DID YOU KNOW: TO BE A CASSANDRA

A gentle reminder to all my readers: When I first created this blog, I was looking for a blank space, a quiet sanctuary where I could finally set down the weight of my thoughts without fear of judgment or restriction. What began as a simple idea soon became a place I instinctively returned to whenever my mind felt feral, restless, tempted, or impossible to contain.

It became a safe home where I could lay down my emotions and tell my stories. My personal cave, where I engrave the myths that move me and stir something deep within my soul. A beautiful escape sheltered from the noise of the outside world, where I could heal and ultimately understand life from a different perspective.

With every new story drawn from the ancient tales, I began to understand not only the most complicated chapters of my own life, but also the people around me. Eventually, I came to realize that history can change because of the smallest events, yet we humans remain strangely the same over time. No matter where we come from, no matter our culture, religion, beliefs, or the color of our skin, the essence of who we are remains remarkably unchanged.

The complexity of the human brain is indeed fascinating, yet it is its familiarity that intrigues me the most. From ancient Greece to modern society, we are, in many ways, just the same people. Our appearances may reveal our origins, but our minds uncover our shared humanity. Across centuries of progress, technological innovation and social evolution, we continue to love, fear, envy, desire, hope and suffer much as our ancestors once did.

And even today, as psychology strives to establish itself as a rigorous science of human behaviour, it often finds itself returning to stories that are thousands of years old. Heroes and villains that outlived the empires, slipping through the cracks of crumbling temples and forgotten ruins, only to find themselves dwelling once more within our so-called educated and disciplined minds.

From Narcissistic Personality Disorder to Oedipus and Electra Complexes, from the Hero’s Journey to the Cassandra Syndrome, we are still bound by patterns recognized long before modern psychology gave them names. It is as if the human software may have received countless updates, but the original code remains surprisingly intact.

All of this brings us to the myth of this new shared piece. And to be completely honest, today’s myth was never one of my favourites. Yet, while searching for a new subject for this article, I found myself compelled to give our culprit - or perhaps our victim - the chance to tell her story. And truth be told, as I delved deeper into the details, I felt abhorrence, then pity, then compassion, and finally a profound sense of kinship with her tragedy, for I, too, had once walked in her shoes not so long ago.

I am not entirely sure whether I should tell my story or hers, but one thing is certain:

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

Cassandra and I are so different, yet strangely alike. She was born of noble blood; I was born of modest, unknown origins. She was beautiful and graceful, while I was plain, hardly the kind to turn heads. She was royalty, and I was a wilted flower in a blooming garden.

And yet, despite everything that seemed to pull us apart, we shared one defining trait: a feral mind. Cassandra was renowned for her intelligence, and I, too, learned from an early age that beauty awakens desire, but a sharp mind conquers pride and even the most untamed hearts.

And so, Cassandra and I became two uncommon flowers, each captivating the mind of a different god. Hers was none other than the mighty Apollo, and mine was a cruel tyrant, slick and shallow, both powerful and accustomed to ruling over weak, corrupted souls.

Unlike most Greek myths, the story of how Cassandra and Apollo met was never fully recorded. All that we truly know today is that Apollo, the god of music, poetry, light and prophecy, was captivated not only by Cassandra’s beauty, but especially by her exceptional intelligence. Desperate to win her affection, he offered her the greatest gift he possessed: the ability to foresee the future.

A gift that Cassandra willingly accepted or perhaps felt compelled to accept. However, once she had received the power of prophecy, she refused Apollo’s romantic advances. Wounded by her rejection, the mighty god resolved to punish the mortal he had once admired.

But changing destiny was no simple game, and even the most powerful gods could not easily rewrite the course of events.  The ancient Greeks believed that a divine gift, once bestowed, could not be reclaimed. Apollo could not take back the power he had granted to Cassandra.  Instead, according to later traditions, he spat into Cassandra’s mouth or, in some versions, touched her lips, condemning her to a fate far crueller than losing the gift she had been given.

