Myths and Legends * Moira. Moirai: Ancient Greek Goddesses of Fate

Moira - in ancient Greek mythology were goddesses of fate.

It was customary for the ancient Greeks to give form to deities and gods who represented and explained the meaning of life.

The Moirai were in some ways more than just fortune tellers, they took control of the entire human cycle - from birth to death. In fact, they guided people's lives in various ways.

moira

According to myth, the goddesses were the daughters of Zeus and the goddess of justice, Themis.

The names of the three Moiras were Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, each of which owned a separate gift that turned them into unique creatures.

Initially, it was believed that each person has his own destiny - moira. Later, they began to believe that all three sisters participated in the life fate of every person from his very birth.

Clotho spun the thread of human life, Lachesis- unwound and passed it through life's hardships, and Atropos- cut the thread of human life (cut off life).

The gods, despite their power, also obeyed the Moirai. An unrelenting fate also ruled over them. The Greeks represented moira in the form of stern old women: Clotho with a spindle in his hand, Lachesis with a measure or scales, Atropos with a book of life and scissors. In Rome, moiras were called parks.

It was believed that the Fates would appear within three days of someone's birth to decide their fate as a person. The Three Moiras represented the cycle of life, essentially responsible for Birth, Life and Death.

They turn (Clotho), draw out (Lachesis) and cut (Atropos) the thread of Life.

Unlike the horai, their siblings were portrayed as ugly and elderly women who made people fear their own fate.

MO YRY(Μοῖραι, moira, lit. “part”, “share”, hence the “fate” that everyone receives at birth), in Greek mythology, the goddess of fate. In the initial ideas, the moira-destiny of everyone is embodied in a certain material object - a fetish, a carrier of vital potentialities. Yes, moira Meleagra is enclosed in the brand left from the sacrificial fire, hidden by the mother of the hero. Wanting to destroy her son, the mother took out the brand and threw it into the fire, where it burned down, thereby causing the painful death of Meleager (Apollod. I 8, 2-3). When animistic notions prevailed, Magic force, enclosed in a fetish, began to appear as an independent deity, which endows a person with one or another fate, expresses his will to him, determines him later life. Moirai are now understood as fate (“what is spoken”) and fate (“what is destined”), although special terms are developed for these concepts in the Greek language, along with the name “moira”. Moira is dark invisible force, it does not have a distinct anthropomorphic appearance, the image of moira in ancient art is rare. With the development of Olympic mythology, ideas about one (Hom. Il. V 613), or two (Paus. X 24, 4), or three moira became stable. The most common myth is about the three Moira sisters. Archaic Moirai are the daughters of the night, which also gave birth to death, sleep, Nemesis, Eris and Hesperides (Hes. Theog. 211-225). Their names are Lachesis ("giving lots"), Clotho ("spinning"), Atropos ("inevitable"). Lachesis appoints a lot even before the birth of a person, Clotho spins the thread of his life, Atropos inevitably brings the future closer. Plato believes that these three moira are the daughters of the goddess Ananke("necessity") that turns the world's spindle (Plat. R. P. X 617 b-e). The relationship between moira and the Olympian gods is complex. As a result of the archaic - the dependence of the gods on moira and their ignorance of what was intended. So, Zeus, wanting to know the dictates of fate, weighs the lots human lives on golden scales (Hom. Il. XXII 209-214). However, there is a variant of the myth, according to which the Olympian Zeus was the father of moira, born by Themis (Hes. Theog. 901-906).

Moirae are involved in Zeus (Pind. Ol. VIII 22), he is called Morius (Soph. O. C. 705). Zeus and Apollo are also called Moiragetes ("drivers of moira"). The epithet of Zeus “the arbiter of fates” (the inscription on the altar in Olympia) means (according to Pausanias) that God “knows human affairs and everything that the Moirai appointed, and everything that they refused” (Paus. V 15, 5) . In the temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, above the head of the statue of Zeus, there was an image of moira, and it was obvious to everyone that “predestination and fate obey Zeus alone” (Paus. I 40, 4). In the Hellenistic era, the goddess competes with moira Quiet(goddess of chance), characterizing the instability and variability of life. Moira correspond to Roman parks.

Lit.: Losev A.F., Homer, M., 1960, p. 270-342; Leitzke E., Moira und Gottheit im alten griechischen Epos, Gött., 1930 (Diss); Steinbach E., Der Faden der Schicksalsgottheiten, Lpz., 1931; Krause W., Zeus und Moira bei Homer, "Wiener Studien", 1949, Bd 64, S. 10-52.

A.F. Losev

Myths of the peoples of the world. Encyclopedia. (In 2 volumes). Ch. ed. S.A. Tokarev.- M.: " Soviet Encyclopedia”, 1982. Vol. II, p. 169.

