Sisyphus (Greek Σίσυφος; transliteration: Sísuphos; IPA: 'sɪsɪfəs), in Greek mythology, was the son of Aeolus and Enarete, husband of Merope, and King/Founder of Ephyra (Corinth). According to some (later) sources, he was the father of Odysseus by Anticlea, before she married her later husband, Laertes. He was the father of the Corinthian king Glaucus by Merope. He was said to have founded the Isthmian games in honour of Melicertes, whose body he found lyin ...

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• Sisyphus - 'Sisyphean task' or 'Sisyphean challenge'

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SISYPHUS

In his The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus gives us a vision of Sisyphus that he claims is heroic: "... at that brief moment, before the stone begins to roll back downhill, Sisyphus triumphs again and again over the gods." I suggest that such a "triumph" is hardly worth mentioning. Indeed, it is no triumph at all, but a pathetic underscoring of Camus' own chronic spiritual depression. For these and other crimes against the human psyche, Camus stands forever indicted.

There is, in fact, a far more satisfying and useful meaning to the story of Sisyphus than Camus was ever brave enough to reach out for. Nor was Camus able to encompass the obvious truth that mortals who incur the wrath of the gods, become themselves semi-divine. For to be touched by the gods, even to be tormented by their cruelties, is to lose one's mortality and partake of the higher life.

Several versions of the story exist, but briefly what happens is that Sisyphus betrays a secret of Zeus in exchange for favors of a less important god. Apparently, even this brief encounter is sufficient to bestow upon him the ability to lock up Death as soon as Zeus hurls him into the underworld. He even manages to wangle permission from Pluto to return briefly to earth in order to conclude some personal business. Once back in life, however, Sisyphus will have nothing to do with the suggestion that he return to Hades.

So Hermes is sent to drag him by the scruff of his neck back to his old moldering grave -- once there to spend forever pushing a stone up to the top of a tall hill. Once reaching the top, the stone would roll down again and he would have to push it up the hill again, ad aeternitatem.

Now what is really happening is quite obvious. In wresting the power from Death, Sisyphus acquires the ability to see what it is that the gods in their mercy have tried to spare us. The mercy of death is forgetfulness, so that we are not obligated to re-experience, to no real purpose, the futility of remembering over and over again the tedium of being born, living and dying. In other words, Sisyphus becomes nothing less than the unwilling turner of the Karmic Wheel of Samsaric Life and Death, from which Buddha would deliver us. Since he refuses to die, Sisyphus is condemned to live forever -- that is, to remember everything. It isn't just that he wants to survive, but that he wants to survive at any cost, and so his punishment is to be granted only the mechanical side of life, stripped of its meaning.

(See also: SISYPHUS, Magick, Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Body Mind and Soul, )

Persephone Hades Minos Aeacus Rhada- manthys Charon Cerberus Acheron Cocytus Tartarus Lethe Elysion Styx Phlegethon Asphodel Erebus Ixion Sisyphus Tantalus The Titans ...

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In Greek mythology, Anticlea, or Antiklia, was the daughter of Autolycus and mother of Odysseus by Laertes (or Sisyphus). She died of grief while her son was away at the Trojan War. Odysseus speaks with her in the underworld when he travels there to speak with someone who can tell him the many dangers of his journey ahead. Odyssey XI, 85. Category: Greek mythological people ...

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As a punishment from the gods, in the underworld, Sisyphus was compelled to roll a big stone up a steep hill; but before it reached the top of the hill the stone always rolled down, and Sisyphus had to begin all over again (Odyssey, xi. 593). This cycle continued on for eternity. As a result, pointless or interminable activities are often described as Sisyphean. The reason for his punishment is not mentioned in Homer, and is obscure. According to some, he had revealed the designs of the gods to mortals; according to others, he ...

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Sisyphus, Sisyphus - 'Sisyphean task' or 'Sisyphean challenge'

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Persephone Hades Minos Aeacus Rhada- manthys Charon Cerberus Acheron Cocytus Tartarus Lethe Elysion Styx Phlegethon Asphodel Erebus Ixion Sisyphus Tantalus The Titans Greek myth ...

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• Tantalus - Story of Tantalus
• Tantalus - Related terms
• Tantalus - Spoken-word myths - audio files
• Tantalus - Other Possible Wives
• Tantalus - Sources

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In Greek mythology, Canace was a daughter of Aeolus and Enarete, and the beloved of Poseidon. She had seven brothers and six sisters. Her brothers were Athamas, Cretheus, Deioneus, Macar (also called Macareus), Perieres, Salmoneus and Sisyphus. Her sisters were Alcyone, Arne, Calyce, Peisidice, Perimele and Tanagra. With Poseidon, she was the mother of Aloeus, Epopeus, Hopelus, Nireus and Triopas. She was forced by her father to commit suicide as punishment for fal ...

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Critias, 460-403 BC, was the uncle of Plato, leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and one of the most violent. He was an associate of Socrates', a fact that did not endear Socrates to the Athenian public. He was noted in his day for his tragedies, elegies and prose works. From his Sisyphus a fragment has been preserved in which he declares faith in the gods to be merely a clever device for holding the masses in check; but as no one would dare to make such a statement before an Athenian audience, the pi ...

