Everything about Meliai totally explained
In
Greek mythology, the
Meliae or
Meliai were
nymphs of the
ash tree, whose name they shared. They appeared from the drops of blood spilled when
Cronus castrated
Uranus, according to
Hesiod,
Theogony 187. From the same blood sprang the
Erinyes, suggesting that the ash-tree nymphs represented the Fates in milder guise (Graves 6.4). From the Meliae sprang the race of mankind of the Age of Bronze.
The Meliae belong to a class of sisterhoods whose nature is to appear collectively and who are invoked in the plural, though genealogical myths, especially in
Hesiod, give them individual names, such as
Melia, "but these are quite clearly secondary and carry no great weight" (Burkert 1985 III.3.2). The Melia thus singled out is one of these daughters of
Oceanus. By her brother the river-god
Inachus, she became the mother of
Io,
Phoroneus,
Aegialeus or
Phegeus, and
Nilodice. In other stories, she was the mother of
Amycus by Poseidon, as the Olympian representative of Oceanus.
Many species of
Fraxinus, the ash trees, exude a sugary substance, which the ancient Greeks called
méli, "honey". The species of ash in the mountains of Greece is
Fraxinus ornus, Manna-ash. The Meliae were nurses of the infant Zeus in the Cretan
cave of Dikte, according to
Callimachus,
Hymn to Zeus. They fed him honey.
Of "
manna", the ash-tree sugar, the standard 19th-century US
pharmacopeia,
The Dispensatory of the United States of America (14th edition, Philadelphia, 1878) said:
» "It is owing to the presence of true sugar and dextrin that manna is capable of fermenting...Manna, when long kept, acquires a deeper color, softens, and ultimately deliquesces into a liquid which on the addition of yeast, undergoes the vinous fermentation."
Fermented honey preceded wine as an
entheogen in the
Aegean world.
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