According to legend, Leto was loved by Zeus and persecuted by the jealous Hera. Fleeing from the goddess's wrath, Leto fled to Patara where she gave birth to her twins (Apollo and Artemis). In one story Leto is harrassed by some Lycian shepherds at a spring as they try to drive her away from the water.  She punishes them by turning them into frogs.  In another story, the persecuted Leto is aided by wolves who guide her to the river Xanthos where she quenches her thirst and washes her children. In memory of this occasion she changes the name of the country from Termilis to Lycia, "lykos" being the Greek world for "wolf".  This legend of Leto and the wolves existed for a long time in western Anatolia - still under the Roman Empire coins were minted depicting the fleeing Leto with her children. Some believe that the cult of Leto existed in Lycia prior to the Greek period and that Leto's name may be related to "lada" which is Lycian for "woman" or "wife".  Leto cults also existed in Halicarnaussus, Cnidus, Phrygia, Caria and Cilicia.

For More Information on the Cults of Lycia and Important Deities follow this link:

http://www.lycianturkey.com/cults_of_lycia_deities.htm

Many folks have different traditions and therefore believe in an afterlife or reincarnation. For the Hellenic Pagan it is a place called 'Elysium Fields, much like that of the "Summerlands' in the Celtic/Wiccan tradiition and/or heaven for the Catholic/Christian tradition. Elysium Fields is a place in Hades where those who have followoed 'their oaths and lived a good spiritual life go. One must have been virtueous and done good deeds and are fond in favor of the Gods! It is a place where the Gods and Heroes go to live their life out their lives. I wanted to share what I have learned of this place with you here on Covenspace and give you referrence material as well so that you may read for your self more on this wondeful place. The read is legnthy but is also references classic literature and geographical places where 'Elysium Fileds' are found. Happy read:)!

In Greek mythology, Elysium was a section of the Underworld  (also referred to as the Elysian Fileds). "Elysium is an obscure and mysterious name that evolved from a designation of a place or person struck by lightning, enelysion, enelysios ( Walter Burkert 1985 p. 198) Alternately, scholars have also suggested that Greek Elysion may instead derive from the Egyptian term ialu (older iaru), meaning "reeds," with specific reference to the "Reed fields" (Egyptian: sekhet iaru / ialu), a paradisiacal land of plenty where the dead hoped to spend eternity.

The Elysium fields, or sometimes Elysian plains, were the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous. Two of Homeric passages in particular established for Greeks the nature of the Afterlife: the dreamed apparition of the dead Patroclus in the Iliad and the more daring boundary-breaking visit in Odyssey. Greek traditions concerning funerary ritual were reticent, but the Homeric examples encouraged other heroic visits, in the myth cycles accreted upon Theseus and upon Heracles (Campbell 1948; Ruck and Staples 1994).

The Elysium Fields lay on the western margin of the earth, by the encircling stream of Oceanus (Odyssey), and there the mortal relatives of the king of the gods were transported, without tasting death, to enjoy an immortality of bliss (Odyssey iv: 563). Lesser spirits were less fortunate: an eerie passage describes the twittering bat-like ghosts of Penelope's slain suitors, led by Hermes:

"down the dank

moldering paths and past the Ocean's streams they went

and past the White Rock and the Sun's Western Gates and past

the Land of Dreams, and soon they reached the fields of asphodel

where the dead, the burnt-out wraiths of mortals make their home"

(-(Odyssey xxiv: 5ff, Robert Fagles' translation).

Hesiod refers to the Isles of the Blessed (makarôn nêsoi) in the Western Ocean (Works and Days). Pindar makes it a single Isle. Walter Burkert notes the connection with the motif of far-off Dilmun: "Thus Achilles is transported to the White Isle and becomes the Ruler of the Black Sea, and Diomedes becomes the divine lord of an Adriatic island." (Burkert 1985, p. 198). Pindar makes it a single island:

And those that have three times kept to their oaths,

Keeping their souls clean and pure,

Never letting their hearts be defiled by the taint

Of evil and injustice,

And barbaric veniality,

They are led by Zeus to the end:

To the palace of Kronos,

Where soothing breezes off the Ocean

Breathe over the Isle of the Blessed:

All around flowers are blazing with a

Dazzling light:

Some springing from the shining trees,

Others nourished by the water from the sea:

With circlets and garlands of flowers they

Crown their hands,

Ruled by the steadfast councils of

Rhadamanthys:

Rhadamanthys,

The great Judge,

Whom the Father,

The husband of Rhea,

Whose throne is higher than all:

The great Father keeps him by his side,

His loyal advisor.

Peleus and Kadmos both are there,

And Akhilleus, brought there by his mother,

After she had conquered the heart of Zeus with her Prayers

In Elysium where fields of the pale liliaceous asphodel, and poplars grew, there stood the gates that led to the house of Ais (in Attic dialect "Hades").