She would always speak the truth, yet no one would ever believe her, no matter how accurate her prophecies proved to be, thus transforming the greatest of gifts into the cruellest of curses.

After Apollo’s punishment, Cassandra’s life became a succession of tragedies from the Trojan War to her own death. Once destined for greatness, she became the prophet no one believed and the saviour no one acknowledged. Time and again, she was forced to foresee the deaths of those she loved, only to watch every prophecy unfold before her eyes, knowing that she could have been their Hercules, their salvation, if only they had believed her.

After the fall of her city and the slaughter of her people, Cassandra was taken as a war prize by Agamemnon, King of Mycenae. She was brought back to Greece as his concubine. On their journey home, Cassandra foresaw what awaited them both. She already knew that this voyage would be her final procession toward death, for Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife, planned to kill them both.

When I first encountered Cassandra, I couldn’t help but feel angry and utterly disgusted by what I initially perceived as her greed. I believed she used her beauty to lure Apollo into granting her the gift of foresight. But as the saying goes, “Only the wounded can truly recognize another's scars.” And the more I thought about her story, the more I began to wonder:

What if she was simply a helpless woman caught in the claws of a merciless predator?

What if Cassandra had no say in the story at all? What if, like me, once trapped with no way out of a gilded cage, she simply did what she had to do, appeasing her master, playing by his rules, kissing the hand that held the key, and waiting until the wind finally turned in her favour?

What if, like countless women throughout history, Cassandra never asked for any advantage at all?

What if, like many of us, she was forced to accept whatever was given to her with no right to refuse? What if, like in every fairy tale, Cassandra was offered a poisoned apple, a divine gift granted by a being infinitely more powerful than she could ever hope to be?

While embodying Cassandra, I found myself feeling sorry for both of us, for her and for me. Two helpless souls, used and abused, captured and forced into submission, forever branded with the names of our captors. Punished for resisting, cursed for leaving, and forever condemned to wander through the abyss of an eternal hell.

I felt her agony, her loneliness, her rage at having to fight so desperately to prove herself to the very people who had once known her, exhausted from trying to salvage what remained of her reputation and honour. Vanquished and broken, she was forced to kneel before another’s will.  

Cassandra and I shared the same fate, both prisoners of a great Apollo, a powerful man, dazzling, radiant, and charming, who sought to seduce us and to whom “no” was never an acceptable answer. Refusal always came at a price, so we learned to survive the only way we could: by being clever, obedient, and patient, waiting for the perfect moment to escape.

But when the opportunity finally came to flee his grip, we discovered that his net stretched far wider than we could have imagined, and his rage threatened even the kind hands willing to help.

Once we stepped outside the cage, he cursed our journey. He used every ounce of his power to defile the women we once were, transforming us from women worthy of admiration into disgraced, blasphemous women whose voices history refused to hear. Truth became lies, and credibility was never to be ours again. Like the plague, we were pushed aside, fled from, and shunned as though we carried a deadly disease.  

No matter the time, no matter the place in which we lived, no matter our heritage or how far apart we may seem, Cassandra and I are the same. The same phenomenon repeated throughout history. Two souls stripped of the simple joy of living, longing for a warm gaze capable of melting the frozen shackles wrapped around our necks and seeing the despair we could no longer hide. A merciful soul willing to understand that our lack of power was our Achilles’ heel, that our only crime was daring to stand tall, daring to say no, daring to play a dangerous game, believing we could outsmart a god born to rule, a supreme monster capable of bending our fate to his will.

Yet, as I once read, “Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again”. I owe it to myself to believe in a greater justice, in divine intervention, even in a modern world where the gods are forgotten and mocked.

I share this story, one that has long troubled my mind and ached within my heart. It is the story of an injustice that has burdened this lonely soul, feeding upon the happiness I have struggled to gather and hold.

A written suffering, nailed to my bones and endured with unyielding courage, in the hope that one day I might avenge Cassandra. That one day, her voice and mine would finally be heard.

Meryem !