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In Greek mythology, several unrelated women went by the name Merope (bee-mask later reinterpreted as honey-like or eloquent), which may, therefore, have denoted a position in the cult of the Great Mother rather than a mere individual's name: Merope, one of the Heliades Merope, foster mother of Oedipus, wife of Polybus Merope, one of the Oceanids, a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys, mother of Phaeton by Helios or Clymenus Merope, one of the Pleiades, she married a mortal, Sisyphus, an ...

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Bellerophon ("bearing darts") was a hero from Greek mythology whose greatest feat was to kill the Chimera, a monster usually depicted as with a lion's head, a goat's body, and a serpent-tail. He is also said to be the grandson of Sisyphus, a notable character in mythology who was sent to Tartarus for doing many evil things in life. He was the son of King Glaucus of Corinth. Bellerophon's journey begins when he is accused of trying to seduce the wife of King Proteus. He is sent into exile to the land of King Iobates of Lycia. Pr ...

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The Acheron river is in the Epirus region of north west Greece. Acheron translates as "river of woe" and believed to be a branch of the underworld river Acheron over which in ancient Greek mythology Charon ferried the newly dead souls across into Hades. The lake called Acherousia and the river still called Acheron with the nearby ruins of the Necromanteion are found near Parga on the mainland opposite Corfu. Another branch of Acheron was believed to surface at the Acherusian cape (now Eregli in Turkey) and was seen by th ...

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Absurdism is a philosophy stating that the efforts of man to find meaning in the universe will ultimately fail because no such meaning exists (at least in relation to man). Absurdism is related to Existentialism, though should not be confused with it. It was born of the Existentialist movement when the French philosopher and writer Albert Camus broke from that philosophical line of thought and published his manuscript The Myth of Sisyphus. The aftermath of World War II provided the social environment that stimulated absu ...

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• Absurdism - What's the point?
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In Classical Greek, Lethe literally means "forgetfulness" or "concealment". The Greek word for "truth" is a-lethe-ia, meaning "un-forgetfulness" or "un-concealment". In Greek mythology, Lethe is one of the several rivers of Hades. Drinking from the river Lethe ("forgetfulness" or "oblivion") caused complete forgetfulness. Some ancient Greeks believed that souls were made to drink from the river before being reincarnated, so they would not remember their past lives. Lethe was a Naiad nymph and her river was in the ...

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In Greek mythology, Cocytus, meaning river of wailing (Greek κωκυτός, "lamentation") was the river in the underworld on the banks of which the dead who could not pay Charon wandered, according to most accounts, for one hundred years. It flowed into the river Acheron, across which lay Hades, the mythological abode of the dead. In The Divine Comedy (Inferno), Cocytus is the ninth and lowest circle of Hell and is frozen by the flapping wings of Lucifer, or Satan. In the Inferno Cocytus is referred to as ...

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In Greek mythology, Tartarus, or Tartaros, is both a deity and a place in the underworld — even lower than Hades. In ancient orphic sources and in the mystery schools Tartaros is also the unbounded first-existing "thing" from which the Light and the cosmos is born. The Greek poet Hesiod asserts that a bronze anvil falling from heaven would fall 9 days before it reached the Earth. The anvil would take 9 more days to fall from Earth to Tartarus. In The Iliad, Jove asserts that Tartarus is "as far beneath Hades as heaven ...

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• Tartarus - Tartarus in Neopaganism
• Tartarus - Tartarus in the New Testament

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The Pleiades Πληιόνης (pleye'-a-deez, also plee'-a-deez), companions of Artemis (ar'-te-mis), were the seven daughters of the Titan Atlas (at'-las) and the sea-nymph Pleione (pleye-oh'-nee) born on Mount Cyllene (seye-lee'-nee). They are the sisters of Calypso, Hyas, the Hyades, and the Hesperides. The Pleiades were nymphs in the train of Artemis, and together with the seven Hyades were called the Atlantides, Dodonides, ...

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• Pleiades mythology - The Seven Sisters
• Pleiades mythology - Mythology

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Aiolos (Αἴολος), Latinized as Aeolus, Eolus, Aeolos, or Aiolus, was the name of three personages in Greek Mythology. These three personages are often difficult to tell apart, and even the ancient mythographers appear to have been perplexed about which Aeolus was which. Diodorus made an attempt to define each of these three (although it is clear he also became muddled), and his opinion is followed here. Briefly, the first Aeolus was a son of Hel ...

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• Aeolus - Aeolus son of Hellen
• Aeolus - Aeolus son of Poseidon
• Aeolus - Aeolus son of Hippotes

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Albert Camus (November 7, 1913 – January 4, 1960) was a French author and philosopher and one of the principal luminaries (with Jean-Paul Sartre) of existentialism. Camus was the second youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (after Rudyard Kipling) when he received the award in 1957. He is also the shortest-lived of any literature laureate to date, having died in a car crash 3 years after receiving the award. Albert Camus - Early years. Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria to a Fre ...

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• Albert Camus - Early years
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In Greek mythology, Cerberus or Cerberos (Greek Κέρβερος, Kerberos, demon of the pit), was the hound of Hades—a monstrous three-headed dog (sometimes said to have 50 or 100 heads) with a snake for a tail and innumerable snake heads on his back. He guarded the gate to Hades (the Greek underworld) and ensured that the dead could not leave and the living could not enter. His brother was Orth ...

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• Cerberus - Heracles' capturing of Cerberus
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