A Million Kinds Of Love
The astrological forecast for Virgo from Rob Brezsny for the week of March 9th, 2006 reminds me of a song I wrote called 'Tony Says' and it validates something I've been thinking about and noticing a lot lately - namely that there are many, many ways love manifests, is expressed and experienced here on planet Earth:
http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/virgo.html
"The ancient Greeks had words for love that transcend our usual notions, writes Lindsay Swope in her review of Richard Idemon's book Through the Looking Glass. Epithemia is the basic need to touch and be touched. Our closest approximation is "horniness," though epithemia is not so much a sexual feeling as a sensual one. Philia is friendship. It includes the need to admire and respect your friends as a reflection of yourself--like in high school, where you want to hang out with the cool kids because that means you're cool too. Eros isn't sexual in the way we usually think, but is more about the emotional gratification that comes from merging souls. Agape is a mature, utterly free expression of love that has no possessiveness. It means wanting the best for another person even if it doesn't advance one's self-interest. The phase you're currently in, Virgo, is providing you with opportunities to explore the frontiers of at least three of these kinds of love."
And here's an excerpt from my tune 'Tony Says':
Tony says
you're in my heart forever
Tony says
baby he's always there
there's a million kinds of love
he says
a million kinds of love
The astrological forecast for Virgo from Rob Brezsny for the week of March 9th, 2006 reminds me of a song I wrote called 'Tony Says' and it validates something I've been thinking about and noticing a lot lately - namely that there are many, many ways love manifests, is expressed and experienced here on planet Earth:
http://www.freewillastrology.com/horoscopes/virgo.html
"The ancient Greeks had words for love that transcend our usual notions, writes Lindsay Swope in her review of Richard Idemon's book Through the Looking Glass. Epithemia is the basic need to touch and be touched. Our closest approximation is "horniness," though epithemia is not so much a sexual feeling as a sensual one. Philia is friendship. It includes the need to admire and respect your friends as a reflection of yourself--like in high school, where you want to hang out with the cool kids because that means you're cool too. Eros isn't sexual in the way we usually think, but is more about the emotional gratification that comes from merging souls. Agape is a mature, utterly free expression of love that has no possessiveness. It means wanting the best for another person even if it doesn't advance one's self-interest. The phase you're currently in, Virgo, is providing you with opportunities to explore the frontiers of at least three of these kinds of love."
And here's an excerpt from my tune 'Tony Says':
Tony says
you're in my heart forever
Tony says
baby he's always there
there's a million kinds of love
he says
a million kinds of love
posted by Stacia @ 11:24 AM
3 Comments:
At 4:47 PM,
Jym said…
=v= I learned these in philosophy, except they used the word "lust" for the first variety, which I suppose is the influence of theologians rewriting the model to suit their own ends. My friendly neighborhood epithemia-inspiring classics professor informs me that Agape was retrofitted to the Greek model by later theologians.
Platonic love originally meant a specific relationship between a young student and old teacher, one that is sexual and educational. This automatically encompasses all of the above varieties, supposedly. Since both student and teacher are presumed to be male, it means no heterosexual hanky-panky, which has somehow led to the term been corrupted to today's (mis)usage, meaning nonsexual.
At 11:06 AM,
Stacia said…
You are killing me with your knowledge - shattering my illusions of the many different and seemingly forgotten types of love. Tell your friend I need to speak with her.
The eskimos have like 200 words for snow - why can't we have more than a couple of words for love?
At 11:05 AM,
Jym said…
=v= The knowledge shouldn't kill you any. The Greeks (well, Aristotle in particular) had a penchant to sum things up in small numbers. Whether they came up with 3 or 4 pigeonholes for love doesn't matter in the face of the million kinds of love we run into.
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