Hellenism in Popular Culture: My Little Pony (Part One) Overview and introduction

 Hello everypony, I mean everyone

Today I'm writing something that is a culmination of many things I hold dear to me both culturally and spiritually

This series explores how the values of Hellenism and similar religions and spiritual paths still teach us today and how they show up in different parts of cultural media, from stories directly based on the classical mythological canon, to stories derived from it in some way, and others especially fantasy series that take many elements from it but ultimately share a value system or morality rooted in what all Hellenic Polytheists share generally, that is virtues like Xenia, Charis, Eusebia, and Ariste.

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic overview and franchise history

This was a show that ran in the 2010s and was the fourth generation of the popular and established toy and media franchise My Little Pony that started in the 1980s, that much is clear, Friendship is Magic the show and anything related to that directly will be called G4 in this blog.

Looking broadly at the franchise of MLP, we see that there are colorful and magical taking ponies, Earth Ponies, being like real life equines, but the two other main types of ponies are unicorns and pegasi, probably the most famous equine mythical creatures. It also featured other creatures of varying degrees of anthropomorphism like dragons, griffons, and monsters, even some types of ponies like the flutter ponies and breezies take a lot of from fairies. Sea Ponies in MLP correspond to the Hippocampus, which also is from Greek mythology like Pegasus, who originally was just the only winged horse, but any horse with feathered wings is called that too. 

Aesthetics 

In the show FIM we see elements of architecture, costumes, and even magic itself takes a ton of designs from Classical Greece, especially in how the hometown of the Pegasi, Cloudsdales is initially portrayed, they have buildings in classical architecture but instead of stone and marble it is made from clouds. The royal guards of Canterlot often wear armor resembling classical military uniforms it's both Greek and Roman, it is simplified even historical movies tend to overused the classical aesthetic of armor even when it would not be historically accurate. 

There are many other cultural influences from our world to Equestria, coming from Northern Europe, Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, China, Japan, east Asia, Mesoamerica, and so forth.

Values

Friendship is Magic is both the title of the show but also its main moral. We follow a protagonist, a purple unicorn (then alicorn princess at the end of season 3) called Twilight Sparkle learning magic from who can be described as if Helios were a horse, Princess Celestia, the co-ruler of Equestria (we don't have time to unpack the politics inside that universe) even in some of the scenes in the first season, we see Celestia travel by a chariot pulled by four white pegasus stallions in her guard. 

Celestia tasks Twilight of learning how to make friends in a small city in the hinterlands of the country, called Ponyville, she befriends 5 other ponies and they learn about each other and a seemingly interwoven destiny of them being together and thus discovering that together as friends they yield some of the most powerful magic, their magic is friendship, and each season makes that clear as it escalates the stories through its more plot driven overarching narrative episodes.

Xenia is ritualized friendship, that is one main way of thinking about it. Hospitality too, also important in Roman religion, and each of the elements of harmony point to how it comes together. Generosity, Kindness, Loyalty, Honesty, Laughter, and Magic are all the six elements of harmony that symbolize each share of their collective powers.

It also neatly ties into Piety or eusebeia as the Greeks called it. 

Celestia and Luna play roles of both Goddesses and Monarchs (or diarchs or co-monarchs?) it matches the ancient political values but it also presents leadership in a way understandable to modern audiences. Equestrian society seems to have a air of democratic minded politics, especially when presented in its own internal folklore, about how different pony tribes came together to unite as Equestria and being the premise of their holiday of Hearth's Warming Eve, while meant to be a stand-in for Christmas, it seems a lot like a holiday about the Hearth and in ancient Greece, the state or city had its own hearth like each home had. Hearth's Warming Eve is about just that, and seems to take the elements we see in Christmas broadly, especially some of its older roots like in Saturnalia, though that holiday is more about liberty than unity, it was nonetheless extremely popular in our historical time. Unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies are shown as being united but also having roots in many ancient city-states like the Greek civilization, and Equestria seems to be an Empire whether like that of Alexander and Macedon or of Rome.