Home › Forums › Once Upon a Time › Season Three › 3×05 “Good Form” › Pegasus
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October 28, 2013 at 12:04 am #219339swanning-offParticipant
Disclaimer: I’m only about 12 mins into the episode. The Jones’ ship has just taken flight. Alas…. the stream I’m watching is taking f o r e v e r t o d o w n l o a d……
So I’m waiting for it to catch up a bit! While doing so, I thought I’d post something that’s been bugging me since Liam gave Killian the sextant with pegasus on it. In the thread about Nealfire’s boyhood star chart/colander in a coconut, wasn’t one of the things people thought they saw a pegasus???
What is the symbolism of pegasus? Beyond merely allowing the boat to fly?
So let’s see what Wikipedia has to tell us:
Pegasus is one of the best known mythological creatures in Greek mythology. He is a winged divine stallion usually depicted as pure white in colour. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as horse-god, and foaled by the Gorgon Medusa Chrysaor born at a single birthing when his mother was decapitated by Perseus. Greco-Roman poets write about his ascent to heaven after his birth and his obeisance to Zeus, king of the gods, who instructed him to bring lightning and thunder from Olympus. Friend of the Muses, Pegasus is the creator of Hippocrene, the fountain on Mt. Helicon.
He was captured by the Greek hero Bellerophon near the fountain Peirene with the help of Athena and Poseidon. Pegasus allows the hero to ride him to defeat a monster, the Chimera, before realizing many other exploits. His rider, however, falls off his back trying to reach Mount Olympus. Zeus transformed him into the constellation Pegasus and placed him up in the sky. Hypotheses have been proposed regarding its relationship with the Muses, the gods Athena, Poseidon, Zeus, Apollo, and the hero Perseus.
The symbolism of Pegasus varies with time. Symbol of wisdom and especially of fame from the Middle Ages until the Renaissance, he became one symbol of the poetry and the creator of sources in which the poets come to draw inspiration, particularly in the 19th century. Pegasus is the subject of a very rich iconography, especially through the ancient Greek pottery and paintings and sculptures of the Renaissance. Personification of the water, solar myth, or shaman mount, Carl Jung and his followers have seen in Pegasus a profound symbolic esoteric in relation to the spiritual energy that allows to access to the realm of the gods on Mount Olympus
So what does that tell us for Once-iverse? Perhaps..
- links between Pegasus and the Fountain (which I’ve seen mentioned on these boards and am waiting impatiently for my stream to get itself together to be able to watch myself!!)
- a way to get to (and from?) Neverland?
- what, if any, links between Pegasus and Pan?
The water link seems to be the strongest. Again turning to Wikipedia…
Pegasus and springs
According to legend, everywhere the winged horse struck his hoof to the earth, an inspiring spring burst forth. One of these springs was upon the Muses‘ Mount Helicon, the Hippocrene (“horse spring”), opened, Antoninus Liberalis suggested, at the behest of Poseidon to prevent the mountain swelling with rapture at the song of the Muses; another was at Troezen. Hesiod relates how Pegasus was peacefully drinking from a spring when the hero Bellerophon captured him. Hesiod also says Pegasus carried thunderbolts for Zeus.
[adrotate group="5"]October 28, 2013 at 12:22 am #219350SlurpeezParticipantWhat if the king who wants the dreamshade poison is really a god named Zeus? That would explain the pegasus reference and the pegasus motif on the sextant, plus the pegasus feathers made into a flying sail!
"That’s how you know you’ve really got a home. When you leave it, there’s this feeling that you can’t shake. You just miss it." Neal Cassidy
October 28, 2013 at 12:48 am #219381PheeParticipantLoved that they used the Pegasus, but didn’t think too deeply about it. I think they just needed some way to make the ship fly, so they went with a sail made from the feathers of a mythical beast that was a land animal but could also fly.
It is interesting though that Pegasus is related to a magical fountain, and is also a constellation, and is also associated with the Greek gods, of which Pan is one, (not necessarily on the show, but traditionally speaking).
In the thread about Nealfire’s boyhood star chart/colander in a coconut, wasn’t one of the things people thought they saw a pegasus???
Some of us were talking about the Phoenix, don’t think anyone mentioned a Pegasus. Phoenix is a shippy, SF thing, so some of us started speculating and got a bit overly excited about the possibility and fun symbolism type stuff. 😉
October 28, 2013 at 1:09 am #219393swanning-offParticipantPhoenix, pegasus…. :rolleyes: Derp by me!
October 28, 2013 at 9:09 am #219458GrimmsisterParticipantI hope they will put this myth more to use. The star map we saw on bae cave ceiling could be of the Pegasus constellation
October 28, 2013 at 9:27 am #219464RumplesGirlKeymasterThe Pegasus sail felt so totally random! Is there a reason why they couldn’t use pixie dust? Why introduce this whole new element? The king could have easily said, “here my lads. Pixie dust. I got it from a fairy.” which would have been interesting story wise given our suspicions of Blue, but no suddenly they’ve clipped the feathers off some poor Pegasus and sewed it together to make a sail. This episode really suffered from how many things can we stick in an episode.
"He was a lot of things to me" "The only conclusion was love"October 28, 2013 at 9:44 am #219470PheeParticipantIs there a reason why they couldn’t use pixie dust?
Maybe because traditionally, the JR flying due to pixie dust is such an iconic thing of how the ship left NL to take the Darlings home, and they didn’t want people’s brains going there while watching this very different story? If they eventually use pixie dust on it so they can fly home, then that will fit better with the traditional canon.
October 30, 2013 at 8:29 am #220009timespacerParticipantSwanning-off asked, ” What is the symbolism of Pegasus…” and described the relation of Bellerophon to Pegasus.
There may be another, distant connection to the Neverland themes of belief and dreams. Edward Young’s poem, Night Thoughts
deals with thoughts about death and immortality but in the beginning it speaks of sleep:
”
Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy Sleep!
He, like the world, his ready visit pays
Where Fortune smiles; the wretched he forsakes;
Swift on his downy pinion flies from woe,
And lights on lids unsullied with a tear.”
and later on cites the story of Bellerophon and Pegasus in praise of belief over skepticism:
“He whose blind thought futurity denies,
Unconscious bears, Bellerophon, like thee,
His own indictment; he condemns himself.
Who reads his bosom reads immortal life,
Or nature there, imposing on her sons,
Has written fables; man was made a lie.”
October 30, 2013 at 8:32 am #220010kfchimeraParticipantTimespacer, that’s a great connection to it. I took it as another way to make a reference of the “last” magic thing vanishing in the FTL.
It looked pretty cool though I thought “Man that was a huge Pegasus to have wings so large.”
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” -- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
November 2, 2013 at 10:35 am #220586timespacerParticipantEven though it’s probably just a coincidence, I just recalled a Pegasus reference in Shakespeare’s Henry IV:
“I saw young Henry with his beaver on,
his cuishes on his thighs, gallantly armed,
rise from the ground like feathered Mercury
and vaulted with such ease into his seat
as if an angel dropped down from the clouds
to turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
and witch the world with noble horsemanship.” -
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