When I was choosing a story for February I knew it had to be a love story, so I picked one of my favorite: the classic tale of Amor and Psyche, Love and Soul.

Check this video for their story:

I loved this story since I read Edith Hamilton's version of it when I was a kid, some years back I read Apulius's full version - yep, it’s awesome. I love that it manages to be a beautiful fairytale and a clever allegory at the same time. But really, it’s just a great story, it has adventure, betrayal, divine intervention(s) and true love. It’s pretty cool that a story from the 2nd century can be this captivating in the 21st.

The idea in this work was to show the descent of Psyche from the mountain to Amor’s magnificent palace, with Amor at the bottom, a moment before the oil burns him. Psyche is represented by the butterflies, which were symbols of the soul in Greco-Roman art. I wanted to give the impression of her journey down from the cliff, so I used the repeated butterfly image in different sizes. As far as I know, this descent, or fall, of Psyche is what originated the idea of “falling in love” or “falling for x”, but I like to think of Psyche’s journey as a rise as well, she fell to her love to Amor, and then rose to the tasks required to find him again.
The lovers are surrounded by the missions Venus gave Psyche. Venus wasn’t testing her, she was trying to break her, but Psyche prevailed, though with much help. Psyche is certainly determined, but the story reads as if fate itself was helping her, what else could explain the help she constantly receives from random animals and objects? Still, she proves herself strong minded already in the beginning of the story when she receives the oracle’s prophecy (which was apparently arranged by Amor in order to hide his disobedience to Venus). She also decides to go in search of Amor, when she could easily give up. So in the end this story has as much female agency as can be expected from a 2nd century Roman tale (…), and remains a lovely story of the soul search - and find - of love.

I could go on, but this is one of those cases where I feel that it’s best to let you hear the story , look at the work and fill in the blanks as you wish ❤

Much love (and soul),

Naama