Eros is not Cupid: differences and similarities

Eros is not Cupid: differences and similaritiesOne of the most common problems when someone wants to get close to Eros is that the information they can find is limited and when they find it, it doesn’t even get to be all about Eros. The simplification and didactics to bring mythology to people of all kinds has made that when the figures of Eros and Cupid are explained they are equivalent and that the attributes of one and the other are interchangeable when they were not originally. But there is also a historical reason that to this day we continue to drag this error, an error that many people within paganism and witchcraft, when they enter the worship of any of these gods, fail to recognize because most of the more habitual sources usually repeat it.

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Freedom ritual with Eros Eleuterio

Freedom ritual with Eros Eleuterio

We live in a time when we need to reclaim freedom and our rights in the face of oppression that does not seem backwards, but on the contrary it seems that every day wants to get bigger and stronger again every day. We need to counteract the efforts of those who want to undermine our freedom or who don’t move a finger because things get better. We must claim our freedom and our rights by all possible means such as demonstrations, protests, activism of all kinds, etc., but as pagans and withces we can also resort to our spirituality to give an extra boost to all this.  This rite is intended within LGBTIQ + Pride week but can be used to support other movements such as Black Lives Matter, the feminist movement or any other movement that fights against oppression and deprivation of rights and freedoms.

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Eros Eleutherios: the god of freedom

Eros Eleutherio

As much as we search we will not find a goddess of freedom in the Hellenic pantheon as we find Libertas in the Roman pantheon, although we do find Eleuteria as a personification of freedom without worship or temples. And it is not that the Greeks did not have a concept of freedom, but it seems that they associated freedom with different gods and worshiped each of them because regardless of their main domain they had power over freedom. That is why we can find the epithet Eluterios or Eleuterias in different divinities, Eros is one of them and under this epithet the influence of Eros is extremely special.

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Finding Eros: suggestions at the beginning of the road

Eros triumphant looking at an arrow

Pain, anguish, despair… are feelings that crowd in our interior in such an intense way that we look overwhelmingly for anything that relaxes our feelings. A broken heart and the feeling of exhaustion of love, of life, of relationships are symptoms of the end of a romantic relationship. This is a very typical time when many people turn to Eros to ease their grief in one way or another. If you really dare to take the step you will find much more than you expect.

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Introduction to Eros

Eros Figure

Nowadays the image we can have of Eros through art (especially since the Renaissance) is that of a winged and chubby boy who shoots arrows so that people fall in love. For those who go a little deeper in mythology, Eros is found as a lesser god, the son of Aphrodite, who over time became the chief divinity of love, sex, and fertility that until then had been the domain of Eros. The name of Eros (Ἔρως in ancient Greek) literally means “love.” The same word for the Hellenes served to name the god and the feeling.

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