The Wheel - Part 1

There are many things in life that we don’t understand. That’s why there is a belief, in God, in a god, in multiple gods, in whatever.

With it, we create unity in the world around us. The more creations, the better it is. A good belief has no limits in fantasizing, and it tells us many stories that we can absorb and pass on. At least, so it used to be. Nowadays we watch TV. Some of us may read a book. But who ever tells a story?

Maybe the most inspiring stories of all times still come from the Ancient Greece. Gods, human beings, fantasy and reality, all are combined into this fabulous universe. They inspired me to write the following story. It is my second blog in the series about ‘the wheel’. It is based on the theory, that the wheel has been invented by the gods.

How Zeus introduced the wheel and what happened next

About 1500 before Christ, in Mycenaean Greece, there lived a shepherd in Attica, named Dimitris. Every day, he wandered around the hills and he had a good life. One day, he saw a strange thing lying in the bushes. It was a round, wooden object with holes in it. Where did this come from? Surely, no human being could have made this. It must have come from the gods. Maybe even from Zeus, the supreme god. He frequently had outbursts of anger and that resulted in lightning on earth. It would be an explanation of the holes into the wood. It also could be an object that the gods had lost during one of their orgys. It was not unusual for them to forget about their personal belongings.

Dimitris took it home and put it against the wall at the front of his house. He thought it the best place, looking artistic, even more when it was surrounded by flowers. In short, it was something that embellished his house. Many people that were walking by stopped to have a closer look.

However, Zeus was not happy with these circumstances. Indeed, the object that he had made with his lightning, was intended to be used as a ‘wheel’. He made a few other ones that ended up here and there on earth. But nobody understood his intentions. One used it as a candler, the other as a holder for beer mugs, and another as a coatstand.

The grand grandgrandgrandgrandchild of Dimitris the shepherd, Philomena, used it as a rack to hang the wool on. After washing, the wool had to be dryed into the sun. For that purpose, the object was very suitable. Next to the river, where she used to wash the wool, she drove a wooden stick into the ground. On top of it, she put the rack through the hole in the middle. At that time it was a very modern clothesline.

But it was not what Zeus wanted. He ment the wheel to turn around and not to be used as a rack. To him, it all looked very stupid down there, and he grew really angry, sending lightning to the wheel. The object swung into the air and happened to land in a small tree. When Philomena arrived the wheel was spinning around the wooden stick in the middle. The stick served as an axis, hanging upon two branches of the small tree.

At first, Philomena tried to stop the wheel by grabbing the wool. She managed to catch a few threads, but these were stretched. Within seconds, she had a long and thin thread and it surprised her how easily it was made. She went home to tell what had happened, and when she came back, she saw her children playing with the wheel by turning it round. She got the idea letting the children turn the wheel while she was spinning the wool. The spinning wheel had been invented.

After he had used lightning, Zeus had fallen into sleep. When he woke up, he saw the wheel turning. He scratched his head and wondered how this could have happened. Whatever it might have been, these human beings amazed him again. The whole day long, they run around in circles, but suddenly, out of nothing, they do something that even the gods didn’t expect.

Corresponding cartoon: