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.The legends say that he was born lame and was therefore cast away in anger by his mother Hera.Another and more believableversion has it that it was Zeus who banished Hephaestus - because of the doubt regarding his parentage- but Hephaestus used his magically creative powers to force Zeus to give him a seat among the GreatGods.The legends also relate that Hephaestus once made an invisible net that would close over his wife's bedif it were warmed by an intruding lover.He may have needed such protection, for his wife and consortwas Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty.It was only natural that many tales of love affairs wouldbuild up around her; in many of these the seducer was Ares, brother of Hephaestus.(One of theoffspring of that illicit love affair was Eros, the God of Love.)Aphrodite was included in the Olympian Circle of Twelve, and the circumstances of her inclusion shedlight on our subject.She was neither a sister of Zeus nor his daughter, yet she could not be ignored.Shehad come from the Asian shores of the Mediterranean facing Greece (according to the Greek poetHesiod, she arrived by way of Cyprus); and, claiming great antiquity, she ascribed her origin to thegenitals of Uranus.She was thus genealogically one generation ahead of Zeus, being (so to say) a sisterof his father, and the embodiment of the castrated Forefather of the Gods.Aphrodite, then, had to be included among the Olympian gods.But their total number, twelve,apparently could not be exceeded.The solution was ingenious: Add one by dropping one.Since Hadeswas given domain over the Lower World and did not remain among the Great Gods on Mount Olympus,a vacancy was created, admirably handy for seating Aphrodite in the exclusive Circle of Twelve.It also appears that the number twelve was a requirement that worked both ways: There could be nomore than twelve Olympians, but no fewer than twelve, either.This becomes evident through thecircumstances that led to the inclusion of Dionysus in the Olympian Circle.He was a son of Zeus, bornwhen Zeus impregnated his own daughter, Semele.Dionysus, who had to be hidden from Hera's wrath,was sent to far-off lands (reaching even India), introducing vinegrowing and winemaking wherever hewent.In the meantime, a vacancy became available on Olympus.Hestia, the oldest sister of Zeus,weaker and older, was dropped entirely from the Circle of Twelve.Dionysus then returned to Greeceand was allowed to fill the vacancy.Once again, there were twelve Olympians.Though Greek mythology was not clear regarding the origins of mankind, the legends and traditionsclaimed descent from the gods for heroes and kings.These semi-gods formed the link between thehuman destiny - daily toil, dependence on the elements, plagues, illness, death - and a golden past, whenonly the gods roamed Earth.And although so many of the gods were born on Earth, the select Circle ofTwelve Olympians represented the celestial aspect of the gods.The original Olympus was described bythe Odyssey as lying in the "pure upper air." The original Twelve Great Gods were Gods of Heaven whohad come down to Eearth; and they represented the twelve celestial bodies in the "vault of Heaven."The Latin names of the Great Gods, given them when the Romans adopted the Greek pantheon, clarifytheir astral associations: Gaea was Earth; Hermes, Mercury; Aphrodite, Venus; Ares, Mars; Cronus,Saturn; and Zeus, Jupiter.Continuing the Greek tradition, the Romans envisaged Jupiter as a thunderinggod whose weapon was the lightning bolt; like the Greeks, the Romans associated him with the bull.There is now general agreement that the foundations of the distinct Greek civilization were laid on theisland of Crete, where the Minoan culture flourished from circa 2700 B.C.to 1400 B.C.In Minoan mythand legend, the tale of the minotaur is prominent.This half-man, half-bull was the offspring of Pasiphae,the wife of King Minos, and a bull.Archaeological finds have confirmed the extensive Minoan worshipof the bull, and some cylinder seals depict the bull as a divine being accompanied by a cross symbol, which stood for some unidentified star or planet.It has therefore been surmised that the bull worshipedby the Minoans was not the common earthly creature but the Celestial Bull - the constellation Taurus -in commemoration of some events that had occurred when the Sun's spring equinox appeared in thatconstellation, circa 4000 B.C.By Greek tradition, Zeus arrived on the Greek mainland via Crete, whence he had fled (by swimmingthe Mediterranean) after abducting Europa, the beautiful daughter of the king of the Phoenician city ofTyre.Indeed, when the earliest Minoan script was finally deciphered by Cyrus H.Gordon, it was shownto be "a Semitic dialect from the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean."Gods came directly to Greece from the heavens.Zeus arrived from across the Mediterranean, via Crete.Aphrodite was said to have come by sea from the Near East, via Cyprus.Poseidon (Neptune to theRomans) brought the horse with him from Asia Minor.Athena brought "the olive, fertile and self-sown,"to Greece from the lands of the Bible.There is no doubt that the Greek traditions and religion arrived on the Greek mainland from the NearEast, via Asia Minor and the Mediterranean islands.It is there that their pantheon had its roots; it is therethat we should look for the origins of the Greek gods, and their astral relationship with the numbertwelve.Hinduism, the ancient religion of India, considers the Vedas - compositions of hymns, sacrificialformulas, and other sayings pertaining to the gods - as sacred scriptures, "not of human origin:" Thegods themselves composed them, the Hindu traditions say, in the age that preceded the present one.But,as time went on, more and more of the original 100,000 verses, passed from generation to generationorally, were lost and confused.In the end, a sage wrote down the remaining verses, dividing them intofour books and trusting four of his principal disciples to preserve one Veda each.When, in the nineteenth century, scholars began to decipher and understand forgotten languages andtrace the connections between them, they realized that the Vedas were written in a very ancient Indo-European language, the predecessor of the Indian root-tongue Sanskrit, of Greek, Latin, and otherEuropean languages.When they were finally able to read and analyze the Vedas, they were surprised tosee the uncanny similarity between the Vedic tales of the gods and the Greek ones
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