Law of life

It is impossible not to admit that in nature there are many laws that govern all processes in a row. Many see such laws in human life. The Greeks designated them with the word "moira", which meant "share", "fate". At first it was believed that everyone obeyed this law - both gods and people. There was an inevitable force in the world, which was simply impossible to resist. For a long time this power had no particular shape or symbol. Some objects could sometimes happen that contained the life force of a person, but gradually the Greeks became bored with living in the world of abstract ideas, and an idea appeared of some moira, deities of fate, determining the length of human life and its ups and downs.

Initially, they were considered a product of Nikta, the goddess of the night, and could not be accurately counted. But the Olympian gods came and put things in order in popular beliefs. Moira became three women, spinners of threads. Unlike some pretty, frivolous nymphs, moiras had the appearance of unsympathetic old women with a stern disposition.

old women of fate

The first of them, Lachesis, was engaged in determining how a person would live after birth, and making sure that he would not be distracted from his lot.

The second sister, Clotho, was in charge of the present. She spun a thread for herself, stringing on it, like beads, the events of today, until the third sister, Atropos, cut this thread of human life with her scissors, cutting off the series of mortal days, and dooming the human soul to descend into the kingdom of Hades.

Plato was a little more kind to moira and described them as worthy women with wreaths on their heads, sitting on high chairs, all of them in white. All of them, in his opinion, are spinning on the spindle of necessity, singing along to the heavenly music of the spheres, each about something of its own. Over time, Zeus got tired of obeying some old women and he slowly began to win back the right to independently control his own fate, first, and then he already grabbed the right to be called the arbiter of human destinies. As a guarantee, he declared moira to be his daughters. In places, even reducing their number to two, as in Delphi. It all ended with the fact that the Moira began to take on the role of comic old women, and Apollo, according to rumors, got them drunk in order to save his friend Admet, and in a drunken state made the Moira promise to accept someone else's life instead of Admet's death.

Well, by the sunset of classical Greece, Tyche, the goddess of chance, began to enter the arena more and more often instead of Moir. But there is a nuance here, the Greeks thought of it already consciously, philosophizing to the point that they decided that there are no laws of life, and the world is ruled by chance.

Justice with a whip

In the beginning (relative to Olympian mythology) matriarchy reigned in Greece, especially in the divine part of her life. In those times that modern emancipated ladies would really like, the goddess could afford to pursue a man, driving him like a game, catch up and use for any purpose of interest to her. Everything flows, everything changes, a wave of modernization has swept through Greece and the fighters for the rights of men have prevailed. Now the women began to run, and the men with great pleasure began to catch up with them.

Swan songs of Zeus

So it was with Nemesis. I’ll make a reservation right away that there are many versions of this myth, and it’s almost impossible to establish the truth now. Let's agree on the main actors myth were Leda, Nemesis and Zeus. Moreover, there is a high probability that Leda and Nemesis are generally the same person. Zeus was inflamed with passion for Nemesis, a pensive and beautiful maiden, with a naturally heightened sense of justice. With the perseverance of a real man, he pursued her on earth, in water and in the sky, and she ran away from him, changing her appearance. At some point, Nemesis turned into a goose, and Zeus quickly turned into a swan, overtook her and, as they say in relation to birds, trampled. From their intercourse, Nemesis laid an egg, pleased Zeus decorated the sky with a couple of constellations. True, he adhered to the version that he deceived Nemesis, turning into a swan pursued by an eagle, and a kind girl warmed him on her chest, protecting him from danger. So an eagle and a swan appeared in the sky. Later, offspring appeared from the egg, about the composition of which myths say different things, but everyone agrees that Elena the Beautiful became the main fruit of this feathered union.

After these events, Nemesis assumed the duties of the goddess of justice, left herself wings and began to keep order, severely and inevitably pursuing violators of moral and social norms of behavior, as well as those who had the imprudence to show their happiness in such a way that it could be interpreted, as disrespect to the gods. The Greeks responded with the saying “envious gods” and tried to follow the rules of the game, pretending that they did not have much happiness, even if they hit the jackpot.

Nemesis, in the form of her symbols, chose the scales - a symbol of balance and the sword - a symbol of the coming punishment for the delinquent. Less replicated is another, much more piquant look of the modern viewer, the image of the goddess of justice - with an arm bent at the elbow, a bridle in one hand and a whip in the other. Moreover, the bent elbow is a symbol of the measure of length adopted in Greece, they say you will get how much you deserve. The bridle is a call to control oneself and restrain impulses, and the whip, like the sword, is a symbol of inevitable retribution. I think such a statue of Nemesis would be in great demand among progressive lawyers.