Elysium in Literature

Among the poets to interpret Elysium is Virgil, who describes an encounter there between Aeneas and his father Anchises. Virgil's Elysium knows perpetual spring and shady groves, with its own sun and lit by its own stars solemque suum, sua sidera norunt (Aeneid book vi:541).

Elysium was a pagan expression that passed into the usage of the Christian patristic writers, simply a synonym for paradise.

Some confuse a Dantean idea of the Elysian Fields with Limbo - he described Limbo as the very upper level of hell, a place of peace that the unbaptized and the non-believers who lived virtuous lives go. It is a place of happiness, but it is closed off from God and thus remains as hell.

In the Renaissance, the heroic population of the Elysian Fields tended to outshine its formerly dreary pagan reputation; the Elysian Fields borrowed some of the bright allure of paradise. In Paris, the Champs-Élysées retain their name of the Elysian Fields, first applied in the late 16th century to a formerly rural outlier beyond the formal parterre gardens behind the royal French palace of the Tuileries.

After the Renaissance, as images of Valhalla entered the popular European imagination, an even cheerier Elysium evolved for some poets. Sometimes it is imagined as a place where heroes have continued their interests from their lives. Others suppose it is a location filled with feasting, sport, song; Joy is the "daughter of Elysium" in Friedrich Schiller's Ode to Joy.

When in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night shipwrecked Viola is told "This is Illyria, lady.", "And what should I do in Illyria? My brother he is in Elysium." is her answer, and "Elysium" for her and her first Elizabethan hearers simply means Paradise.

In Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Opera Die Zauberflōte (the Magic Flute), Elysium is mentioned in Act II during Papagino's solo while he describes what it would be like if he had his dream girl: "Des Lebens als Weiser mich freun, Und wie im Elysium sein." (Enjoy life as a wiseman, And feel like I'm in Elysium.)

The New Orleans neighborhood of the Elysian Fields mentioned in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire is ironically the declassé purgatory where Blanche Dubois lives with Stanley and Stella Kowalski. The Elysian Fields of New Orleans are the second act setting in the second act of Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine.

In the fictional writings of J. R. R. Tolkien, the Undying Lands, the home of the gods, elves, and a select few others, and is based on stories of Elysium. A combination of Olympus and Elysium, the Undying lands can only be reached by crossing the western sea, much like one would have to cross the stream of Oceanus to reach the underworld in greek mythology. The latter could be more related to the Fortunate Isles myth.

Elysium in Neopaganism

Many Neopagans today, particularly Hellenic neopagans in the United States, have what most would consider a new-age view of Elysium. Elysium is seen as a multi-layered paradise, or Heaven, to many modern neopagans. Some believe that the outer layer of Elysium is composed of great and beautiful fields, often envisioned in imaginative descriptions as having green glowing blades of grass and bubbling springs of glowing water and wine, often made from the nectar of Ambrosia. Beyond the fields of Elysium, reserved only for the most righteous and virtuous, is the Golden City where spirits exist in a state of constant euphoria. Whether or not such beliefs are based in actual mythology often seems rather unimportant to many neopagans. Most claim that old myths are simply mortal accounts and interpretations of the divine, but the same could be argued about any current beliefs regarding Elysium.

"Geographic" Elysian Fields

•  In Nova Scotia, Canada, a rural community near Minudie, on the Bay of Chignecto.
•  In Harrison County, Texas, a rural community is Elysian Fields, Texas.
• New Orleans, Louisiana, filled with French place names, has a major street named Elysian Fields Ave.
• Elysian, Minnesota of Le Sueur County, Minnesota is a "quaintly progressive" town of 550 residents.  
• In Paris, France, the avenue that starts at the Place de la Concorde and ends in the Arc de Triomphe is the famous Avenue des Champs Élysées.  
• Alexander Cartwright invented modern baseball at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey.  
• In Mexico City, Campos Eliseos is a street in Polanco neighbourhood where several of the city's best hotels and restaurants are located.  
• Paradise (Persian and judeo-christian)  
• Reed fields (Egypt)  
• Tartarus (Greek Hades)  
• Jannah (Islamic name for paradise)
• Elysian Fields is also part of the 14th fairway on the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. Elysian Fields has long been said to be the flatest fairway on an otherwise undulating seaside golf course.

Sources and references 

Gladiator(Film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator_%28film%29 (Maximus goes to the Elysian Fields upon his death.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elysium

Catholic Encyclopaedia 

Walter Burkert, Greek Religion 1985

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces 1948 

Carl A.P. Ruck and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth 1994: "The Liminal Hero"

 

Shapeshifting is a common theme in mythology and folklore, as well as in science fiction and fantasy. In its broadest sense, it is a change in the physical form or shape of a person or animal. Other terms include metamorphosis, morphing, transformation, or transmogrification.

