Synergy to Synastry: Greek Lore (S3E2) Podcast Transcript

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Welcome

Renee: You're listening to Synergy to Synastry, the podcast where two corporate girlies call to follow their intuition take you on a journey of self-exploration through metaphysical modalities.

Christine: I'm Christine, intuitive coach and clairvoyant.

Renee: And I'm Renee, psychic intuitive and astrologer.

Christine: We're excited that you're here and honored to be your spiritual guides.

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Renee: Now, let's get into the episode.

Introducing the Greek Lore Mini Series

Renee: Hello and welcome everyone.

Renee: If you missed episode one of season three, where we gave a breakdown on preliminarily what to expect this season, because part of our expectations is that things might change, I would definitely go listen to that now before I get started on today's conversation.

Renee: And that is because this episode will be the first mini-series of the season.

Renee: Keep this background in mind throughout season three as we discuss each of the cultures.

Renee: Mythology comes from the th century Latin root mythologia, with mythos meaning speech, discourse, or story and logia meaning study.

Renee: Over the centuries, this word has taken on the meaning of falsehood as Stephen Fry writes in his book Heroes, quote, myths are not crossword puzzles, allegories with single meanings and answers.

Renee: Fate, necessity, cause and blame are endlessly mixed in these stories as they are in our lives.

Renee: Fry goes on to posit that we could view gods as a way of poetically casting archetypes via personification.

Renee: I'll give a quick example from Greek mythology, which you'll hear more about later.

Renee: Athena, who's the goddess of wisdom, whispers in your ear.

Renee: And that is really just a poetic way of saying that you had an epiphany.

Renee: And also the discussion of different gods and goddesses, especially in polytheistic religions, could even just be a way for people over the centuries to process their emotions and the human experiences that are so intense, it's as if they overtake us.

Renee: In the same way as an external force acting upon you, almost not fully disassociating, but you're separating yourselves by applying this lens of storytelling.

Renee: Euhemerism, named after the Greek philosopher Euhemeris of Sicily in 4 BC, the method of tracing mythology and linking it to tangible history.

Renee: There is a thread of truth in any mythology, and they may have been just as vivid and real and true in these ancient cultures and societies as any religion or spiritual practices are to people now.

Renee: There is a bit of relativism going on, and we can't forget.

Renee: Myths are just stories.

Renee: So you could refer to anything in the present moment that is a story as a myth.

Renee: In situations where archaeologists have ventured out, they have been able to tie certain events in time to connect back to people in these different mythologies.

Renee: A classic Greek example is Troy.

Renee: There's the Battle of Troy.

Renee: But we do know that this city did in fact exist.

Renee: This season we're going to be using the term lore.

Renee: Really it came through our Spirit Guides, but after doing this research on mythology, I'm recognizing why saying lore is actually the perfect word choice, because it dispels a bit of the connotation that mythology has, as I mentioned at the top, of being intrinsically linked to falsehood.

Renee's Connection to Greece

Renee: So before we hop in our time machine and go to ancient Greece, I wanted to share a little bit of personal background on this culture.

Renee: I am actually Greek.

Renee: My grandmother is half Greek.

Renee: In my sixth grade English class, we learned about Greek mythology.

Renee: And I remember feeling, knowing that I was Greek, that I had a particular affiliation, fascination, interest in it.

Renee: Of course, growing up watching Disney movies, they had the movie Hercules.

Renee: That's got some of the best music.

Renee: And I always loved that movie.

Renee: And interestingly enough, to loop Christine in on this a bit, in 2025, when we were recording season two, for both of us, this topic of Greek mythology kept popping up over and over and over again.

Renee: For example, when Christine was in Italy, she kept seeing owls everywhere, and then had this intuitive hit that she should message me.

Renee: And of course, when she did, I was like, wait, I don't know why she's sending me these owls.

Renee: I don't get the context of this, so why is this of significance?

Renee: In very, very short time, I started seeing owls in more places.

Renee: For example, Chani App, they launched the Pallas Athena, a Greek goddess who we will talk about later.

Renee: One of her symbols is the owl.

Renee: When I saw that, I was realizing, hold on, I have a little Athena owl on my desk.

Renee: When I had lived abroad summer 2023, I was in London for about a month.

Renee: Honestly, when I travel, I don't usually buy myself things or trinkets.

Renee: I made a point of looking around to see, well, is there anything that I might want to buy while I'm on this trip?

