The Seba library treats Mast in 7 passages, across 6 authors (including Vernant, Jean-Pierre, G, Autenrieth, Homer).
The hearth also evokes the image of a ship's mast, firmly rooted in the deck and raised straight toward the sky.
Vernant argues that the hearth and the ship's mast share a structural-symbolic identity as the vertical axis of communication between cosmic levels, grounding his reading in the lexicographical link between histia and histos.
, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis
histos: anything that stands. (1) mast, in the middle of the ship, held in place by the himantes, histopede, protonoi, ittounooi. During stay in port the mast was unstepped and laid back upon the histodoke.
Autenrieth's dictionary provides the technical anatomy of the Homeric mast — its central position, its rigging system, and the practice of unstepping it in port — establishing the material referent upon which symbolic readings depend.
, Homeric Dictionarysupporting
and mast together, and rode them, carried on by fearsome winds... I hoped Charybdis would belch my mast and keel back up.
In this Odyssey passage the mast and keel become the sole means of survival after shipwreck, functioning as a life-raft and the last remnant of the vessel's structural integrity amid chaos.
, The Odyssey, 2017supporting
let them tie you standing up on the mast-block, with the rope ends fastened to (the mast) itself
The Homeric Dictionary's gloss on the mast-block (histopede) describes Odysseus bound to the mast, a scene in which the mast becomes the axis of enforced endurance and heroic self-constraint.
, Homeric Dictionarysupporting
in its character of death tree, cross, gallows, coffin, and ship of the dead, it is the deathbed... the word Schiff, 'ship,' also meant vessel or dish.
Neumann situates the ship within a broad vessel symbolism of the Feminine, implicitly positioning the mast within a larger complex of axis-and-container imagery associated with birth, death, and maternal enclosure.
, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, 1955supporting
Then straight-way the wind ceased, and lo, there was a windless calm... my company rose up and drew in the ship's sails, and stowed them in the hold of the ship.
Campbell's citation of the Sirens passage implicitly invokes the mast as the locus of Odysseus's binding, though the mast itself is not the focus of Campbell's mythological commentary here.
, The Mythic Image, 1974aside
ton d' histodoke pelasan protonoisi pherentes, ek de thoron epi reithron alasses.
The Homeric Hymn passage describes the lowering of the mast into its crutch as sailors go ashore, illustrating the ritual gesture of de-erecting the ship's vertical axis upon arrival.
, Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, -700aside