PSYCHE AND CUPID

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November 26 at 6:47 PM

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This is the story of Psyche and Cupid, a tale of soul, love, betrayal, and arduous trials, as recounted in Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths. Graves draws primarily from the Roman writer Apuleius, using the Roman names for the gods.

Once, there was a king and queen with three daughters. The two older ones were beautiful, but the youngest, Psyche, possessed a beauty so transcendent that language could not capture it. People traveled from far and wide just to gaze upon her, offering her the adoration that was meant for Venus (Aphrodite), the goddess of love herself. Venus’s temples fell into neglect, her altars cold.

Enraged by this mortal usurper, Venus summoned her winged son Cupid (Eros), a mischievous god armed with arrows that compelled love. She commanded him to make Psyche fall passionately in love with the most wretched, hideous creature walking the earth. Cupid flew to obey, but upon seeing the sleeping Psyche, he was so startled by her loveliness that he accidentally wounded himself with one of his own arrows. He fell instantly, irrevocably in love with her.

Meanwhile, Psyche’s beauty was a curse; no man dared to ask for her hand. Desperate, her father consulted the Oracle of Apollo, which delivered a chilling decree: Psyche, dressed in funeral clothes, must be taken to a mountaintop to be wed not to a mortal, but to a "winged, serpentine monster" feared by the gods themselves.

Sorrowfully, her parents obeyed. But as Psyche waited alone on the crag for her doom, Zephyrus, the gentle West Wind, lifted her up and bore her away down into a deep valley, placing her softly on a bed of flowers outside a magnificent, glittering palace.

Inside, invisible servants attended to her every need. That night, in complete darkness, her husband came to her. His voice was gentle, and she fell in love with him, though he forbade her ever to see his face, warning that if she did, she would lose him forever.

For a time, Psyche was happy. But she grew lonely and begged her husband to allow her sisters to visit. He reluctantly agreed but warned her against their influence. When her sisters arrived, transported by the West Wind, they were consumed by green-eyed jealousy at Psyche’s opulent lifestyle. They planted a seed of doubt in her mind: remembering the oracle, they convinced Psyche that her husband must be the monstrous serpent, fattening her up to be devoured. They insisted she must take a lamp and a knife at night, look upon the monster, and cut off its head.

That night, terrified and conflicted, Psyche lit a lamp while her husband slept. To her amazement, the light revealed not a monster, but the most beautiful of the gods, Cupid himself, with golden wings resting at his shoulders. Overcome by love and curiosity, she dared to touch his arrows and accidentally pricked her thumb, falling deeper in love than ever before. But as she leaned over to kiss him, a drop of burning oil from the lamp fell onto Cupid’s shoulder.

He awoke with a cry of pain. Seeing the lamp and knife, he knew she had betrayed his trust. Without a word, he spread his wings and flew away into the night. Psyche tried to cling to his leg as he rose but fell to the earth, heartbroken.

Cupid returned to his mother’s palace to heal his wound. When Venus learned what had happened, her fury knew no bounds. She imprisoned her son and then set out to hunt down Psyche.

After wandering the earth in misery, searching in vain for her lost love, Psyche finally surrendered herself to Venus. The goddess treated her cruelly, handing her over to her handmaidens, Worry and Sadness, to be whipped. Venus then imposed upon her four seemingly impossible tasks, hoping to break her spirit or end her life.

The First Task: Venus pointed to a gigantic, mixed heap of wheat, barley, millet, lentils, and beans, commanding Psyche to sort them all by evening. Psyche sat in despair, but an ant took pity on her. It summoned a massive army of its fellow ants, and together they sorted the grain grain by grain before nightfall.

The Second Task: Venus ordered her to gather golden wool from a flock of fierce, wild sheep that grazed by a river. As Psyche approached to throw herself into the river, a green reed spoke to her. It warned her that the rams were deadly in the midday sun but advised her to wait until evening when they rested. She could then safely gather the wool that had snagged on the briar bushes.

The Third Task: Venus gave her a crystal flask and told her to fill it with the icy, black water from the source of the River Styx, which tumbled down from a high, inaccessible cliff guarded by dragons. This time, Zeus’s royal eagle, indebted to Cupid, flew down, took the flask in its beak, filled it from the rushing stream amidst the snapping jaws of the dragons, and brought it back to her.

The Fourth Task: For the final task, Venus handed Psyche a small box and told her to go to the Underworld and ask Persephone, the Queen of the Dead, for a little of her beauty cream to soothe Venus’s worry-worn face. Psyche, seeing no other way to enter the realm of the dead, climbed a high tower to throw herself off. But the tower broke into speech and gave her precise instructions: she must take two coins for the ferryman Charon and two sops of barley bread soaked in honey to appease Cerberus, the three-headed guard dog. The tower warned her sternly: under no circumstances should she open the box.

Psyche followed the instructions perfectly, obtained the box from Persephone, and returned to the upper world. But as she neared the end of her journey, vanity overtook her. She thought she might steal just a tiny bit of the divine beauty for herself to make herself more pleasing to Cupid.

She opened the box. Inside was no beauty cream, but an infernal Stygian sleep, which immediately burst forth and enveloped her. She fell to the ground like a corpse.

By now, Cupid’s wound had healed. Unable to bear being apart from Psyche, he slipped out of his window and found her. He carefully gathered the sleep back into the box and woke her with a light prick of his arrow. "You almost perished again by your own curiosity," he said gently. "Go now and finish my mother’s task."

While Psyche delivered the box to an appeased Venus, Cupid flew straight to Jupiter (Zeus), the king of the gods, and begged for his help. Jupiter, amused by the god of love being so lovesick himself, agreed. He summoned a council of the gods and announced that Cupid and Psyche were to be formally married.

Hermes brought Psyche up to Olympus. Jupiter himself handed her a cup of ambrosia, saying, "Drink this, Psyche, and be immortal. Cupid shall never break loose from your embrace."

Thus, Psyche (Soul) was united with Eros (Love) forever. In due time, they had a daughter whom they named Voluptas, or Pleasure.

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