Renee: One of the very, very few things that I did, in fact, buy for myself that I was really drawn to, was we had gone to the British Museum and I was looking around and around and around and trying to find something to get for myself in the gift shop.

Renee: I found this little tiny, it's probably an inch to an inch and a half maybe tall, silver owl of Athena.

Renee: For some reason, I was really drawn to it, and so I decided to buy it and bring it home with me.

Renee: And I've had it sitting on my desk ever since.

Renee: It took Christine pointing this out while she was abroad for me to recognize, oh wait, isn't that kind of interesting that for whatever reason, I chose to buy that.

Renee: I bought this Greek symbol from the British Museum.

Renee: So that being said, when Christine and I were actually channeling with our spirit council for our season three plan, this topic of lore came in, both of us had Greece on our list.

Renee: They were already planting seeds during season two, well before we sat down to conceptualize season three, that this type of storytelling and specifically the Greek culture and history and mythology is one that would be worth discussing.

The Hellenistic period

Renee: So, why don't we begin with some history?

Renee: Hellenistic Paganism, or Hellenismos, originated in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Renee: Its practices were at their height in popularity from 300 BC to 300 AD, when the religion experienced a spiritual revolution and very active religious movement.

Renee: Historians have determined that these stories have passed through oral tradition.

Renee: For example, Dionysus' name was written on a tablet that dates back to 1400 BC, and there's a really strong link to ancient Egyptian stories, lore, mythology, but they found that names have been changed or they have been splintered out.

Renee: In Egyptian lore, we had Isis, and then in Greek lore, we have Demeter and Aphrodite.

Renee: In Egyptian lore, we have Serapis, and in Greek lore, we have a combination of Zeus, Dionysus and Hades.

Renee: These characters either through direct names or themes, and then specific stories tied to them have existed for thousands and thousands of years and continue to evolve across cultures and across generations.

Renee: I want to point out another example here.

Renee: We have Hermeticism.

Renee: So this is a term that refers to the practice of occult sciences or alchemy or fusion.

Renee: The root, of course, is Hermes, aka the messenger god, which in Roman mythology is referred to as Mercury.

Renee: So it actually is important to know your history because there are so many Greek words and terms that originated during and around this time, and a lot of them do, in fact, relate to the Greek lore.

Renee: Now that we understand a bit of when we are, it's story time.

Renee: I did read a few books and articles on Greek mythology in preparation for this episode.

Renee: Details on all of my citations are in the show notes.

Renee: As always, there is so much to learn, and I am only touching on but a few components of Greek mythology based on what I had channeled to bring up.

Renee: The first book that I read was Mythos by Stephen Fry.

Renee: So I mentioned Stephen Fry earlier, and he has a Greek mythology series.

Renee: I was listening to the audiobooks.

Renee: He has a great voice, great delivery, very charismatic.

Renee: As of recording this, I've only listened to the first two books, Mythos and Heroes, and the others aren't available on my Libby app yet, so I have to wait for those to come out.

Renee: But I will get to them eventually.

Renee: The story of Athena is one that I absolutely had to mention because of her whole owl synchronicity situation, signs and symbols happening at the beginning.

Renee: Oh, and lest I forget, in season one, we had that episode on signs from the universe, and I told that story about seeing a purple owl.

Renee: How interesting and fascinating this owl thing has kept coming up over and over again.

Renee: So I guess I'm understanding now why Christine was bringing it to my intention, and I just was not aware.

Athena's Origin Story

Renee: Here is the story of Athena.

Renee: Zeus swallowed Metus, a Titan goddess, and Athena was born when Hephaestus split his head in half, because Zeus was having a headache.

Renee: I know this sounds crazy.

Renee: But these stories are so visual, vivid, and visceral, which makes them incredibly entertaining.

Renee: There's like such a whimsy to them.

Renee: So she stepped out of his head as a fully formed woman with her armor and symbolizes wisdom, platonic love, and strategy, specifically in war.

Renee: So in some ways, you can think of her as a counterpart to Ares, the god of war.

Renee: And as far as motifs associated with her, we have the owl, as I've mentioned already, the serpent, and that's because Zeus had entrapped Athena's mother, Metis, by turning into a serpent.

Renee: And then we also have the olive tree, which of course is the tree in Greece, incredibly famous.

Renee: I mentioned earlier, Pallas Athena, so P-A-L-L-A-S.

