Sirens were created by the Greek goddess, Demeter. A group of maidens failed to protect Demeter’s daughter, Kore who was the younger version of Persephone, from being kidnapped by Hades. To give the negligent maidens the ability to fly in search of Kore everywhere in the world, Demeter transformed half of their voluptuous figures into birds. Initially, Sirens were women with claws, bird tails and wings.
Aphrodite also claimed to have given bird characteristics to some women. Her curse was punishment upon the virgin-maidens who refused to submit themselves to men.
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The suffering of Sirens continued. They were forced to compete in a music contest against Muses. The Sirens lost. The Muses plucked all the feathers off the wings of the Sirens in order to create crowns to be worn at the winning ceremony. Appalled by their misfortune, the Sirens turned white and dove into the water, forming a cluster of flowery islands surrounded by rocks.
No longer able to fly, Sirens regained their human legs and hid within meadows covered in flowers. At noon each day, the wind paused as Sirens sang haunted tunes enticing sailors to jump into the sea and bring about their deaths. Sirens gathered the corpses and bones in the meadows where they waited for their next victims.
Odysseus ordered his crew to plug their ears with beeswax so they wouldn’t be attracted to the songs of Sirens. Tied to the mast, Odysseus listened to their tunes without taking his life. If any man escaped their temptations, Sirens plunged themselves into the waves and died.
Orpheus protected the Argonauts by playing a lyre and singing his own song. The purity of his voice overpowered the Sirens’ false promises that any man who joined them would gain wisdom.
Sirens depicted holding lyres and lamenting the dead appeared on pre-Christian tombs. They waited for the souls of heroes to leave their human bodies and take flight within the images of birds. Sirens attempted to catch the souls of the dead once they took on bird forms.
Egyptians dubbed Sirens as souls who failed to reach the otherworld. Sirens essentially became bi-polar, at times acting as compassionate beings who led a select group of souls to a superior dimension and, other times acting bitter toward humans by ruining the lives of the living.
Europeans preferred portraying their Sirens as beautiful women with bodies in the form of half-fish instead of birds. Mermaids were limited to aquatic life and differed from Sirens because of they were sea creatures. Later, mermaids adapted benevolent qualities while Sirens retained their temptress nature.
Sirens represented the fatal results of succumbing to desire. Any man who survived their seductive calls was deemed to hold high morals and a strong character. Seductive antagonists tempting conflicted heroes provided the same intensity to storylines as when beastly creatures overpowered weak heroes.
Title image by JohnDotegowski.
This article was originally posted on May 14, 2011.
