Sacred Circles' Coven

Eros & Psyche: A True Love Story

Author Unknown

Beautiful Psyche was one of three daughters born to a king. She was so beautiful, in fact, that men traveled from miles around to worship her beauty. When Aphrodite found out that her temples were being neglected because of a mere mortal woman, she was jealous and angry and turned to her son, Eros, for help. She wanted him to shoot Psyche with one of his arrows and make her fall in love with the most hideous man he could find.

Everything was going according to plan until Eros laid eyes on the princess. She was the most gorgeous creature he had ever seen and wanted her for himself. Psyche began to get lonely when she realized that on one wanted to marry her, they just wanted to gaze upon her lovely face. Her parents were partiulary upset because their other two daughters, whose beauty was nowhere in the vicinity of Psyche's, were both married to kings. So her father sought out an oracle of Apollo's to see what they should do.

Well, Eros had already told the whole story to Apollo, so the God of Light gave a response using this knowledge. He ordered that Psyche must be taken to the top of a mountain and left alone. He said that her destined husband was a horrible serpent that could fly and was more powerful than the gods. No one was happy to hear this. Though Psyche was scared, she did what she had to do.

She sat on the moutain top not knowing who or what she was waiting for. She relaxed a little a Zephyr picked her up and carried her down the mountain to a meadow. It was there that she fell asleep and awoke to a beautiful palace beside a river. When she went inside, she heard voices telling her that they were her servants, but she couldn't see anyone. Later that night, she finally met her husband...well, actually she only heard him. He told her that she could never look at him, but that didn't matter to her. She knew that she had, at last, found her true love.

One day, Eros warned Psyche that her sisters would be visiting the mountain to mourn her. Psyche got excited and desperately wanted to see and comfort them. He couldn't refuse her but warned her not to let anyone talk her into trying to see him or would be gone forever. Zephyr brought the two women to Psyche's home the next day, and they couldn't believe their eyes! They were happy to see her, but couldn't help being jealous of the luxuries that their sister had and wanted to know who, exactly, her husband was. Psyche kept her answers short, so they knew something was wrong.

When the sisters visited again, they had a plan. They told Psyche that her husband was the hideous serpent and that she had to kill him. They advised her to hide a lamp and knife until her husband was asleep. They told her to then use the lamp to look upon the creature and plunge the knife into it's heart. Psyche was confused over the whole thing, but decided that she would, at the very least, see him.

So that night she did everything according to plan, and when she held the lamp up to gaze upon what she thought would be a monster, she saw only the most beautiful man she had ever seen. She couldn't help herself from looking, and then she accidentally spilled some of the hot oil on her lover waking him up. Without a word he flew out the door. She ran after him but only heard him say that there can be no love if there is no trust. She was terribly upset, but decided to spend the rest of her days searching for her beloved. She prayed to the gods to help her, but no one would; this was because Aphrodite found out that her son was the one who took Psyche away.

Her was badly wounded from the hot oil and his mother took care of him. She locked him up in a room while she nursed him back to health, and then went to take care of Psyche. The girl was looking for Aphrodite when the two met. The goddess told her that she would need to complete an impossible task in order to be in her good favor. She laid a pile of mixed seeds on the floor and told Psyche to have them sorted by morning. Psyche was about to cry when some little ants came to help her. They worked through the night sorting the seeds into piles, and this is what Aphrodite saw the next morning.

She was furious and kept giving Psyche one impossible task after another. All of which the girl completed with help from sympathetic creatures. The last task Psyche accomplished was retrieving some of Persephone's beauty from the underworld. She told the goddess of the dead that she needed it because she was so worn out from tending to Eros. She accomplished this, but on her way back to give the box to the goddess, she decided to open it and use a little of the beauty herself.

Psyche fell into a deep sleep, and that is when Eros decided that love cannot be contained and flew out the open window of his room to save his lover. He found her laying near the palace. He wiped the sleep from her eyes and put it back in the box. He told her to take the box to his mother and all their problems would be over. Eros flew to Olympus and asked Zeus to make Psyche immortal, which the King of Gods agreed to.

Aprhodite wasn't too mad...she decided that having Psyche as an immortal daughter would keep her away from the earth and her worshipers. Eros and Psyche had one daughter named Voluptas, which means "pleasure". Love and Soul were never parted again.

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