Photographer Tasos Biris is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this photo essay. From the ongoing project ‘THE BLEEDING HERCULES (GEOMYTHOTOPIA)’. To see Tasos’ body of work, click on any image.

Hercules a Chthonic deity as a geological phenomenon and the wounds he leaves on the Landscape.
On the Geomythotopia

“Geomythotopia”: “Mythical geolandscapes”, Geomythology: A term referring to the field of geosciences with the ultimate goal of discovering the relationship between the Earth’s natural geological processes and mythology. Geomythology connects the geological, geographical, climatic and cultural development of an area with the myths that refer to it. The term was first used in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. It was introduced to Greece in 1990 by the emeritus professor of Geology H. Mariolakos.

Myths: Admiration and questioning are the common starting points of mythology and philosophy, according to Aristotle. That is why the mythlover is in a sense a philosopher. According to Plutarch, genuine myths are scientific reasoning, hidden deep inside mythical wrappers, expressed in enigmatic words with various implications.

Hercules seems to have been a regular visitor to the hot bath springs, when, for his sake Hephaestus, at the request of Athena, created the springs, to bathe and renew his strength from his physical efforts and feats, according to Arpokration. Hercules symbolizes the tectonic forces and his wounds are those that are formed on the surface of the earth by this activity. The volcano is an earthly plague.

The explosion of Hercules as soon as he wears the cloak given to him by Dianeira, watered with the poison of the Centaur Nessos, transforms the landscape with his wounds. Geology is the science that searches Geohistory through internal earth exploration.

The water bleeds from the veins of Heraklion and forms are born.

An earth sculpture of thousands of years old the body of Hercules

The rocks are the witnesses of the internal geological change

Rocks are its crystallized forms.

The Titanic forces that shape them testify to the forces of the Hero.

Geological research that reveals the prehistory of our planet,

it seems like the search for our inner truth… self-knowledge.

These wounds create the Landscape.

Wounds and pain are the starting point.

Everything creative is pregnant.

That is, it springs from pain.

Everything new is born from within us.

Every birth comes with pain.

This birth created the GEOMYTHOTOPIA inside me. The work “The Bleeding Hercules” explores Geomythology through the Landscape, in the thermal springs of Edipsos Greece, capturing internally “Geomythotopia” and it is in progress.