish sorrow and pain. If you were Paracelsus for instance who was declared evil, he could be compared to something that lived in Hades, or would want to get rid of his suffering by taking nepenthe. They all lead back to evil. Nepenthe could also be considered not only a drug but magical or part of alchemy.
No comments:
Post a Comment