Some scholars have seen in Circe a version of the forest witch familiar from Indo-European folktales such as the story of Hansel and Gretel. Others have suggested that Circe shares characteristics with the West Asian “Mistress of Animals,” who has various names, including Ishtar,
Lillith, and Anat. The name Circe means “hawk” in Greek, and the comparable West Asian goddesses are often depicted with the wings of hawks or associated with other birds of prey. In the Epic of Gilgamesh there are further parallels between Circe and Ishtar, the fertility goddess of the Assyrians and Babylonians: Both can control wild animals; their characters have a dangerous side connected to sexuality and magic; and they both ultimately turn from a threat into a helper. Ishtar turns her lovers into wild animals by striking them with a rod. She also sends her husband down into the underworld. These similarities can hardly be coincidental—the myths of the two deities are interdependent, and possibly come from a common source.
Circe seems to stand mythologically for the dangers (from a male point of view) of sexual entanglement.
Those who yield to her attractions may find themselves irreversibly transformed. She has links to the world of the dead, as if her attractions could be not only transformative but also lethal. She is powerful, and if her initial threat can be overcome she becomes beneficent. She is a wise woman, and the transformations she effects may be positive. The lovers who can weather the storm of her early hostility are generally enriched by their subsequent involvement with her.
James M. Redfield
Bibliography
Bulfinch, Thomas. Myths of Greece and Rome. New York:
Penguin, 1998.
Homer, and Robert Fagles, trans. The Odyssey. New York:
Penguin, 2009.
World History
