Calypso's isle

It is widely believed that Gozo is the island of Ogygia, where the beautiful nymph Calypso kept Odysseus as a 'prisoner of love' for several years. In Homer's poem 'The Odyssey', Calypso promised immortality to Ulysses if he would stay with her, but Ulysses rejected her and escaped to his wife Penelope who had remained faithful despite numerous temptations. 'Calypso's Isle: The Experience of Odysseus' was written by Boston based Greek mythology teacher Tracy Marks as a reflection on the Calypso chapter in Jean Houston's The Hero and the Goddess and Alicia LeVan's online Calypso and Circle. From Calypso's Isle:

During his stay on Calypso's isle, Odysseus is never able to fully accept his situation. His body is alive, but only in regard to sensuality. Calypso holds him so tightly in her embrace, that he is not free to embrace her in turn. And because of his unresolved grief and trauma, his heart remains closed. In book nine of the Odyssey, he says of both Calypso and Circe, "They never won the heart inside me, never."

But at the same time, Odysseus is also compelled to surrender. Only in surrender can another part of himself emerge and lead him forward once again. Only in surrender can he feel and release the deep grief he has been carrying all these years, and own the feminine energy within himself. And by the seventh year, he is ready to move into the next stage, what Houston refers to as the stage of active longing. He weeps ceaselessly, for Ithaca and for Penelope.

The waters are his own now - his tears. The island is his own making - his loneliness. The feminine is within him now - his own deep feeling. At this point, he begins to own and express his own anima .... and in this emerging wholeness, a new voice, which encompasses both the masculine and feminine can begin to exert its authority...

Geography in the Odyssey; Cleysi from Italy fell in love during a Malta vacation and hopes to have more luck than the legendary Calypso