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Wheel of Fortune: Life had been good to Ganymede. Not only was he born a prince of Troy, with money,
position and a nifty title, but (according to Homer) he also had the best looks
in Asia Minor. He probably thought he had it
made, with life having provided him a cushion for every possible sling and
arrow. Then one day out of the blue, a
huge eagle swooped down, snatched him up and flew off. Okay, except that one.
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On the plus side, the eagle
didn’t want him for dinner. On the down
side, it had been sent by randy old Zeus, king of the gods, who’d decided that
Ganymede was much too attractive to be left to rot on Earth. He had him brought to Olympus and made him
his new “cup bearer.” Now, we know how
Hera, Zeus’s longsuffering wife, felt about having yet another pretty euphemism
hanging around her husband. We can guess
how Hebe, the previous holder of the cup bearer job, felt about getting kicked
out. We can say for certain that
Ganymede’s father was seriously pissed-off, because Zeus had to placate him
with a couple heavenly horses for cavalierly making off with his son like
that. What nobody bothered to record are
the thoughts of Ganymede himself.
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He was probably of two
minds: immortality and eternal youth (which went with the office) vs. putting
up with Zeus’s affections and Hera’s simmering resentment. Sort of a toss-up, really, which is what the
Wheel of Fortune card usually signifies.
Chance, fate, luck, whatever you want to call it, is coming at you at
high speed. Will it be good luck or
bad? That may depend on how you choose
to look at it. You may get that
promotion, but be forced to work longer hours; you might get the girl, only to
find out that her mother is a nightmare. Luck is usually like that, bringing
some good with the bad and vice versa.
But, either way, things are about to get a lot more interesting.
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Wheel of Fortune reversed: Luck is often viewed as
something over which we poor mortals have no control. You are either dealt a winning hand or
you aren’t, the feeling goes. But,
really, there’s a little more to it than that.
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Consider
the fate of
Tithonius.
Like his brother Ganymede, shown here on our card, he drew the
attention of a deity. Unlike Ganymede, it wasn't Zeus who was
interested but the Titan Eos,
goddess of dawn. She asked Zeus to make her new boy toy
immortal, as he had Ganymede. But while Zeus was willing to
bend a rule
where his own pleasure was concerned, he was less than thrilled about
doing it
for another’s--especially when it might set a dangerous precedent.
Pretty soon, every petty god in the pantheon
was going to want a favorite dalliance made eternal, thereby cluttering
up
Olympus and eroding the already tenuous difference between humans and
the
gods. But saying no would look bad,
considering his own newly immortal cup bearer. So Zeus got crafty.
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He granted Eos’s request for immortality for
Tithonius, but neglected to add the bit about eternal youth. As a result, poor Tithonius aged and aged
and, well, aged. Eos took care of him
for centuries, but when he finally shrank down to the size of a cricket, she
decided enough was enough. Zeus wouldn’t
let Tithonius die, probably because his eternal suffering was serving as a nice
deterrent to other immortality requests, so Eos took him back down to earth
and released him. We don’t know for
certain, but it’s likely that the once handsome, immortal consort of a goddess
ended up as lunch for a passing seagull. |
The moral: luck often needs
a helping hand. Eos and Tithonius might
have remembered with whom, exactly, they were dealing and thought things out a
little better. Instead of immortality,
they could have requested the same gift Zeus had bestowed on Ganymede, which
would have included the non-aging clause.
Similarly, if you want to win that poker game, it might be a good idea
to take a few lessons before challenging a master.
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