Have you ever heard the phrase “never underestimate the power of love?” Well, the myth of Eros and Psyche is one of the stories that confirm that this saying is actually true.
Written in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses), discover how the Greek god of love ended up being smitten by a mortal princess, and how their affection was the origin of the goddess of the soul.
Who was Psyche?
Once upon a time, there lived a king and a queen who had three beautiful daughters. The two elder girls were so stunning that they exceeded all other mortal women. But the beauty of the youngest sister, Psyche, was such that even goddesses envied her.
People came from all over the world to admire Psyche. They were so smitten with her that they even started paying her the divine honors typically reserved for Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty, whose ceremonies started to be neglected.
Aphrodite’s jealousy
Aphrodite felt offended and became jealous of the princess. Thus, she sent her son, Eros, among the mortals with the following task: to make Psyche fall in love with “the most miserable, poorest, crooked, and vilest living creature of the world.”
Yet, the minute Eros laid his eyes upon the beautiful Psyche, he instantly fell in love with her. For the first time, the god decided to disobey his mother.
The oracle’s prophecy of Psyche
While Psyche’s sisters had enjoyed their fair share of suitors and ended up marrying two foreign kings, Psyche had no such luck.
Thinking that she was an embodiment of an unknown daughter of Aphrodite herself, nobody dared to ask for the hand of Psyche, who, consequently, started hating herself for her own beauty.
Psyche’s father became anxious, so he went to Miletus and asked Apollo’s oracle about how he could find a husband for his youngest daughter.
The oracle replied that Psyche’s future husband is “of no human seed, but of a serpent dire and fierce as may be thought, who flies with wings above the starry skies, and subdues each thing with a fiery flight.”
They also added that “to meet this ‘evil’ spirit – who’s feared by the gods themselves – Psyche must be clad in her mourning garments and left alone on a rocky mountaintop, from where her future spouse would come and fetch her.”
Eros and Psyche’s marriage
Little did the king, queen, and princess know that the creature described by the oracle was none other than Eros. After being left alone on the mountaintop, the frightened Psyche was lifted by Zephyrus, the West Wind, who drifted her gently down into a deep valley and laid her in a bed of the Earth’s most fragrant flowers.
Amid a nearby wood, Psyche stumbled upon a heavenly palace, so luxurious and splendid that even Zeus himself would have marveled at it. After being provided with invisible servants, the most exquisite meals, and all kinds of pleasurable things, Psyche went to bed.
There, in the darkness, she was visited by Eros, her unknown husband. Despite not being able to see him, the princess felt safe in his presence. That night, the lovers consummated their marriage, and just before dawn, Eros left Psyche sleeping to fulfill his duties as a god.
Psyche’s jealous sisters
And so, Psyche spent her days alone (except for the invisible servants), and her nights with her beloved but unseen husband, who had made her promise not to look at him and base their love on their feelings rather than looks.
The days passed for Psyche who, for a while, was happy and wished for nothing more. However, she eventually felt lonely and started missing her family. So she asked Eros if it would be possible for her sisters to visit her.
Eros accepted, but also warned her that her sisters wanted to end her happiness. After Psyche swore that she would ignore her sisters’ pleas and advice, the West Wind hoisted her sisters just as he had once lifted Psyche herself, and brought them to Eros’s palace.
The elder sisters of Psyche, who were already jealous of their sister’s surpassing beauty, grew more envious once they saw their sibling’s extraordinary fortune. After talking for a while, her sisters asked Psyche who her wonderful husband was.
Psyche, unable to explain to them what her husband was like since she had not seen him, hesitated and told them that he was a young hunter. Yet, she ended up confessing that she didn’t know what he looked like.
Her sisters took advantage of this secret and taunted Psyche by claiming that her husband “must be an ugly beast.”
Thus, Psyche’s sisters convinced her to light a lamp in the middle of the night and observe her lover, assuring her that only a monster would want to hide its true appearance.
Eros flees from Psyche
After spending the night together, Psyche approached a blissfully asleep Eros with a lamp. The princess was awestruck once she saw her husband. Upon her, a man with hairs of gold, sharp features, and skin whiter than milk, laid with a bow and arrows beside him. There was no question who her spouse was: Eros, the god of love.
Stunned by her discovery, a curious Psyche picked one of the arrows and, in doing so, pricked herself. The pain startled Psyche, and a drop of burning oil fell from her lamp upon the shoulder of Eros.
This awoke the god momentarily and, as soon as he realized that his wife had broken her promise, Eros fled away without a word.
The wandering of Psyche
Once Psyche realized what she had done, and not knowing what to do, she started searching for Eros. The princess wandered from the country after country, praying that she would find her beloved husband. But no aid was given to her, not even from the deities.
Psyche eventually came to the palace of Aphrodite herself, begging her to return Eros’s love.
But the spiteful goddess, furious that her son had disobeyed her former task, ordered the princess to perform four nearly impossible tasks before she could win back her divine lover.
Psyche’s trials
The four tasks that Aphrodite gave to Psyche were:
Eros and Psyche reunite
Psyche left the underworld and opened the box and took some of the beauty for herself, thinking that if she did this, Eros would surely love her. However, inside was a “Stygian dream” that surprised her.
An infernal and deadly sleep immediately invaded every part of her body. As soon as the box was uncovered, she fell to the ground and lay there like a sleeping corpse.
Meanwhile, Eros, who could no longer bear the absence of Psyche, flew out through a window of his secret chamber and, upon reaching Psyche, wiped away the cloud of sleep from her face, and put its essence back in the box.
Then, he lifted his beloved wife into the air, and Psyche was able to bring her present to Aphrodite just in time.
Psyche, Greek goddess of the soul
Not wishing to see her suffer anymore, Eros immediately went to Zeus and begged for his approval of Eros’s and Psyche’s marriage. Zeus granted his wish and made Psyche immortal by giving her ambrosia, not only so that she and Eros may be united in marriage as equals, but also so that Aphrodite may finally be appeased.
And so, Psyche became the goddess of the soul. Later on, Psyche and Eros had a baby. It was a healthy daughter whom the married couple named Hedone, the goddess of pleasure.
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