The myth of Pygmalion: How to bring beauty to life (transcript)

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Episode Transcript:

Lian (00:02)

What could the tale of Pygmalion tell us about bringing our deepest longings to life? Hello, my beautiful mythical old souls and a huge welcome back. In this episode, I tell the ancient and evocative myth of Pygmalion, a story of longing creation and the mystery of what brings something or someone to life. Each month I share a mythical tale as spell as memory as invitation.

These aren't tales to analyze or consume, they're here to be felt, stirred, remembered as magical doorways into your own soul. I first told this one live with our beloved community in Unio, our Academy of the Soul, where we continue to journey with it more deeply through a month long quest. If you found this story soul stirring,

And you'd like to join us for the next one I tell and a guided journey for you to enter the story and then the mythical quest that follows. You can find out more at bemythical.com slash unio. And before we get into this month's myth, I also want to let you know about my brand new upcoming crucible for women, the Crimson Quest. It's a mythical journey into the ancient blood mysteries to heal pain and shame and reclaim the long lost gifts.

Of dreaming, desire, truth and wisdom. It's for my daughter and all the daughters, so we might enter a sacred and powerful relationship with the menstrual cycle. You can find out more and register your interest to be one of the first to know when I open it for enrollment at bemythical.com slash crimson. And now back to this month's myth. Together we walk through the temple of Venus.

Through stone and flesh, through the spaces where our unspoken dreams might come to life.

Of the mythic figure Pygmalion, a sculptor who turned away from the women of his world and poured all his longing into the creation of his own ideal. But this is more than a tale of a man and a statue, it's a revelation on what we create when we shape from love.

How the act of creating shapes us in return. It speaks that timeless dance between the human and the divine and how longing leads us to the altar. How offerings made in faith and beauty may yet be answered, invites us to reflect on our own sacred longings and how these desires might be the soul's way of sculpting something real into existence.

This myth holds up a mirror for us to longing, to devotion and the transformative power of love that brings creation to life. Are you ready to look into that mirror? Let's dive in.

Lian (02:54)

Okay, so we shall begin the story and as ever the invitation is to allow yourself, you know perhaps if you remember being read bedtime stories as a child, not all of us were sadly but you you probably have that almost like that remembrance in your bones even if we didn't experience that in our lifetime.

Certainly our ancestors, whether that was a bedtime story or sitting around the fire, there's always like a way of remembering how to be entered and enter a story. And so just take a moment and see if you can recall that remembrance and allow yourself to kind of settle down into it, just like a bed, like settle down into the bed of the story.

Take a few moments to settle in and you might want to close your eyes and actually lay down if you're not someone like me that can very easily fall asleep in such circumstances. You want to kind of allow yourself to be in that liminal space, maybe even a light trance, but without completely leaving the space. So let's allow yourself to drop in to that story space, that magical story space.

Once upon a time, when God still walked amongst mortals, there lived a sculptor named Pygmalion on the beautiful Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

Now Pygmalion was a very talented sculptor, even though he was a quiet man and not rambunctious or kind of wanting to sing his own praises, he was so skilled that he was known, his name was known. So seemingly, he would be a popular man and would have a choice of partners and maybe even a bride. However, Pygmalion was repulsed by the women he saw around them.

He saw vanity and lust. He saw a way of conducting themselves that lacked what he considered grace and elegance.

And so disillusioned by what he saw as this moral and emotional corruption, this living from the ego, he swears off women and decides to be a confirmed bachelor.

Says that's it it's just me and my art.

And then he notices, even though in his conscious world, he's sworn off women, it doesn't stop them creeping into his dreams and his daydreams and his fantasies. And he notices this symbol of this perfect, beautiful woman coming to life in his awareness every time he's not fully paying attention to the task in hand.

And he's so moved by this vision, he decides to see if he can create her. And so he carves a statue from Snow White Ivory. He creates her with such artistry that each time he goes back and works on her more, she appears more alive, more beautiful, more soft, more modest, more radiant.

And he falls in love with her. He becomes unable to separate his desire for her from this image he's created.

He dresses her, he brings her offerings, jewels and flowers and gifts. He speaks to her, he even kisses her, places her in his bed, treating her as though she was fully alive.

He adores her. He adorns her. He is devoted to her.

She goes from art to his beloved.

And then Venus, the goddess Venus has a yearly feast day and it's celebrated throughout Cyprus. And Pygmalion does as he usually does and brings offerings to her altar. And he enters the temple and there's incense swirling through the temple. And there's all the offerings that others have brought. There's fruit and there's herbs, flowers and he brings more. And he falls to his knees and he prays to Venus. He says and notice this he doesn't dare ask for his statue to come to life he thinks that would be impossible so instead he says please give me a woman like my ivory girl.

And then he looks up and the flame on the altar flares three times. One, two, three. And when he sees that happen for the third time, he knows Venus has heard and accepted his prayer.

He hurries home, back to his statue. Again, not believing that she will come to life, but believing somehow he will be graced with a woman who were the qualities of the statue. But still, he feels such love. He's so entranced with the statue. He kisses her once again, and as he does so, he feels warmth in her lips, softness in her limbs and little by little like wax melting in the sun the ivory yields under his touch.

She has come to life.

She's no longer stone, but a warm, living woman made of flesh and blood and bones. Pygmalion's mouth was overfull of words with which to thank Venus, but still he pressed his mouth against hers.

She welcomed the kisses he gave her. Blushed and rose her bashful eyes to the light and saw both her lover and the sky for the first time.

The woman, once only an image, now lived. Whether the soul rose from his longing or from arriving on her own terms, no one can say. But they soon married. And the goddess Venus herself attended the marriage that she had brought about. And when the moon's horns had nine times met at the full, the woman bore a son, Paphos from who the city takes its name even today.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Lian (10:26)

I hope you loved this mythical tale as much as I do and that it showed you something of the world and your own soul. If you're not already subscribed, I suggest you do so now if you'd like to catch each new story as they're released. And as I said at the beginning, I first shared this story live with our beloved community in Unio, our Academy of the Soul. And we begin each month with a community ceremony in which we gather and we journey with a particular tale, fairy tale, folk tale, myth, legend, together in community in this way. And then that initiates us into a month long quest. If you would like to journey in this alchemical mythical way, again, with others in community, which provides a level of depth and mirroring that really can't be matched in any other way, come join us.

You can find out more at bemythical.com slash unio. Thank you so much for watching. You've been wonderful. I'm sending you all my love. I'll catch you again next week. And until then, go be mythical.

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