Renee: Pallas was the daughter of Triton, who Athena had played against in a war game.

Renee: She was overtaking with this sense of passion and victory in defeating her friend.

Renee: She ended up actually killing her and then taking her name in her honor.

Renee: So then she started going by Pallas Athena after that.

Renee: Also linked to Athena is Parthenos, which means Virgin, and that is where the name Parthenon came from, one of the most famous structures in Greece.

Renee: As you're seeing a pattern here, Athena, also related to Athens, is so major in naming conventions, in history and identity of even modern Greek culture.

Renee: I also wanted to mention another story, the creation of humanity.

Renee: Different religions and different spiritual practices, there are different stories.

Renee: And the one here is that Zeus, Prometheus, and Athena formed a little trio, collaboration, group project, and created humanity.

Renee: So it was Zeus' idea, because he wanted some playthings on earth, and he contributed his saliva.

Renee: Prometheus, who was a titan, took that saliva and mixed it with clay to form the bodies.

Renee: And then Athena was tasked with breathing life and inspiration into them.

Renee: All right, pivoting away from Athena, I wanted to talk about some other notable symbols and tie them back to Christine and I.

Renee: And I will include a link in the show notes if you want to research a bit for yourself, or feel free to leave a comment or send us an email, and I can give you a little personalized overview.

Astrology in Ancient Greece

Renee: Not only can we look back to this era for the root of so many words, incredible storytelling, artistry, and architecture, but we can learn about the history of the constellations.

Renee: For context, the first book of Greek astrology was written by Astronomer Ptolemy, and it was called Apotelesmatica, oh, was it that right?

Renee: Or Work on Astrology, commonly referred to as the Four Books.

Renee: And this was written in 2 AD, around the midpoint of this era.

Renee: So remember, we're talking about 300 BC to 300 AD.

Renee: So this has been going for some hundreds of years at this point.

Renee: We already know that a lot of these stories are much older than this time, but they were being reprocessed, reworked, retooled, and expanded upon.

Renee: They were drawing these stories from mythology and using them to map out what they were seeing within the sky.

Renee: So we have characters from this lore explaining the cosmos.

Capricorn in Greek Lore

Renee: I'm not going to review all 12 zodiac signs, just the rising signs for Christine and I, but you can check out that quickie article for an overview.

Renee: And if you would like to go down a rabbit hole, feel free to research more.

Renee: And you can also send me a message if you have any questions.

Renee: All right, so we'll start with Christine first.

Renee: Capricorn.

Renee: Amalthea was a woman or nymph, honestly, when I was researching this, this was hotly debated.

Renee: There are so many different stories and lots of disagreement around her background.

Renee: So some were saying that she was a nymph who could transform into a goat, and others were saying she was just full-time a goat.

Renee: But what is consistent is that she had nursed a baby Zeus.

Renee: And the reason that we had this other figure nursing Zeus rather than his own family is because his father had received a prophecy that his kids would destroy him.

Renee: So he ate all of his children.

Renee: They end up coming up and out, and we see all of them later.

Renee: So they didn't actually perish.

Renee: His mother, who was tired of her children being eaten, sent Zeus away after he was born in secret, and Amalthea had raised him.

Renee: Some stories say that she broke off one of her horns and filled it with food and gave it to him.

Renee: And that is where this concept of the cornucopia came from, a horn of plenty.

Renee: Capricorn is associated with the seagoat, and naturally, in this situation, we have a goat that's in the mountain.

Renee: It's a goat that climbs the mountain.

Renee: Amalthea might have been the daughter of Oceanus, which could give us that seagoat component and tie her to the ocean.

Renee: Another story that I saw to explain Capricorn is actually it's a combination of two different myths.

Renee: The other being Pan, the god of shepherds and flocks, who was half man, half goat, jumping into a river to escape from Typhon, a serpent monster.

Renee: He tried to transform into a fish, but he only partially changed.

Renee: So therefore he was half goat, half fish basically.

Renee: Ultimately, whether it is either or both, we have this association for Capricorn with abundance and caretaking, which I thought was pretty interesting because normally we wouldn't associate those traits with Capricorn, we would associate them with Jupiter or with Cancer.

Cancer in Greek Lore

Renee: Now, speaking of talking about My Rising Sign, the story here is much more clear and tightly wound.

Renee: So we had Hera, who was Zeus' wife and also sister, one of the ones that came out of the father.

