Where are the Elysian Fields?
The Elysian Fields was a phrase used in Greek mythology to describe what we would call Heaven.
Before European navigators sailed far beyond the Mediterranean and found other lands inhabited with people like themselves, people believed the world was flat.
In early Greek mythology the souls of those who passed away went for refuge to the Infernal Regions. This the “afterwold” was said to lie at the extremity of the earth.
At that extremity were the Elysian Fields or the Isles of the Blest, it is thought by some that this land adorned with every beauty might well be the Canary Islands or the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean.
Later when the Greeks learned more of other lands, they changed the location of the infernal Regions to the center of the earth. There two great regions in the Underworld. One was the Elysian Fields, where those who had led a just life in the world above ground joined the children and favourites of the gods of Olympus and where harsh weather was never known and soft breezes forever refreshed the beautiful land.
The other place was Tartarus, the awful region of the damned, who had committed crimes against the gods and were punished by tortures.
One inmate was Tantalus, son of Zeus, the father of the gods. He had betrayed his father’s secret and was condemned to stand forever with water all around him and rich fruit just above his head. When he tried to eat and drink, both fruit and water drew away from him.
From this story we get the word “tantalize”. Another prisoner was Ixion, father of the Centaurs, who was bound to a rolling, flaming wheel for the rest of time for attempting to win the love of Hera, sister and wife of Zeus.
During the Second World War St. Paul’s was hit three times by bombs, the most serious damage being the high altar had been wiped out on the night of October 10, 1940. The new high altar was dedicated as a British Commonwealth war memorial in May, 1958.
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