🦋Psyche, or Psyche - in ancient Greek mythology

 Psyche, or Psyche (ancient Greek Ψυχή - "soul", "breath") - in ancient Greek mythology, the personification of the soul, breath; she was represented as a butterfly or a girl with butterfly wings. 🦋

In myths, she was pursued by Eros (Cupid): sometimes she took revenge on him for the persecution, sometimes there was the most tender love between them. The myth was first described by Apuleius in the novel "Metamorphoses".

The myth "Cupid (Cupid) and Psyche"

Once upon a time there was a king whose three daughters were famous throughout the world for their incomparable beauty. Psyche, the youngest of the sisters, was so beautiful that her father's subjects declared that she, and not Venus, should be called the goddess of beauty, and proposed to give all honors to her.

Insulted by this proposal, which the clever Psyche rejected, Venus decided to show the impudent ones that the girl was mortal and could not be revered like her, a goddess. She ordered her son Cupid to kill the unfortunate girl.

Taking a bow and arrows smeared with deadly poison, Cupid went to carry out his mother's order and reached the palace by nightfall. He crept silently past the sleeping guards, walked through the empty halls and, reaching Psyche's room, slipped in unnoticed. He carefully approached the bed on which the beauty was sleeping and bent down to kill her.

But at that moment the moonlight fell on the sleeping woman's face and, struck by the beauty of the girl, Cupid recoiled. At that very moment he accidentally wounded himself with his own arrow - this wound later brought him much suffering.

But Cupid did not yet know how serious it was. He leaned over the sleeping girl to imprint her beautiful features on his heart, and then left the room silently, vowing that he would never harm her innocence and beauty.

Morning came. Venus, who had expected to see the sunlit corpse of her rival, noticed that she was playing in the palace garden as usual, and realized that Cupid had not carried out his orders. Then she began to annoy the girl with petty troubles and achieved that poor Psyche ran away from home with the firm intention of ending her scores with a life she could no longer enjoy.

Psyche climbed the steep mountain with difficulty and, coming to the very edge of the cliff, threw herself from it, right onto the sharp stones visible below.

But Cupid, who indignantly watched how her mother mocked the girl and understood that he could not help her in any way, followed Psyche unseen. Seeing that she had decided to commit suicide, he called Zephyr and asked him to pick up the girl with his strong but gentle arms and carry her to a distant island.

And so, instead of a quick fall and a painful death, Psyche felt the wind carrying her over fields, mountains and over the sparkling waters of the sea. Before she had time to be frightened, he easily landed on a flower-covered shore in the very center of a magnificent garden.

Astonished, she slowly stood up, rubbed her beautiful eyes to make sure that this was not a dream, and began to look around the garden with curiosity. Soon she saw an enchanted palace, whose doors opened wide before her, and gentle voices invited her to enter. Invisible hands carried her across the threshold and began to serve her.