Renee: Hera despised Heracles, also known as Hercules, because he was one of the many children born of Zeus' affairs with humans.

Renee: She cursed him, which resulted in him accidentally killing his wife, Megara, and their children.

Renee: If you commit a crime like this, because it is so horrific, you have to pay penance in some capacity.

Renee: So he was charged with completing 12 labors.

Renee: For the most part, it was taking down some beast or creature in a different land, such as slaying a lion, so then we see him wearing the lion's coat, the nine-headed hydra, and then retrieving Seribus, the three-headed dog, from the underworld.

Renee: Shout out to Fluffy and Harry Potter.

Renee: Hera tried to sabotage him along the way.

Renee: While he was trying to take down the hydra, she sent a crab to eat it, but he ended up crushing it with his foot.

Renee: So to commemorate the brave crab's efforts, she cast it up into the stars.

Renee: Cancer is associated with memory, caretaking and family, in this case, RIP to Heracles' family.

Renee: The crab and then the mother, Hera.

Renee: I do wonder how they actually chose which stories to create.

What?

Renee: Because of course, if you look up at the sky, you're not saying, hey, that cancer constellation looks just like a crab.

Renee: We kind of draw shapes around it.

Renee: They had to be very strategic and methodical in deciding.

Renee: We want this to mean that.

Renee: Maybe they were backfilling.

Renee: I don't know.

Renee: This is where we have Euhemurism, where we can trace some components of these stories back to find truth, to find history, to find public record.

Renee: But as with anything, just because they wrote it down doesn't mean it's true.

Renee: Oh my gosh, I'm realizing as I'm saying this, how appropriate to be talking about this through that lens in these times, when so much of our reality is questioned.

Renee: We have the freedom to take what resonates from these stories, whether or not we want to believe them as true or not, the same as any other ancient religion and any other modern religion.

Lessons from Greek Lore

Renee: Other just quick takeaways that I had from reading at least these two books plus just my history of consuming some content in this area, reading some different articles, people will view them as their morality tales, like fairy tales or the Bible.

Renee: They are showing you culturally and at the time what is right or wrong, what you should do versus shouldn't do, relationship dynamics in a really, really, really high percentage of these Greek lore stories.

Renee: At some time or another, there's a god that says don't do X, and that could be open something, look at something, ask something, share something.

Renee: And most people will inevitably do that, even if it's literally at the 11th hour.

Renee: They've basically achieved the task and then suddenly something happens by accident or they cave, and they end up doing the thing that they were explicitly told not to do.

Renee: And as a result, they face a punishment, and this may be transfiguration.

Renee: They get turned into an animal or disfigured in some way.

Renee: They may be cursed or they may be killed.

Renee: I mentioned the Bible earlier.

Renee: There's definitely a parallel here with God telling Eve, don't have the apple, and then eventually she does.

Renee: In Greek mythology, they have a similar story.

Renee: Pandora was told not to open a box, and when she does, it releases kind of the equivalent of the Eve story, like releasing sin and darkness.

Renee: So when she had opened it, it released disease, sorrow, death.

Renee: Always interesting to see the parallels and the through lines between these different categories of floor.

Closing Thoughts

Renee: I hope that you enjoyed hearing some Greek lore stories today.

Renee: Let me know what you're watching, reading, or listening to, because you know I'm going to end up consuming more of this anyway.

Renee: And I hope that this background has given you some food for thought, and you can chew on it over the coming weeks.

Renee: But I'll be back because we have part two of the mini-series, and that is the Modernity episode.

Renee: We'll be talking about how that lore is visible in the present day, how we can all or maybe already do engage with it, and ultimately its bigger picture relevance, because sometimes the past is present.

Christine: Thanks for listening.

Christine: If you'd like to learn more, the resources we used to prepare for this episode are listed in the show notes.

Renee: If you're curious to develop your intuition, we've partnered with the Nuurvana Be Light program to give our listeners a $500 discount on tuition fees.

Renee: Email us for more details and we'll connect you with the founder, Deganit Nuur.

Christine: Want to connect with us?

Christine: You can reach me, Christine, @ChanneledbyChristine with one L on Instagram.

Renee: And you can reach me, Renee, @_readbyrenee, or connect with both of us via email at synergytosynastry@gmail.com.

Christine: Keep your spirit curious and your aura sparkling.

Renee: We'll see you when the stars next align.