Doris’ 50 Wet Daughters

This week’s “Ocean People” are actually ocean divinities, the Nereids. In Greek mythology the 50 Nereid sisters were beautiful benevolent sea nymphs, all daughters of Doris, a sea goddess, and Nereus, oldest son of Earth and Sea, whom Hesiod calls “the Ancient One of the Sea.” “Nereus” means “wet.”

Since the Greeks were a sea-faring people, multiple and varied ocean deities ruled in their vast pantheon.  Before setting sail the Greeks would invoke these gods to appease their mighty power, and after a bountiful catch the ocean spirits would be thanked immediately. The best known ocean deity is Poseidon, the forceful and fearsome brother to the two other mighty Olympian males, Zeus, ruler of the sky and Hades, ruler of the underworld.  Poseidon is also god of earthquakes and horses; in many stories he is strong and angry and destructive.  So is the ocean.

NereidesBut I am more partial to the Nereids, variously called sea nymphs or minor nature dieties or spirits of the sea.  Rarely the stars of a myth, they are more the chorus, appropriately, since they are said to have lovely voices.  Even more appealing is their consistent benevolence; they help sailors in storms and point the lost toward shore.  On vases and sarcophagoi nereids are often frolicking in the waves, riding astride dolphins and holding a bountiful catch.  They embody the sea at its least angry and destructive. 

If you are already hummng “Under the Sea” then you have experienced the modern Disney version of the Nereids, Ariel and her sisters in the movie The Little Mermaid.  They all have long hair, great figures and seem content simply to swim and sing.  Except for Ariel of course, who wants to be part of handsome Prince Eric’s dry world.  While the ancient Nereids seem pretty content in their world, they do encounters mortals, mostly to save them.  In a lovely ancient account, they gently guide the Argonauts between the treacherous rocks Scylla and Charybdis.

Then, though Hephaistos had ceased from his toils, the sea was still sending up a warm vapor. Hereupon on this side and on that the daughters of Nereus met them [the Argonauts]; and behind, lady Thetis set her hand to the rudder-blade, to guide them amid the Wandering rocks.

And as when in fair weather herds of dolphins come up from the depths and sport in circles round a ship as it speeds along, now seen in front, now behind, now again at the side and delight comes to the sailors; so the Nereids darted upward and circled in their ranks round the ship Argo, while Thetis guided its course.

Why in so many cultures is the sea referred to as “she” and embodied as a goddess?  Perhaps it is just that these prescientific ancients knew full well that the sea really is mother of us all, evolved as we are from those waters.  Experiencing the sea as a divine marine mother may also reflect the experience we all have in our mother’s womb, where the amniotic fluid sloshes like the sea (listen to an ultrasound) and is the same salinity as our original birthplace.  You don’t need to read Carl Jung or Joseph Campbell to know that myth comes from our deep collective unconscious, and the ocean is the deepest of it all.

As patriarchy took over the earliest goddess stories, the few remaining female spirits and heroines were often left nameless, as in the Bible.  But the Nereids are all individually named, by Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus and Plato.  Some translators simply leave their Greek names, such as Neso, Protomedeia, Euagore, Galene, Leagore, Melite, Speia, Thetis.   Others translate those Greek names into English equivalents, rendering the Greek as “Headland’s Hope, Calm, Bounty, Power, Glitter, Healer, Glory, Swell’s Embrace, Race with the Waves, Sparkler, Fair isle, First Light, Eyes of the World and Blossoming Spray.”  Ocean spirits indeed.

It may be patriarchal wishful thinking that this vast choir or college of female ocean spirits, the Nereids, are called Poseidon’s consorts, and said to reside in his ocean palace.  I prefer to think of them as the women who swim with dolphins, the free spirits of beauty and bounty who sing and splash and laugh.  Ready to help a lost ship of male sailors or serenade an old man and his trident.  But freest when on their own, down where it’s better, down where it’s wetter, under the sea.

Copyright © 2017 Deborah Streeter