Indomitable Avengers

Erinnia - the forces of revenge. How many of them exactly - is unknown, at first it was believed that about thirty thousand. As in the case of moira, gradually from faceless forces they acquired bodies and even names. As personalization progressed, their number dropped sharply, stopping at three. There are Tisiphone, the avenger of murders, Alecto, who cannot forgive, and Megaera, the envious one. They were born from the blood of Uranus, when Kronos castrated him, and from the moment of birth they fiercely pursued murderers, especially specializing in parent-murderers. Most of all, Orestes was unlucky with them. When his power-hungry mother killed his father, the Erinnes began to cry out for vengeance, chasing Orestes and threatening madness (in a later version of the myth this was done by Apollo) until he avenged his father by killing his own mother. Then the Erinnia began to pursue Orestes, as the culprit of the death of his mother. Moreover, it was impossible to get rid of them until Orestes brought the case to court in Athens. Then some of the Erinnes recognized the supremacy of the patriarchy, left Orestes alone and settled on the slopes of the Acropolis, becoming "Eumenides", merciful. As far as is known, the Erinnias brought their victim to insanity as a punishment, which most often ended in suicide.

The singing spindle of the world

Ananke with her spindle - the goddess of inevitability, sits to herself, rotates the axis of the world between her knees. She spins not threads, but something incomprehensible. After all, its spindle consists of eight celestial spheres, on each of which a siren sits and sings, creating the harmony of the cosmos. It is only at their leisure that they drive sailors crazy.

Ananke seems to be an unkind goddess, in none of the stories associated with her is it heard about the fact that she took pity on someone or helped somehow. Although, if you are busy with the rotation of cosmic spheres, there is no time to be distracted by the rest of the time.

In ancient Greek mythology, the Moira are the goddesses of fate. MOYRA - (Greek Moirai share.) Goddess of fate, 3 daughters of the Night; birth and death are under their special protection.

This deity spoke his will to him, and also determined his future life. Moira was now understood as fate ("what is spoken") and fate ("what is destined"). Initially, it was believed that each person has his own destiny. However, with the development of Olympic mythology, ideas about one, two, and then three moira became stable. Plato calls them the daughters of the goddess Ananke ("necessity"), who turned the world's spindle.

She spins fate, on which the events of the present time in a person's life were strung. The relationship between the Moirai and the Olympian gods was complex. So, Zeus, wanting to know the dictates of fate, personally weighed the lots of human lives on golden scales. However, there is a variant of the myth, according to which it was Zeus who was the father of the moira, born by Themis.

Be that as it may, both in the first and in the second case, the three sisters of Moira are involved with Zeus, who is called Morius. The first, in the form of a spinning woman, personifies the steady and calm action of fate, the second - her accidents, the third - the inevitability of her decisions. A.F. Losev points out that in the Hellenistic era, the goddess of chance Tycha, who characterizes the instability and variability of life, competes with moira.

Presenting themselves as the daughters of Themis, moiras act as goddesses of regularity and order. In ancient art, moira were depicted rarely and in different ways. The fate of Zeus himself is in their hands. Doom rules over mortals and over the gods.

The Romans called these goddesses parkas. In the initial ideas, the moira-destiny of everyone is embodied in a certain material object - a fetish, a carrier of vital potentialities. Plato believes that these three M. are the daughters of the goddess Ananke (“necessity”), who rotates the world spindle (Plat. R. R. X 617 b-e). The relationship between M. and the Olympic gods is complex. They were depicted as a stern-looking old woman: Clotho with a spindle in his hand, Lachesis with a measure or scales, and Atropos with a book of life and scissors.

Cloto, who spun the thread of life, Lachesis, who pulled this thread, Atropos, who cut it) - in Greek mythology, the daughter of Zeus and Themis, the goddess of inevitable fate.

Daughters of Zeus and Themis. Over time, moira are understood as fate ("what is spoken") and fate ("what is destined"); This dark force, which does not have a distinct appearance. The most common myth is the myth of the three Moira sisters, daughters of the Night, which also gave birth to Death, Hypnos, Nemesis, Eris and Hesperides. Their names are Lachesis ("giving lots"), Clotho ("spinning") and Atropos ("inevitable").

Goddesses of Fate - Three Sisters of Moira

In Roman mythology, parks correspond to them. The parks, the Roman goddesses of fate, at the birth of a child determined his fate in the form of a thread that they spun, measured and cut off. Zagreus is the god of fertility, the son of Zeus and Persephone. Mom is the son of the goddess of the Night, the god of slander. Even in ancient times, the power of the Great Goddess over time was expressed in ideas about her as the goddess of fate.

