Styx, ("Shuddery; That Which is Taboo,") in Greek mythology, was the entrance to the underworld, the primary river of the underworld.1 The Styx river was forbidden because it was associated with the menstrual blood of the Earth Mother, stemming from her secret shrine in a mountain by the city of Clitor.2 Like most rivers of the ancient world, Styx was also incarnate as a Goddess, called a daughter of Ocean. She married Pallas (phallos, the lingam), and birth to Power, Force, and Dominance (Nike). This was a mythic;' expression of the magic power supposedly engendered by the combination of semen and menstrual blood.3
Styx wound seven times through the underworld: a remnant of the primitive belief that pregnancy lasted seven lunar months, and rebirth would follow seven cycles of the moon. It was said that one crossed Styx to reach the land of death-rebirth-as Thomas Rhymer crossed the River of Blood to reach Fairyland, and Jewish sages were said cross the Jordan. Both Styx and Jordan were birth-rivers as well as death-rivers. The other name of Styx was Alpha, "birth." Similarly, when a man dipped himself seven times in the Jordan, "his flesh came again like unto the flesh of a little child" (2 Kings 5:14).
The early idea that a dead person must be ferried across the Styx by Charon was still literally believed in Greece, Ireland, and other countries up to the 17th and 18th centuries. Even though they were by name Christian, peasants more often than not put money in a corpse's mouth prior to burial, "to pay the ferry."4
The actual river, the modern name of which is the Mavronéri, is in northeastern Arcadia, Greece. It plunges over a 183-meter (600 foot) cliff, then flows through a gorge. The ancient Greeks believed that its waters were poisonous, and the river was associated with the underworld from the time of Homer.
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