There is no settled agreement on the terminology. Still, the most common usages are:

 ·shapeshifting indicates changes that are temporary^[1]

·metamorphosis indicates changes that are lasting^[2]

·transformation indicates changes that are externally imposed^[3]

 Shapeshifting is distinguished from natural processes such as aging or metamorphosis (despite shared use of the term), the body contortions of animals such as the Mimic Octopus, and illusory changes. Instead, shapeshifting involves physical changes such as alterations of age, gender, race, or general appearance or changes between human form and that of an animal, plant, or inanimate object.

Shapeshifting, transformations and metamorphoses serve a wide variety of purposes in classical mythology.

Examples of shapeshifting in classical literature include many examples in Ovid's Metamorphoses, Circe's transforming of Odysseus' men to pigs in Homer's The Odyssey, and Apuleius's Lucius becoming a donkey in The Golden Ass.

Proteus among the gods was particularly noted for his shape-shifting; both Menelaus and Aristaeus seized him to win information from him, and succeeded only because they held on during his manifold shape changes.

 While the Greek gods could use transformation punitively - as for Arachne, turned to a spider for her pride in her weaving, and Medusa, turned to a monster for having sexual intercourse with Poseidon in Athena's temple - even more frequently, the tales using it are of amorous adventure. Zeus repeatedly transformed himself to approach mortal women, both as a means of gaining access:

Danae as a shower of gold

Europa as a bull

Leda as a swan

Alcmene as her husband

or to attempt to conceal his affair from Hera

Io, as a cloud, and Io herself as a white heifer.

More innocently, Vertumnus transformed himself into an old woman in order to gain entry to Pomona's orchard; there, he persuaded her to marry him.

In other tales, the woman appealed to other gods to protect her from rape, and was transformed (Daphne into laurel, Cornix into a crow). Unlike Zeus and other god's shape-shifting, these women were permanently metamorphised.

In one tale, Demeter transformed herself into a mare to escape Poseidon, but Poseidon counter-transformed himself into a stallion to pursue her, and succeeded in the rape.

Humans were also transformed, for many reasons.

Tiresias once saw two snakes mating and struck the female with his staff; this transformed him into a woman, and he lived as such for many years. At the end, he saw the snakes again, and this time was careful to hit the male, which restored him to male form.

Caenis, having been raped by Poseidon, demanded of him that she be changed to a man. He agreed, and she became Caeneus, a form he never lost, except, in some versions, upon death.

As a final reward from the gods for their hospitality, Baucis and Philemon were transformed, at their deaths, into a pair of trees.

Pygmalion having fallen in love with a statue he had made, Venus had pity on him and transformed the stone to a living woman.

In some variants of the tale of Narcissus, he is turned into a flower.

After Tereus raped Philomela and cut out her tongue to silence her, she wove her story into a tapestry for her sister, Tereus's wife Procne, and the sisters murdered his son and fed him to his father. When he discovered this, he tried to kill them, but the gods changed them all into birds.

Sometimes metamorphoses transformed objects into humans. In the myths of both Jason and Cadmus, one task set to the hero was to sow dragon's teeth; on being sown, they would metamorphosize into belligerent warriors, and both heroes had to trick them into fighting each other to survive. Deucalion and Pyrrha repopulated the world after a flood by throwing stones behind them; they were transformed into people.

Referrence material dervied from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapeshifting

 

 

Muse, tell me about Pan, the dear son of Hermes, with his goat's feet and two horns -- a lover of merry noise. Through wooded glades he wanders with dancing nymphs who foot it on some sheer cliff's edge, calling upon Pan, the shepherd-god, long-haired, unkempt. He has every snowy crest and the mountain peaks and rocky crests for his domain; hither and thither he goes through the close thickets, now lured by soft streams, and now he presses on amongst towering crags and climbs up to the highest peak that overlooks the flocks. Often he courses through the glistening high mountains, and often on the shouldered hills he speeds along slaying wild beasts, this keen-eyed god. Only at evening, as he returns from the chase, he sounds his note, playing sweet and low on his pipes of reed: not even she could excel him in melody -- that bird who in flower-laden spring pouring forth her lament utters honey-voiced song amid the leaves. At that hour the clear-voiced nymphs are with him and move with nimble feet, singing by some spring of dark water, while Echo wails about the mountain-top, and the god on this side or on that of the choirs, or at times sidling into the midst, plies it nimbly with his feet. On his back he wears a spotted lynx-pelt, and he delights in high-pitched songs in a soft meadow where crocuses and sweet-smelling hyacinths bloom at random in the grass.

 

"Hekate whom Zeus the son of Kronos honored above all. He gave her splendid gifts, to have a share of the earth and the unfruitful sea. She received honor also in starry heaven, and is honored exceedingly by the deathless gods ... For as many as were born of Gaia (Earth) and Ouranos (Heaven) [the Titans] amongst all these she has her due portion. The son of Kronos [Zeus] did her no wrong nor took anything away of all that was her portion among the former Titan gods: but she holds, as the division was at the first from the beginning, privilege both in earth, and in heaven, and in sea. Also, because she is an only child, the goddess receives not less honor, but much more still, for Zeus honors her."