The Germanic peoples also had three sisters, distributing human destiny and called norns. The Greeks called them Cloto, Lachesis and Atropos (“giving lots”, “spinning”, “inevitable”, all of them are the daughters of the goddess Ananke).

The word "moira" translated from Greek means “share”, “part”, with the meaning “fate”, which each person receives at birth. The goddess Lachesis was in charge of the past. Clotho was the real moira. Atropos is the moira of the future. In this case, he was regarded as Moiraget - "the driver of the moira", revered in this capacity in Delphi along with Apollo, who acted as the prophet Zeus and the protector of the order he established. According to the inscription on the altar at Olympia, Zeus is called "the arbiter of fate."

MOYRA - (Greek) or PARKS (lat.) Goddesses of fate. The Fates, otherwise known as the three moiras, the daughters of Zeus and Themis, are goddesses who do not predict fate, but only monitor its execution.

Since ancient times, it has been noticed that the age of every person develops in a special way, unlike others. It was customary to believe that the gods were in charge of these processes, nothing less. People described them and tried to negotiate in order to beg for a better share. The Greeks believed that Moira, the goddess of fate, was leading them by the hand. These are three sisters standing aside from the common Pantheon. Let's get to know them better, maybe it will be useful to someone in life.

Moira - goddess of fate

Quite indicative is the fact that in the formation of the concepts of rock, people were led by fear. They were afraid of an unknown force that dominated them. It seemed impossible to get rid of her, or somehow influence what was destined. By the way, today's thinkers are not far from the people of antiquity. They all say the same thing, the fate of each member of society is predetermined even before birth, only little things depend on our will.

Ancient people associated their ideas about the future at first with material objects. For example, fate could lie in a stone or a firebrand. By breaking this item, it was possible to take someone else's share. With the development of abstract thinking, the image of the gods became more complex. Higher beings acquired traits, characters, were endowed with will, goals and duties. So they arose in the general idea of ​​​​Moira - the goddess of fate. These are representatives of the dark world, invisible to people, but holding the life and happiness of everyone in their hands. They treated them respectfully and fearfully. This is proved by the fact that there are practically no images of Moir left. Ancient people feared their wrath more than real dangers.

Three sisters and their parents

With the development of ideas about deities, higher beings began to be shrouded in legends and beliefs. Moirs were considered sisters and portrayed (described) as spinners, endlessly working on the threads of fate. Over time, the question arose about their origin.

Ancient mythology contains rather confused information about this. It is generally accepted that the Moira (goddess of fate) are the daughters of Zeus and Themis. It was sometimes said that the sisters were born by the Night, which also created Death.

In any case, the Moiras are the rightful mistresses of the share of each person. Without their knowledge or consent, nothing can be done, from simple harvesting to a long journey. From birth to death, as the inhabitants believed Ancient Greece, a person is accompanied by Moira - the goddess of fate. The names of these higher beings are Lhesis, Clotho and Atropos. Let's say a few words about each.

On the division of duties

Fate is a very broad concept. The Greeks divided it into three parts. The first was determined before birth. Lachesis was responsible for this work. She was considered the giver of lots. Some received a comfortable life from her, others fame, and the majority of the population - a hard, difficult lot.

The man who came into the world was accompanied by Cloto - the spinner. She looks like this in rare images: a woman making thread from wool. Next to her is constantly the third sister - Atropos. She has a book and scissors in her hands - the instrument of Death. This goddess is free at any moment to cut the thread of a person's fate. She observes everyone and evaluates his actions. If you show disobedience, make a mistake, she will immediately make a radical decision about your earthly existence.

Thus, the Moirai (goddesses of fate) were endowed with tasks of their own. I wonder whether the idea of ​​the division of labor developed from these ideas? Science has not considered such a question.

Moira (goddess of fate): attributes

Each of the sisters had their own tools with which they influenced the fate of a person. Lachesis holds a spindle in his hands (according to other versions - measuring device). With his help, she allocates to each the appropriate piece of thread - fate. The Greeks believed that this happens even before the birth of man. If you ask well, you can find out in advance your length of stay in that world.

Klotho's attribute is the thread itself. This goddess creates destiny without interrupting the spinning process. Atropos, on the other hand, controls that no mortal gets too much. Her task is to cut the thread in time (cut it with scissors). It should be noted that Moira's attributes were received much later than the time when their images were finally formed in society.

Fate or fate are more ancient concepts than weaving. With the development of crafts, people tried to attribute the use of tools to the gods. Thus, the Moirai acquired their attributes, which ideally suited the tasks formed in the beliefs. Does your fate really have higher patrons? What do you think?